>What about Rick and Morty, an incredibly popular TV show among many groups of people? Nihilism, self-awareness, and breaking the 4th wall are basically trademarks of the show.
See: "most banal of sources". Rick and Morty is a case study on this exact point. A perfectly plausible commercially packaged shadow of reality. I wouldn't be so elitist as to call Roiland a hack, but he is working firmly within "what was and is". He is not showing us an envisioned possible future, or exploring any novel ideas. It's just riding the last dying gasps of postmodern existential angst that was drilled into our heads by The Simpsons and Family Guy. Perfectly competent as a work of commercial entertainment, but not original art to be studied critically.
>See: "most banal of sources". Rick and Morty is a case study on this exact point.
While it is indeed banal, please, then, mention any other source that is not banal, and does not owe 90% of its existence to postmodernism.
I don't think you'll find any on either side of the Atlantic, no matter how highbrow it purports to be.
>He is not showing us an envisioned possible future, or exploring any novel ideas.
That's orthogonal and unrelated to postmodernism. Postmodernism wasn't about envisioning new ideas and futures -- in fact it said that new ideas are nigh impossible, as all current forms/ideas are just imitations and recombinations of existing ideas and forms, and all are perceived with equal indifference towards their novelty factor (or lack thereof).
In other words, if I created Blugrass-Death Metal-Opera combo in 1920 I would be a pioneer and a modernism breaking norms etc, and would have even shocked some part of the establishment and public.
Nowadays it would be business as usual, even if somebody hasn't already made that combination, nobody would bat an eye for its emergence. And the same holds true for anything else. It's just a new product, not a new form.
When music (to keep it to that sphere) progressed in small steps that took decades/years to be superceded, there were new forms (eg. Palestrina, Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Stravinsky, etc).
Now that it has embraced anything from silence (4.33) to total noise (e.g. Pan Sonic and noisecore), there's nothing really new. Anything will sit somewhere between those extremes (that are already received).
Ehrm, I'd definitely say it's worthy of study. But I agree 100% on the lack of envisioned future, good or bad. No warning (such as Philip K. Dick), no vision (such as earlier Star Trek).
See: "most banal of sources". Rick and Morty is a case study on this exact point. A perfectly plausible commercially packaged shadow of reality. I wouldn't be so elitist as to call Roiland a hack, but he is working firmly within "what was and is". He is not showing us an envisioned possible future, or exploring any novel ideas. It's just riding the last dying gasps of postmodern existential angst that was drilled into our heads by The Simpsons and Family Guy. Perfectly competent as a work of commercial entertainment, but not original art to be studied critically.