Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 34

32 Popular Culture Review the eighties they have become a sign of untouchable know ingness, paralleling the multinational headquarters and bank buildings of Southern California and its imitators. There, the mirror-glass skin of the building throws back all inquiries to the inquirer, suggesting that today’s corporation is to be appreciated precisely for its claim to high-tech universality, that the m aterial claim is not important—all that matters is the shiny sac of pure capital, the ultimate postmodern abstraction (139). Melville summed up his reading of 19th century American urban existence in a searing crystallization: Bartleby’s silent, despairing stare at the man-made walls of New York City. In our time that metaphysical despair has metamorphosed into a desperate desire to "write" on that w all—i.e., to fill the void of "untouchable knowingness" with ourselves, or to internalize the Other: the two impulses are really one and the same. In Gitlin's view, we have attempted to meet the Other, and the Other appears to be us: "Surface is all," he concludes. " . . . What you see is what you ge t.. . . [Americans' love of reflecting surfaces] suggest[s] that the highest destiny of our time is to become cleansed of depth and specificity altogether" (139). Jean Baudrillard makes an interesting distinction between what he calls the "mirror" and the "video" phases of postmodern culture. The "mirror phase," or what I would call "low postmodernism" because of its roots in more conventional varieties of societal narcissism, reaches its zenith in the cult of relevance beginning around 1965 and extending through the so-called "me decade" of the 1970s. The self-serving get-rich narcissism of the Reagan/Yuppie years is an extension of this type of low postmodernism. The "video phase," on the other hand, reflects a tendency toward radical or "high" postmodernism: a desire for "cleansing of depth." The attraction for giant video screens, for example, which reproduce surrounding environments either "live" or in instant replay, is one expression of the way technology re-channels the essential human need to authenticate being. Many people have experienced a unique thrill from being on television, or from seeing themselves or someone they know on television. Why is this experience, unique to the postmodern