Postmodern Theory and Blade Runner by Matthew Flisfeder (review)

Matthew Flisfeder's book undertakes precisely what its title suggests it will do; it comprehensively presents the history and features of postmodern theory and criticism and then applies these set of analytics to a close reading of Ridley Scott's 1982 classic sf film. Flisfeder's text is part of the 'Film Theory in Practice' series by Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing. As such, he gears it toward readers interested in learning media theory and close reading practices in tandem. In this work, Flisfeder successfully demonstrates how a specifically Marxist and postmodern analysis of Blade Runner can provide insights for understanding our contemporary late-capitalist society, culture and politics. Taking an intertextual interpretive approach to the film and other works of popular culture, Flisfeder lays out a cognitive map of our capitalist realist setting, reclaims the radical potential of postmodern theory and highlights Blade Runner as a prism through which to consider the transition from modernity to postmodernity and from the postmodern to the capitalist realist present.

Flisfeder divides his book into two chapters, the first providing an account – as concise and clear as one could hope for – of the history of modernism and postmodernism (broadly defined) and their major tenets. In order to guide the reader to an understanding of postmodernism as a reaction to modernism, he begins by exploring the latter, covering everything from Marxism and psychoanalysis to semiotics and structuralism. Flisfeder contends that although modernism attempted to distance itself from market logic and produce 'art for art's sake', capitalism ended up commodifying and institutionalising all sectors of society, including art, and turned modernism's 'practices of subversion … into the dominant ideology' (84). Postmodernism, Flisfeder argues, is then what happens 'when subversion is no longer subversive' (84). The first chapter also fleshes out the primary elements of postmodernism, under which Flisfeder identifies some of its positive improvements on modernism – its pluralism and dissolution of the lines between high art and popular culture – as well as what he sees as its more problematic critiques of master narratives of historical teleology. Marxism and its historical materialist reading of history is one such metanarrative that he wants to retain, however, and use to reframe postmodern readings to see past their 'cynical resignation' (85). His claim is that other traits of postmodernism – pastiche, parody, double-coding, irony and simulation – can only be fully grasped as political if they retain awareness of 'commodity-class dynamics of contemporary capitalism' (83). Given the nature of the book's focus and target readership, much of what Flisfeder discusses in the first chapter is positioned in relation to film and media, and he uses numerous examples from movies and television to illustrate his points. Blade Runner, in particular, is chosen as a text which lends itself to a Marxian postmodern reading, which is the focus of the book's second half.

In his analysis of Blade Runner, Flisfeder shows how the film surfaces postmodern themes that challenge authoritative accounts of history, liberal notions of subjectivity as centred, and modernism's Western and phallocentric positions. He accomplishes this by engaging in a close reading of the film as a 'constant simulacrum of itself' (97), which is evident through the various editions of its theatrical release, Director's Cut (1992), Final Cut (2007) and its incarnations in the digital present. He also explores the film's genre hybridisation of noir and sf into a cyberpunk, hyperreal setting, its use of parody and pastiche, its manipulation of mise-en-scène, its questioning of subjectivity and its postmodern emphasis on spatialisation rather than temporality. For example, Flisfeder calls attention to how the 'glossy images of consumer spectacle' and presence of digital technology in Blade Runner contrast with the 'decay' and 'cultural density', which would make it difficult for viewers to specify a locale for the setting had the film not clarified it as Los Angeles at the outset (93). Furthermore, he notes the costumes evoke both 1940s film noir...