Postmodernism Half term homework:

Task one: Read OCR handbook and answer the questions

1. What does Post Modernism suggest about the value of high art (eg opera) and popular culture (eg TV)-  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 and that anything can be art and deserves to reach an audience, and culture ‘eats itself’ as there is no longer anything new to produce or distribute. The distinction between media and reality has collapsed, and we now live in a ‘reality’ defined by images and representations (a state of simulacrum).
2. What does Post Modernism suggest about the ideas of truth or reality - how is this linked the Media? That 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. By this it means that there are so many different examples of texts and products which explore and state hyper reality.
3. Who were the 2 big thinkers and what concept do their theories share? Lyotard and Baudrillard. Their concept is that the idea of truth needs to be ‘deconstructed’ so that we can challenge dominant ideas that people claim as truth, which Lyotard (1984) describes as ‘grand narratives’. In the postmodern world, media texts make visible and challenge ideas of truth and reality, removing the illusion that stories, texts and images can ever accurately or neutrally reproduce as reality or truth.
4. Give an example of 3 'Grand-narratives' or 'Meta-narratives' (2 will need you be your own not listed in the chapter)- Gran-narratives:  Meta-narratives:
5. What is significant about Disneyland and simulacrum? Disneyland is a place of imagination where people signify as a magical place. However, Disneyland is not magical in reality, it does exist but has been designed to be how it is presented and described in books. In hyper reality sense it is a place where all the magic happens.
6. How is our understanding of the events of 9/11 hyper-real? Our understanding of the 9/11 event was horrific and the impact it had on America. Baudrillard describes the 9/11 attacks as ‘the absolute event’. Instantly passing into and imploding with its electronic transmission, this was a global media event, accelerating us into a state if hyperreality and of feedback, interference and uncertainty. The real time montage of CU’s, LS's, multiple angles and ground images, edited and replayed and mixed with commentary, speculation, political reaction and the apprehension and adrenalin of the live moment – no event was ‘happening’ for them. Through this electronic experience it simultaneously actualised and hyper-realised the actual real event and deterred the truth. We cannot distinguish the representation of the events on television from the actual events, therefore the events are hyperreal, neither real nor ‘just’ media, but in both in combination, impossible to separate.
7. What is significant about the Matrix as an example of Baudrillards ideas of simulation & hyper-reality? It can be assumed that some influences on the directors about what it of more relevance in the film in the way it has been interpreted by many as a cinematic portrayal of Baudrillard’s notion of postmodern simulation as a controlling force keeping the masses enslaved. For example, in the film a few ‘chosen; individuals wake up to find the unhappy realisation that the human race is plugged into a network of machines (the matrix) and that their existence is virtual masking a much less savoury ‘reality’.
8. Why are Post-modern elements of The Mighty Boosh? Well first of it is a comedy with many post-modern aspects. For example, Noel Fielding and Julian Barrat add to this as they play more than one character in an obvious way. They have used pastiche of the film Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon) from 1992, where the Noel Fielding plays the moon. This is pastiche because they have incorporated an old film into a modern day program in a modern way, but it is pastiche because they have made this obvious through the use of clouds and the effect of the moons face. Richard Smith identifies nine elements of post modern media in The Might Boosh, these are ecletic mix of conventions, influences, genre traits which makes it impossible to situate the product in any one style. It has so many intertextual references to other tv shows and a liberal dose of parody. The programme is seen as hyper real as it exposes and plays around with the conditions of its own possibility, deliberately messes about with its own status as a television programme rather than striving to create the illusion that what we are seeing is ‘real’.
9. Why are Post-modern elements of Extras ? Extras have a self-reflective approach and a way they parody the conventions of genre. The Office is a situation comedy using and subverting docusoap convention: the character of David Brent works because of its pathos – the mixture of please and pain we feel when he performs in the role of an office manager. Without our cultural awareness of this genre, as ordinary people behave in such ways and take on characteristics beyond their daily work the humour would not work. TALK ABOUT EXTRAS NOT OFFICE!!!!!!
10. Why is Grand Theft Auto Post-modern? It immerses the player in a convincing, intricate and believable world, but that the reality it represents is the stuff of films and other media. The idea of the game is to take on the character of Niko Belic and live in Liberty City which is a profoundly hyperreal experience. The game revolves around the intense experiences of drugs, violence, sex, crime and vice in the hyperreal situation translates into effects in our real society, and a postmodern position that the separation between the two types of states are meaningless.
11. Why is the Cadburys Gorilla ad Post-modern? Hyper real because you would not see a Gorilla playing drums, intersexuality to Planet of the Apes.
12. What does FLOW and IMMERSION mean? Immersion describes how the gamer invests imagination in the game and is subsequently absorbed into the gameworld. Flow is described as a state whereby an activity demands incrementally harder, but increasingly pleasurable and achievable challenges, while providing regular feedback (a ‘loop’) on degrees of success.

http://www.slideshare.net/mickgoogan/04-baudrillard-the-matrix-and-blade-runner-simulation-and-hyperreality

Task 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDgHEDgdWoo

http://latymermedia2010mvodelia.blogspot.com/2011/09/postmodernism-intertextuality-hollywood.html

Postmodernism is an intellectual concept. The theory is defined as ‘a style and concept in the arts characterised by distrust of theory and ideologies and by the drawing of attention through different conventions’. This concept is used a lot in today’s television, especially in comedies. A great example of this could be Family Guy, which is rich with references from popular culture. Another good example could be in music videos such as Michael Bubles’ ‘Hollywood’ where they have used several different intertextual references and parodies for example the ‘Wild West’ to Today’s western culture of popular existing music artists. Moreover I will be discussing Family Guy.

Family Guy is a typical family sitcom that consists of a traditional nuclear family of husband, wife and children. In each episode you will expect to see their daily family life based around misfortune and trouble where regardless of this, the family are always back to normal as if nothing had happened in the next episode in which we know as hyper real as this would not be the case in reality. Similar to this the family or the characters never age (unless in the odd episode as part of the skit) they will always be the same age. For as long as Family Guy has been produced, Stewie has never grown out of is a toddler stage. However, since the start of being introduced to Stewie (who is the youngest) he speaks and at times acts like an adult and has a different accent to the rest of his family.

The decline of the meta-narrative in Family Guy is evident in the odd episode when we they have used parody of Jesus in season 7.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkPgYbdQ1kQ&feature=related

Family Guy have also had an hour-long special episode, which was based on a parody of Star Wars. This show was made to celebrate the premier of its sixth season as well the 30^th anniversary of Star Wars. Posters were created of the old Star Wars but the characters were replaced with the Family Guy characters cast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkPgYbdQ1kQ&feature=related

Task three:

Theoretical Terms 

1. Post-modern: The collapse of the distinction between the real 

and simulated. 

2. Post-modernity: A historical period in Western culture after the

Second World in which society became dominated 

by information technology.

3. Parody: To copy something in a humorous and tongue in 

Cheek way.  (Stylistic approach)

  

4. Pastiche: To copy something without humour, irony or 

anything else that communicates difference= (Tribute).

5. Hyper-reality: The collapse of the distinction between the real 

And simulated. (Style and Theme)

6. Consumer culture: A culture and society in which individual and 

Collective identity is constructed in material acts of 

Economic exchange e.g. shopping (Simulated)

7. Simulacrum: A copy without an original (po-mo theme)

  

8. Cultural capital: The knowledge and information that informs 

people’s cultural consumption in a post-modern 

society. 

9. Signifier and the signified:: The basic units of semiotic analysis. (association with something else- for example, what is blue? postmodern= anything you want it to be)

10. Multi-accentuality: The way in which meaning changes according to 

context and over-time.

11. Ideology: A system of belief or ideas. 

12. Hegemony: The dominant way of thinking about society and 

culture enforced by the ruling class.