Postmodernism Research

1. Theorists 

1. John Belton identifies 3 characteristics of post modern cinema: 
2. - It is based on a pastiche (borrowing and re-using in another context without changing) of traditional generic material
3. - It is an imitation of images from the past, offered as nostalgic substitutes for any real exploration of either the past or for the present.
4. - This referencing the past reflects the fact that for the modern film maker, there isn’t much that hasn’t already been said. 

1. TV as a Postmodern Medium

1. - In its resistance to simplification or generalisation, TV is sometimes seen as one of the clearest embodiments of postmodernism.

1. - TV provides a constant turnover of images and symbols.

1. - TV is seen as central to the explosion of consumer culture – unlike Modernist Art, which was thought to be characterised by “integrity, authenticity and originality” and therefore stood against capitalism and consumerism, TV often focuses on these ideologies.

1. - Jim Collins said about TV: “TV is frequently referred to as one of the main kinds of postmodern culture.”

1.  Layers to post modern media

1. - Jim Collins was talking about films, not TV programmes, and said you read a film or TV programme on two levels:
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3. - One is the straight narrative layer
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5. - The other is the post modern layer which is filled with meaning, pastiche, parody, intertexual references, irony, humour and knowingness. 

1.  Hyper-consciousness

1. - Simply – a text’s awareness of itself, its status, function and history.
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3. - A term used by theorist Jim Collins.
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5. - A hyper awareness on the part of the text itself of its cultural status, function and history, as well as how it will be received by an audience.
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7. - Jim Collins makes a distinction between the ‘knowing’ pomo text, the hybrid and the solid traditional film.
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9. Jean-Francois Lyotard

1. - He suggests that grand narratives like religion, science, Marxism, capitalism no longer have the same importance in our lives. The concept of progress and the arts, technology, medicine and knowledge would progress to a greater good is now seen to be questionable.
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3. - The ‘death’ of the grand narrative, as it is known, is explored in ‘Children of Men’
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1. Postmodern theory: Marshall McLuhan

1. - As a background to postmodern theory it’s useful to look at the media theorist Marshall McLuhan (he wasn’t specifically a pomo theorist)
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3. - In 1964 McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message”.• By this he means the way any message is communicated is more important than the message itself. 
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5. Baudrillard and simulacra
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7. - Simulacra - copies of historical events or landmarks.
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9. - Fantasyland at Disneyland - copies various Disney films and books, e.g. Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, King Arthur, Pinocchio.
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11. - Umberton Eco said that ‘we enjoy a perfect imitation, we also enjoy the conviction that imitation has reached its peak and afterwards reality will always be inferior to it.”
12. Disneyland and Simulacra and simulation

1. -Both Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard refer to Disneyland as an exemplar of hyperreality. 
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3. -Eco believes that Disneyland with its settings such as Main Street and full sized houses has been created to look "absolutely realistic," taking visitors imagination to a "fantastic past."
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5. - This false reality creates an illusion and makes it more desirable for people to buy this reality. The fake animals such as alligators and hippopotamuses are all available to people in Disneyland and for everyone to see. The "fake nature" of Disneyland satisfies our imagination and daydream fantasies in real life. Therefore, they seem more admirable and attractive.
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7. - In his work Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard argues the "imaginary world" of Disneyland magnetises people inside and has been presented as "imaginary" to make people believe that all its surroundings are "real". But he believes that the Los Angeles area is not real; thus it is hyperreal. 

1. Hyperreality
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3. - Some examples are the McDonald's "M" arches which signify the material promise of endless amounts of identical food. In "reality" the "M" represents nothing, and the food is neither identical nor infinite.
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5. - Hyperreality relates to consumerism, in respect of its reliance on signs.
6.  E.g. Abercrombie and Fitch shows that one is fashionable• A Mercedes indicates ones wealth. These can be seen to create hyper reality.
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8. - Hyperreality tricks the consciousness so it doesn’t emotionally engage, and people enjoy artificial simulation, and endless reproductions without meaning.
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10. - Fulfilment or happiness is found through simulation and imitation of a transient simulacrum of reality, rather than any interaction with any "real" reality.
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12. - Interacting in a hyperreal place like a casino gives the subject the impression that one is walking through a fantasy world where everyone is playing along. The decor isn't authentic, everything is a copy, and the whole thing feels like a dream.

1. Jean Baudrillard

1. - Hyperreality is an exaggeration of something that existed into something that is so perfect its a fantasy. E.g Disneyland

1. - And he believed that the media reality is now the ‘reality’ of today. We all want an Xmas tree for Xmas, but not a ruffled pine tree from the forest, but a perfect one with perfect leaves.

1. - We see images of women in magazines who have been Photoshoped and touched up, so that you have a fantasy woman that is very far removed from what real women are like. 
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3. - In the post modern world, media texts make visible and challenge ideas of truth and reality removing the illusion that films, music videos or any media text can ever accurately or neutrally reproduce reality or truth.

1. - There are competing versions of truth and post modern film explores this. 
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3. Other examples of hyperreality
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5. - Films in which characters and settings are either digitally enhanced or created entirely from CGI (e.g.: 300, where the entire film was shot in front of a blue/green screen, with all settings super-imposed).
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7. - A well manicured garden (nature as hyperreal).
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9. - Professional sports athletes as super, invincible versions of the human beings.
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11. - Many fake places around the world: Disney World; Dubai; Celebration, Florida; and Las Vegas.
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13. - TV and film in general (especially "reality" TV), due to its creation of a world of fantasy and its dependence that the viewer will engage with these fantasy worlds.
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15. - A retail store that looks completely stocked and perfect due to facing, creating a world of endless identical products.
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17. - A newly made building or item designed to look old, or to recreate or reproduce an older artefact, by simulating the feel of age or ageing. 

     Post Modernism in Media

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. 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.

1. - 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 hyperreality. 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. 

1. - 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. 

1. - 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.  

1. - 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.

1. - 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. 
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3.  Postmodern Media as an aesthetic 
4.  Hybridity - 
5. (the mixing and sampling of different kinds and levels - of hip hop music, of material in television ads, films, etc.). Hybrid forms are said to level hierarchies of taste. It is said that all distinctions between high culture and popular culture, have gone, or become blurred. Postmodern texts 'raid the image bank' which is so richly available through video and computer technologies, recycle some old movies and shows on television, the Internet etc. Music, film and TV provide excellent examples of these processes. 

1.  Bricolage:
2. This is used to refer to the process of adaptation or improvisation where aspects of one style are given quite different meanings when compared with stylistic features from another. Youth subcultural groups such as punks, with their bondage gear and use of swastikas were eclectic as they took clothes associated with different class positions or work functions and converted them into fashion statements 'empty' of their original meanings. A more recent, feminised example would be the combination of Doc Martens and summer dresses worn by girls. 

1. Simulation: 
2. The blurring of real and ‘simulated’, especially in film and reality TV or celebrity magazines. Simulation or hyperreality refers to not only the increasing use of CGI in films like The Lord of the Rings films and Avatar, but also in the use of documentary style in fiction such as In This World or in the narrative enigmas of science fiction such as The Matrix or Blade Runner. 'Is it human or artificial’? 

1.  Disjointed Narrative Structures: 
2. These are said to mimic the uncertainties and relativism of postmodernity in films like Pulp Fiction as contemporary narratives often won’t guarantee identifications with characters, or the 'happy ending' or meta narratives like the Defeat of the Enemy, which have traditionally been achieved at the end of films. They often manage only a play with multiple, or heavily ironic, perhaps 'unfinished' or even parodic endings, Similar to Memento and Fight Club. Narratives can also be disjointed in time and space – see modern / retro films like Blade Runner 

1. Blurring of boundaries 

1. It's easy to spot how boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture have been eroded. This idea is alluring because of the democratic implications - there's no such thing as bad taste; you can enjoy, consume, shop for what you like - all class hierarchies have disappeared.

1. However, paradoxically, for there to be any thrill in transgressing boundaries, like those between 'high' and 'low' forms in Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet or Shakespeare in Love (1998), those boundaries need still to have some meaning — and indeed they do, if you think of the huge industry still associated with the status and name of Shakespeare and his continuing cultural importance. 
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3. We usually think of the media as being 'in between' us and reality, hence the word 'media' and the idea of 'mediation'. Postmodernists claim that in a media-saturated world, where we are constantly immersed in media - on the move, at work, at home - the distinction between reality and the media representation of it becomes blurred or even entirely invisible to us. In other words, we no longer have any sense of the difference between real things and images of them, or real experiences and simulations of them. Media reality is the new reality.

  Key Terms

   

Alterity 

• Alterity is a philosophical principle of exchanging one's own perspective for that of the "other".
• State of being on the periphery or fringes due to race, gender, or ethnicity
• Dissimilarity from cultural norms
• A lack of personal identity.

Aporia

• An aporia is a philosophical puzzle, paradox, or impasse often used in conjunction with 'deconstruction'.
• A state of wonder and awe due to contemplating the mysteries of life and the universe.
• An internal contradiction in a statement or theory
• Literal translation from Greek is 'without passage’

Bricolage

• Bricolage is a processes by which traditional objects or language are given a new, often subversive, meaning and context.
• Art technique where works are constructed from various available materials ("found items" or mass-produced "junk").
• A mashup or creation from a diverse range of existing items or ideas

Catharsis

• A form of emotional cleansing, first described by Aristotle, which occurs simply from the passive act of viewing a tragedy.
• The process of freeing oneself from damaging or repressed emotions.
• A postmodern analogy is that the media's focus on violence is the method by which society cleanses its collective psyche.

Commodification

• Term used in Marxist economics when economic value is assigned to something not traditionally considered a commodity.
• Examples of commodification include: ideas, culture, identity, and even the human body.
• Appropriating of cultural phenomenon for the physical creation of cheap mass marketed goods.

Constructivism

• Term attributed to Jean Piaget, who described how knowledge is assimilated and internalized during the process of learning.
• Postmods contend that the process of matching internal models to the real world is inherently colored by the bias of the observer.

Cybernetics

• Cybernetics is a process by which a biological organism enhances its abilities by the integration of technology.
• So called "cyborgs" are a common feature of science fiction (Popular examples include: Robocop and the Borg).
• In postmodernism, much philosophical weight is given to this merging (and interdependence) of man and technology.
• Many consider there to be similar impact due to reliance on everyday items like glasses or hearing aids.

Cyberpunk

• Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre based in the near-future and often set in post-industrial dystopias.
• The focus of Cyberpunk has been described as "high tech and low life": technology run amok with gritty film noir motifs.
• Its name is a synthesis of Cybernetics and Punk and often features body modification.
• Plots often involve hackers, artificial intelligence, and mega corporations.
• Popular examples include: Snow Crash and Neuromancer

Cyberspace

• A term coined by William Gibson in Neuromancer and Burning Chrome to describe an all-encompassing, virtual reality internet.
• "A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding..."
• A similar term, Metaverse, was used by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash

Dadaism

• Dadaism was a cultural movement which attempted to reject and destroy the prevailing standards in art through anti-art.
• It was a reaction to the horrors of World War I, which its followers believed was due to the reason and logic of the modernists.
• Dada strove to have no meaning and its works are often described as random or without organization.
• Ironically, Dada became an influential movement in modern art (examples include Duchamp's "readymades" found objects)

 Deconstruction

• Deconstruction is a term coined by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida for a process of critiquing literature and language.
• It analyzes the built in bias of language and questions its ability to represent reality.
• Critics see deconstruction as oversimplified and "sloppy" intellectual approach to attacking modernism.

 Dystopia

• Dystopias are societies usually characterized by societal decay and/or oppressive governments.
• Relevant authors include Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Kurt Vonnegut.

 Flattening of Affect

• Flattening of affect is a scientific term describing a person's detachment and lack of emotional reactivity.
• Used in the postmodern literature to describe technology's dehumanizing impact.
• A key example is the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey
  where the main characters lose their humanity whereas the computer HAL gains "his".

 Hyperreality

• Hyperreality is a symptom of postmodern culture where a person loses their ability to distinguish reality from fantasy.
• The hyperreal world is often thought of as an idealized enhancement of reality, much preferable to the real life equivalent.
• Present day examples could include reality television, pornography, or multi-player online games.

 Kitsch

• Kitsch was originally a German term used to categorise art that is considered an inferior copy of an existing style.
• Art (often commercially mass-produced) that is done in bad taste or tries to be overly campy or sentimental.
• From Baudrillard: "one of that great army of 'trashy' objects, made of plaster of Paris or some such imitation material".

 Modernism

• Modernism is associated with the period of the mid 20th century.
• It is associated with constant change in the pursuit of progress, achievable through rationality and logic.
• In contrast, Postmodernism takes a less optimistic view where constant change becomes the status quo and progress obsolete.

 Panopticon

• Panopticon is derived from the Greek opticon (see) and pan (all).
• A type of prison designed to allow the guards to observe all prisoners without their knowledge.
• The goal is to convey a feeling of "invisible omniscience" over the minds of the prisoners.
• The panopticon is a symbol in many dystopian novels, most notably George Orwell's 1984

 Pastiche

• Pastiche is a tongue-in-cheek imitation or tribute used in literature, art, music, movies, etc.
• Performed with respect to, or in homage to, other works (as opposed to parody which is done in ridicule or sarcasm).
• A popular example is the cartoon The Simpsons, known for its pop culture references and recycled plots.

 Punctuated Equilibrium

• A theory in evolutionary biology by which otherwise slow evolutionary change happens during sporadic periods of great change.
• Postmodernism analogy of technological or cultural change, often used in conjunction with "tipping point" or "singularity".

 Simulacra

• A simulacra is a copy of a copy, so far removed from its original, that it can stand on its own and even replace the original.
• Term defined by Jean Baudrillard in "The Precession of Simulacra" from Simulacra and Simulation
  "It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.... substituting the signs of the real for the real".
  Examples included Disneyland, psychosomatic illness, and the Watergate scandal.
• Another example is the cartoon Betty Boop, who has now become an icon for the long forgotten actresses she was based on.

 Semiotics

• Semiotics is the study of signs, symbols, and how meaning is constructed and understood.
• Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure proposed the deferentiation between the spoken word (signifier) and mental concept (signified).

 Steampunk

• Steampunk is an off-shoot of cyberpunk set in the steam-powered Victorian era.
• A type of speculative fiction where fictional and real technologies occur at an earlier date.

 Virtual Reality

• Virtual Reality is a simulation technology providing an immersive computer-generated environment.
• The environment may be real (medical applications) or imagined (the Matrix).