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?
To what extent does a Postmodern text of your choice challenge existing forms and conventions of traditional media?
All require:
- A comparison of 2 x Contemporary PoMo Media (Style vs themes/forms)
- 1 Historical reference (Earlier post-modern text - how it has developed eg Fight Club/Matrix/Music Video)
- 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)
- Arguments for and against how they are/aren't post-modern
- Examples
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment