Post-modern Language

The thing about the post-modern age we’re living in, and have been living in, for the past 30 years or so, is that we all want to see citations and references - -we want to see familiar images and hear familiar sounds.  We want movies to either have videobits or audiobits (clips from movies/music/TV we all remember ) and we use these as commonly and ubiquitously as words or even letters.  We live in an age of reproductions and copying and citing and so on - - we want familiarity in our entertainment and in our culture.  And these ‘bits’ operate no less and no more than letters  (or perhaps words) in an increasingly complex video/audio language; in some ways, the new language is quite logographic (writing system that often pairs visual image with sound-based characters).  In some ways, we are becoming more Chinese, if the logographic writing system has any influence on the culture – which McLuhan would, of course, strongly argue for.  (I feel like I’ve written this all before, curiously enough, at the end of University, I think).  Most young people feel the world is devoid of originality because so much of it is familiar and cliched.  But people never say the English language is cliched, or the English alphabet is unoriginal.  Everyone uses them, either words or letters, freely and we treat them as free and open to creative use, or even dull use – but no one ever says, “Oh, you used the word “the” again.  Get a life!  Say something original!  Have an original thought!”  We should treat the post-modern age we live in as the incipience of a new language, whether they take the form of words or individual letters remains to be seen, but it is a new language, more complicated by far than the poor alphabet or English language.  Our discomfort and cynicism with the world and artistic cultures, of the state of being unoriginal and totally incapable of originality, is childish and ignorant.  We are living in the age of Cadmus - -maybe that’s why I wanted to do a short movie based on the myth.  Anyways, quote freely and use the images of the culture as openly as one uses their own mother tongue. You are part of a revolution in language!