Class Notes

Postmodernism

Definition: A late 20th-century style in the arts, architecture, and criticism that represents a departure from modernism. (In essence, it is based on the position that reality is not mirrored in human understanding of it, but is rather constructed as the mind tries to understand its own personal reality. Postmodernism is therefore sceptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person.)

Possible exam questions (all involve key concepts)

• What are the different versions of postmodernism? (historical development, styles, theoretical development)
• What are the arguments for and against understanding some forms of representation?
• How do postmodern texts challenge traditional "text-reader" relations and the concept of representation.
• In what ways do postmodern media audiences and industries operate differently in a postmodern world?
• How do postmodern texts/media relate to narrative and genre?

Aspects of Postmodernism

1. Hybridity - Distinctions between high culture and popular culture, have gone, or become blurred, eg. films with more than one genre.
2. Bricolage - (a French word meaning 'jumble') this is used to refer to the process of adaptation or improvisation where aspects on one style are given quite different meanings when compared with stylistic features from another, eg. punks used bondage gear and swastikas on their clothing  were eclectic as they made a big fashion statement. 
3. Simulation - the blurring of real and 'simulated', especially in film and reality TV or celebrity magazines. This referring to not only CGI in films like 'The Lord of the Rings' films (2001-2004), 'Avatar' (2009); or story lines of films like 'Blade Runner' (1982) and 'The Matrix' (1999) which forms the question 'Is it human or artificial?'.
4. Intertextuality - is now a familiar postmodern flourish across most moving image media  and Jameson specifies pastiche and parody as belonging to a similar idea. This self-reflexive awareness of itself as a text is also termed hyperconsciousness. 
5. Disjointed Narrative Structure - These are said to mimic the uncertainties and relativism of postmodernity in films like, Quentin Tarantino's 'Pulp Fiction' (1994) as the contemporary narrative often won't guarantee identifications with characters or the 'happy ending'. They often manage only a play with multiple, or heavily ironic, perhaps 'unfinished' or even parodic endings - 'Fight Club' (1999) and 'Atonement' (2007).
6. The Erosion of History - The deliberate blurring of time in films such as 'Cock and Bull Story' (2005) or more extravagant historical events like 'Elizabeth' (1998) and 'Saving Private Ryan' (1998), Inglorious Bastards (2009), where events and characters are telescoped, merged or discarded entirely. History can be viewed nostalgically or with suspicion.
7. The Active Audience - postmodern theories suggest that there is a decoding process going on among audiences who no longer use the passively media for gratification. Postmodern audiences read texts actively because they recognise the importance of the analysis of various clues or signs. At its simplest level, the audience accept or agree with the encoded meanings sent out by a text, they accept and refine parts of the text's meaning or they are aware of the dominant meaning of the text but reject it for cultural,  political or personal reasons.
8. Blurring of Boundaries - Boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture has been eroded. This idea is alluring because of the democratic implications all class hierarchies have disappeared. However, paradoxically, for there to be any thrill in transgressing boundaries like those between 'high' and 'low' forms in Baz Luhrman's 'Romeo & Juliet' (1997) or 'Shakespeare in Love' (1998), those boundaries need still to have some meaning - and indeed they do, if you think of the huge industry still associated with the status  and name of Shakespeare and his continuing cultural importance.
9. A Society of Spectacle - Postmodern media texts share a delight in surface style and superficiality, a delight in trivial rather than dominant forms from conversations about burgers in 'Pulp Fiction' (1994) to Lindsay Lohan or Victoria Beckham appearing in 'Ugly Betty' - and an alternative, excited, ironic tone involving scepticism about serious values. 
10. Atmosphere of Decay & Alienation - The 'structures of feelings' that find echoes in the music of Radiohead or Aphex Twin, the films 'Blade Runner' and 'Fight Club', the music videos and advertising of Chris Cunningham.