The theory of Post Modernism

Post modernism1 from christimothy12

District 9: Science Fiction & Representation

'District 9' is a 2009 dystopian science fiction thriller film directed by Neill Blomkamp.A dystopia is the vision of a society that is the opposite of utopia. A dystopian society is often a planned structured society in which the conditions of life are deliberately made miserable, characterised by poverty, oppression, violence, disease, scarcity, and/or pollution for the benefit of a select minority or some unnatural societal goal.

A typical dystopia paints a picture of government or society attempting to exert control over free thought, authority, energy, freedom of information. Others focus on systematic discrimination and limitations based on a variety of factors - genetics, fertility, intelligence, and age being a few examples.

An underlying theme in 'District 9' is state reliance on multinational corporations as a government funded enforcement arm. As MNU represents the type of corporation which partners with governments, the negative portrayal of MNU in the film can be seen as a statement about the dangers of governments, particularly in their outsourcing of militaries and bureaucracies to private contractors.

Themes of racism and xenophobia are also put forward by the movie in the form of speciesism applied to the aliens. The use of the word "prawn" to describe the aliens is a reference to the Parktown prawn, a king cricket species considered a pest in South Africa.

MS4 - Text, Industry & Audience: District 9 (Representation/Genre)

'District 9' is a 2009 dystopian science fiction thriller film directed by Neill Blomkamp.A dystopia is the vision of a society that is the opposite of utopia. A dystopian society is often a planned structured society in which the conditions of life are deliberately made miserable, characterised by poverty, oppression, violence, disease, scarcity, and/or pollution for the benefit of a select minority or some unnatural societal goal.

A typical dystopia paints a picture of government or society attempting to exert control over free thought, authority, energy, freedom of information. Others focus on systematic discrimination and limitations based on a variety of factors - genetics, fertility, intelligence, and age being a few examples.

An underlying theme in 'District 9' is state reliance on multinational corporations as a government funded enforcement arm. As MNU represents the type of corporation which partners with governments, the negative portrayal of MNU in the film can be seen as a statement about the dangers of governments, particularly in their outsourcing of militaries and bureaucracies to private contractors.

Themes of racism and xenophobia are also put forward by the movie in the form of speciesism applied to the aliens. The use of the word "prawn" to describe the aliens is a reference to the Parktown prawn, a king cricket species considered a pest in South Africa.

Media Theory Links: Making the most of this blog

The column on the right hand side of the blog titled 'Useful Blogs/Sites' provides very good links for the further study and referencing of Media theory.

Visit these sites for a deeper understanding of the key theories that you need to apply to coursework and exam texts.

From these links you can access the full transcript of Laura Mulvey's - Visual pleasure & Narrative Cinema.

Or
Postmodern theory

Looking for the underlying messages within media texts!

Take a look at this short video analysis of the John Carpenter film 'They Live' (1988) which takes an interesting approach to the hidden messages contained in modern media texts. The sci-fi narrative deals with aliens influencing human thought processes as a way of controlling  society, but this can also be read as a metaphor for the way society is controlled by powerful media organisations within a capitalist society. It's basic message is made very clear though - all media texts contain ideas which shape our existence.

Everything Is A Remix

MS3 - Production: The Taxonomy Of Film Posters

This blog has distilled movie poster design into 13 categories. Despite the lighthearted approach and overwhelming generalisations of the critique, the visual analysis is spot-on. Composition, colour, perspective and typefaces are all considered.

Gucci Guilty Ad: Influenced by 'Sin City'? (Postmodernism?)

Postmodernism and Consumer Society: Working with Frederic Jameson's categories

(1) "the transformation of reality into images" (cf. Debord and Baudrillard)

(2) "the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents"

"the erosion of the older distinction between high culture and so-called mass or popular culture" (Jameson).

Pastiche and parody of multiple styles: old forms of "content" become mere "styles"

stylistic masks, image styles, without present content: the meaning is in the mimicry

"in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum" (Jameson).

No individualism or individual style, voice, expressive identity. All signifiers circulate and recirculate prior and existing images and styles.

The postmodern in advertising: attempts to provide illusions of individualism (ads for jeans, cars, etc.) through images that define possible subject positions or create desired positions (being the one who's cool, hip, sexy, desirable, sophisticated...).

"our advertising...is fed by postmodernism in all the arts and is inconceivable without it" (Jameson)

Po-Mo as late capitalism: transnational capitalism without borders, only networks and info flows. Some features of postmodern styles:

Nostalgia and retro styles, recycling earlier genres and styles in new contexts (film/TV genres, images, typography, colors, clothing and hair styles, advertising images)

"History" represented through nostalgic images of pop culture, fantasies of the past. History has become one of the styles; historical representations blend with nostalgia.

"the disappearance of a sense of history, the way in which our entire contemporary social system has little by little begun to lose its capacity to retain its own past, has begun to live in a perpetual present and in a perpetual change that obliterates traditions of the kind which all earlier social formations have had in one way or another to preserve... The information function of the media would thus be to help us to forget, to serve as the very agents and mechanisms of our historical amnesia" (Jameson).

Culture on Fast Forward: Time and history replaced by speed, futureness, accelerated obsolescence.

Information from: http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/pomo.html

Postmodern Theory: Useful Notes

Postmodernism: Theory, Theorists & Texts

Intertextuality in Film & TV

Postmodernism: Intertextuality/Parody in The Simpsons

The Simpsons version of Hitchcock's 'North By Northwest' 

'The Simpsons' has always provided some excellent examples of postmodernism in action in its consistent referencing of other texts, in particular cinema. It can therefore be regarded as a good source for getting to grips with the concept, beginning to understand the way the theory works and recognising how it can be seen in other contemporary media texts.

Below are fames from a Simpson's episode that references 'It's A Wonderful Life'. It is clear that the framing and elements of the mise-en-scene have been replicated in homage to a classic piece of American Cinema.

See More at Movie Simpsons

MS3/MS4: Postmodern Theory - Everything is a Remix Part 1

Remixing is a folk art but the techniques are the same ones used at any level of creation: copy, transform, and combine. You could even say that everything is a remix.


Apply the same principals to your key texts (Nirvana/Radiohead/Lady Gaga) and you will develop theoretical constructs that are key to a better understanding of the way that media texts can be analysed more culturally and academically.

Everything is a Remix Part 1 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Re- posted from screenagers.me

MS3/MS4 - Postmodernism and Mass Culture

For some comprehensive notes on Postmodernism and Mass Culture use the link below.

pcpmod.doc

MS3/MS4: Postmodern Theory - 'Sin City'/'The Matrix'

MS3/MS4: Postmodern Theory - Useful Notes

Postmodernism: An Artistic Style

Postmodernist art reveals itself when:

1. It's self-referential. In other words, it refers to itself, or is about itself. Postmodernist artists often refuse to let their works be simply or totally about something else. Their works are about themselves as works of art, and they constantly draw attention to themselves as artifices instead of trying to be windows on some sort of reality beyond themselves.

2. It's "intertextual." That is, it's art that often likes to be about some other work of art, or some other "text." A famous pop artist named Roy Lichtenstein loved painting images taken right out of comic books. That's "intertextuality," he made art about somebody else's art.

3. It's category-defying, often in confusing ways. Postmodernist artists love to defy our expectations and do things they're not "supposed" to do -- maybe to remind us that the rational categorisations we often use to understand art never work as well or as perfectly as we like to think they do.

4. It's "pastiched." Fancy French word, that. "Pastiche," to recent art critics, is the practice of borrowing elements of different genres and different styles from lots of different historical periods, then mixing them all together in a single work of art. It creates a kind of historical collage.

5. It's not snobbish. In fact, postmodernist art can be very "pop." It often draws its subject matter from the realm of popular culture and employs pop-culture forms and genres. Most postmodernist artists don't draw the sorts of distinctions between "high" and "low" culture many artists of the past did -- and so they defy yet another mode of categorisation.

6. It gets fact and fiction all mixed up. Postmodernist artists aren't much interested in the distinction between real and make-believe. They often make famous "real" historical figures interact with fictional characters in their works, and they often re-tell "actual" textbook history in peculiar, unsettling, often illuminating ways. Mixing fact and fiction is a way to amplify this idea.

Read more here.

MS4: Postmodern Theory - 'Sin City'/'The Matrix'

Postmodern Ideas

1. We no longer have any sense of the difference between real things and images of them, or real experiences and simulations of them.

2. The distinction between media and reality has collapsed, and we now live in a ‘reality’ defined by images and representations – a state of simulacrum.

3. Postmodernism rejects the idea that any media product or text is of any greater value than another. All judgments of value are merely taste.

4. Culture ‘eats itself’ and there is no longer anything new to produce or distribute.

5. 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.

6. Postmodern texts are said to be intertextual and self-referential – they break the rules of realism to explore the nature of their own status as constructed texts.

7. In the postmodern world, media texts make visible and challenge ideas of truth and reality, removing the illusion that stories, texts or images can ever accurately or neutrally reproduce reality or truth

MS3/MS4: Postmodern Theory - Useful Notes/Site

A very good overview of postmodernism can be found here with some very contemporary examples used including Lady Gaga.

Extract:

artistic and stylistic eclecticism (aesthetic postmodernism)hybridization of forms and genres, combining "high" and "low" cultural forms and sources, mixing styles of different cultures or time periods, dehistoricizing and re-contextualizing styles in architecture, visual arts, literature, film, photography

MS3/MS4: Postmodern Theory - Useful Notes

Postmodernism: Theory, Theorists & Texts

MS3/MS4: Postmodern Theory - Useful Notes/Site

This extract on Postmodernism and Consumer Society provides some useful quotes that may be applied to many of the topics for A2 Film and Media this year. 'Fight Club' (FM4) is the most obvious text but these concepts can be applied to other examples of Film/Television/Music throughout the year. Getting to grips with this type of theory and applying it to those examples will set your answers apart from other students who rely upon more descriptive responses.

Working with Frederic Jameson's categories (Postmodernism and Consumer Society)

(1) "the transformation of reality into images" (cf. Debord and Baudrillard)

(2) "the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents"

"the erosion of the older distinction between high culture and so-called mass or popular culture" (Jameson).

Pastiche and parody of multiple styles: old forms of "content" become mere "styles"

stylistic masks, image styles, without present content: the meaning is in the mimicry

"in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum" (Jameson).

No individualism or individual style, voice, expressive identity. All signifiers circulate and recirculate prior and existing images and styles.

The postmodern in advertising: attempts to provide illusions of individualism (ads for jeans, cars, etc.) through images that define possible subject positions or create desired positions (being the one who's cool, hip, sexy, desirable, sophisticated...).

"our advertising...is fed by postmodernism in all the arts and is inconceivable without it" (Jameson)

For more useful notes on postmodern theory visit here.