Postmodernism: cheap trick or brilliant twist?

My friend Brittany and I were on campus the other night for an ASU actors performance of "The Death and Life of Sherlock Holmes". The play was B quality. The actors were earnest in their impassioned readings, the bendable set was absolutely incredible with the ability to create hidden platforms and rooms, the use of screens was innovative to create mood and ghost effects, and the ingenious lightening was utilized for displaying snakes and trains and characters running as well signals to the audience (by way of projected architecture) of new locations.

The script though was convoluted at best. It took pieces from "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", "The Adventures of the Dancing Men", and allusions to another story involving psychics and gypsies. I read every single Sherlock Holmes story when I was a kid and ate up the sense of mystery and whodunit with a sense of wonder like most people who've read the collections. But that's just it. I've read the Sir Conan Doyle stories so I knew what the hell was going on with the bell rope, the snake, the hat box, and the dancing men code. Well, I was sort of able to follow. When they kept blending the story together and dancing men were part of the snake story I was thoroughly confused, as was Brittany judging by the way we'd turn to each other every now and then with a "wtf?" look on our face.

[spoilers ahead] I was ready to write the play off as a mildly forgettable but fun piece of entertainment for a Thursday night until that last 10 minutes of it. The villain of the play had been the depressed homebody psychic dad that was later revealed to be the eye-patched gypsy lord. This caused Brittany and I scratch our heads in confusion for a time until it was revealed that the mastermind of the whole scheme was actually Professor Moriarty. That is, until the professor took off his hat and showed the audience (by way of red hair and thick Irish accent) that he was actually the dad, the gypsy lord, and the professor.  Well, until the brilliant and redeeming postmodern twist was revealed. [more spoilers ahead]

The dad/lord/professor exclaimed that he was actually Sir Arthur Conan Doyle!  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as in the author of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  And on stage he exclaimed that he had created this whole mystery to lure Holmes to the edge of the waterfall so he could kill him, be rid of the literary character who had become more popular than the author, and be rid of the pressure to write about him anymore.  This is actually true, as Doyle wrote to his mother in 1891 telling her he wanted to kill the character and in 1893 with "The Final Problem" he did.

Back to the play.  With a shot of the pistol Homes was dead, and Doyle continued in his soliloquy of why he had to kill his most famous character.  As he continued to speak, however, he found himself remorseful over Holmes death and stated that a lot of himself was in Holmes and a lot of Holmes was in him.  They were too connected to actually part, and with further reflection Doyle brought Holmes back to life.  El Fin.

In my mind it was a brilliant postmodern twist.  It saved the confusing play into something original and clever.  That's what postmodernism is about.  It's about taking the expectations of what a thing should be and giving these expectations a kick in the ass by making it something recognizable but wholly different.  And yes, postmodernism usually instills ironic elements, such as a fish bowl designed as a fish, or black light, or ground beef cooked inside of a bell pepper.

In literature postmodernism is usually shown in structure or self-reflection of itself.  Like Thomas Pychon's The Crying of Lot 49.  The whole book is a parody of a novel since it has all of the aspects of a novel (a quest, patterns, conflict with the protagonist) but then leaves the quest unfinished, creates patterns just to break them, and the conflict is all a hoax (maybe) but then again the whole book is really just a hoax on the audience.  This can also be seen Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts were the protagonist Eric is being chased by a conceptual shark, with the idea that there are "thought waves" and "streams of consciousness" and "streams of conversation" and in those "streams" fish can swim within them with an occasionally shark that finds itself way into the waves and feeds off of information and memories.  This isn't new.  Shakespeare did it in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" when Puck tells they audience that if the play offended anyone that they should remember it as being just a dream.

When postmodernism is done right it can be a nice twist like this aforementioned examples and the Thursday night play.  But when an artist doesn't know what to do with his or her work and decides to call unfinished or lazy art "postmodern" it can used as a cheap trick to cover up bad art--like a terribly inaccurate portrait of someone, or a photo that has someone's finger in the lens, or a shoe with holes in it.

Postmodernism can be a really cool movement in art and lit, and I'm happy I saw a good example of it with the non-death of Sherlock Holmes last week.  Still a B quality play, but perhaps with the postmodern twist, a B+.