Define postmodern media with examples.

1.  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.