Postmodern notes

What is postpodernism?

- Postmodern media rejects the idea that any media product or text is of any greater value than another. All judgements of value are merely taste. 

- Anything can be art, anything can deserve to reach an audience, and culture ‘eats itself’ as there is no longer anything new to produce or distribute. 

- The distinction between media and reality has collapsed, and we now live in a ‘reality’ defined by images and representations – a state of simulacrum. Images refer to each other and represent each other as reality rather than some ‘pure’ reality that exists before the image represents it – this is the state of hyper-reality. 

- All ideas of ‘the truth’ are just competing claims – or discourses and what we believe to be the truth at any point is merely the ‘winning’ discourse.

- Postmodernism is also said to reflect modern society's feelings of alienation , insecurity and uncertainties concerning identity, history, progress and truth, and the break-up of those tradition like religion, the family or, perhaps to a lesser extent, class, which helped identify and shape who we are and our place in the world. Artists like Madonna, Michael Jackson and David Bowie are all cited as examples of postmodernism in the ways in which they have created or re-created different identities for themselves.

Experts say...

- Writers on postmodernism (such as Lyotard, Baudrillard and Jameson) argued that recent economic changes produced particular 'structures of feeling' or a 'cultural logic' . Typical assertions include claims that, mostly thanks to television, and MTV in particular, we now live in a 'three-minute culture' (the length of most people's attention spans, it is said); or that we are part of an over-visual society, a 'society of the spectacle' - due to the preponderance of television and the Internet

- This has implications for realist forms of media, since our sense of reality is now said to be utterly dominated by popular media images; cultural forms can no longer 'hold up the mirror to reality', since reality itself is saturated by advertising, film, video games, and television images.

- Moreover the capacity of digital imaging makes 'truth claims' or the reliability of images tricky – think about the use of Photoshop in magazine and advertising images. Advertising no longer tries seriously to convince us of its products' real quality but, just shows us a fake about the product.

Ways to spot a Postmodern text...

Hypereality 

Proposed by the philosopher Jean Baudrillard, hypereality is the shift from texts that reflect an external reality to reflecting one in which reality is false or exaggerated. A reality which is based on a reality which is not real.

Dystopian Narratives 

Narratives become dystopian or negative, downbeat. Often the "bad" guys win or everyone dies. Often these texts suggest a lack of hope in the future (also includes flattening of effect)

Voyeurism/Panopticanisation/ Scopophillia 

Texts that are obsessed by the process of looking at others or the process of looking. These films suggest a society dependent upon the visual consumption of others. People change behaviour when they know they are being watched (panopticanisation)

Nostalgia
Using remakes, this is popular as this already has a guaranteed audience

Self Reflexivity 

This is where a text knows it's a text and draws attention to it's structure, production and/or conventions to the audience. In doing so, inverts (reverses) itself reflecting its own reality rather than an outside one. (often where characters talk to camera or you can see them on set) Nostalgia There is no future so why not recycle the past? Using remakes and a glossy positive memory of the past to create distracting entertainment from contemporary times. (linked to nothing new) (non-original material)

Non Linear Narratives 

Breaking up the rules of narrative, staring at the end, jumping around in time or even making a film run backwards to create something new. MANIPULATION OF TIME AND SPACE.

High art / low art hybrids

Cinema is largely considered a mass entertainment and low art, so juxtaposing it with "high" art is seen as a way of producing something new. 

Intertextuality 

If there are no ideas left out there, steal your ideas from other media or reflect them in your texts.

- The problem with this is that is can only make sense if you've seen what it's referencing 

- Pastiche, parody, homage are part of intertextuality

Hybridisation or Bricolage/ Juxtaposition 

This occurs when attempting to create something new by merging two existing objects together. The result of forming new conventions is called Bricolage Juxtaposition is a mash up of contrasting/opposing elements. Anything Artificial Moving away from anything natural or organic represents a sense of hyperreality and un naturalness that is at the centre of Postmodern ideas

Anything Artificial 

Moving away from anything natural or organic represents a sense of hyperreality and un naturalness that is at the centre of Postmodern ideas