Post-Mod Exam Question

Discuss why some people are not convinced by the idea of postmodern media.

Postmodernism was created in response to disagreements with the ideas of modernism. Jean-Francois Lyotard created the theory of ‘grand narratives’, and ‘little narratives’. He suggests that modernism is very much in the past as it revolves around three main themes: religion, politics, and science. In the present day Lyotard argues that people take the features that they like from each of the themes and combine them to create their own beliefs; this can happen in fashion, as well as media.

Modernism is built around things such as: romanticism, hierarchy, finished product, paradigm, and genital. This contrasts with the opposite features of postmodernism: paraphysics, anarchy, process of product, syntagm, and polymorphous. An example of postmodernism being more about the ‘process of the product’ than the ‘finished product’ is Dan Black’s music video, ‘Symphonies’, which is created by ‘addition, deletion, substitution, and transposition’ – Levi Strauss. ‘Symphonies’ is a remix of various songs/videos all combined together: there are imitations of ‘Thunderbirds’, ‘King Kong’, and ‘Goldfinger’. These three original medias are among many others used in Dan Black’s music video, as well as the fact the chosen medias are very famous. Black even used the backing track from Rihanna’s number one single, ‘Umbrella’, even though the backing track for the song can be found on Garage Band on Mac computers, although the tempo and settings are altered slightly.

Postmodernists argue that everything is a remix of something already created, nothing is original, and this expands into two types of postmodernism: pastiche, and homage.
A pastiche is an imitation or a copy of something that has previously been made without giving credit to the original creators; for example this was used in the TV series, ‘Family Guy,’ when they did an imitation of the original ‘Star Wars’ films. Homage is a remix of something originally created, but the end product of the homage pays respect to the original version. An example of homage is cover albums by musicians, Fleetwood Mac, for instance.

Modernists would particularly not be convinced by the idea of postmodernism as it rejects all of their views. For example modernists would design everything they product before they produce it; whereas postmodernists take more chances and produce things based on unplanned production. ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ is a postmodernist film, this starts because it is a film created from a fake trailer; someone created a trailer for an imaginary film and then directed by Jason Eisener. Hobo with a Shotgun does not have a productive storyline like many modernist films, it is a film made for gore’s sake; some argue that it is ‘too good at being rubbish’ so it becomes a real/modernist film, but as it was based on a fake trailer it is solely postmodern.

Postmodernists rely on the audience knowing everything about everything ever created, however at the same time they want everyone to know nothing so that everything is new; but if everyone did know everything, then everyone would know nothing, because everyone would know the same.

Postmodernism can play a part in all forms of media, as previously mentioned, Dan Black’s music video; but also postmodernism happens a lot in films. I previously talked about ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’, but there are other postmodern films as well that are not just based on a fake trailer. The ‘Scream’ films are postmodern films, there are multiple references to ‘if this were a scary movie’ and ‘how to survive a scary movie’ throughout the films, this tries to convince the audience that it is ‘real life’. In the very first ‘Scream’ movie, they introduce the series of films as being very gory and predictable. The film also contradicts itself as all the way through, the characters discuss the rules of surviving a horror movie, such as ‘never say “be right back” because you won’t come back’, and ‘don’t have sex because you will die’. The characters go against all of the ‘rules’ but most survive up until the ‘Scream’ murderer is revealed at the end of the film. 

(Still in progress)