“Postmodernism and Sally Potter
Sally Potter’s costume drama Orlando is described in a review by James Berardinelli as a “lavish tour through 400 years of history” Berardinelli believed Orlando to be “thin on story”, this comment unintentionally concurs with the essay question; the visual nature of the film disrupts the story and draws the viewer away from the meaning created by Virginia Woolf in her book by the same name published in 1928. Woolf wrote Orlando for her close friend Vita Sackville-West. The text’s purpose was to satirize the dispossession of Vita, who being a women was unable to inherit her family seat of Knole. Much of Woolf’s meaning is present in Potter’s film however Potter has added a large amount of her own meaning intentionally or unintentionally, a common feature of postmodern texts, in doing so Potter has revealed much of herself in Orlando. This aspect of the film draws much attention, again, disrupting the viewing process. Orlando is a more modern text then postmodern, both the film and novel although criticizing the human condition appear to have faith in eventual redemption. Despite this, the film uses several postmodern techniques. Techniques present in Orlando like appropriation, gender confusion, fluid time barriers, looking at . . .
The latter technique is very common in postmodern texts. While Somerville sings Edward Johnson’s Eliza is the Fairest Queen the Queen appears in the form of yet another famous gay icon: drag queen Quentin Crisp. Another common postmodern feature is Orlando speaking directly to the camera. The most obvious example of this is Orlando’s age: four hundred. The film also criticizes the English aristocracy in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. the past with irony and the fusing together of the ‘real’, the fictitious and composer interpretation, are some of the aspects of postmodernism that “disrupt the reading process”. Gender confusion continues throughout the course of the film. After Orlando finds himself incapable of killing during a war in the east he sleeps only to wake six days later as a women. The order of the sections in the film, Death, Love, Poetry, Politics, at which point Orlando changes sex, Society, Sex and finally Birth, is another clear criticism of assumed gender roles. Potter also appropriates a great deal of classic literature from sources like Spencer, Shelley, Shakespeare and the Qu’ran. The obscuring of time barriers is introduced from the opening of the film. Orlando sees this change as unimportant stating “Same person. The humorous irony of these scenes distracts the viewer from the serious focus of the film, the dispossession of Lady Orlando. The juxtaposition of two such conflicting sounds is an imm ediate disruption of the viewing progression.
Common topics in this essay:
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Acceptance Essays
