Postmodernism and Popular Culture: A Cultural History

by John Docker

In this provocative study, John Docker takes his readers on an intellectual adventure. The journey includes a guided tour of the history of modernism, consideration of the development of postmodernism, explanation of structuralism and poststructuralism, and discussion of the debates and conflicts around each. It ranges widely, from theoretical discussion to consideration of everything from architecture, television and detective writing to Sydney's monorail. The book engages with some of the most important debates of our time, combining polemical force with intellectual rigor, and reclaims popular culture from the forces opposed to it.

Genres: Nonfiction

335 pages, Hardcover

First published December 12, 1994

About the author

John Docker is a literary critic and cultural historian. His books include 1492: The Poetics of Diaspora (2001); The Origins of Violence: Religion, History and Genocide (2008); and a three-volume memoir, Growing up Communist and Jewish in Bondi (2020). He is an honorary professor at the University of Sydney.

Reviews

[Dfordoom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Postmodernism and Popular Culture by Australian academic John Docker seems to have been intended mainly as an exercise in what used to be known in Australia as “stirring the possum”. He’s being deliberately provocative and controversial in an attempt to stimulate some debate. He argues that modernist criticism and cultural theories have mistakenly seen popular culture as monolithic and presenting a single ideological message when in fact popular culture is in fact extremely diverse and can be both extremely conservative and extremely radical. He also argues that audiences of popular culture are not, as they have so often been painted, mere passive consumers and that television, which has so often been scorned by intellectuals, is not passive either. He’s also scornful of various modernist scholars who have felt able to dismiss popular culture genres like detective fiction and soap operas without having actually read any detective fiction or watch any soap operas. I’ve certainly been guilty myself of being dismissive of some popular genres such as soaps and reading this book has made me realise how much of my reaction to such genres has been pure snobbishness. He’s also rather scornful of the attitudes of public broadcasters like the BBC and its Australian equivalent, the ABC, with their remarkably condescending and trivializing views of commercial television

He also has interesting things to day about modern popular culture and its similarity to medieval carnival. And he offers a spirited defence of the 1980s Australian TV serial Prisoner (known as Cell Block H in some of the many countries it was exported to). I have fond memories of watching that show. I also liked his view (and this particular example will I’m afraid mean nothing to non-Australians) of Australian comedians Roy Rene and Graham Kennedy as being in the great tradition of clowns as tricksters and wise fools. I found this book highly entertaining and extremely stimulating.