"Postmodernity," writes Lawrence Grossberg, "points to a crisis in our ability to locate any meaning as a possible and appropriate source for an empassioned commitment. . . . It is not that nothing matters--for something has to matter--but that there is no way of choosing or of finding something to warrant the investment (222). The postmodern dilemma then can be described in terms of the need to make something, anything, matter; to care about, to make a commitment to, something" (224).
Commitment becomes a matter of faith, a willed response to chronic inauthenticity, and there are, according to Grossberg, four contemporary attitudes or postures one can adopt towards one's own inevitable commitment:
The Commitments--as with, perhaps, all things soulful--exhibits a sentimental response to "affective investment." Grossberg writes:
sentimental inauthenticity celebrates the magical possibility of making a difference against impossible odds. What enables that possibility is not any specific affective investment but rather the intensity, the quantitative measure, of the investment itself. Cultural practices become merely the occasion for a temporary but intense affective investment, for a constant movement between emotional highs and lows. (229)
The plot of both Roddy Doyle's novel and Alan Parker's film concludes when the Commitments disband. Doyle, however, adds a coda to close his book. Jimmy Rabbitte, in a scene that echoes an earlier moment when he had introduced the core of his new band to soul, plays Mickah, Outspan, and Derek a new, archival tune: The Byrds's "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better." They immediately become enthusiastic about forming a new band (something along the lines of Jason and the Scorchers) and cutting a "country-punk" version of "Night Train" (160-65).