Pre-class Jameson

I thought Jameson's piece was somewhat confusing. I have yet to figure out parts of it, but what I did understand from it is that it reminded me of Jenks term of "tradition reinterpreted" and our discussion from Jenkins about parody. Jameson talks about the terms "coupure" or a radical break and "pastiche." The term pastiche is defined as "a work of art that imitates the style of a previous work." The term pastiche reminds me of Jenks term "tradition reinterpreted" because they both involve taking ideas from the past to create new ideas today. Today, everything is created with ideas from the past due to intertextuality. We shape everything we learn or invent today from previous experiences or ideas. From my understanding, the coupure is a break in time between a piece of work and the previous piece of work. For example, architecture. Years ago someone may have designed a building, then there was the coupure or the break in time, and now someone may use ideas from that previous building to create a similar style. One of Jameson's sections is titled "Pastiche eclipses Parody" (492.) The term parody means to make fun of or to make light of. Jameson says, "Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar mask, speech in a dead language"(493.) Pastiche and Parody relate because they are both imitating something that has already happened. I saw that one of the previous posts mentioned how 80's fashion is coming back. I thought this was a great example of how Pastiche and Parody relate. I feel as though people started wearing bright clothes and wild fabrics as a joke and because they thought it was funny to bring back the 80's days. Now, the fashion has caught on and it is becoming back in style. Today's 80's fashion is a pastiche because it is imitating a previous fashion era, but it is also a parody because it is making fun of how ridiculous it used to look.