Practitioners

Frederic Jameson

• The loss of historical reality in the postmodern era 
• Describes the postmodern condition as "a new ind of flatness, of deathlessness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal sense" 
• Describes the loss of historical reality in writing, claiming that it only represents our ideas of the past
• Has a lack of faith in anything new

Jean Francois Lyotard 

• Explores the manifestations of anti-authoritarian tendencies 
• "the grand narrative has lost its credibility"
• He believes that knowledge has become a commodity and consequently a means of empowerment
• He believes grand narratives are authoritative and calls for a knowledge based on meta-narratives
• Mini-narratives do not contain universal truths
• Meta-narratives are big ideas and group identities

Baudrillard

• Discusses the role of the mass media in the construction of postmodern hyperreality
• Simulations of reality become "more real than the real"
• Constructed the discussion of 'the loss of the real'
• The world used to be consisted of signs but has been replace with postmodern simulacrum
• The postmodern world consists of simulations of reality of hyperrealities
• 'There is a lack of faith in anything new as postmodernism believes that everything has been done before and nothing new can be created" 

The Simpsons

The Simpsons - an american sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox broadcasting company.

A satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle. The show’s narrative structure and mode of humour is a prime example of a postmodern product. Narrative is disjointed/ in parts/ non-linear.

Comedy in intertextual references

Self awareness- text is often screaming ‘i’m a text’. Simpsons is a melting pot of society- everybody from every walk of life is in. Uses the micro-narratives. 

Because The Simpsons is animated it lends freedom in exploring micro-narratives. 

The Simpsons parodies the earnest family values of a traditional American sitcom. The show does not promote ideals for the audience to aspire to. Homer fractures the meta-narrative of the father having the most authority in the household. 

Postmodernism= In its determination to fracture meta-narratives, it just creates NEW meta-narratives. In essence, you could say the micro-narrative has become the new meta-narrative. 

Frederic Jameson: “Postmodernism is a world in which innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles…” 

It is therefore a culture “of flatness, of depthlesssness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal sense… it derives its force from other imags, that is, from the interplay of intertextuality…”

Consumerism....

Krusty the Klown (McDonalds/ Ronald McDonald) represents the mass produced, commodified world of consumer culture.  The Simpsons inhabit a society where consumer brands and advertising slogans dominate their daily life. The show continually parodies the 'hopes and aspirations' promoted by consumer culture. 

The way the Simpsons mocks everyone in society shows equality- oxymoronic. 

The narrative structure of the Simpsons demonstrates some of the characteristics of postmodernism. Episodes are deliberately non-linear and erratic. 

The Simpsons tried narrative style reflects the pluralism of the postdmoern society. It manages to portray and entire spectrum of society i.e. 

Apu- Indian immigrant

Reverand Lovejoy- church minister

Nelson Muntz- school bully from a dysfunctional family 

The narrative focus of an episode can cover a wide range of characters and therefore no authoritative voice is presented. We are presented with a wide range of micro-narratives. The Simpsons reject systems that exert their authority on order to proclaim absolute truths. 

Leotard's view is that meta-narratives that are there to explain and easier society, are really illusions which smother opposition, difference and plurality. 

The Simpsons criticises those who perpetuate meta-naratives. i.e. Bart and Lisa having authority over their parents.

The message, although buried, is to oppose authority- religion, politics, education, legal etc. Therefore they reject authority figures. 

Mayor Quimy, Chief Wiggum and Rev. Lovejoy are all seen as either corrupt or incompetent.  

'Postmodernism is a warn against the cultural and theoretical consensus and ideological unity'. -Lyotard 
'Knowledge is continually commented through metanarratives'- Leotard 
Lytoard calld for a world of 'micro-narratives' where there is no universal 'truth'. (absolute truths) 

Religion....


Religion is a metanarrative. The Simpsons examines religion from a critical perspective. The Simpsons attend a church in their local town, however we also know that Lisa is a Buddhist and Homer pronounces Jesus as Jebus. 

Christian fundamentalist, Ned Flanders is often ridiculed. The simsons ridicule of Flanders' beliefs, reflects Lyotard's opposition to the metanarrative. The Simpsons has criticised other religions too: Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism- staying rue to Postmodernism's non-discriminative disposition, all religious metanarratives are equally vunerable to attack. 

Although it is dangerous to assume that equity is achieved through discrimination to everybody. 

Her

Her 2013
Spike Jonse
Theodore

Repackaging memories through photographs. He’s creating a simulacra. Writing letters give a sense of nostalgia which is postmodern. The feeling of alienation and exstistenicialism and the desire to find love and being with someone who gets you makes this film postmodern.

Disconnects us from human emotion. Love and human emotion are disconnected because they live in a simulacra.

Online dating- simulacra. Set up profiles of an identity that’s more attractive than you really are. It’s hard to find love, easy to find sex. Samantha falls in love (simulacra love) with Theodore. Limitations of human identity. Bleak concept.

The mies-en-scene helps us explore the themes of the postmodern age. Office- fractures our positioning in the world. Backdrop of LA- postmodern landscape. Skyscrapers with lights on show that there are people there but he is removed from them. Train- such proximity to other people but the distance is greater than it’s ever been. Protagonist is lonely and solitude which is a condition brought on through our technological and digital postmodern age

Theodore leaves a date with an attractive woman and the prospect of real sex to return home to have ‘sex’ with his operating system (Samantha). The bleakness lies in the message that although the operating system can now feel emotion and touch, Theodore cannot further develop. He is chosen a fake simulacra world over reality.

How watching her differs from watching a formulaic hollywood text
Her gives a bleak outlook on the technological and digital age we live in. Although digital technologies are something we all use, the film alienates the audience with the way Samantha has a simulacra of human emotion. Hollywood texts work to make the audience empathise with characters and experience emotion, however, her is a film that is hard to relate to and the audience feels alienated. This is oxymoronic however, as the average film consumer will use digital technologies and will likely have a simulacra of themselves on a social media. Because of this, the audience will be left contemplating the blurred line between their real lives and simulcraic lives. A formulaic hollywood text often follows the theory of equilibrium whereas her is unpredictable and doesn’t follow the typical narrative convention. Hollywood texts are made as a way to entertain an audience and make money, whereas the purpose of ‘her’ is to make an audience question their existence and identity.

In the truman show- leaves simulacra for reality
Her- leaves reality for simulacra

Catfish- Watch the film for homework. Choose any texts: pop video, film, tv program why is it postmodern. Year, director if film, episode if tv show. 400 words discuss why it’s postmodern. ANIME. Ouran HSHC.

TALK TO HER - creepy film

Truman cont.

Truman Show
Consumerism:
Postmodern culture is our obsession with buying and consuming.
Consumerism- superficial need to buy with the assumption that it’ll make us better in some way.

Product placement in Truman Show. Through the use of product placement, consumerism has found a voice in popular culture. Within the Truman Show, the narrative is littered with messages urging us to buy. This can also be seen in other contemporary media texts. (e.g. jessie j price tag)

Truman’s most significant and most mundane moments are consistently linked to brands.

TV was turned off at midnight years ago, the internet was rarely used. Watch anything online- pop ups appear. = the postmodern condition. Branding infiltrates our everyday lives. With the growth of new media technology, consumerism has increased. Our ability to consume is greater than ever. Our postmodern condition is almost confined by consumerism. The future of consumerism? Increase.

In today’s postmodern society, there are more platforms for consumerism. Truman’s simulacrum of friends and family express the benefits of various consumer products to the audience while simultaneously playing their roles in Truman’s life, exaggerating the importance of the products and making the audience believe that the products will make them better in someway. The film’s explicit message is a bleak one, it claims that we cannot escape from the consumer society that surrounds us. It not only shapes our identity, but controls us. The product placement show that the show was funded by advertising.

http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap1002/truman.htm

Baudrillard notes that consumerism has developed through three stages:

The use value- the object’s use
The Exchange Value- trading objects for money or other objects
The Sign Value- the image and identity it presents to others

Personalised Number Plates- pointless consumer products that people want .

Fight Club comments upon the trappings of contemporary consumer culture. Baudrillard agues that modern consumerism has placed us within an intricate sign system, whereby we gain an understand of others as as our place within society by the objects we own. Therefore, we no longer acquire goods because of real needs but because of desires that are increasingly defined by commercials. “The media spectacle has handed us the script and stage to perform our lives upon”- Baudrillard

Another prime theme within the truman show resulting from its hyperreal construct, are the fake memories which create Truman’s simulated sense of self. Artifical memories are a reoccurring texts that explore postmodern issues. (BE Right Back- Ashe’s memories are that of the online words he’s said). In the same way as Fight Club, Be Right Back explores the notion of: ‘a copy of a copy of a copy’. Presenting the notion that one’s sense of identity is merely a fabrication when excsiting within a hyperreal realm.

Existential Crisis

False nostaligia- werther’s originals as a child. The media creates fake memories that never really exsisted- e.g. having a werther’s originals as a child.

Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga: Marry The Night

Useful for intertextuality - Judas (2011) dresses like Axl Rose (1980s)
Marry the Night- into the groove (madonna) Papa don’t preach (Madonna)
Born this way- Billie Jean

Her videos are original but they aren't - oxymoron

It is oxymoronic that lady gaga can be a copycat yet unique

Does a recognition of intertextuality add deeper meaning

Metanarrative- ‘big story’ things like ‘god is good’ ‘marriage is sacred’ ‘men are active, women are passive’: codes that made up societal ideologies. Postmodernism fractures the metanarrative. i.e. ‘men are weak’. Jean Francois Lyotard.

new practitioner

Frederic Jameson-

Jameson argues that the distinction between the real and the simulated becomes very blurred in postmodern society.

He uses the terms parody and pastiche to explain the way people use and borrow existing cultural artefacts/ texts. Pastiche is basic mimicry, parody is more knowing and ironic.

How is marry the night postmodern?
Style over substance
Intro follows convention of a film narrative
Intertextuality- Thriller, Take your breath away (top gun), desperately seeking Susan, fame, Girl Interrupted (film)
Bricolage ‘to tinker with’- taking hospital hats and making them berets.
Hyper-femeninity: angry, throwing stuff, in bathtub doing hair
Lady Gaga rejecting male gaze, forcing it (nurse) (fracturing the metanarrative)
Gay Icon-
High art vs low art- Ballet vs vaguely trashy music video
“It's not that I’ve been dishonest, I just loath reality”
“The lie of it all is much more honest because I invented it”
“My past is an unfinished painting”- she’s the author of her own history

Lady Gaga draws attention to her work as a construct
Gaga is self aware. She borrows this from film directors such as Tarantino. ‘I know i’m in a media text’ Self awareness
Postmodern texts highlight their status as not real (the collapse of the distinction between real and simulated.

Postmodernism originated in the 60s
Consumerism and postmodernism is a signifier

Lady Gaga cont. 
Mikhail Bakhtin- ‘carnivalesque’
Grotesque behaviour- in modern society we embrace the carnivalesque in our consuming culture- often mocking or satirical challenge to authority and the traditional social hierarchy

Schadenfreude- people taking pleasure in your pain. Jeremy Kyle for example. 
People who are carnivalesque: Katie Price, Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj 
Lady Gaga’s videos have the aesthetics of the carnivalesque. The spectator does not feel a sense of schadenfreude because we’ve come to accept the knowledge that it is what she represents however, in a postmodern society, whether everything and everyone is a commodity, her grotesque-ness becomes her star vehicle. 
Gaga in control of male gaze rather than an object of it. 
Lady Gaga embraces a hyped almost carnivalesque notion of femininity to draw attention to its constructed nature 
Lady Gaga draws attention to the overly made up version of femininity 
It becomes comical/ grotesque- not sexy
Society says ‘high heels are sexy’ she turns them grotesque/ postmodern 
In our patriarchal society that dictates ‘rules’ of attractiveness, Lady Gaga has taken the high heel and made it into something postmodern, something grotesque. 
Lady Gaga subverts notions of femininity and plays with gender identity. 
Gaga is postmodern in her refusal to be an object of the male gaze. She is in control of the gaze and men watching her will not feel voyeurism watching her. 

The Truman Show

The truman show is a thoughtful, insightful and bleak look at postmodern, contemporary society. The character is unaware that he exists within a purely simulated world that has no connection to reality, but is instead a superficial realm constructed by a media corporation.

Truman- name ‘true man’ only true thing in the text is truman himself. Yet, there is nothing real about truman apart from his human emotions, feelings for muse.

The Truman Show offers us a metaphor for our own postmodern condition.

Christoff: ‘Christ of’ is the maker of the program. creator of truman’s life.


Postmodernism describes the emergence of a society in which the mass media and popular culture are the most important and powerful institutions controlling and shaping all other types of social relationship.



Hyperreal- so real it’s not real: Truman’s life. Baudrillard argues that in a culture dominated by Tv and Film and the internet all we are now are simulations of reality, leaving us to exist within the hyperreal. Baudrillard: ‘Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy”.  In The Truman Show, this notion is prevalent.

Examples of our increasing Hyperreal Culture
-Aspiring towards perfect bodies that have been manipulated with photoshop
-Irish themed bars situated around the world, which offer a version of ‘Irishness’ which is more Irish than that found in pubs in Ireland itself.
-Las Vegas skyline has a hyperreal experience of different cities around the world: the ultimate postmodern skyscape

Our postmodern culture has a fascination with reality television. New media technologies such as digital editing has made reality tv much easier to manipulate and create new narratives.
Journalist Amanda Rikton aptly describes the format, “participants are placed within an artificial environment which is highly controlled and are at all times aware that they are being scrutinised by the viewing public. To what extent a real notion of self is presented is questionable.”

Charlie Brooker- Black Mirror

Black Mirror: Episode Be Right Back 

What postmodernism element and it’s relationship with postmodern society is it’s link and ability to embrace technology in a digital world?

Products by Charlie Brooker often highlight a cynicism and bleakness. There are many texts that focus around the structuring theme of identity which raises the enigmatic code and forces the spectator to think.

Postmodern texts puts the spectator in an active position. (but the enigmatic code isn't postmodern)

Postmodern products made in a postmodern way force the spectator to be active and think of the world in a different way. Quite often through the medium of film and tv they pose a certain bleakness. In ‘BRB” Charlie Brooker raises questions about the simulacra world we create through social media and technology. The consumer over relies on technology. Public rely on social media. Charlie Brooker offers no solutions, however.

What was real in the episode?
Nature- countryside walk
Emotion- Martha’s greif is real

Audience can identity with Martha’s emotion/ grief. Audience relate with the false world you/ others create through social media.

On Facebook we create a false representation. Simulcraic world in our simulacraic friend group.

Often raises philosophical questions around abstract notions such as identity, sexuality, gender, morals.

Music video and film/ tv tie up with identity. Not only is gender a performance, but our identity and who we like to claim we are is also a performance. Blurring of what’s real and what’s hyperreal.

Postmodern test have a self-reflectivity. They know what they is.

Postmodernism makes us question our existence.

Key Words and definitions

-Faux TV

-Pastiche
An artistic work in a style that imitates/ pays homage to another work, artist, or period.

-Hyperreal 
An inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality. i.e. Disney Land

-Parody 
An imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.

-Cyberspace
The notional environment in which communication over computer networks occurs.

-Metanarrative

-Surrealism
A 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images.

-Bricolage 
A work that is made from combining existing materials, independent of their original purpose.

-Intertextuality 
Making reference to a pre-exsisting text

-Simulacra
Something fake pretending to be real. i.e. Disney Land

-Faction

-Kitsch
Art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way. i.e. the barbie doll

-Spectacle

-Dystopia 
An imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.

Jean Baudrillard

Postmodernism celebrates the image rather than the real: style over substance
Baudrillard discusses blurring between real and not real.

Everything is a sign, a simulacra (pretending to be real). simulacra- go into pub made to look old, new pub, new decorations that look old. Simulacra= fake but pretending to be real. i.e. disney land.
According to Baudrilliard, nothing is real, everything is surface

The gulf war didn’t exist- Jean Baudrillard book

Hyperreal- so real it’s not real

In Madonna’s like a prayer video, religious metanarratives are broken. Jesus is a black man who is open to temptation, Madonna is sexualised and posing within a church, crosses are burned. Stigmata becomes an aesthetic.

Madonna

Ways Madonna uses postmodernism...

• Style over substance
• Intertextuality- Pastiche form mostly: i.e. Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen prefer blondes
• Constantly changes style and image
• Good for inserting queer theory- her sexuality is something she always appears to be exploring
• Fractures metanarratives- Jean Francois Lyotard 
• Parodies traditional gender and sexual identities
• Embraces consumer culture

Consuming: the more you consume, the more it will improve your life. i.e. Buy this deodorant by David Beckham and you’ll be like him- get the girls.

Postmodernism and queer theory breaks down binary opposition- male vs female

Fixed gender identity-metanarrative is rejected- heterosexual man and woman

Postmodernism celebrates all sexualities 
Annie Lenox
Lady Gaga

Judith Butler was positive in her reapproapiriation of sexual identity. She writes that gender and sexuality are constantly in transition. 60s and 70s feminism argued that sexuality and gender are biological. Judith Butler argued that it was constantly moving/ shifted and it’s about performance (how you choose to perform your gender/ sexual identity).

Laura Mulvy 1975 book, wrote how women are there to be looked at and fetishised. Judith is more postmodern.

Madonna parodies female stereotypes and adopts identities that 'contradicts' her as a heterosexual female.

In postmodern society, people are not restricted to traditional gender identities. In true queer theory style, one could participate in a range of identities= lesbian heterosexual, heterosexual lesbian, etc.

‘Material Girl’ embraces consumer culture and is also a pastiche of Marilyn Monroe in the film ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’.

Madonna exposes femininity as a ‘masquerade’- something that’s not real.

Video reproduces the elements of blondness, sexuality and gold-digging in parody form.

She’s portrayed as ‘a more savvy’ monroe in contrast to the traditional nostalgic treatment of her as a ‘witless sex object’

Madonna mocks femininity as a ‘Meta masquerade’

Intro

Postmodernism is notoriously difficult to define.

To be successful in the exam, you need to think about what is historical (not within the past 5 years), what’s present and what the future holds for postmodernism.

What does postmodernism do...

• Generates interesting debate
• Interesting case studies 

Post (after) modernism. A development of modernism? the result? the rejection of?

Eras are defined by changes in art, theory and economic history. 

Postmodern Texts

• Black mirror (TV drama)
• The Simpsons
• Modern Family
• Black Swan
• Lady Gaga- Telephone + Marry The Night
• Jessie J- Price Tag
• The Truman Show (historical) 
• Madonna 
• Gorrliaz

What is Postmodernism?

-An attitude towards truth claims
-Jean Francois Lyotoird -Incrudaroty towards all Metanarratives ‘big story’ (suspicious of big stories)
-Interpretation
-Illegitimate child of modernism
-During the rise of modern science
-Modern though became old fashioned during postmodern age
-Intertextual references (postmodernism supports that there are no more original ideas)

FRACTURING OF THE METANARRATIVE 

Style over substance- Truman Show set- aesthetics more important than narrative

Question what is real and what isn't 

Terminology:

-Faux TV

-Pastiche

-Hyperreal 

-Parody 

-Cyberspace

-Metanarrative

-Surrealism 

-Bricolage 

-Intertextuality 

-Simulacra

-Faction 

-Kitsch

-Spectacle

-Dystopia