Modern Love
Postmodernist Ideology

Kofi Fosu Forson

Some would identify with Daniel Day Lewis’ character in Stars and Bars as a true romantic figure. That the Cohen Brothers painted a picture of a dry cinematic hue all adds to the tremor in the heart of the 1980’s as a romantic time.

Choose Me, directed by Alan Rudolph, with its passion for music, dialogue and cinematography is a clever example of modern love. David Bowie is quoted in a song with the very title that “Don’t wanna fall for Modern Love.” I personally feel that Bowie’s music is equivalent of sexual defiance. As a discography, it’s actually the most essential recognition of love and angst in the modern age.

In the current age of celebrity, where actors such as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are in the public eye, the modern lover is concerned more with the body as an entity and with money as a source of fulfillment.

An increase in cyber porn and dating sites nullifies any notion of modern love. It’s a hard reality where the purpose is to match personalities based on official reasons not chemistry. This then draws the lowest common denominator where partners are forced to meet sexual demands, eliminating the realm of individual intellect and philosophy.

However said, cyberspace creates a world where people exist in that very intellect and a foundation for love. This is done not as a means where cyberspace represents a web-oriented universe. It’s more so a matter of communication which is encouraged by modern technology.

Modern love in the postmodernist ideology is conscientious. As always, money hastens the connection between two different parties whether they exist in the same country or internationally. Self-love and individual evolvement are of the essence.

Centeredness has all the bearings in courage, confidence and stature. It allows an ability to live a life of love; as in I am sex. I make love. I am love. This then becomes a matter of metaphors. To exist in a literal habit makes little room for what else could be found in the universe or cyberspace.

The difference then is to be original or to commit the gravest sin of imitation. Love doesn’t exist in copy. It does in clay, the origin of man.