La La Land: The Postmodern Musical

Art fascinates me. Its rich history, stimulating content, volatile nature, and powerful impact never cease to keep me engaged and interested. Art is one of the few things that is truly universal to every one, everywhere. No one can live a life with out experiencing art in some way. It's a constant in every culture. Art is where we express our values, where we share our hearts, and where we come to understand ourselves. When all is said and done, we are known by the art we create.

The discourse surrounding art begets a further conversation about culture at large. Art forms a two way street with culture. The two go hand in hand so perfectly. They form a mutual cycle of impact and reaction. Art not only changes and defines a culture, but it also is shaped by the change of a culture or a cultural movement.

Currently, the western art scene is dominated by the postmodern movement. The movement was created as a direct response to modernism and challenges the beliefs and values of modern art. Before we into a serious discussion about the subject, we have to dispel of few common misconceptions of what postmodernism.

Contrary to what certain popular pseudo-intellectual internet personalities will say, postmodernism is not some evil force ruining our society. Postmodern is not inherently evil. It's an artistic and philosophical movement with advantages and disadvantages, just like any other movement. We are damning ourselves if we disregard an entire movement. With that out of the way, let's take a look at how we arrived at postmodernist art, and where La La Land factors into all of this.

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818), one of the
most notable works of the romantic period.

Art has always existed in a highly volatile state. Art changes quickly and without much warning. However, the volume and frequency of different movements and periods has increased rapidly in the past two centuries. Things really got going with the rise of romanticism in the early 19th century. Romanticism was the dying breath of the neoclassical period, in which things began to change from the ultra-realistic, deceptive pieces of the renaissance, and move to the vague, interpretative pieces of the modern art period. Romanticism signaled a move away from art representing physical space and the religious, to it representing emotion and ideas. Artists, philosophers, and writers moved away from the religious and spiritual subjects, and turned to the ideas that directly impacted people.

The 18th century was largely defined by the industrial revolution. The world began to move into a far more materialistic direction. The revolutions of the 18th century had redefined society. It was no longer about God, man, and the King in between, it was now just about mankind. The rising philosophical ideas of liberalism, conservatism, nihilism, and the like no longer dealt with humanity and some larger outside force, but now dealt with how humanity interacts with itself. Two of the most notable thinkers of the century, Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, are excellent examples of this.

Art was moving in this direction as well. Images were no longer painted in a way that God, or some objective outside force would see them, but as the artist saw it. Art became personal and human.

Romanticism finally died in 1863 with the Salon des Refusés, an exhibition of the rejected pieces from the general Paris salon. Here, the first modern artists were all in one room together. In a moment, the art world changed.

Modern art continued on for nearly 100 years and produced some of the most well known artists of all time. Monet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, O'Keeffe, Kahlo, and Picasso were some of the most important and notable artists of the modern movement. It also spawned several other movements under the modern banner: cubism, impressionism, and expressionism are some of the most notable. In the later years of the movement, the first non-figurative artworks appeared.

The modern period quickly became the most diverse movement in art with appearance of radio creating pop music and the rise of the accessibility of the cinema.

But even the most successful movements must die. World War II broke out and the world was turned upside down again. The war could be largely blamed for the demise of modern art. The world was unstable. World War II had put the very worst of human nature on display. Governments couldn't be trusted. Institutions couldn't be trusted. And as the cold war began, so died popular culture's trust in the system.

Post modernism was the response to the failure of modernism. The revolutions that birthed modernism had killed God, and now the wars of the 20th century were killing humanity. The old schools of thought were proving to be flawed.

God failed us, man failed us - where do we go from here?

It seemed as though there was little meaning left in the world. Here, in the rubble of the modern world, postmodernism was born.

The first postmodern art first showed up at the end of the 50s. It wasn't a quick transition between the two, unlike the transition between romanticism and modernism. In fact, it could be argued that the transition is still happening.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in La La Land

Modern art in the world of painting came to an end in the 70s with the death of Picasso, the last great modern artist. Philosophy soon followed, the literature. The last major art form to make the switch to postmodernism was cinema. Cinema hadn't had time to get all of the modern out of its system as it started its modern period four decades after the rest of the art world. While films certainly dealt with postmodern themes, they had never made a major, widespread switch in style. Exceptions exists, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Matrix, Pulp Fiction, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind come time mind, however these films were largely outsiders from the trends of the time.

The independent film scene has been alight with postmodernism in recent years. Art house films have taken on more nuanced approach to thematic content, narrative style, and visual presentation, and have seemingly actively avoided the convention and tropes of modern film.

The past decade has an incredible density of these kinds of films. The early 2010s started things off slow with films like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Life of Pi. Things picked up in 2013 with Her, Prisoners, and Under the Skin. The large influx continues with Birdman, Interstellar, American Sniper, and Ex Machina in 2014 and Spotlight and The Big Short in 2015. The trend showed no signs of stopping with Moonlight, Arrival, Nocturnal Animals, The Florida Project, Sorry to Bother You, Vice, and Us continuing the importance of post modern filmmaking in the following years.

However, there is one film that I neglected to mention above that is one of the most aggressively postmodern film of recent memory: La La Land.

La La Land is an easy target for understanding postmodernism in film. It rejects the notions of the modern-era musical and instead offers of a new look at the world classical cinema musicals present. It imitates the style of the classic in order to tear that world down.

La La Land is our postmodern musical.

Now its identity as postmodern entirely revolves around its ending and what it comes to mean, or rather, not mean.

Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain

Stories in the western world often fall into two categories: a happy ending and a tragic ending. The happy ending is for catharsis and the tragic ending is for learning. Tragedy is used as a teaching moment and the result of mistakes. If it happens in the middle of a story, then our characters grow from it. If it happens at the end, then the audience learns from it. The happy ending comes from our heroes learning from their mistakes and so earning a positive farewell.

Musicals, the Hollywood musical in the case of our argument, often fall into this happy ending category. They end with some celebratory final number, with the main characters having resolved their problem. We see this in films like Singin’ in the Rain, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, The Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins, and most notably in the disney animated musical affairs. A counter example of this could be the popular French musical Les Miserables, but even here our heroes end up triumphant. The revolutionaries die as martyrs and are welcomed into heaven and Marius and Cosette live happily ever after. The show ends with a powerful, triumphant finale.

La La Land avoids any sort of standard finale and presents the audience with a third option that firmly rejects the simple notion of a happy or a tragic ending.

A common comment I hear from people regarding the film runs somewhere along the lines of: “the ending made me cry! It was so sad.” With some further analysis, that becomes less and less true. The ending certainly isn’t happy, but it certainly isn’t sad either.

Where does La La Land leave its two central protagonists? The ending sets us five years into the future. Sebastian, played by Ryan Gosling, has opened a successful jazz club and has made a name for himself in the jazz world. Mia, played by Emma Stone, is a popular actress and is married and has a child.

The film ends with Mia and her new husband accidentally stumbling into Sebastian’s club. The two notice each other in the crowd. The film cuts to a dream sequence that shows the plot of the film where everything turns out in a Hollywood ending. The two are happily in a relationship together and are enjoying a new life in Paris. Then it cuts back to reality. Mia gets up to leave. The two share a glance and a warm smile. Mia then leaves and Sebastian turns around to play with his band: they will never see each other again.

It’s sad on a surface level, yet both characters got where they were going. Sebastian owns a successful club and Mia has made it big in Hollywood. But it doesn’t happen in the way we expect it too.

Writer and director Damien Chazelle firmly rejects the ways off the golden-age of musicals. While he holds to aesthetic similarities, he ultimately gives us what we don’t expect. He throws away the normalities of the modern musical and gives us something entirely new. That’s pretty postmodern.