Billy Raybould

What is meant by postmodern media?

Postmodern Media is a label given to text or cultural forms that challenge or play on meaning. They are design with an audience in mind who are familiar with numerous other texts across varying genres and cultures etc, as Postmodern Media texts display a number of intertextual references amongst other qualities. Postmodern style is often characterised by eclecticism, digression, collage, pastiche, and irony. Postmodernism follows on from modernism which refers to cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries & but best is any modern thought, character, or practice. The movement that was labeled modernism was a revolt of the conservative views on reality and the rejection of tradition. In general, the term modernism encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organisation and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialised world. Now however, postmodernism as a movement is viewed as anything away from the motives and viewpoints of what modernism stood for. It involves the belief that many, if not all, apparent realities are only social constructs, as they are subject to change inherent to time and place (again referring to the different versions of postmodernism). Postmodernism takes many forms - art, architecture, literature, music, TV & film, computer games and so on, and it is this that makes postmodernism such a wide and varied subject matter which people may find hard to distinguish or to even understand at all. "A general explanation is that postmodernism is a contradiction in terms, as post means after and modern means now, it is impossible for anything to be after now. The term itself is supposed to be deliberately unexplainable. Again another simpler explanation of postmodernism is that anything under the label of postmodern is weird for the sake of being weird. It is therefore understandable for people to not understand the concept of postmodernism, or what is indeed postmodern and what isnt which may have lead to the creation of several theories which support the ideas behind postmodernism. In terms of understanding forms of postmodern media, theorist Jean Baudrillard provides his theories behind how the public associate themselves with the postmodern movements. His work with Simulacra and Simulation (a philosophical treatise written by Braudrillard) interrogates the relationships between reality, symbols, signs and society. He argues that modern society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that the human experience is of a simulation of reality rather than reality itself. He refers to cultures and media that create the perceived reality for many and suggests that people are so reliant on these simulacra that they are losing any indication of what the real world on to which these simulacra are based on. This is a good theory as too why people grow to understand what is and what isn't postmodern - for example we now communicate through electronic media (social networking and so on) as opposed to face to face, and are lives are now being shaped by simulated events and opportunities through the likes of TV and online shopping. People are beginning to create codes for themselves from what they are fed by the media (Think 9/11 and how it was reported as being like a movie). It can be argued that these simulations are now becoming more real than what is actually real think about the effects in films or what is now achievable with computers, a percentage of people will believe that just about anything is possible. And it is this that is beginning to blur the line between the real and the unreal, otherwise known as hyperreality. A good example of this would be fast food advertisements. People are enticed to eat in certain restaurants by what they are shown on advertising boards and menus etc, but in reality a large percentage of the time the food actually being served is not remotely as pictured, yet people still insist on eating in these places. This could also be viewed as a challenge of representation. Postmodern media relates to globalisation through forms of advertising from worldwide or multinational companies that develop

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new forms of representation much like fast food representations (Mcdonalds and Coca Cola are prime examples of how globalisation can tie into postmodernism). These companies are using postmodern media in an attempt to create new constructs of experiences with there brand.

American Sociologist George Ritzer offers some more indication on the subject of postmodernism as an art form. Ritzer proposes that postmodernism usually refers to a cultural movement postmodernist cultural products such as architecture, art, music, films, TV, adverts etc. He claims that postmodern culture attempts to break down distinction between high culture and mass culture, for example the 2010 film Black Swan; a film about a prima ballerina laced with a liberal dose of crowd pleasing sex and psychological violence. Postmodern texts will also attempt to blur & mix genres and styles and for example Django Unchained, has the basis of a spaghetti western due to the time period of which the film is set in, but is a mixture too of dramas, actions and comedies with a deep underlying message of the slavery. As well as crossing and mixing genres and styles, postmodern products will also mix time, space and narrative. Ritzers ideas here offer an theoretical approach to a certain style of postmodernism. Another theoretical approach to postmodernism comes from Levi-Strauss and his development of the idea of bricolage and seeing any text as being constructed out of socially recognisable debris or other parts from different texts. He noted that other writers construct texts from other texts using the processes of addition, deletion, substitution and transportation. This particular theory again backs up Rizters theory of postmodern texts cross referencing and mixing genres as he believes texts are made up of pieces of different texts from all over. This theory is again supported by Jacques Derrida, who states that a text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without a genre. Every text participates in one or several genres, there is no genre less text. Postmodern texts are argued to make little attempt at covering up the fact that they are not real - they are make believe, fiction, the working of a director or author and often take or steal ideas from existing forms of media. For example, in Kill Bill Vol. 2 directed again by Quentin Tarantino, in Chapter 6 The Massacre At Two Pines, The Bride is shot stood in the church but is staged in such a way that the frame & archway of the churches entrance is visible as well as beyond and onto the open plain that lies beyond it, which is a reference to the final scene of the The Searchers a 1956 Western directed by John Ford. Examples of the same style are examples of Pastiche; an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period. It can therefore be argued that any texts (whether this be Video games, music video, TV & film and so on) that would show signs of pastiche, would not be wrong for the audience to take these types of texts as postmodern. An example of a postmodern text cross referencing and mixing genres would be Quentin Tarantinos Inglorious Bastards, a mixture of action, drama and war, all with an underlying comedic value running throughout the film. There are also elements of fairytales within the film, present in the opening scenes of the film where Tarantino's trademark yellow text is followed by the tag line once upon a time.. there are also references to chapters that break up the film (this is present in a number of his films) and again is reminiscent of a fairytale or childs story. This jumps back to the point of postmodern media making little attempt to hide the fact that it is fake and not reality. Reality TV shows such as TOWIE or Made In Chelsea are also an example of how postmodern texts are breaking down peoples ideality of what is real and what is staged or fake. People immerse themselves in a world that has been created for their own enjoyment but insist that these characters are real and what they do is genuine. And it is this that has promoted certain cast members to stardom. American Literary critic, Frederic Jameson however does have some criticisms of postmodern media. He states that postmodernism is vacuous and trapped in circular references. Jameson says that postmodernism is nothing more than a series of self referential 'jokes' which have no deeper meaning or purpose. Ironically Postmodernists don't disagree but use his criticism as their purpose, again showing another purpose of postmodernism, irony. Jameson is still a strong believer that literal and cultural output is still the most important factor and that these factors are more powerful than the jokes that postmodernism attempts to create, sticking to his modernist

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views even now in a time when postmodern culture is becoming increasingly dominant. Here Jameson present an argument against believing or understanding postmodern cultures and art. Philosopher Noam Chomsky also argue that postmodernism is meaningless because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge. He questions why postmodern industries do not operate and act in the same way whilst creating anything that is postmodern. Chomsky asks Seriously, what are the principles of their theories? he is creating a criticism of the fact that postmodern media does not explain anything that wasn't already obvious (to the public, audiences,

readers of modern texts etc). Art Bollocks is an article written by Brian Ashbee which appeared in the magazine Art Review in April 1999. Ashbee points out the importance given to language in "post-modern" art. The post-modern art forms mentioned by Ashbee are: "installation art, photography, conceptual art and video." The term bollocks in the title of course relates to rubbish, showing his own argument against postmodern media. The main criticism of postmodernism is that the theories and meaning behind them are very vague. In conclusion, postmodern media is categorised or defended due to a number of different characteristics; which are apparent across all types of postmodern media, or what is categorised as postmodern. The idea of postmodern media is that there is no longer originality, and that everything new is someway a remake of something modern, or made prior to the production of the new product. New constructs and realties are being created constantly through the media and their audiences using signals, signs and codes. Amongst modernists, postmodernism is dead, but this would appear in fact not be the case due to a ever increasingly digital aware society.