Wings of Desire frames postmodern fragmentation through clashing time scales between angels and humans

Evidence

In Wings of Desire, we similarly encounter two groups of actors living on different time scales. Angels live in enduring and eternal time, and humans live in their own social time, and, of course, they each see the world very differently. The film articulates that same sense of fragmentation that suffuses Blade Runner, while the question of the relations between time, space, history, and place is directly rather than indirectly posed. The problem of image, particularly that implied by the photograph, versus the telling of a story in real time, is central to the construction of the film. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1985

Categorization

• DEFINE: The photograph/story-in-real-time opposition is a concrete instance of the postmodern image-versus-narrative tension Harvey will theorize.
• XREF: connects to: Postmodernism replaced temporality with space and rejected phenomenological perception — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 331; Modernism privileges temporal experience while postmodernism subordinates time to space — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 367; The modern’s present-absolute nature generates recurring postmodern markers — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 28 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Postmodernism replaced temporality with space and rejected phenomenological perception #contradicts (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 331
• Modernism privileges temporal experience while postmodernism subordinates time to space #corroborates (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 367
• Theorists locate the postmodern shift in a crisis of spatial-temporal experience #corroborates (0.78) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1255
• The modern’s present-absolute nature generates recurring postmodern markers #expands (0.75) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 28
• Postmodern montage delegitimizes conceptual transcendence in favor of immanence #corroborates (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 437