POSTMODERN: "Stranger than Fiction"

This was our postmodern movie selection. I think the most obvious way that it was postmodern was through its metafiction, the fact that Harold Crick knew was the protagonist and knew it. There is also a sort of sense that there is no God. Perhaps fate is determined by chance circumstances or other people, but there is no supernatural being who oversees everything. The most powerful character in the movie is the author and she is not even aware of the influence she has on others and she is not omniscient and is not aware of their lives outside of her writing. Also, there is a hint of the idea of celebrating chaos in that Anna is an "anarchist".

However, there were some aspects of the movie that I felt were un-postmodern. In the movie, I liked the line the author said when she was explaining why she kept Harold alive, saying something to the effect that "when a man dies without knowing he's going to die, that's one thing, but when a man knows he's going to die and still willingly does it--isn't that the sort of man you want to keep alive?". By the end of the movie, Harold had transformed from a mindless sort of tax-machine, to a man driven by his desire to preserve his own life, to a man who saw the world through lenses bigger than his own two eyes; in other words, he saw the greater picture outside of his own interests. Thus, he was willing to die for the sake of something that was greater than just himself. For this reason, he was saved. If he had maintained his sense of self-centeredness, he would have died, but he lost himself and gained his life by doing so. This is very much the Biblical idea of Matthew 16:25, which says, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." This aspect of the values that Harold learns is quite unlike the Postmodern way of celebrating disorder and chaos as well as the belief that there is no absolute truth.