Schematic Differences between Modernism and Postmodernism.

Schematic Differences between Modernism and Postmodernism Modernism Postmodernism Romanticism/symbolism Paraphysics/Dadaism Purpose: Music video – To advertise a song. Play: Interactive – To engage with the audience. Design: A Scripted T.V drama – My Family. Chance: An unscripted improvised drama - Outnumbered (kids). Hierarchy: The Hierarchy of a traditional war film. Anarchy: Inglorious Basterds – Hitler dies in the wrong day Art object, finished word: Mona Lisa (finished artwork). Process, performance: When someone films the growth of a tree. Distance: At a Kanye West gig – not involved in the performance, merely watching. Participation: The D.O.T and Ghostpoet’s interactive video, where the live audience choose each scene. Creation, totalization: A Rom-com film, strictly within a genre. Deconstruction: Kill – Bill, PoMo film. Presence: The presence of a story running coincidentally with comedy, to tell a story and make the audience laugh. Absence: A load of random events/acts for a comedy show, no story running through it. Centering: Every genre has a centre (stereotype) traditional war films. Dispersal: Spreads out genres etc.… Inglorious Basterds is a combination of various ideas. Genre, boundary: A traditional war film with traditional conventions. Text, intertextual: Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds untraditional, intertextual references – Mexican standoff & Cinderella. Selection: A selection of a specific genre: Action, Drama, Rom-Com/ Combination: A combination of different genres and aspects of films – Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Or films like Scary Movie. Depth: A traditional film will be made with a moral and to convey a story. Surface: A postmodern film such as Jackass that has no depth and is just made to be funny. Interpretation: The morals in a traditional film are open for interpretation. Against interpretation: Sometimes in postmodern films something is there to be seen as what it is and not open for interpretation. Reading: A traditional piece of classical guitar music, is read as created by that artist. Misreading: For example a Kanye West sample could be mis-read as something he has created, when in reality he has ripped it off from someone. Narrative: There’s a conventional story. Anti-narrative: An unconventional order of clips. Grande histoire: Narrative - a fiction that locks readers into interpreting text in a single, chronological manner that does not reflect our experiences. Petite histoire: Anti Narrative -Postmodern texts may not adhere to traditional notions of narrative. Genital, phallic: A Freudian theory of psychosexual development. Polymorphous: Lots of different characteristics of certain genres/aspects within a film. Paranoia: Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. Schizophrenia: A breakdown in conventional thinking/emotional responses. Origin, cause: The point, at which something begins, arises or is devised. Modernism topics always have an origin. Difference-difference: A point or way in which people or things are different – different from the accepted truth. Determinacy: Of the narrative voice. Indeterminacy: Of the narrative voice.

First essay plan

  

Task 1. 

Topic: Postmodernism

Aspect: Texts 

Viewpoint: Time & Space 

Instruction: To what extent

Task 2.

Postmodernism rejects the truth of time and space. 'Inglorious Basterds' manipulates time through placing songs such as David Bowie in a film set in WW2. Inception manipulates time and space through the layers which differentiate in time and space.

Task 3.

Quentin Tarantino & 'Inglorious Basterds' uses pastiche to mock existing films that claim to be true stories or realistic, by making a film that people think is completely untrue and farfetched, when in really it is no less untrue than films made to be realistic. Also long dialogue's in french and german, more realistic than most american war films which claim to be truth and they usually have germans and french speaking english with an accent. Pastiche towards traditional war film - voices are  OTT and eccentric. Film within a film. However uses homage by placing David Bowie songs, western film aspects and 'Mexican standoff' all aspects which Tarantino like and includes across his film work - pulp fiction - kill bill. Tarantino is trying to make a statement about war films and our knowledge of war films; that societies outlook of war films is is now just the media's perception of war and our view of war is now from films - relate to Fiske. Added Bricolage- random things to add conspiracy and question conventions and idea's. 

Inception manipulates time and space through the layers which differentiate in time and space. Hans Zimmer Edith Piaf music is played as a kick to wake up the characters and is also heard by the 

• How post-modern media relate to genre and narrative
• post-modern cinema,
• interactive media,
• music video,
• advertising,
• post-modern audience theories,
• parody and pastiche in media texts or a range of other applications of post-modern media theory.

'Death of Uncool' Playlist/Album

1. Foals - Black Gold .Indie Rock.
2. LCD Soundsystem - Drunk Girls .Dance Punk.
3. Panpipes - TE.E.D .Dance Pop.
4. Yasmin - Thinking about you .Pop.
5. Miguel - Where's the Fun in Forever .R&B.
6. Foals - Blue Blood .Indie Rock
7. Justin Timberlake ft. Jay Z - Suit& Tie .Pop.
8. Mac Miller - Party on Fifth Ave .Hip-Hop/Rap.
9. Frank Ocean - Crack Rock .Pop/R&B.
10. String Thing - Shadow Child .House.
11. Major Lazer ft. Santigold, Vybz Kartel& Danielle HAIM - You're No Good .Electronic/D&B.
12. Jay Z ft The Beatles (Danger Mouse) - December 4th .Hip-Hop.

Postmodern Advert

Postmodernism in advertising: attempts to provide illusions of individualism, nostalgia and retro styles, recycling earlier genres and styles in to new contexts and genres.




This Thomas cook advert is postmodern because:
It is trying to sell you a holiday that isn't real, the couples and families featured is this holiday, that are used to evoke emotion from the audience are not real. They are merely acting roles within the advert to portray the 'perfect family holiday', thus making the audience want a holiday that is not real and does not exist. 

My initial understanding of Postmodernism

It would be appropriate to start my first blog post with the Oxford Dictionary's definition of Postmodernism:


"A style and concept in the arts characterised by a distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions"


Postmodernists claim that in a media-saturated world, where we are constantly immersed in media, 24/7 - and on the move, at work, at home - the distinction between reality and the media representation of reality becomes blurred or even entirely invisible to us. In other words, we no longer have any sense of the difference between real things and images of them, or real experiences and simulations of them. Media reality is the new reality.


Some see this as a historical development: the modern period came before, during which artists experimented with the representation of reality. Postmodern came next, where this idea of representation gets 'remixed', played around with, through pastiche, parody and intertextual references - where the people that make texts deliberately expose their nature as constructed texts and make no attempt to pretend that they are 'realists'.


Basically, Postmodernism:

• Culture 'eats itself' as there is no longer anything new to produce or distribute.
• Everything is copied; remixed/transformed/sampled - nothing is original.
• Rejects the idea that any media product or text is of any greater value than another.
• Uses existing media/material, but goes so far away from the original origin that the meaning is confused and societies outlook changes upon it. Copies of this copy then project an ideological hyperreality, where images refer to each other as reality rather than some 'pure' reality that existed before the image represented it.
• So the distinction between media and reality has collapsed. Nothing is real. not anymore.
• 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.
• PoMo is extremely cynical.