Can fiction, when questioned beyond the bounds of logic, ever become reality? Postmodernist thinking is a way of manipulating the beliefs and concepts that shape literature, but even more so the typical methods of storytelling. Instead of structuring ideas around pure fiction, he takes ideas designed around abstract philosophies, real aspects of life and the universe, then develops them into fictional narratives, allowing the reader to expand their thought toward something greater than the isolation of mere explicit textual meaning. Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five and Peter Weir's film The Truman Show revolutionized postmodernism by doing precisely that, uniquely designing erratic structures within which stories are told, as well as placing conflict of ideas between the reader or viewer. These works clearly question what the main protagonist faces, does and thinks; this tactic leads to a conceptualization that goes far beyond the depth of a modernist novel and, arguably, beyond the impact of other postmodern works. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The Truman Show opens a window into an observation about the fascination with the ordinary and the surrender of our modern culture to succumbing by many means in the digital age of media attention. The film takes an image of today's society and captivates it with the basic concept of everyday life, an event that one could easily surround oneself with in reality, but instead uses one's energy by feeding off the fact to watch others endure reality for hours. them. In the case of the film, the lab rat who experiences this phenomenon would be the main protagonist, Truman Burbank. He is a naive man, ignorant of the world around him and unaware of his situation, but he still pursues a quest to discover the larger world (Seahaven Island) around him; Truman constantly embarks on an inner journey to find answers to life, reflecting a strong aptitude for postmodernist thought. A crucial moment where this is depicted visually in the film is when Truman walks away from Seahaven Island and finally reaches "heaven". This moment is representative of humanity's universal curiosity to discover what normality really is and reveals the main flaw in Seahaven Island's "perfection", namely that no matter what, one thing that cannot to be entirely manipulated is the human mind. . Thoughts are never preemptive, and this is exactly what leads Truman to escape from his caged life. Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five shares this same type of conceptualization by placing its main protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, in a constant battle with time and struggling to try to survive. find his belonging among the phases of it so that he can also try to discover the meaning of life, or how it is meant to be truly lived. It offers a level of escapism, offering vital commentary on humanity as it rests, and could potentially expand. There is a keen insight into how perfection is defined by society, as evidenced by the incorporation of Billy's journey through time to Times Square where he shops in a store displaying Kilgore Trout novels , to then serve as a facade to the world. societal obsession with unaccepted parts of public society. This signifies how society views Billy as an outlier sothat he is actually the most normal person with an understanding of reality in this store, while almost everyone else is immersed in wool collecting; Billy is criticized by one of the workers and tells him, "That's not what you want, for Christ's sake" (Vonnegut 260), as he holds one of the few actual novels in the 'place. In this statement, there is an implicit postmodern commentary on modern trends, since society seems to be invested in the lives of others, such as that of Montana Wildhack no longer reads for a good story, but rather for entertainment, a society that is not only doomed by capitalist media consumption/addiction, but also perfectly parallels that of Truman Burbank's life...let alone our own current society too. Literary theorist Linda Hutcheon has described the kinds of conditions that Billy Pilgrim and Truman Burbank, arguably even, live in, as the epitome of postmodern culture. It posits that the crucial elements that are almost always present in this type of consumerist society are a world dominated by the logic of capitalism, which cares nothing for the rights of oppressed workers or the ravages of the natural world, a culture dominated by simulacra . and spatial representations (screens, monitors, advertisements, etc.) that rupture our old sense of history, and a growing reliance on technology as a crutch for knowledge that fuels society's growing sense of unease and our separation of the real and the natural. world. Overall, in relating this view of society to what Vonnegut and Weir both seek to describe, it is to highlight that while others invest their escape from normality into an even more unchanging by turning to technology, an impalpable world...Billy and Truman both share and constantly contemplate a key question that distinguishes the purpose of their stories from others: what remains beyond the tangible life we let's lead? It is exactly this question that makes the lives of Truman and Billy so fascinating as a reader or viewer. Humanity as a whole is overcome by curiosity, which is why the term “innovation” has become so famous for the progression of our lifespans. Whether we look at it personally or not, it is divisive, because few decide to take the step towards searching for answers... they can be called crazy or seen as such in our eyes like Billy Pilgrim was to many of us. those he met, but they are the ones who move time forward to the next great developments in life. They push boundaries that would otherwise never be pushed, which is why the Tralfamadorians are obsessed with Billy, just as society is with Truman's televised life. Behind Billy's apparent madness, we are told that his "apathy hid a spirit sparkling and sparkling with thrills." He prepared letters and lectures on flying saucers, the negligibility of death, and the true nature of time” (Vonnegut 243). These beings truly experience life as it is, rather than escaping into an intangible artificial experience. Truman's director and "creator" Christof describes this fascination precisely, opening the film by emphasizing: "Although the world he inhabits is, in some respects, counterfeit, there is nothing false about Truman himself. -even. No scripts, no cue cards. It's not always Shakespeare, but it's authentic. It’s a life” (Weir, The Truman Show). Another concept present in both Weir's film and Vonnegut's novel is the postmodern idea shaped in atheory developed by Baudrillard in 1970, when Baudrillard had distinguished himself from Marxist theory of revolution, and instead posited the possibility of revolt against consumer society in an "unpredictable but certain" form. In other words, the obsession with a utopian type of society and a neo-generational world surrounded by facades of human evolution would ultimately bring about the downfall of society itself. We see this obsession present in society's view of the "perfect" life depicted in Truman Burbank's television report, as well as in Vonnegut's reaction to his arrival in Dresden, which would ultimately be burned to the ground, killing 130,000 people. "Someone behind him [Billy] in the boxcar said, 'Oz.' It was me. It was me. The only other city I ever saw was Indianapolis, Indiana” (Vonnegut 189). It is Vonnegut's included reaction that acts as a paradox of what we know will happen in the future fate of Dresden. Although the city became a mechanized machine, surrounded by history and architectural efforts, as well as residents who didn't even have to worry about war, it eventually collapsed precisely because of that. The city was in ruins because it fell into the category of a quaint consumer society. However, in addition to this premise, the experience of Billy and the other POWs in Dresden was formed around another popular postmodern philosophy described in Baudrillard's book, The Consumer Society, in which he comments on the process of social homogenization, alienation and exploitation. He argues that these processes “constitute a process of reification of commodities, technologies and things (“objects”) which come to dominate people (“subjects”), stripping them of their human qualities and capacities” (Baudrillard, La consumer society). This philosophical idea is evident in both plays, as we see that humans lose touch with themselves and their lives once The Truman Show becomes a worldwide phenomenon as a sort of reality television show. And in the case of Vonnegut's story, this is seen through Billy's experience on Tralfamadore when the typical zoo exhibit for humans consisted almost entirely of consumer items and objects...this which caused Billy to cherish his humanity with Montana much more. Pilgrim and Truman Burbank are very similar as parallel characters, as both are very fanciful and out of place in a life captivated by discovering their goals. For Truman, this involves trying to experience his life as something tangible, and not just a life scripted and filmed for real-world viewers to derive unpleasant pleasure from; as for Billy, this involves him trying to discover the purpose of his role in the war as we are thrown into his period of becoming a prisoner of war, as well as his attempt to discover where he actually belongs in time, as he constantly jumps. between eras...and even planets, when he has moments of glimpse through what Kilgore Trout called "time windows". Both are truly trapped in isolated moments, not in a tangible life. But this is where they become outliers and launch into their stories to break away from their isolation or stuck moments. Billy and Truman eventually succeed and avoid being trapped; “Billy thought a lot about the effect the quartet had on him. He did not travel in time to experience this. He remembered it shimmeringly” (Vonnegut 226). Some depth of this is depicted in Slaughterhouse-Five, as Vonnegut opens many portals to introspection for us by placing his..