Post-Post-Modernism?

The first take is usually the hottest. There’s one famous can of soup, but not two. Mono Lisa has only one mustache. God died once, and there have been no other gods to stand in the breach, despite the efforts of many prodigious Ubermenchen.

Too many takes, and folks reach for the martini. The best actors don’t act, and reality is hard to fake. The movie budget is tight for make-up, explosives, and birds for Hitchcock to throw at actors. This is why computer-generated movies are less dazzling: the potential for infinite takes of “Superman vs. Doomsday” leaves the audience yawning. Inevitably, industrious media moguls seek a computer-generated audience. Actors are not robots, but they might as well be — and why not the audience too? Thus, what began as robots trying to be human, ends with humans trying to be robots.

I know a thing or two about taking takes, because I was once a remarkable filmmaker. At least, that’s what my mother and my college degree led me to believe. I rarely shot on celluloid, but “digitalvideomaker” doesn’t have the same style as Tarantino, who’s shoes I was sure to fill by my early 20s. However, my “films” somehow never found an audience after the film fests, and the time comes for a young man to accept that the starving-artist lifestyle is less romantic than depicted in “Naked Lunch.” Perhaps if my grandmother shuffled off this mortal coil a little sooner, the distribution deals would have been more forthcoming. But that’s a horrible thing to think. When you’re “Upper-Lower-Middle Class,” as Homer Simpson puts it, family wealth is sad and confusing. By my late 20s, my parents had racked up almost $100K sending me to psych wards and rehab, and I was lost in bitter delusions of grandeur.

Now at the glad old age of 32, I am a subpar truck driver. Though my credit score is lowly after attending a highly-accredited university, my Bachelor’s Degrees in Film Studies and Philosophy have never felt more applicable. Trucking 14-hours-a-day offers plenty time to muse and just enough time to write. It’s got me thinking…

A theory: “Post-Post-Modernism” sounds dumb, so we need a better name. “Post-Truth” was a hot-take for a minute, but it turns out “truth” is timeless and nihilism is boring. But we do need to call it something, because we have entered into a decidedly new era. Using Borge’s analogy, the map of signifiers has stretched so thin across the signified landscape, it is now ripping to shreds on the icebergs of reality and sinking into the cold abyss. Rich kids have struggled to appear homeless, and they’re tired of going to the ATM. Women have been men and now want to be women. Teeny-boppers have danced enough for their phones, and they yearn to lindy-hop in their lover’s arms to a big brass band. Humans have tried to be gods, and though we might be too proud to repent, we miss Him. Certainly, we can’t call this the “Modern Era”, because that would confuse the grad students! Perhaps we should call it the “Pre-Future,” or “Post-Yonder,” or simply — “Homecoming.”

So here’s the hottest take: sunbathing on a beach is nice. Having a campfire with friends is fun. Phones are for calling someone you love.