Hollywood Undeads Hear Me Now and the Postmodern

After watching the mildly-infamous video multiple, Im convinced that is indicative of postmodernism in every sense of the term. Pastiche: The video has it in spades. It references other forms of media left and right, without parodying any of them. This because parody relies on an underlying normative standard, which postmodernism categorically rejects. Instead it merely shows the audience an array media, it is almost a celebration of how clever the director is for cramming so many references into a single music video. Consumerism: The product placement is obvious, but it is not portrayed as humorous, more of a sense of anarchy, rebellion and self belief. The camera does not linger on each product, and the video knows it, but it still manages to avoid parody. Rather, the video uses these consumer images as an integral part of its aesthetic with small amount of comments on their social context, which can be heard in the lyrics of the song. Self-Reference: The blatant product placement shows a self-awareness in the video, but this particular brand of ironic detached harms the videos ability to make any sort of overall message on its own. Instead it implies that celebrating consumer culture, anarchy and rebellion against the norms is fine as long as we are appropriately ironic about it, this is a largely intended consequence of the videos aesthetic. Appropriation of Identity-based-struggle: Hollywood Undead is interesting for turning a blind eye on authority, and for portraying the mainstream genres like pop, and hip-hop as wrong. The resistance to authority and power on each of the band members parts is purely individual when each member is performing their verse but it is collective during each chorus but is present throughout the whole video. However, it can be argued that they themselves are to accepting authority in the fact that their faces are hidden behind individualized mask. But this a brief thought, as it can also be stronger argued that the masks are too highlight the fact that everyone is the same regardless of how they look. Behind this initial layer of anarchism and rebellion there is a still an individuated desires to become mainstream, given through the puns and references in some of the lyrics. They maintain a rough and edgy image in every scene of the video, an implicit message that no matter how bad life gets and how we are expected to bend over backwards for authority that we do not have to there is strength in numbers. Anarchist theory. Therefore their kind of anarchism is empowering to the weak. Furthermore, it portrays women as objects and keeps the male gaze on them as they are scantily dressed.

Incredulity towards metanarratives: Lyotards famous description of the postmodern condition applies even here, as its difficult to find an overall message or narrative in the video. There is a sequence of events interspersed with pop culture references and product placement, but little else. Most works of postmodern culture incorporate the ethic of postmodernism philosophy with even less critical engagement than postmodern philosophers themselves, and in so doing implicitly endorse the status quo. This video is no exception. Postmodernism: Many aspects of contemporary culture, borrowing of styles, blurring line between things.