Pastiche, entailing the consatant imitation, through media, of what the very media propagandized as unique and singular (or exclusive), becomes a practice appropriated both by the arts and by popular culture (hence pop art)
About the uniqueness as a construction of certain industries, collective of communitary interests, Fredric Jameson coined the useful term culture of the simulacrum, insisting on imitation of things for which perhaps no real original existed. However, is definition of pastiche as "neutral practice of mimicry, without satirical impulse, without laughter" is perhaps not so useful as the term parody coined by another postmodernism theorist, Linda Hutcheon.
Linda Hutcheon's conception of parody conflates many other similar ones: "Parody—often called ironic quotation, pastiche, appropriation, or intertextuality—is usually considered central to postmodernism, both by its detractors and its defenders" (Politics of Postmodernism) . Unlike Jameson, who considers such postmodern parody as a symptom of the age, one way in which we have lost our connection to the past and to effective political critique, Hutcheon argues that "through a double process of installing and ironizing, parody signals how present representations come from past ones and what ideological consequences derive from both continuity and difference" (1989, p. 93). Hutcheon believes in parody as transformational repetition, or repetition with a difference.
(1984)
What temporal differences are signaled by Madonna's parody(ies)?
- blurring of fact and fiction ( the end of the great narratives) - see the French word "faction"
- empowerment of woman as individual (for better or for worse)... but the individual in general has hallowed, or decentered of self (perhaps)
- breaking down of tabus (sex)... but also religion, and race
- multilayered iconicity, or the overdetermined symbol
(1993)
Other traits:
- transnationality and hybrid ethnicity
- de-differentiation
