Things that are not postmodernist

Not everything is postmodernist. Not even everything you dislike is postmodernist. Some things are not postmodernist.

Artistic license is not postmodernist. It has been around for a long time, longer than postmodernism.

Why am I telling you this? Because of some literal-minded bozos who have been complaining that a Hollywood movie about Noah and his big boat CHANGED SOME OF THE THINGS IN THE STORY.

At the request of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), Paramount added a disclaimer which reads, in part, that “[t]he film is inspired by the story of Noah. While artistic license has been taken, we believe that this film is true to the essence, values, and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith for millions of people worldwide. The biblical story of Noah can be found in the book of Genesis.”

The movie isn’t the story in Genesis told in pictures. That fact is not postmodernist.

Brian Godawa, a screenwriter whose Christian films have repeatedly failed to be profitable at the box office, wrote that Noah‘s script “is deeply anti-Biblical in its moral vision.”

“Noah is a kind of rural shaman and vegan hippie-like gatherer of herbs. Noah explains that his family tries to study and heal the world whenever possible, like a kind of environmentalist scientist,” Godawa writes.

…

The environmental message, however, is not Godawa’s central complaint — he is mostly considered concerned with the “postmodernist fancy” that Aronofsky brings to the script. He initially acknowledges that anything not explicitly written in Genesis 6 is fair-game for creative license. “Saying ‘That didn’t happen on the ark,’” he writes, “is sheer ignorance because nobody knows what happened on the ark, because it wasn’t written down!”

However, “postmodernists fancy playing God and changing the meaning of texts to suit their agenda because they believe language creates reality. Therefore, it’s okay to ‘make the Bible say what we want it to say.’ This is manipulative narcissistic nonsense[.]”

No, Brian Godawa, that is not postmodernism. It’s just retelling the story. You know who else did that? Shakespeare. He used other people’s stories, and he changed them any old way he felt like. Shakespeare was not a postmodernist. Changing stories is not a new thing and it’s not blasphemy and it’s not postmodernist.

I’m sure you won’t make that mistake again.