- Define postmodern media with examples.
Post
modernism strays very much from the path of conventional media,
postmodern media uses the fact that 'nothing is original anymore',
many would call the intertexual links to different texts as
uncreative or lazy but many post modern texts make the links so
obvious that it's hard to believe that it wasn't unintentional, for
example Tarentino uses many themes that director Toshiya
Fujita used in his film Lady Snowblood. The themes that Tarentino
copied were the duel in the snow scene, the framing is nearly exactly
the same. The way that Tarentino breaks up the main story with an
animated sequence is also borrowed from Lady Snowblood.
Postmodern
media can defined in many different ways, it could be said that the
piece of media uses bricolage or simulacra, either borrowing from
different texts, for example Inglorious Basterds by Quentin Tarentino
uses multiple elements from different films, when we are introduced
to the ‘Basterds’ we get western theme music coming into the
background, also Blaxploitation elements creep into the feature as
well as we hear the intro to the song Slaughter by Billy Preston when
the character Hugo stigglettes is introduced. The song was originally
theme music to the blaxplotation movie ‘Shaft’.
Films
can have a number of postmodern elements that ‘define’ them as
post modern, the french structuralist Levi Strauss states that any
text was constructed from socially recognisable debris, Strauss
developed the concept of bricolage, this theory states that a text
e.g. a film can be constructed from various different themes from
different texts, Tarentino is infamous for using 'bricolage' in many
of his films, Inglorious Basterds for example borrows various themes
from existing war films, this follows strauss's theory that the
construction of a text uses different text in four different ways,
addition,deletion, substitution and transposition. Some addition that
Inglorious Basterds uses is the scene in the cinema where a German
soldier shoots a man through the eye, this is a subtle reference to
the film Battleship Potemkin, where in the riot a woman is shot
through the eye. Interestingly Tarentino uses Deletion quite a lot in
Inglorious Basterds as you expect there to be more war elements from
different films, the film lacks a major battle that most war films
have, for example the landing scene in Saving Private Ryan, we don't
get to see how the 'Basterds' go from America to Germany, normally a
war film would show a lengthy Journey to the destination, for example
Saving private Ryan consists of an hour or so of traversing through
france before they get to find private Ryan. Elements of
substitution are used as well through swapping classical war film
music, e.g. bugles and march's with Blaxplotation and David bowie.
The transposition that Tarantino integrates into the film is the
ending, he completely changed the end of the war, the Basterds
actually killed Hitler, this is another feature of postmodern media
as it has distorted space and time this is a common feature in Post
modern media.
Another
feature of postmodern media is Hyperreality, usually it is a feature
of films but sometimes It can appear in music as well. For example
the character Ziggy Stardust that David bowie created dressed in
bizarre costumes and also had a strange lighting bolt face paint, he
can been scene as hyperreal as he has created a character in real
life instead of in a film or a music video.
Hyperreality
appears many times in inglorious Basterds, I found that it mainly
came across in the characters, for example Aldo Raine played by brad
pitt had a extremely exaggerated accent, in some point so the film it
was so bad that in a way it was good, the exaggeration can be seen as
a pastiche or parody to other texts, this also being an element of a
postmodern text. This parody can also be scene in another scene from
Inglorious Basterds, this is the scene where it portrays Hitler in a
very exaggerated rage, this is a parody of Both the person and the
character portrayed in the iconic defeat of hitler, this film is
Downfall.
Another
defining feature of postmodern media is Fiske's theory of a semic
code, he states that we can only judge experiences from past memory,
for example we compare car chases in movies to car chases that we
have already seen. This theory in a way is quite ironic because it
forces you to understand events through media we have already seen.
Quentin Tarantino is quite renown for his film style that includes
very visceral violence, but when people label the gore as realistic
it is quite ironic because we define realistic gore as something we
have experienced in a film, normally people haven't seen the amount
of violence Tarantino includes In his films and therefore judge the
gore from previous films they have seen. Postmodern media try's to be
different from other films in the same genre, because postmodernists
like to question the ideal's that have built the society we live in
today, for example when the character in Falling down questions why
the burger doesn't look like the picture representation in the fast
food, Baudrillard states that we cannot separate the image from the
reality therefore post modern media can be defined as something that
has been separated from a symbol, for example Inglorious basterd's
takes Hitler a feared historical character and turns him into a
raving pathetic man, therefore distorting the symbol and the reality.
I
think that the IT Crowd also portrayed some postmodern qualities, for
example in the episode entitled Moss and The German moss meets a
cannibal, but instead of being a stereotypical ‘creepy’ German he
turns out to be very nice and doesn’t get angry about Moss not
wanting to be eaten, I believe this is another feature of
hyperreality as well because this type of scene would have never have
played out in life.
Music
is also in the category of ‘postmodern media’ and quite
interestingly post modern music portrays similarities with post
modern films, for example Media
Theorist Jonathan Kramer says that post modern music isn’t a
historical period or surface style, ‘it’s an attitude’. Kramer
defines postmodern music to have 16 specific characteristics, for
example it challenges barriers between high and low styles, for
example the Electric light orchestra, a mixture of Rock ‘low style’
and a full orchestra, High style. The blurring of genre’s or the
inclusion of more than one genre in an artist, for example Manu
chao‘s song Mr bobby encompasses a Latin acoustic melody with a rap
break in it.
Another
way in which post modern music can be defined is that it ‘locates
meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores,
performances, or composers’ For example Pink Flyod’s another
Brick in the wall was a concept album, which later became a film that
followed specific events of a character whose father died in a war,
although it had multiple meanings as some of the songs were lossely
based on there bass guitarist Roger walters.
The
artist madeon can be considered to be postmodern as his music
complexly consists of remix of other people songs; this can be
considered to be bricolage as he takes elements from different songs
and uses them to create completely different, I believe he would also
meet the requirement of ‘music technology not only as a way to
preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the
production and essence of music’ I believe that Madeon fits this
because as well as producing with such music production software’s
as Ableton and Logic pro he also preforms his track using a Novation
Launchpad, this piece of technology allows madeon to load different
loops from different artists and lock them to specific keys, this
then enables him to either for example loop a drum track that will
keep plays or just queuing in a loop that only play when you press
the button
This
very similar to Girl Talk who can also be considered to be post
modern, as I think that he meets at least three of Kramer postmodern
musical theories. As well as creating songs from various artists I
think his blurs genre’s lines as he mixes in rock and rap together,
this could also be considered to be blurring the lines between High
and low culture as some of his remixes combine for example rap and
classical. Girl Talk could be considered postmodern for being
‘distrustful of binary opposites’ as instead of sticking to a
specific well defined genre he uses degree’s of fragmentation to
encompass multiple genres into one track.
I
believe that postmodern media can be defined as a text that rejects
notions of a modernist lifestyle, the way society revers logo’s and
brands instead of actual results.
The
ability to see past a modernist view of a grand narrative and present
and media texts that have multiple meanings or just leaving the
viewer to interpret the text for themselves instead of forcing a
preconceived concept that requires the listener to follow the story
or idea of a music track in one way.
Postmodern
media rejects the modernist utopian ideals and bases its knowledge on
previous texts through a series of intertexual links, as well as
piecing together media through the theory of Bricolage and creating
new products from it.