Essay Structure / Plan

Is contemporary branding and design merely a pastiche or can it be parodic?

Introduction
The focus of this essay - the contrasting viewpoints of 2 theorists regarding the post- modern and what has come with it - pastiche or parody?

Parody vs Pastiche
1. PARODY
According to Linda Hutcheon, one of the main features that distinguishes postmodernism from modernism is the fact that it "takes the form of self-conscious, self-contradictory, self-undermining statements" (Politics 1).
One way of creating this double or contradictory stance on any statement is through the use of parody: citing a convention only to make fun of it. As Hutcheon explains, "Parody—often called ironic quotation, pastiche, or appropriation - is usually considered central to postmodernism, both by its detractors and its defenders… Parody signals how present representations come from past ones and what ideological consequences derive from both continuity and difference" (Politics 93).

PASTICHE
Jameson characterises postmodern parody as "blank parody" without any political bite. According to Jameson, parody has, in the postmodern age, been replaced by pastiche: "Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style, the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead language. But it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody's ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter" (Postmodernism 17).

2. J POSTMODERN PARODY IS UNORIGINAL
“For with the collapse of the high-modernist ideology of style - what is as unique and unmistakable as your own fingerprints… the producers of culture have nowhere to turn but to the past: the imitation of dead styles, speech through all the masks and voices stored up in the imaginary museum of now global culture.” (Postmodernism 17).
The Death of Subject means the death of individualism, and Jameson has a terminal view of these things: he suggests that the search for individual voice and style of the Modernists is dead this time around, that there are literally no more permutations left to try out, and that the artist must simply resign himself to mimicry of past styles in the form of pastiche. What postmodernism amounts to, Jameson believes, is something existing only in the present; undergoing such radical change, decay, and rebirth; and utterly destroying any inchoate traditions that, if left to develop, would make full demonstrable periods makes this demarcation of temporal postmodernism nearly impossible.
SUPPORTED BY BAUDRILLARD 

Baudrillard (1983) defined "hyperreality" as "the generation by models of a real without origin or reality” (Storey, 2012, p.193)

POSTMODERN DOES NOT IGNORE HISTORY - GIVES NEW LIFE
“The past as referent is not bracketed or effaced, as Jameson would like to believe: it is incorporated and modified, given new and different life and meaning. This is the lesson taught by postmodernist art today. In other words, even the most self-conscious and parodic of contemporary works do not try to escape, but indeed foreground, the historical, social, ideological contexts in which they have existed and continue to exist.” (182)

3. NO PRINCIPLE Examples of Postmodern Pastiche according to Jameson:
1) the way that postmodern architecture "randomly and without principle but with gusto cannibalizes all the architectural styles of the past and combines them in overstimulating ensembles" (Postmodernism 19)

PARODY IS NOT WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
Jameson argues that in postmodernism “parody finds itself without a vocation," replaced by pastiche, which he (bound by a definition of parody as ridiculing imitation) sees as more neutral or blank parody. But then by looking to both the aesthetic and historical past in postmodernist architecture is anything but what Jameson describes as pastiche, that is, "the random cannibalisation of all the styles of the past, the play of random stylistic allusion.”
- “There is absolutely nothing random or "without principle" in the parodic recall and re-examination of the past by architects like Charles Moore or Ricardo Bofill. To include irony and play is never necessarily to exclude seriousness and purpose in postmodernist art.” (186)

4. J NOSTALGIA FILM
2) the way nostalgia film or la mode rétro represents the past for us in hyperstylised ways (the 50s in George Lucas's American Graffiti; the Italian 1930s in Roman Polanski's Chinatown); in such works we approach "the 'past' through stylistic connotation, conveying 'pastness' by the glossy qualities of the image, and '1930s-ness' or '1950s-ness' by the attributes of fashion" (Postmodernism 19).
The "history of aesthetic styles" thus "displaces 'real' history" (Postmodernism 20).
Jameson sees this situation as a "symptom of the waning of our historicity, of our lived possibility of experiencing history in some active way" (Postmodernism 21).

HUTCHEON VS POSTMODERN FILM
As Hutcheon puts it, "Postmodernism is both academic and popular, élitist and accessible" (Poetics 44).
It is thanks to such contradictions that postmodernism can mount a successful critique. Whereas Jameson condemns all Hollywood film as contributing to the problems of late capitalism, Hutcheon offers another way of valuing such work: "Postmodern film does not deny that it is implicated in capitalist modes of production, because it knows it cannot. Instead it exploits its 'insider' position in order to begin a subversion from within, to talk to consumers in a capitalist society in a way that will get us where we live, so to speak" (Politics 114).

Pastiche / nostalgia in branding (going back to earlier responses)
Nat-west & Co-op
Stripping back to plain vector

What current design studios opinions are

Pastiche / parody - inspired by/celebrating or mocking others?
Stranger Things Title Sequence

Supreme as a consumer culture itself - is it just a huge parody?
- Kruger parody or pastiche?
- Married to the MOB parody & lawsuit

Reference to legislation and copyright in terms of pastiche
Football teams moving away from the traditional crest. Making use of the more vectorised logo style - feels like a brand. Applying this design style (seen as pastiche) but to an industry which has never had this approach. - Juventus, Man City, Everton, West Ham

Conclusion

Sources

Storey, J (2012) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (6th Edition). Essex: Pearson Education Limited

Jameson, F (1991) Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP

Hutcheon, L (1989) The Politics of Postmodernism. New York: Routledge

Hutcheon, L (1988) The Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge

Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Jameson: On Pastiche." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. 31/01/11. Purdue U. 16/01/17. < https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/postmodernism/modules/jamesonpastiche.html >

Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Hutcheon: On Parody." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. 31/01/11. Purdue U. 16/01/17. < https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/postmodernism/modules/hutcheonparody.html >

Oxford University Press. “The Definition of Parody”. 16/01/17. < https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/parody >

Farrell, S. P. “How the Stranger Things Titles Came Out So Perfectly Retro.” 08/11/16. Wired. 16/01/17 < https://www.wired.com/2016/08/stranger-things-titles-came-perfectly-retro/ >

Brewer, J. “Nostalgia in branding.” 13/10/16. It’s Nice That. 16/01/17 < http://www.itsnicethat.com/news/nostalgia-in-branding-design-opinion-co-op-natwest-131016 >