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"Gattaca" (1997) is a movie that, to me, exemplifies several postmodern features. The link is to the Wikipedia page about the movie and gives a detailed synopsis. The movie deals with the idea of genetic engineering. In "a not-too-distant future" all discrimination upon race, gender and religion will be forgotten, and thanks to scientific advances, people will only be judged upon their genes. This is a postmodern idea that depicts the importance of surface appearance, and not depth and meaning. In the movie, the main character goes for an interview, which surprisingly to him consisted only of a simple blood test. The company did not care about his personality or goals or past education like a normal interview, only about his genes and any risks of diseases. Since race is no longer an issue, "Gattaca" also contains the postmodern characteristic of disunity of nationalities and ethnicity. Instead, the only thing that decides who you associate with, work with, and even marry, are your genes and weather or not you were genetically engineered (which is more valued).

This "fail" video also displays characteristics of postmodernity. Most fail videos are of people falling down or hurting themselves, but this one shows a very private moment between a son and mother "discussing" god. Just as the video reaches a high point of intensity, and you think the mother is going to really get angry and maybe violent, the maker of the movie cuts away to a cat playing a peppy piano tune. This is very ironic and, as the Modern and Postmodern: Contrasting Tendencies chart would call it, a direct challenge "to official seriousness", or the discussion of "is there a god?". It could also be postmodern because the mother plays right into the idea of surface value over depth: she thinks telling her son that he can't get Christmas presents will some how change his mind. If you look below at the comments, this one video spurred a discussion between (one must assume) strangers who only know each other by there screen-names, but are having a calm discussion about religion themselves, compared to the heated discussion in the video.

This website discusses what post modernity is as well as the various perceptions that different point of views have on the subject matter. The website talks about how the term first came to be with architecture in 1971 and from there has spawned a whole new genre of books, movies, art, and many others. The main points of view the website contains are the Marxist point of view, the non-Marxists who are critics of the idea of post modernity, and the sociologist who see postmodern aspects of everything around them. It then goes into describing how post modernity influences subjects such as post structuralism, which involves the books having meaning beyond that which the author meant it to have, and many other aspects of human life such as society and politics. The last section deals with why post modernity is a problem because it can be argued that post modernity puts an end to progress. Overall, this website gives an excellent look in to the depths that post modernity can reach in all aspects of life and whether or not such a change will be detrimental to our society.