I don't buy into the postmodern explanation as theory, more like an eternal story of how things decay. The story is made poignant because it's one of people resisting mass culture, knowing they're doomed, and then after the doom, finding out they've been accepted -- as cartoon characters. I always say that Nietzsche was the father of postmodernism because of his assault on "knowing," and I've found every postmodern thinker since to be extraneous and obvious; if you accept them, you dumb yourself down. The movie succeeds where it gets outside the tedious theory and just shows us how isolated these guys are, and how oppressive the society around them is.