Looking closer at Harvey’s idea of “space-time compression,” the progression of globalization and new communication technologies further disintegrated a modernist world view into a series of subjectively experienced phenomena, leaving an overarching sense of instability. It is this instability which becomes a particularly important theme in postmodern works of art and architecture, an attribute shared in a more recent text, “Cinematic Urbanism”, by architecture professor
Nezar Alsayyad:

“Postmodernism, in its broader scope, involves a crisis of knowledge and representation… postmodernism emerged based on the recognition that there was no longer a stable, neutral, outside place, and that it was often no longer possible to differentiate between he real and the simulated… Such fragmentation meant it was only possible to know the world in a disjointed and chaotic way.”
(Alsayyad, 2006, 9)

In this work Alsayyad tries to chart the direct association between the evolution of cinema and the ever changing urban landscape.

Investigating the subtler nuances of the pluralistic canon of postmodernism, Harvey does however denote certain criteria which, within the frame of reference of “space-time compression”, are readily applicable to the discourse of contemporary film.  These include, but are not limited to, the fragmentation of plot into multiple realms, the “[collaging] together [of] incompatible source materials as an alternative to choosing between them” (Harvey, 1990, 49), the layering of character in to multiple personas, the non-linear referencing of history, thus ultimately denying a utopian existence. The following website will looking closer at several of the films viewed this term and discuss how a majority of them manifest, in some fashion, these motifs of fragmentation and how the resultant qualities can support a theme of madness.