Postmodern Media
Postmodern Media
This part of the exam asks you to consider some difficult academic debates. You will need to: Engage with a range of theories about how people use media; Learn about audience practices and habits; And demonstrate a personal position on the issues.
Three Statements
1. 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 a state of relativism. 2. The distinction between media and reality has collapsed, and we now live in a world defined by images and representations - a state of simulated or hyperreality. 3. 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.
Quote 1
The mass media were once thought of as holding up a mirror to, and thereby reflecting, a wider social reality. Now that reality is only definable in terms of surface reflection of the mirror.
Quote 2
The world we see is the world of the commodity[the spectacle is] a social relationship between people that is mediated by images to compensate for the crumbling of directly experiencedproductive activity.
2005
2008
2010
Bill Guttentag Oscar winning documentary and feature film writer, producer & director
Quote 3
The distinction between media and reality has collapsed, and we now live in a reality defined by images and representations - a state of simulated reality. 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
hyperreality
Jean Baudrillard
Reality has become hyperreality, truth has become simulation, we value things that are worthless
Lets have another pause. How can we use an example from popular culture to explain the idea that we can no longer see the difference between whats real and whats not?
Defining Postmodernism
Pastiche, parody and intertextuality are terms that come from Fredric Jamesons (1991) theories. Jameson sees parody as the comic intention to produce an imitation which mocks the original whilst acknowledging that it imitates. Pastiche, however, is less about comedy and more about plagiarism. Pastiche is blank parody. Parody that has lost its sense of humour. An example might be The Day After Tomorrow (2004) as it recreates the 1970s disaster movie adding only CGI as a contemporary update. So be careful how you apply the terms
Defining Postmodernism
Intertextuality is found in postmodern films and other media texts that borrow features from other texts. Though now seen as positive through films like Pulp Fiction (1994) and Scream (1996) intertextuality was seen by Jameson as being an example of cultural decline that there was nothing new anymore. Connections - What other media involves huge amounts of intertextual borrowing?
Mel Ramos, Nude Descending A Staircase (2006) Why is this a postmodernist text? Parody? Pastiche? Intertextual?
Why is this a Modernist text? How does it change our reading of the 1912 Duchamp painting?
Review
What have we learnt? Postmodernism suggests that we now live in a hyperreal world. Reality TV is an example of hyperreality and the the representation of the spectacle - a
relationship between people that is mediated by images.
When representation gets 'remixed' through pastiche, parody and intertextual references this is postmodernism at play And that the Media Studies is no longer as easy as it once was.