WEEK 7

Throughout What is What there are themes to draw on from McKee. I believe that sensationalism is the main one to draw on. Sensationalism can be summed up as “the use of sensational subject matter, style or methods, or the sensational subject matter itself; behavior, published materials, or broadcasts that are intentionally controversial, exaggerated, lurid, loud, or attention-grabbing. Especially applied to news media in a pejorative sense that they are reporting in a manner to gain audience or notoriety but at the expense of accuracy and professionalism.” The use of flashbacks alone is a key sign to this, as it entails his own opinion on how things went. Throughout his conversations with TV Boy, his flashbacks not only seem to be somewhat exaggerated, but, on his own account, actually are. He continually states the stories are slightly exaggerated as a plan to extract sympathy from the readers who are looking into this novel for the real stories behind the Lost Boys.

This is definitely a Postmodernist take as well, it takes on so many characteristics of being postmodern that it is definitely, in my opinion, a postmodern novel. Some of the characteristics include the fact that he plays off the sense that everything is important to someone, uses trivia as a catalyst to change/challenge public discussion (doesn’t know what became of his parents or his other friends, the suspense of having their lives hanging in the air with him in no sense of control at all), and using the trivia as an insight between private lives and links between public and private life. The way he talks, using real life scenarios; just the way the book is written, in an autobiographical sense, is clearly leaning towards the postmodern perspective. The fact that opinion holds such a large influence on the relevance of his written material is proof enough for the fact that it is strongly postmodern.