Postmodernism presentation

Sophie Bishop - Wreck it Ralph Homework

Collapsing of the structure/boundary:
The structure begins with a stereotypical Hero and villain, theses roles switch allowing the non stereotypical hero to save the game. The structure is non linear as it is not a clear equilibrium etc, this is in order to stretch the boundary. The boundary is stretched because of these stereotypes being broken, and the many genres within the film, the different games int he arcade.

Representation of Gender:

The film represents a stereotypical male, from Ralph being violent in his game and become angry. But is also shows a more feminine male because of Felix’s character, being small and fragile.

Narrative: Hero, villain and princess (Propp):
The character types in the film are not clear to begin with, to begin with Felix is the Hero, Ralph is the villain (in the Wreck it Ralph Game) and Vaneloppe is the princess (heroin). These roles then reverse, Ralph is the hero saving Felix, Vaneloppe and the game its self. Calhoun is continuously the hero in the whole film, but she is not a lead character, but is always there. She saves Felix and helps the game but not as much as Ralph, but she has a Gun to help this Ralph does not, giving her an advantage.

Representation Human or game character:
The whole film is animated, so the people characters are not 'real' people but are compared to the game characters. The children/people in the arcade playing the game I think have been added to give the film a realistic touch. Disney have given the game characters human characteristics, so the audience can make an emotional attachment, therefore enjoying the film more and perhaps buying into other features, such as the individual 'retro' games and usual merchandise.

Genre - Video Games:
This film has a hybrid is genres, including comedy, animation and action. These genres are traditional, but in contrast to these traditional genres it could also fit into perhaps another category video games, which is post modern.

Audience: Interactive or Part of the text?
The audience of Disney are form all age groups, so the film can connect with these but also because the games are 'Retro' and nostalgic it will attract people from those eras. The audience may get a feeling of nostalgia when watching the film, making them feel part of the film/text.

Representation  - Simulated, world and reality:
This film is a simulation because is is based on video games, it is cartoon so cannot be reality.
Lack of belief/faith in progress or big ideas(morality - are there any 'Disney' messages at the end?, Morality or Religious values?:
As all Disney films there is a message, a 'moral' message to become a hero/good rather than being the villain/bad. But the message can also be viewed as sexiest, also like other Disney films, that to be a man you have to be strong and save the girl. The lack of belief in the characters start off deflated but towards the end they increase. There are no clear religiouse values, but their are traditions such as the race.

Theories of PM - Hyper reality, simulation:

Hyper reality and simulation re the main themes int he film, as the film is animated it is hyper real. As well as the non realistic behaviours and actions too.
Stylistic Approach:
The whole film is promoted as 'retro' the characters also even talk about this int he film. These 'retro' themes are there to sell to older consumers.
Intertexuality references (parody or pastiche):
This theme is mainly seen as a homage to Fix it Felix, so a  pastiche. Also games such as Pac Man are seen in the central area/train station, which adds tot he nostalgia theme of the film . It could also e seen as a parody, as the Candy race game is a parody to Mario Cart, the game is very similar but the characters and colour schemes are different.
Bricolage:
The stylistic parts, different games, are adapted and blurred throughout the film, adding to the nostalgia theme throughout.
Self Reflexive (irony and playful):
The film is constructed well, in order to link together creating nostalgia.
Conclusion
In what ways (1-3) and to what extent does WIR qualify as Post modern (PM):

Wreck it Ralph is postmodernism, because of the Disney film being nostalgic, we can only look back. Also the film includes hyper reality and simulation, the whole film is animated so from a stylistic view it in aesthetically postmodern. But a huge part of this film being postmodern is the fact it is a hybrid, plus fits into a category which is not traditional, as well as the structure being blurred and stretched through non traditional ideologies and challenging traditional stereotypes. This film is post modern to attract all audiences of all ages, because it is stylistically post modern is looks colourful and young, but it also attracts older audiences because of the nostalgic aspect. Disney wants to gain profit by using intertextuality to their advantage.


Intertextual mood board:
These are all the interetextual references the film makes, parody and pastiche.

Nostalgia and cultural recycling - Jameson

Style over substance 'retro'

How does your familiarity with and immersion with the characters change how you read the text - how does Nostalgia makes it's meaning richer?  300 words 

The characters take the audience back to a time when they were younger, they are familiar with these character in Wreck it Ralph, this nostalgia affects the way the audience see the film and enjoy it. As soon as they hear about the film, this immediately creates the nostalgic feeling, and makes them want to see it. As they watch the film this nostalgic feeling will affect the film, if the film is bad at least they are revisiting their past. The film makes the audience exciting and happy, and emotionally invested in the film, because they feel they are 'past friends' because these characters were so involved in their childhood. As the film is Disney they will already have a young audience, this young audience will hear about these characters from their parentS. Also retro games are popular now so they may know these characters. The pastiche aspect is what creates the nostalgia, their is also some parody aspect this entertains the audience, because they get the characters they will get any jokes made. The intertextual references in the film include Fix it Felix, Street Fighter 2, Tron, Halo, Pac man and Rampage. The film combine the references so they interact with each other, which the audience enjoys seeing their past come together. Because the references are different genres this makes the film a hybrid. The whole film is playful and ironic, the lighthearted film has the characters act differently to perhaps they used to making it playful, and giving the audience some contrast.

Cultural Recycling:
Jameson is the main theorist linked to this theory. The random collection of various pasts styles - erasing historical depth - Postmodern cultural recycling Example Wreck it Ralph, combining the intertexualities creating a new - parody and pastiche.

Key Terms and Examples

Characteristics for the way post modernism looks 

Key terms 

Simulacra - realist forms of media, part of hyperreality. Reality it's self is saturated 

Parody & Pastiche - referring to existing texts. 

Homage - paying tribute to influences 

Makes sense of meaning of the reference 

Hyper reality - making something that's real simulated so it appears to be better than it originally is - photoshop 

Bricolage - the process of adaptation or improvisation, aspects of one style are given different meanings. 

Stylistic features with combination of multiple. Doctors tardis - old type writer with a modern viewer.

Intertextuality

Hybridity - mixing and sampling different types of kinds and levels. 

Recycles the old

Hip Hop - DJ Shadows 

Dislocation from time & space 

Self Reflexivity - constructed simulation or reproduction. Using hyper reality and using it to make reference. 

Wolverine - atomic bombs, and war - intertexuality 

Matrix - hyperreality 

Lady gaga telephone (parody) - parody

Death to videodrome - hyperreality 

Doctor who - hyperreality - isn't real. Also homage because it's showing Winston Churchill in a good way. Dislocation to time and space 

Pulp fiction - style over substance 

Wrecking ball - hyperreality 

Aphex Twin - simulacra - strange faces 

Dead set (Davina Zombie) - hyperreality, self reflectivity 

Aesthetics

Simulacra - reality is saturated - photoshop 

Parody and Pastiche - uses intertexuality as a homage sometimes - paying tribute to its influences comedy 

Hybridity - a mix of levels 

Bricolage -process of adaptation or improvisation where aspects of one style are given meanings when compared and collide with stylistic features from another combination. Doctors tardis 

Intertexuality

Hyper real- enhanced or unreal 

Dislocation from time and space 

Self reflexivity - is it a simulation ? Or reproduction 

Wolverine atomic bomb scene:

Intertexuality

Matrix desert the real:

Hyper reality 

Lady gaga telephone parody: 

Parody 

Death to videodrome:

Hyper reality 

Doctor who Churchill 

Homage, hyper reality, dislocation from time and space 

Royal with cheese pulp fiction 

Style over substance 

Miley cyrus - wrecking ball 

Hyper realityAphex twin: 

Simulacra

Dead set: 

Hyper reality, self reflexivity 

Sophie Bishop more pre reading

-3 states - 

Aesthetic, historical - ww2 and philosophically 

-Theorists: 

Baudrillard simulation, leotard - collapse of grande narratives original start with the dad, Jameson - stylistic theorist hybridity 

Difference - post is after modernism, Post-modern media, is a text which doesn't follow and does not trusts modernism ideals and theories. Rather than modernism, post modernism is not traditional ideologies and theories. 'A loss of faith' 'the people started to question, didn't want to be told' ' do we trust these people' rejecting everything before 

-What is it built on: fictional ideas two foundations 

Technology and consumerism 

Technology slows us to become hyper real 

Consumerism - clothes the exspression

What has caused emptiness - the pessimistic view, and hyper reality and we are preferring artificial to real. Style over substance. Lack of faith 'I will only believe in what I can see' a rejection what we're told to do, there is still some faith 

-Birth: historical events holocaust and atomic bombs Japan 1960 onwards 

Was it made in the era - history 

Does it think - p

Does it look - aesthetic 

Some modern aspects - breakdown 

Simulacra

Parody and Pastiche 

Hyperreality - a mix of levels 

Bricolage

Intertexuality

Hybridity

Dislocation from time and space 

Postmodernism revision - Sophie Bishop

Essay Response:

What do we mean by post-modern media?

Post-modern media, is a text which doesn't follow, but distrusts modernism ideals and theories. Rather than modernism, post modernism is not traditional ideologies and theories. Post modernism is a distrust in modernism theories. Postmodernism is characterised as superficial and empty, because of hyperreality, Baudrillard, and how we now want artificial rather than the real 'stuff'.

The game 'Rampage'

What do they have in common?

They are all about destruction and conflicts, their is sympathy built in all in some way or another. They all are about buildings, being destroyed or used to destroy other things. The masculine role is the most prominent in all, 'Wreck It Ralph and the game. Wreck it Ralph and the game are hyper real, whereas the video is real. The main genre would be action.


Whats the exam about?

What is meant by ‘postmodern media’?

Why are some media products described as ‘postmodern’?
 

Explain how certain kinds of media can be defined as postmodern.
 

Explain why the idea of ‘postmodern media’ might be considered controversial
 

“Postmodern media blur the boundary between reality and representation.” Discuss this idea with reference to media texts that you have studied.
 

Discuss why some people are not convinced by the idea of postmodern media.

To what extent does a Postmodern text of your choice challenge existing forms and conventions of traditional media?

All require:

1. A comparison of 2 x Contemporary PoMo Media (Style vs themes/forms)
2. 1 Historical reference (Earlier post-modern text - how it has developed eg Fight Club/Matrix/Music Video)
3. A Future prediction (all films CGI like Scott Pilgrim, will there be a rejection of PoMo? All shows vacuous & empty fake TOWIE, all show audience involved like Xfactor, DIGI-MODERNISM)
4. Arguments for and against how they are/aren't post-modern
5. Examples

Postmodernist checklist:

Fragmented structure/non-linear narrative - not a clear begging, middle and end, or they are not in that order.

Challenging of meta-narrative (Lyotard) - narrative aboutnarratives of historical meaning, experience or knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealised) master idea - Online definition

Playing with time and space (Strinati) - blurr time - 500 days of summer example

Self-reflexivity 

Emphasis of style over substance and context (Strinati) - ex. the advert is much better than the actual product, a bands style may be better than their music, but this sells.

Challenging cultural imperialism and mass production

Conventions of genre challenged/subverted

Breakdown of distinctions between high art and pop culture (Strinati)

Asks questions not giving answers, allowing audience interpretation

Juxtaposing old and new to make new meaning (bricolage) 

Intertextuality - influence from another media text.

Multiplicity of meanings linked to audience interpretations

Post WW2-war being a catalyst for postmodernism

Parody and pastiche – creating something new through imitation, homage (tribute)

Web 2.0 and new technologies allowing people to become producers/celebrities outside traditional/mainstream methods

Instantaneity – accessibility now

Culture is no longer viewed as art mirroring life but a reality in itself (Strinati)

Experimentation with new forms – not necessarily the ‘glossy’ Hollywood approach

Meaning and purpose holds more significance than the skill involved in making it

Photoshop movement changing how we see reality

Cult of celebrity – celebrity obsessed society – style over substance

Truth is created and doesn’t exist in any objective sense

Text goes beyond what it is and comments on society

No single definition – open to interpretation – concept crosses art, media, literature, architecture, music, society

States of hyper reality (Baudrillard and simulacra)

Modernism/Modernity	Postmodern/Postmodernity
Master Narratives and metanarratives of history, culture and national identity as accepted before WWII (American-European myths of progress). Myths of cultural and ethnic origin accepted as received. Progress accepted as driving force behind history.	Suspicion and rejection of Master Narratives for history and culture; local narratives, ironic deconstruction of master narratives: counter-myths of origin. "Progress" seen as a failed Master Narrative.
Faith in "Grand Theory" (totalizing explanations in history, science and culture) to represent all knowledge and explain everything.	Rejection of totalizing theories; pursuit of localizing and contingent theories.
Faith in, and myths of, social and cultural unity, hierarchies of social-class and ethnic/national values, seemingly clear bases for unity.	Social and cultural pluralism, disunity, unclear bases for social/national/ ethnic unity.
Master narrative of progress through science and technology.	Skepticism of idea of progress, anti-technology reactions, neo-Luddism; new age religions.
Sense of unified, centered self; "individualism," unified identity.	Sense of fragmentation and decentered self; multiple, conflicting identities.
Idea of "the family" as central unit of social order: model of the middle-class, nuclear family. Heterosexual norms.	Alternative family units, alternatives to middle-class marriage model, multiple identities for couplings and childraising. Polysexuality, exposure of repressed homosexual and homosocial realities in cultures.
Hierarchy, order, centralized control.	Subverted order, loss of centralized control, fragmentation.
Faith and personal investment in big politics (Nation-State, party).	Trust and investment in micropolitics, identity politics, local politics, institutional power struggles.
Root/Depth tropes. Faith in "Depth" (meaning, value, content, the signified) over "Surface" (appearances, the superficial, the signifier).	Rhizome/surface tropes. Attention to play of surfaces, images, signifiers without concern for "Depth". Relational and horizontal differences, differentiations.
Crisis in representation and status of the image after photography and mass media.	Culture adapting to simulation, visual media becoming undifferentiated equivalent forms, simulation and real-time media substituting for the real.
Faith in the "real" beyond media, language, symbols, and representations; authenticity of "originals."	Hyper-reality, image saturation, simulacra seem more powerful than the "real"; images and texts with no prior "original". "As seen on TV" and "as seen on MTV" are more powerful than unmediated experience.
Dichotomy of high and low culture (official vs. popular culture). Imposed consensus that high or official culture is normative and authoritative, the ground of value and discrimination.	Disruption of the dominance of high culture by popular culture. Mixing of popular and high cultures, new valuation of pop culture, hybrid cultural forms cancel "high"/"low" categories.
Mass culture, mass consumption, mass marketing.	Demassified culture; niche products and marketing, smaller group identities.
Art as unique object and finished work authenticated by artist and validated by agreed upon standards.	Art as process, performance, production, intertextuality. Art as recycling of culture authenticated by audience and validated in subcultures sharing identity with the artist.
Knowledge mastery, attempts to embrace a totality. Quest for interdisciplinary harmony. Paradigms: The Library and The Encyclopedia.	Navigation through information overload, information management; fragmented, partial knowledge; just-in-time knowledge. Paradigms: The Web.
Broadcast media, centralized one-to-many communications. Paradigms: broadcast networks and TV.	Digital, interactive, client-server, distributed, user-motivated, individualized, many-to-many media. Paradigms: Internet file sharing, the Web and Web 2.0.
Centering/centeredness, centralized knowledge and authority.	Dispersal, dissemination, networked, distributed knowledge.
Determinacy, dependence, hierarchy.	Indeterminacy, contingency, polycentric power sources.
Seriousness of intention and purpose, middle-class earnestness.	Play, irony, challenge to official seriousness, subversion of earnestness.
Sense of clear generic boundaries and wholeness (art, music, and literature).	Hybridity, promiscuous genres, recombinant culture, intertextuality, pastiche.
Design and architecture of New York and Berlin.	Design and architecture of LA and Las Vegas
Clear dichotomy between organic and inorganic, human and machine.	Cyborgian mixing of organic and inorganic, human and machine and electronic.
Phallic ordering of sexual difference, unified sexualities, exclusion/bracketing of pornography.	Androgyny, queer sexual identities, polymorphous sexuality, mass marketing of pornography, porn style mixing with mainstream images.
The book as sufficient bearer of the word. The library as complete and total system for printed knowledge.	Hypermedia as transcendence of the physical limits of print media. The Web as infinitely expandable, centerless, inter-connected information system.

Postmodernism comes after modernism.

Postmodernism believes nothing can be new, hybrids and remakes.

Technology for technologies sake - Iphone

Derrida - Everything becomes superficial and empty, no meaning under the surface.

"Meta Narratives" big theories or ideas that attempt to understand using the same approach (predicted grades, race theory and gender identity).

Culture tends to be pessimistic, questioning right and wrong. (batman, politics and terrorism)

Has all knowledge been written from the winning team? Foucault

Style over substance - ripped jeans

Hyper real, we prefer the artificial to the real 'stuff'

Culture and society become inverted (social networking)

A virtual me:

This is a simulation/virtual me. It is hyper real, because it is an animation.

Lesson Notes

Hyper reality 

9/11 images on TV - postmodernism 

Jean- framcois lyotard and jean baudrillard in the post modernism world media texts are used challenge the idea of truth and reality, removing the story and images. 

Baudrillard - can't tell the different between reality or fakery (hyper reality) 

Postmodernism - flow and immersion. Showing something to be enjoyed 

Disneyland - postmodernism world, place within the real world, but with a fictional purpose. 

GTA - game, fake. Game world relies on unpleasant model 

Player and character - story, character, narrative 

Isn't real 

Collaborate 

People form communities through social media, you're involved 

Producing something 

Ludology and narratology

Selling products that have already been made. Re making transformers.

All been done before 

Olden days - use to believe 

No technology 

Loving relationships - families 

Religion 

Nation 

Theorises - science

People don't believe in government 

Not a belief in nothing, you reject the big ideas that you've been told to believe in 

Intextuality 

Noasalisa 

Superficial - no depth or meaning 

9/11

Horrific 

Damage 

Collapsed - post modernism 

Post modernism - structures collapsing 

Narrative breaks structure as well

Traditional - modernist ideas, modernism 

Breaking the structures - post modernism 

Post modernism is breaking what modernism is trying to do

Post modernism and modernism are brinary opposites