Postmodernism Theories, Theorists and Texts.ppt

Postmodernism

- theory, theorists and texts

Postmodernsim is a way of thinking about:

•Culture – art, music, film, architecture

•History and politics

theory

Postmodern artists use this way of thinkingto make :

•Culture – art, music, film, architecture practi

ce

Postmodernism contains several branches of ideas.

Some thinkers prefer one branch of postmodernism.

Others think of it as the whole tree.

In your exam, you could be asked about a particular branch or to write about the whole tree.

Style over

Substance

Dominic Strinati

Modernism works well with cars

Economy Speed Comfort SAFETY

1930s 2000sModernism believes newest is best

Postmodern design influence

Old and new can co-exist

Style and substance?

Mixing it up

Bricolage (Baudrillard)

Intertextuality

Break away from genre

Break away from time periods

Nothing is real

Advertising destroys our sense of reality

Simulacra (Baudrillard)

No right answer

No more ‘grand narratives’ (Lyotard)also called metanarrative

Newest is not best

History does not have the answer

Go kitsch!

Low culture as good as high culture

Mix up the time zones

Prezi version

http://prezi.com/5porxm7lexjj/postmodernism/

http://prezi.com/5porxm7lexjj/edit/#Slide%209

PostmodernPointless symbols and intertextuality

Must comment on >

Be ironic about >

Try to escape from >

Creating a sham media world that gullible people might believe to be real (eg Hello, Big Brother etc)

Big Brother, Britain’s Got Talent, X Factor

Pleasantville

Cheers bars, ‘real’ Central Perk in NY.

modernUnthinking acceptance that the latest is best

Blindly following trends

Belief in ‘ways forward’, theories and solutions to the big problems of the world

Criticism

Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe

Baudrillard, Jameson

Charlie Brooker’s ‘15 Million Merits’

John FISKE

Fiske develops Barthes’ semic code:

American Professor of Communication Arts, 2000s

A representation of a car chase only makes sense in relation to all the others we have seen - after all, we are unlikely to have experienced one in reality, and if we did, we would, according to this model, make sense of it by turning it into another text, which we would also understand intertextually, in terms of what we have seen so often on our screens. There is then a cultural knowledge of the concept 'car chase' that any one text is a prospectus for, and that is used by the viewer to decode it, and by the producer to encode it. (Fiske 1987, 115)

Structuralist Theories of Genre

Structuralism is the opposite of Postmodernism

Roland BARTHES French semiotic theorist

A scene from the Hollywood film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’



Roland BARTHES French semiotic theorist

A ‘real’ image of people fleeing the dust cloud in the aftermath of ‘9/11’



Jacques DERRIDA

Jacques Derrida proposed that

French philosopher

'a text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without... a genre. Every text participates in one or several genres, there is no genreless text'

(Derrida 1981, 61).

Derrida is a structuralist and therefore this principle goes against postmodernist thinking.



Jacques DERRIDAFrench philosopher

Derrida’s point helps to explain why commentators on September 11th could only understand what they were seeing as ‘like a movie’. This is perhaps what Fiske means by saying ‘we make sense of it by turning it into another text.’

Compare this to what Fiske says about never having experienced a car chase. If we encounter a real-life genre experience the decoding system in our brains becomes confused.



Levi-Strauss developed the concept of bricolage

Levi-Strauss saw any text as constructed out of socially recognisable ‘debris’ from other texts.

He saw that writers construct texts from other texts by a process of:

AdditionDeletionSubstitutionTransposition

Claude LEVI-STRAUSS French structuralist, 1970s



Genette developed the term transtextuality and developed five sub-groups, but only 4 apply to film:

Gerard GENETTE French structuralist, 1990s

•intertextuality quotation, plagiarism, allusion

•architextuality designation of the text as part of a genre by the writer or by the audience

•metatextuality explicit or implicit critical commentary of one text on another text

•hypotextuality the relation between a text and a preceeding hypotext - a text or genre on whichit is based but which it transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends (including parody, spoof, sequel, translation)

Which of our viewed films give examplesof each type?



Although this is a structuralist application of theory, postmodernsim uses all aspectsof transtextuality.

Postmodernist Theory

Postmodernist theory grows out of and extends modernist and structuralist thinking.

Postmodernists might reject Derrida’s proposition that no text can be without a genre.

Postmodernists take bricolage (Levi-Strauss) and the various intertextualities identified by Genette, extending their work into pure intertextuality that breaches the bounds of genre.

Talcott Parsons was a sociologist in the 1950s who made observations of society leading to the ‘structural functionalist’ view. This view suggests that society (like literature and film) has necessary structures that keep it together. Like Propp’s spheres of action, structural functionalism observes roles in society, particularly gender roles in the nuclear family. Structural functionalists believed that if roles were not fulfilled or changed then the structures would adapt, entrenching new roles and society would progress into the future based on a new structure.

Postmodernists reject structures and defined roles.Postmodernists reject ‘the old certainties’ of morality and religion.

Talcott Parsons

Structural Functionalism

It is possible to argue that there is a continuum of postmodernists

‘mild’ postmodernism

Retains some structures but rejects others:

Spoof and parody does this eg. Armstrong and Miller’s Street-slang WW2 fighter pilots or Chris Morris’s The Day Today.

Clever intertextuality eg Disney’s Enchanted.

Still accessible to a mainstream audience

‘pure’ postmodernism

Rejects as much structure as possible

Ground-breaking or just plain weird…layer upon layer of intertextuality and symbolism, many unresolved micro-narratives.

Eg David Lynch’s Inland Empire

Inaccessible to mainstream audience but loved by niche audience who ‘get it’.

Postmodernist Theory – Historical or Cultural?

The term ‘postmodernism’ was coined in 1938 by an English historian, Arnold Toynbee, after a term used by a Spanish historian Federico de Onis. Toynbee used it to mean the declining influence of Christianity and the Western nations post 1875.

This is definitely not how it is used in current Media Studies. Jencks’ definition is nearer the mark:

‘Post-Modernism is fundamentally the eclectic mixture of any tradition with that of its immediate past: it is both the continuation of Modernism and its transcendence’ (Charles Jencks, What is Post-Modernism?, 1986).


Some theorists see postmodernism beginning after theSecond World War, when the major ‘modern’ political movements of Nazism and Communism were called into question by Western thinkers.

Others date the movement to the 1960s, notably to Marshall McLuhan’s coining of the phrase:“The medium is the message,” (1964). By this he means that the manner in which the message is mediated becomes more important than the meaning of the message itself. In an era disillusioned by the failure of great political hopes, by the holocaust and by the loss of influence of religion in Western society, mediation seemed set to fill the vacuum. Out of this grew the idea that theories were possible for how mediation works - how it is built (representations), how it influences audiences (hypodermic theory, uses and gratifications, male gaze), how it references itself (intertextuality). Previously, serious thought was reserved for the messages (religion, politics, philosophy) behind the mediation – not the mediation itself.

Marshall McLuhan

I have a belief systemand I can name it.

I take life as it comes and just get on with it.


Lyotard rejected what he called the “grand narratives” or universal “meta-narratives.”

Principally, the grand narratives refer to the great theories of history, science, religion, politics. For example, Lyotard rejects the ideas that everything is knowable by science or that as history moves forward in time, humanity makes progress. He would reject universal political ‘solutions’ such as communism or capitalism. He also rejects the idea of absolute freedom.

In studying media texts it is possible also to apply this thinking to a rejection of the Western moralistic narratives of Hollywood film where good triumphs over evil, or where violence and explotation are suppressed for the sake of public decency.

Lyotard favours ‘micro-narratives’ that can go in any direction, that reflect diversity, that are unpredictable.

Lyotard

What can you see?

Can you see a tree?


Baudrillard developed the ideas of McLuhan to the point where it is possible to deny that the message underneath the medium has any substance at all. Therefore, the audience comes to perceive through the media a world that appears ‘real’ but is not.

In some ways this reflects what Rene Magritte painted in 1928 in his work called ‘The treachery of Images.’

Baudrillard

Magritte captions an arrangement of paint on canvas with the denotative words, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” (This is not a pipe).

Our eyes tell us it is a pipe because we are used to decoding images, colour and perspective; but it is not a pipe for it cannot be smoked.

Goffs

What does this mean to you?

What is it?

Goffs

What does this mean to you?

What is it?

Semiotics is the study of signs.

It looks at the second question below and asks how the sign works on our minds.

It also looks at the first question and considers ‘polysemy’ where the sign Goffs might have a slightly different meaning to every person in the classroom.

Is there a better way to see what life was like in England in 1824?

Lyotard promotes postmodernism: he proposes that there are no theories that work and therefore, like ‘Egg’ in This Life (BBC, 1996)we should live through intertextuality, pick and mix bits from the grand narratives, enjoy micro-narratives and ‘go with the flow.’

Baudrillard sees the danger in postmodernism:He proposes that micro-narratives can be shallow and we end up replacing the grounded reality or moral qualities of a sound grand narrative with superficial beliefs promoted by capitalist companies simply out for our money. He would criticise people whose philosophy of life is built on why being a ’Gucci’ person is better than a ‘Louis Vuitton’.

£260 for a belt? Mine was 8 quid and it still holds me trousers up.

GucciLouis Vuitton

Theories don’t work, that much is clear. We can no more ‘solve crime’ than we can stop the rain.

Some examples of postmodern design from the Exhibition at the V&A Museum in 2011.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15007309

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15007309

Critics of Postmodernism eg , Brooker & Baudrillard say:•See and understand the paint, not just the pipe•Focusing on the medium is superficial•Too much focus on the surface of the medium is dangerous and means you miss the truth - or the lie – underneath.•There is no point to communication if it does not have a message.

Postmodernists eg Lyotard & David Lynch say:• It doesn’t matter what the message is – just look at the quality of the medium.•There does not need to be a message, just look at the medium•Believe and enjoy the surface meaning (the micro narrative), messages (grand narratives) don’t work anyway.


Baudrillard developed the idea of simulation and simulacra

simulation:the process in which representations of things come to replace the things being represented . . . the representations become more important than the "real thing”4 orders of simulation:

1. signs thought of as reflecting reality: re-presenting "objective" truth; 2. signs mask reality: reinforces notion of reality; 3. signs mask the absence of reality; eg Disneyworld, Watergate,LA life:

jogging, psychotherapy, organic food 4. signs become…

simulacra - they have no relation to reality; they simulate a simulation:

Spinal Tap, Cheers bars, new urbanism, starbucks, the Gulf War was a video game, 9/11 has become the coverage, not the event.

Baudrillard


simulation and simulacra4 orders of simulation:1. signs thought of as reflecting reality: re-presenting "objective" truth;

original unedited cinema pre 1903, ‘the camera never lies” Levis worn by workmen & cowboys

2. signs mask reality: reinforces notion of reality;conventions replace reality, eg the past is black and white; all 1940s detectives talk like Humphrey Bogart; America always wins; good triumphs over evil.Levis thought of as tough because workmen and cowboys wear

them

3. signs mask the absence of reality; eg Disneyworld, Watergate, LA life: jogging, psychotherapy, organic food, distressed Diesel jeans mask the absence of experience by the wearer

4. signs become…

simulacra - they have no relation to reality; they simulate a simulation: Black Mirror, Cheers bars, new urbanism, Starbucks, the Gulf War was a video game, 9/11 has become the coverage, not the event. Superdry.

Baudrillard


From the simulacrum, Baudrillard developed the idea of hyperreality

hyperreality:- a condition in which "reality" has been replaced by simulacra argues that today we only experience prepared realities-- edited war footage, meaningless acts of terrorism, the Jerry Springer Show, Black Mirror ‘15 Million Merits’.

The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. . . The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced: that is the hyperreal. . . which is entirely in simulation.

Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible.

Baudrillard


Circular referentiality

Baudrillard admires the Mobius strip as an image of hyperreality - it is never ending, it is a product of itself, it looks like a circle but is not:

Baudrillard

Anti Postmodernist texts:•The Truman Show•Superbrands, Alex Riley•15 Million Merits, Charlie Brooker, 2011

Postmodernist texts:•Inland Empire, David Lynch•Twin Peaks, David Lynch•Music videos by – Art of Noise, David Bowie•Pleasantville, Gary Ross, 1998•Ulysses Gaze•The Piano•Nat Tate•Superdry adverts

Lighten up, Jean, go with the postmodern flow, man.

I would disagree with you David but thanks to postmodern hyperreality I believe you are not real: you are only a photgraphic signifier. So there!

Texts influenced by postmodernism:•Enchanted, Disney•This Life, BBC, 1996


Strinati separates Postmodernism into 5 distinct sections

1. There is no distinction between culture and society

2. An emphasis on style over substance

3. The breakdown of the distinction between high and low culture

4. Confusions over time and space

5. The decline of meta-narratives

Dominic Strinati

postmodern popular culture


• Pastiche — combining together different styles and content from different periods within the same text, creating unusual combinations of borrowed styles from different eras.

• Breakdowns of master narratives featuring the final triumph of good over evil through science or human problem-solving, as well as a clear distinction between reality and fiction.

• The ways in communication technology creates mass reproduction of texts, creating copies for which there is no original, what Baudrillard (1983) described as a “hyperreality” based on simulation of reality. Much of contemporary art plays with the idea of endless copies or parodying of texts that only create a simulation of reality that focuses on the image or surface of reality.

• The domination of conspicuous consumerism in which everything is commodified or commercialized.

• The fragmentation of sensibility and the plurality or multiplicity of perspectives evident in the often random juxtaposition of images in music videos or contemporary art.

• This fragmentation and focus on surface images creates self-reflexivity — the need to reflect on the lack of coherent meaning, as well as an ironic humour.

Michael Real

postmodern popular culture


Courtesy of Theo Miller. Kramer says "the idea that postmodernism is less a surface style or historical period than an attitude. Kramer goes on to say 16 "characteristics of postmodern music, by which I mean music that is understood in a

postmodern manner, or that calls forth postmodern listening strategies, or that provides postmodern listening experiences, or that exhibits postmodern compositional practices."

According to Kramer (Kramer 2002, 16�17), postmodern music":1. is not simply a repudiation of modernism or its continuation, but has aspects of both a break and an extension2. is, on some level and in some way, ironic3. does not respect boundaries between sonorities and procedures of the past and of the present4. challenges barriers between 'high' and 'low' styles5. shows disdain for the often unquestioned value of structural unity6. questions the mutual exclusivity of elitist and populist values7. avoids totalizing forms (e.g., does not want entire pieces to be tonal or serial or cast in a prescribed formal

mold)8. considers music not as autonomous but as relevant to cultural, social, and political contexts9. includes quotations of or references to music of many traditions and cultures10. considers technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the

production and essence of music11. embraces contradictions12. distrusts binary oppositions (see Theories of Narrative and Genre powerpoint)13. includes fragmentations and discontinuities14. encompasses pluralism and eclecticism15. presents multiple meanings and multiple temporalities16. locates meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers

Jonathan Donald Kramer (December 7, 1942, Hartford, Connecticut � June 3, 2004, New York City), was a U.S. composer and music theorist.

Jonathan Kramer

postmodern music theory


Jameson rejects postmodernism!

Jameson essentially believes that postmodernism provides pastiche, humorously referencing itself and other texts in a vacuous and meaningless circle. Pastiche is distinct from parody, which uses irony, humour and intertextual reference to make an underlying and purposeful point. Postmodernists would have no problem in making no particular point - that is their point, but for Jameson, literary and cultural output is more purposeful than this and he therefore remains a modernist in a world increasingly dominated by postmodern culture.

Jameson also sees reason for the present generations to express themselves through postmodernity as they are the product of such a heavily globalised, multinational dominated economy, which carries the multinational media industry as one of its main branches. The onmipresence of media output helps explain postmodernists’ merging of all discourse into an undifferentiated whole "there no longer does seem to be any organic relationship between the American history we learn from schoolbooks and the lived experience of the current, multinational, high-rise, stagflated city of the newspapers and of our own everyday life” (p.22 Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1991.)

Frederic Jameson


A definition of postmodernism -

Label given to Cultural forms since the 1960s that display the following qualities:

Self reflexivity: this involves the seemingly paradoxical combination of self-consciousness and some sort of historical grounding

Irony: Post modernism uses irony as a primary mode of expression, but it also abuses, installs, and subverts conventions and usually negotiates contradictions through irony

Boundaries: Post modernism challenges the boundaries between genres, art forms, theory and art, high art and the mass media

Constructs: Post modernism is actively involved in examining the constructs society creates including, but not exclusively, the following:

Nation: Post modernism examines the construction of nations/nationality and questions such constructions

Gender: Post modernism reassesses gender, the construction of gender, and the role of gender in cultural formations

Race: Post modernism questions and reassesses constructs of race

Sexuality: Post modernism questions and reassesses constructs of sexuality

With acknowledgement.

Mr. Ford Media teacher and blogger from Lutterworth College

Structuralist (modernist) vs Postmodernist Theorists

Derrida – no text without a genre

Jameson – understands why postmodernism came inot being but believes a text should have a point.

Talcott Parsons – when society changes, structures change.

Barthes – no more original writing. All media fit five codes – action, enigma, semic, referential, symbolic.

Fiske – car chase understood by reference to other texts.

Todorov – Equilibrium/disequilibrium

Propp – character types, narrative turning points

Baudrillard – hyperreality and a world dominated by commercialism.

Lyotard – grand political (eg Communism) and religious narratives have failed so there should be no meta-narrative in media texts.

McLuhan – the medium is the message.

Jencks – modernism ended with the failure of the high rise housing solution in 1972.

Strinati – observes features of p/m texts.

Real – observes features of p/m texts.

Kramer – observes features of p/m texts.

Levi Strauss – bricolage Levi Strauss – bricolage

Texts that are a product of the postmodern world.

Reality TV – full of structures, commercialism and hyperreality.

Superdry – a brand constructed entirely out of brand and media based iconic intertextualities.

BMW ‘Joy’ advert – commercialised hyperreality?.

News coverage – Baudrillard noted that our understanding of 9/11, even as it was broadcast live had already been mediated by choices of editing, commentary and anchorage through commentary. Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe finds two alternative meanings in coverage of the Haiti Earthquake.

‘15 Million Credits’ – a parody of the media dominated commercial world and of reality TV.

Inland Empire; Nat Tate; 80s pop videos eg Art of Noise, David Bowie – genre breaking, confusion of time and space, mix of high and low culture, deliberately confusing.

Pleasantville, The Truman Show – offer criticism of the media world vision and of mediated hyperrealities – eg obsession with reality TV, belief that the 1950s was like the soap opera Pleasantville.

Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe/Newswipe – points out how television is mediated and constructs its own forms of meaning.

These texts fit Baudrillard’s criticism or the postmodern era

These texts show pastiche, are deliberately genre-breaking or parody texts in the other column.

Postmodernist texts that deliberately try to have postmodern features.

Postmodernist Text

Intertextuality - The film plays with images from American soap opera and imagesof a ‘bygone’ age of America in the 1950s. Although the soap ‘Pleasantville’ within the must never be mistaken for a real 1950s soap, it does parody TVProgrammes of that decade. It also echoes images from TV shows like ‘Happy Days’ and films like ‘Grease.’

Parody – there are elements of homage in David’s obsession with the TV soap ‘Pleasantville’ there are also sharp criticisms of its unrealistic and escapist nature. The naïveté and excessive innocence of the characters is a pastiche not so much of the actual decade but the portrayal of America as an ideal society in the 50s and 60s. There are also elements of nostalgia for the childhood of the filmmakers - Gary Ross was born in 1956. Consider issues of censorship at the time and the way film/TV companies were in thrall to the Catholic League of Decency.

Pleasantville is massively self-referential and creates a hyperreal world through the metaphor of David and Jennifer actually entering the television set - which is the opposite of Baudrillard’s threory of the media simulation and simulacra engulfing our ‘real world’ existence. It is a very similar metaphor to that of British TV programmes Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes where the distant echoes from the world left behind by Sam Tyler or Alex Drake come through a TV set breaking transmission and speaking directly to those characters.

Pleasantville dir. Gary Ross, 1998

Postmodernist Text

What is most clever about Pleasantville postmodernism is that the world of the TV soap is portrayed without full verisimilitude - it is not just that it is black and white but it is over-idealised, too clean, too ‘pleasant’ in a world visually similar To that occupied by Truman in The Truman Show.

The key to the film is the way that whilst Jennifer starts out as a ‘corrupting influence’ on the youth of Pleasantville, she also learns how to improve her own life. David and the Pleasantvillians learn from the modern world but Jennifer learns about books and the value of education in the emancipation of women from what she has seen in the historical situation of Pleasantville. This fits Jencks definition of postmodernism very well - an ‘eclectic mixture of any tradition with that of its immediate past.’

The ambiguous ending of Pleasantville - suggesting that change is okay per se, even if we do not know what it will be - places it in the postmodern idiom by defying the need for a film to end conclusively or with certainty. The world has not necessarily improved for David, Betty, George or Bill - it’s just different, and that’s okay. Unfortunately, this in itself could also be seen as a cheesy version of a postmodernist moral - and postmodernist art should not carry a moral, by definition.

Pleasantville dir Gary Ross, 1998

Postmodernist Text

‘15 Million Credits’is an edition of Black Mirror, a Channel 4 mini-series devised by Charlie Brooker. It is a futuristic vision of a world taken over by the media. There are three levels of society: those who work in the media; those who pedal bicycle-generators in a post fossil fuel environment to create electricity to power the media and those who clean up.

The middle band of society are a parody of lower middle class Britain who swallow the fodder put out to them on television and blindly adopt the hegemonic prejudices they are exposed to – notably a contempt for the fat cleaners who do not have access to the exercise bikes. They are also a parody for today’s gym and keep fit industry of ‘healthy living’ and they are so busy exercising or relaxing that they actually live their social lives via an avatar. The isolated world they inhabit is clearly influenced by Baudrillard’s vision of a hyperreal world made up entirely of simulacra.

The key character, Bing, with intertextual echoes of George Orwell’s novel 1984, befriends Abi, another member of his gym, and persuades her (by giving her his 15 million credits) to try her voice on the pastiche reality show ‘Hot Shots.’ The plan is thwarted when Judge Wraith (the other two are ironically and self-referentially named Judge Hope and Judge Charity) sees her potential not as a mid-ranking singer, but as a porn icon. Faced with the choice of a bland existence interminably cycling into a hyperreal landscape, she opts to join the privileged but equally hyperreal world of minor ‘celebrity’.

Black Mirror dir Brooker, 2011

Postmodernist Text

Frustrated by the way Abi has been forced to sell out her principles and has been exploited by the media industry as mere fodder for the male gaze (Mulvey, 1974), he decides to concetrate all his effort into cycling enough to re-build his 15 million credits. With this capital, he is able to enter an inane and stupid dance on the show ‘Hot Shots’. However, having secreted a shard of glass in his clothing, he suddenly stops danv=cing and threatens to kill himself unless the judges and avatar audience hear whay he has to say. He gives a long rant about the shallow, prejudiced, exploitative and hyperreal world they live in.

Bizarrely, Judge Hope (a thinly disguised parody of Simon Cowell), applauds the rant. However, he is appluading the performance (the style) and ignores the content (the substance). He sees an opportunity for Bing to rant about a variety of matters in a show of his own – the subject matter is unimportant, merely the style with which he rants. It is an intertextual hint at the ‘five minutes hate’ in Orwell’s ‘1984’.

Bing faces an instant dilemma but decides to sell out for the lifestyle he can gain as a member of the celebrity class. In a final irony, nothing is changed in the world and even the shard of glass Bing used to threaten suicide becomes a simulacrum as it is available in a variety of forms as Bing Madison merchandise.

Black Mirror dir Brooker, 2011

Postmodernist Text

It seems odd to propose a Disney film as postmodern because that studioseems the quintessence of innocent plotlines and happy endings. This film,however seems to show postmodernism creeping into the mainstream. Like Shrek, the film is full of irony and self-referentiality in the guise of humour for Mums and Dads. In fact, the whole intertextual concept of crashing together a Disney cartoon princess with the jaded real world of a New York divorce lawyer is very postmodern and totally self-referential.

The plot moves through familiar stages of the present day world learning from the innocence of the past world (represented by the Disney fairytale) and the cartoon characters learning from the real world - even Prince Charming comes to accept the value of dating before marriage. It’s all quite corny - but in a very humorous and ironic manner. Traditional elements are all there - functioning as structures - such as the defeat of the wicked step-mother, an icon of failed marriage and dysfunctional family relationships. Perhaps most ironic is the way the women swap worlds - Princess Giselle remains in New York whereas the feminist Nancy loves the spontaneity and romance of Prince Charming, returning with him to Andalasia.

Enchanted dir Lima, 2007

Postmodernist Text

Inland Empire – dir. David Lynch 2006

Another postmodern nightmare that should endear him to his fans, Empire made me take a step backwards as I’d always been on the fence regarding Lynch but was blown away by Mulholland Drive. Of course, as established—he’s not one to play by the rules but I wasn’t sure just how off the deep end he’d go with this rambling and incoherent but beautiful work. We’re never quite sure exactly what’s happening—we believe it’s about Nikki Grace (Dern), a married blonde actress who takes a role on a film that she later learns may be cursed after discovering it’s a remake of a doomed incomplete Polish production that found the two leads dead. She begins to let her imagine run away with her while simultaneously becoming attracted to co-star Justin Theroux. After a bizarre opening, the first hour of the film is compelling and even easy to decipher but that’s when Lynch reminds us once again he’s running the show and takes us further into the nightmares and dreamscapes of his subconscious mind with a meandering hybrid of fantasy and horror involving a carnivalesque stable of freaks and people living on the fringes of society—life sized rabbits living out a domestic drama in front of what appears to be a live studio television audience, hookers who enjoy doing the locomotion, a scary old woman, lots of Polish speakers, and a film crew.

Text – Jen Johans

Postmodernist TextInland Empire

Co-produced by Dern who inspired the title of the piece after sharing that her husband musician Ben Harper is from the area nicknamed that, the film co-stars Jeremy Irons, Harry Dean Stanton, Diane Ladd, William H. Macy, Julia Ormond, Mary Steenburgen and also utilizes the involvement of Nastassja Kinski, Laura Harring and Naomi Watts. Lynch, who told Joe Huang at the AFI Dallas Film Festival that the film’s “episodes” were never supposed to be edited together for a feature but were rather just film short stories he wrote and shot on digital video, earned a Special Award from both the Venice Film Festival and also the 2007 National Society of Film Critics Awards for what they called his “labyrinthine Inland Empire, a magnificent and maddening experiment with digital video possibilities.” Overall a film to be experienced rather than sincerely admired such as Mulholland or his other works, Inland Empire’s three hour running time is daunting indeed but for those ready to take the journey, go ahead and follow along and try your best to keep up.

Text – Jen Johans

Postmodernist Text

The Day Today was a surreal British parody of television news programmes broadcast in 1994. Each episode is presented as a mock news programme, and the episodes rely on a combination of ludicrous fictitious news stories, covered with a serious, pseudo-professional attitude.

So why is it postmodern?

Lyotard says that in a postmodern world we tend to question everything, we don't trust what we see before us, and we look for hidden meanings in things. The Day Today clearly does this, as Chris Morris wants to highlight how ‘unreal’ the news actually is. News programmes purportedly represent truth, represent what’s really happening in the world. Yet, as we’ve seen from Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe programme, the news is often misleading (cardboard boxes in Haiti). Chris Morris uses over-the-top graphics, sound, interviews and silly sketches (Elvis fan on death row) to highlight how unreal the news is. It is also, of course, self-referential – on the face of it Chris Morris’s news presenter represents what we expect (smart suit, clear authoritative voice, neat hair, studio based etc). Yet he plays with this representation and breaks down what the audience expects – a seemingly pleasant interview about making jam for charity has his character crushing the interviewee, he mocks his fellow presenters, chats up and uses obvious innuendo with another presenter, etc…The sketches are also self-referential: on the one hand typical of news reports, but the stories are often ridiculous or, in the case of the weather reports, simply meaningless.

Chris Morris – The Day Today

Postmodernist Text

Meshes of the Afternoon – Maya Deren 1943

An experimental film by dancer and film maker Maya Deren dating right back to 1943, showing that experimental cinema is not just a modern idea.

This text demonstrates how the audience is made to feel uneasy when the familiar guidelines of genre conventions and structured narrative signposts are taken away.

The film is experimental rather than postmodern probably as most theorists suggest that postmodernism as a movement did not begin until the 1960s – McLuhan ‘The Medium is the Message (1964) or Jencks’ reference to the demolition of the modernist hosing estate in missouri 15th March 1972.

However, it has influenced postmodernists and the staircase scene in the second act of Inland Empire is a clear intertextual reference to Meshes of the Afternoon.

Postmodernist Text

Strinati's feature of postmodern confusion over time and space, really comes into play in Ashes to Ashes. This programme has the plot of Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) who gets shot in present time (2008) and stays unconscious in 2008 but become conscious in 1982. During Alex's time in 1981, she knows that she is meant to be in the present time and the series is about her trying to get back and wake up from her coma. For confusion over time and space, this happens because every now and then, within the show, there are clips of what is happening in the future. An example of this is the clip below of when Alex is seeing people talking to her unconscious body in 2008.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ty32Y_sEwM&feature=channel.Another example of confusion over time and space is flashbacks as the occur often. This is a technique commonly used throughout the series, for example when Alex Drake has flashbacks of her parent's death.Ashes to Ashes draw on several genres, such as, mystery, police, comedy and drama. Even though Ashes to Ashes is meant to have a genre of drama, however, there are comedy elements, especially some of Gene Hunt's line which creates a humorous side. This series also has three narratives which are all about the past, future and present. As of the three part narrative, it is blurring the lines of reality. This is because in this series they are using the flashbacks to mix the narratives up which is causing the blurring of line in reality. This is also happening because in some confusion over time and space aspects, it is showing what people are doing/saying to Alex Drake in 2008, however, Alex is in 1981, so is confusing whether 1981 is realty or is 2008 and the events in 1981 is just a dream. Text – Reflectproductions.blogspot

Ashes to Ashes – final episode

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ty32Y_sEwM&feature=channel

Postmodernist Text

The final episode draws on a variety of intertextual symbolism (Genette) that will only mean something to either an older audience who remember these texts in conext or to students of postmodernism.

There are constant references to David Bowie’s music and videos (Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes) which were experiments in postmodern art from the late 70s and early 80s. A Pierrot clown keeps appearing – a visual quote from Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes video.

There is frequent self-reflexivity (Michael Real) in references to the first series, Life on Mars and to the fate of its main character Sam Tyler.

There is obscure religious symbolism in the role of the ‘Devil’ character Jim Keats trying to coax the protagonists to ‘Police Hell’ in the basement whereas Nelson (also only recognisable self-referentially to viewers of Life on Mars plays St Peter enticing the team to Police heaven or Manchester tavern from Life on Mars The Railway Arms aka ‘pub’.

Ashes to Ashes – final episode

Postmodernist Text

Intertextuality - This TV series by David Lynch, a director well known for his postmodernist texts, has many intertextual references. Such references were sometimes explicit and explained by the characters involved, or were more obscure. For instance, any reference to the black lodge or the white lodge in Twin Peaks is a reference to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, but also to Christianity and its notions of heaven and hell.

Like Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks "provides an improbable and disturbing stitching together of different genres and genre expectations" through its "running together in a postmodern fashion the tradition of the small town film" with a rhizomatic mix of the unpresentable and the common place.

Twin Peaks' small town locale, affluence and lack of children is reminiscent of other night time soap operas of its era, including Dallas, Falcon Crest and Knot's Landing. However, the fact that its male hero resolves the central narrative of this series through a mix of traditional detective work and intuitive techniques questions gender stereotypes in the extra filmic world and poses a challenge to the conventions of the detective genre.

Twin Peaks

Postmodernist Text

Twin Peaks surrealistically used a variety of characters with mythic proportions including dancing dwarves, giants, doppelgangers and owls plus the spiritually charged black and white lodges to depict the role of divine influence in people's lives. And as within postmodern culture, everything about Twin Peaks was plural. It lay within two mountains, had two creators, numerous directors with broad film and television experience plus two versions of its double pilot and finale episodes.

This postmodern spirit is also evident in the numerous popular culture references found in Twin Peaks which are used to extend upon its intertextual meaning. For instance, the series murder victim Laura is loosely based around a character from the 1950's noir film Laura. Indeed, Laura's presence as the central, absent figure in Twin Peaks' narrative is also somewhat reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rebecca'. The Sheriff of Twin Peaks, Harry S Truman, gained his name from an ex US President; while Dale Cooper is named after a prominent Northwest American figure. The brothers Ben and Jerry, who are food obsessed, are named after a gourmet icecream and the brothel in the series is named after the 1950's Marlon Brando Film 'One Eyed Jack.' In addition to this the one eyed character in the series, Nadine Hurley, is a female version of one of the most popular soap characters of the eighties, Patch from 'Days of Our Lives'; while biker James Hurley is intended to be a nineties version of James Dean.

The utilisation of double coding, double genres, intertextual references, plural meanings and irony in Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me reflects the plurality and spirit of postmodernism as a whole.

Twin Peaks

Postmodernist Text

Intertextuality - This film mixes original footage from well known films noir with modern footage set in the noir period, using black and white. Levi-Strauss might refer to this form of intertextuality as transposition and/or addition.

Parody – using homage, to show a genuine appreciation of the noir style, period, performance, although it is partly postmodernist in the way that it is ‘knowing’ in its adoption of a slightly superior, benefit of hindsight humour, making some of the extracts looks overblown in their acting style.

It is very self-referential and uses ironic self-awareness. It is postmodern in that it can be understood on a variety of levels, depending on how familiar we are with the original extracts and how far or how amusingly they have been taken out of context. Postmodern political ideas such as the male gaze are shown in pastiche (eg ‘The case of the girls with the big tits).

The film does not establish a style of full hyperreality although it is clearly not a naturalistic piece or full set in versimilitude.

Compare to Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid

Postmodernist Text

In many ways, this is a conventional film but it does contain elements ofPostmodernism both in its ‘message’ about ‘sellin’ an image’ and in the danger of its approach to historical interpretation.

The film is self-referential in that it deliberately challenges images of reality portrayed by the contemporary media and suggests that the media was in the pockets of the political authorities. The TV show ‘Badge of Honor’ (pastiching the real series, Dragnet) presents the image of the LAPD that the mayor desires to public to have - the ‘walk on water’ as Sid Hudgens puts it. Sid Hudgens embryo tabloid journalism is clearly shown to fake its stories, with the collusion of Sergeant Jack Vincennes. Vincennes describes his role as adviser to ‘Badge of Honor’ by saying that he ‘teaches Brett Chase to walk and talk like a cop.’ When his companion points out that ‘Brett Chase doesn’t walk and talk like you’ Vincennes replies with the actor/character’s full ironic self-awareness that ‘America isn’t ready for the real me.’ Kevin Spacey has said that he modeled his portrayal of Vincennes on the persona of Dean Martin - 50s cool - and in a scene of multi-layered intertextuality, he looks into the mirror behind the bar in the ‘Frolic Room’ (a real LA bar), sees his life disappearing into drink, corruption and illusion while Dean Martin sings ‘smile, smile, smile’ in the background.

The film also challenges binary oppositions through James Ellroy’s use of the three-man structure of having three detective heroes of equal status and no particular antagonist, although it could be said that Dudley Smith assumes this role when he shoots Jack Vincennes.

LA Confidential dir Hanson, 1997

Postmodernist Text

Any period piece set in the past and selectively choosing what elements to suppress and which to emphasise is in danger of making a postmodern re-interpretation of that past. The film avowedly avoids noir style in its approach to cinematography and lighting and locations are chosen to create a mise-en-scene that feels both 1950s and contemporaneous with today. The film is not constrained by the Hayes Code, as would have been a crime film made in 1953. This raises the question of whether the audience sees a more or less ‘accurate’ representation of LA in the 1950s than we receive from a film made at the time. In this sense we can question whether.

This fits with a historical approach to postmodernism and challenges the view that there was a better, more innocent time somewhere in the past because the film seeks to blend images and interpretations of the past with images of the present, perhaps proving that the 1950s were more similar to our own times than we have been led (or have led ourselves) to believe or perhaps creating a never-time that is nothing but a hyperreality.

LA Confidential dir Hanson, 1997

Postmodernist Text

Jam was a postmodern British comedy series created, written and directed by Chris Morris and broadcast on Channel 4 during March and April 2000. It was based on the earlier BBC Radio 1 show, Blue Jam, and consisted of a series of unsettling sketches unfolding over an ambient soundtrack. Many of the sketches re-used the original radio soundtracks with the actors lip-synching their lines, an unusual technique which added to the programme's unsettling atmosphere. So why is it classed as Postmodern?Meaning is superficial, not deep - It’s a work of pop culture championing the slipperiness of meaning – like Twin Peaks, some sketches can be taken at face value (lizards in a TV), whilst others are far darker (little girl hitman). Does Chris Morris ‘mean’ anything by creating such disturbing sketches? Or rather, does the audience bring meaning to the text? We, the audience, interpret what we see and decide whether it’s funny, unsettling, sad, shocking etc…not Chris Morris.It’s self-referential, as Chris Morris takes what is normally represented by ‘a comedy sketch show’ and subverts this. Audience expects to find comedy sketches funny, jokes with a build-up then a punch line, to feel comfortable, to watch recognisable character types, for meaning to be clear…Jam does the opposite. Whilst many comedy sketch shows purport to show (or to exaggerate) ‘real’ characters or situations (remember ‘Little Britain’), Jam doesn’t pretend to represent reality or to exaggerate it in a normal sense; it subverts it and plays with our expectations. It uses decontextualisation – he uses objects outside normal context (lizards in the TV)!It uses Juxtaposition – two ‘extreme’ objects put together that shouldn’t (young girl as a hitman)Baudrillard tells us audiences makes sense of the real world by using the ‘hyperreal’, images we have watched and processed from the media. Ask us what a car chase is like and we describe a film version, not something based on reality. Chris Morris knows that for many people, what they see on TV is what is real…so he gives us something that is wholly unreal, that doesn’t pretend to show ‘reality’.

Chris Morris - JAM

Documents

Postmodernism Theories, Theorists and Texts.ppt