Postmodernism

Postmodernism says that these days the typical sign does not have the pattern

Signifier --> signified

but

Signifier ---> another signifier

In other words, signs relate to each other, not to reality. Baudrillard extends this to say that what we experience as the world is a web of signs, not reality but a simulacrum of reality.

The movie The Matrix turns Baudrillard's idea into a sci-fi parable.

This video re-enacts The Matrix with Muppets.

But instead of being actual Muppets (in the cloth-flesh, as it were) they are computer animations.

So this is an animation representing Muppets representing a film representing a theory representing a relationship between signs.

And if you know anything more postmodern than that, please let me know.

The power of the image

An article in today's Sunday Telegraph says that Hitler used to have a large moustache, but was ordered to clip it so that his gas mask would fit properly, when he was a soldier in the First World War.

Question: Could he still have become Der Fuhrer if he'd still looked like the first photo?