excellent teaching blog to follow: christ the king st marys

ctk st marys

Bricolage "Mad Men"

Key Terms for Post Modern Media
Try constructing one of these yourselves for either Mad Men or Grand Theft Auto IV. It'll help you remember the term bricolage. Bricolage – a collection or putting together of images, ideas etc to make a new piece of media art.



Click on the image to enlarge

Arguments for and against Postmodernism

Here are a few links to articles which consider the pros and cons of the theories and arguments of post modernism.

POSTMODERNISM AND ITS CRITICS

This is very helpful, particularly with arguments against post modernism

http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/436/pomo.htm

Post Modernism: what is it? And what is wrong with it?

http://goinside.com/01/1/postmod.html

Cadbury's Gorilla 2007

Taken with the adverts that it influenced what is post modern about this TV advert? 

It was created by Argentine-born, Fallon Advertising's creative director Juan Cabral, who had created the immensely successful Balls and Paint spots for Sony'sBRAVIA line of high-definition television sets, wrote and directed the piece, acting as creative director, art director, copywriter and director.

cadburys gorilla 

Read this article in which the writer critises this advert and post modern adverts like it. Make a note of some of his arguments. Do you agree or disagree with them?

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/4088/

eastenders remix

cadburys pisstake

More information:
Articles on the advert
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla_(advert)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/dec/11/cadburyschweppesbusiness.advertising

Reality and Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

The film is an old one, but Plato's theory of forms is presented by Orson Welles in one of the clearest ways available on the Net. The video is particularly useful for discussions on postmodernism, advertising, reality, truth, pastiche, Jean Baudrillard's simulacra, or films such asThe Truman Show , The Matrix, etc.


plato's cave 

"The Cult of Sincerity" - Postmodernism and Sincerity

Is it possible to live our lives without being ironic, sarcastic and . . . postmodern? A character in this offbeat comedy aims to find the most sincere message he can produce on a T-shirt. The film seems to have slipped under the radar of most reviewers in the media because if was the first film to be fully premiered and distributed on YouTube before being pulled to be distributed as a three dollar download. It's now also available as VOD (Video On Demand) from Amazon.

Here's three interesting scenes. All of them are about how none of us can escape being postmodern and the main character's uphill struggle against the irony, sarcasm and relativism of our postmodern age.


cult of sincerity 1 


cult of sincerity 2

cult of sincerity 3

Revision for the post modern media

                 Don Draper's "Carousel" pitch to Kodak on "The Wheel".

This is the chief examiner's advice on how to write an an exam answer. It's for "Media In The Online Age" but the approach is transferable. Note also his advice for question 1b for the five areas. 
http://petesmediablog.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-to-do-exam-answer.html

• Audience

• Narrative

• Genre

• Representation

• Media Language

Most of you did this in class, but there were a few absences. It is certainly easier to argue that the texts you studied are post modern rather than being not. However you still need to be aware of counter arguments: it has all been done before and the arguments are not new - Plato's "Allegory of the cave" (see the earlier post) and arguments from other websites on this page: http://asanda2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2009/10/arguments-for-and-against-post.html
 and on this one: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/4088/


What you need to revise to write about in the exam ( if you answer on post modern media )
Each of the four texts we studied in class lend themselves to being labelled "post modern" in different ways. Sometimes these ways overlap, sometimes, not. For revision you should use the key concept guides you have been given for key terms and your own notes and understanding to help you create a table which identifies four or five key, post modern features of each text. Then be able to ARGUE FOUR detailed examples from at least TWO selected areas in the exam. Remember that you will only have to answer on two post modern media texts and not all four! 



As an alternative, Dave did "Contemporary Media Regulation" with you. The post modern media texts that you studied with me were:

• TV drama - AMC's Mad Men 2007-2009 (Mostly early episodes from the first series).
• Video games - focusing mainly on Grand Theft Auto IV
• Advertising - The Cadbury's Gorilla and Sony's TV adverts
• Film - The Truman Show (1998); some of you also worked on Fight Club and The Matrix (1999)

Go over the key concept glossaries that you have been given so you can identify the ways in which each text can be identified as post modern.  For instance, "Mad Men"'s  opening sequence has extensive intertextual references that provide plenty of post modern food for thought. Go over your notes on this and watch it again. Freeze frame it to make detailed notes. You should also use Check out You Tube for key clips from Series One: good ones are The Kodak scene in episode 12 on nostalgia and an earlier episode in which Don Draper takes identity tag from a dead officer in the Korean war - and later lives a new life as this man. The programme's non linear narrative is notable post modern feature. Historical events, attitudes and behaviour  are filtered through fictional characters for whom few people can have sympathy. See this post: http://asanda2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2009/10/post-modern-texts-their-themes-and.html


 Click on this link to see Jefferson Robbins' brief, but excellent video essay on the programme at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBhw9mul9II    It's great for how the programme blurs genre boundries between TV and the Cinema ( another post modern feature ) and for the show's 'visual grammar' and how historical and intertextual/filmic influences and references were assimilated into this TV drama.

Don and Betty Draper try out "Connie" Hilton's hotel in Rome (Series 3)

The programme has also been pastiched and parodied extensively on the Internet, examples of which can be found on You Tube. Consider also the motifs within the programme which are also post modern: the characters' names, i.e. Don and Betty Draper. Don has draped a new identify over his old one as Dick Whitman and Betty Draper once modeled clothes in Italy.  Identity is a key issue for post modern media. It could be argued that when we immerse ourselves in in the spaces found in video games we usually lose our identity and assume that of another. ( An avatar.) There again, when people immerse themselves on the hyperreal world of the Internet they also lose track of time and what we take as the "real world".


Go over all the post modern posts on this blog as you will get reminders and prompts from several posts on each area studied to help you with your arguments.


Don't forget to revise the main theorists and know how you can apply their arguments to the texts that you have studied! (Baudrillard and Lyotard) You might even look up Guy Debord as well as his ideas on "Spectacle" were very similar to Baudrillard's for simulacra.


Dave has sent you revision material by post for the five areas in which you could be expected evaluate your productions from AS and A2. You will find information for Todorov on this site.


This is a link to  generic questions for this part of the paper: http://asanda2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2009/10/mad-men-essay-questions.html


All the best for the exam

"Kick Ass" reviews which discuss its POMO features

Kick Ass interview with mark kermode 

Matthew Vaughan about directing Kick Ass 

Jonathan Ross interviews Kick Ass director 

A great discussion on the British Film Industry in this last video.

.filmcritic.com/reviews/2010/kick-ass/

http://scifimafia.com/2010/04/kick-ass-is-matthew-vaughns-post-modern-love-letter-to-superhero-movies/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/26/kick-ass-comics-film-adaptations - Very useful for postmodernism.

Phillip French guardian.co.uk/film/2010/apr/04/kickass-film-review  He thinks it's "ersatz".

Peter Bradshaw guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/31/kick-ass-review-film  Loves it but feels he "shouldn't."

blogcritics.org/video/article/movie-review-kick-ass1   Some interesting ideas
The Californian Literary Review  Balanced, with readers' comments added.

scifimafia.com/2010/04/kick-ass-is-matthew-vaughns-post-modern-love-letter-to-superhero-movies/

filmschoolrejects.com/features/culture-warrior-deconstruction-and-difference-in-kick-ass  Quite technical, theory-wise!

http://www.illinoistimes.com/Springfield/article-7203-kick-ass-is-only-half-right.  Good on parody

zoemedia.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/kick-ass

guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/apr/02/kick-ass-bad-language

Roger Ebert's scathing review  He does focus on the film as post modern, but as something dark and disturbing.

filmthreat.com/reviews   Another reviewer with mixed feelings about this film.

Arguments against post modernism

A really good study guide. It has everything you need about this topic! Scroll down to find arguments against. Some of its films suggested for study are somewhat dated. You should focus on modern films for your examples such as "Inception", "Kickass", etc.
http://media.edusites.co.uk/files/Postmodern_Media.pdf  .
Postmodernism: What is it and what is wrong with It?   http://goinside.com/01/1/postmod.html
http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/cultures/cultures.php  (Scroll down arguments against postmodernism)

Interesting points, clearly argued, for and against, here:
http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/postmodernism.htm

Patrick West accepts that post modernism exists. He cannot bring himself to accept the abstract advertising in The Cadbury's Gorilla:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/4088/

http://asanda2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2009/11/arguments-against-jean-francis-lyotards.html

The Road To Coronation Street - Updated Resource for G325 post modern media: television drama

I've updated the study resources in this link for G325 Post Modern Media: TV Drama. The whole ofThe Road To Coronation Street is now there alongside the original scene from the Coronation Street's first episode from 1960 in which Elsie Tanner (played by Pat Pheonix) challenges her son, Dennis, over two shillings missing from her purse. The scene is  pastiched in The Road To Coronation Streetwhere Pat Phoenix is auditioned for the role of Elsie Tanner by production staff from Granada Television.


the road to coronation street 

Modernism and Postmodernism compared

This is a great page on postmodernism as it is defined and compared. Scroll down for the chart where modernism and postmodernism is compared.
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/pomo.html

True Blood - The Making of the Opening Credits

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_LolGcehOQY

Modernism Verses Postmodernism

The site below is great for understanding the differences between modernism and postmodernism and for identifying these differences in texts. This is just what students need to be able to argue for and against postmodernism. I've noticed that in "True Blood" modernist attitudes and feelings coexist with postmodern ones. In fact the modernists in "True Blood" are pretty extreme. For instance the Reverend Newland and his fundamentalist church in the first few episodes of season 1. Sookie and her Grandma are at the other extreme, in the live and let live category.

http://nmc.loyola.edu/intro/postmod/table.htm#

An argument against Lyotard's postmodernist argument on Grand Narratives

The collapse of the "Grand Narrative"

Most famously, in La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge) (1979), he proposes what he calls an extreme simplification of the "postmodern" as an 'incredulity towards meta-narratives'. These meta-narratives - sometimes 'grand narratives' - are grand, large-scale theories and philosophies of the world, such as the progress of history, the knowability of everything by science, and the possibility of absolute freedom. Lyotard argues that we have ceased to believe that narratives of this kind are adequate to represent and contain us all. We have become alert to difference, diversity, the incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs and desires, and for that reason postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of micronarratives.  From Wikipedia

One of the old, modernist grand narrative was, and for some still is, that science will solve nearly all our problems. Of course, apart from religious narratives, there are a number of other "grand narratives", too. Hollwood draw on most of the'grand' narratives listed below. One major flaw in Lyotard's argument is that postmodernism, itself, offers its own "grand narrative".

Perception and Reality in "Mad Men", Episode 10, Series 3

Here's a well-written write up of a remarkable episode, "The Color Blue" from Mad Men's Season 3. The episodes deals with the characters perceptions of reality - a post modern idea our class is "looking at" presently with "The Truman Show".


televisionaryblog.com/2009/10/its-not-london-its-not-even-england.html

A comedian's view of postmodernism

Postmodernists reject any notion of grand "truth",  such as say belief in God or the narratives associated with God. Similarly,  the idea or narrative that science is going to improve our lives is rejected also. Indeed any grand narratives are held suspect. For postmodernists "truth", if it exists at all, is all relative and may only be found in little stories or micro narratives and experiences of ordinary people and those living on society's fringe. No one religion has the answer as each faith group has its own beliefs - and "may" have some "truth" on its side. The main French theorist who advances this idea is Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924-1998).

Of course, you do not need to believe in any of this, as this comedian makes clear. And in any case, to argue that there can be no "truth" is somewhat contradictory as one is trying to advance a grand "truth" that there is no "truth"!


A comedian's view of postmodernism 

The Difference Between Modernism and Postmodernism

A challenging read for beginners - but worthwhile.
The difference between modernism and postmodernism

Here's and explanation of post modernism with images from Metapedia
Postmodernism

"Life on Mars," Series 1, Episode 2 essay task on postmodernism

Transition class from AS to A2

Prepare by writing notes for this essay question. 

In what ways is Life on Mars a post modern TV drama?
You can watch the first part of the episode again by clicking this link
Find the others so you can fill out your notes further.

Pick up the final intertextual references and contrasts between the reality of 1973 and 2006 in this last part of the episode. Use the info. below to help you make notes and points. ( The 1968 film,The Good, The Bad and Ugly and the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. Why are these references there? What meanings do they add to "Life On Mars" or it characters?)
CLICK HERE for the link to the end of this episode.

Essay Task: how do audiences react to this post modern TV drama?

As you watch the second episode of Life On Mars (2006)  pause sometimes so you can write notes on the following points:

How is reality represented?

1. What is real and what is hyperreal? How does the programme suggest Sam Tyler may be dreaming up the early 1970s while in a coma from his hospital bed? How does the programme show that this may just be an immersive dream?

2. Intertextuality – Can you identify references to other texts/programmes/music from the past: the 1970s buddy cop shows, The Sweeney (UK) and Starsky and Hutch (USA). When you spot or hear an intertextual or cultural reference try to explain how to adds meaning to your text.

3. The historical context - How the programme’ meaning(s) for our time comes out of being set in the past. Consider the issues of Sam Tyler’s identity and his political correctness from 2006 and how this clashes in particular with Gene Hunt. Consider also how Sam's ethics and police methods clash with Gene Hunt's: a scientific approach verses instinct.

How does the programme consciously show politically incorrect behaviour and attitudes for audiences to judge them in our time:

• racism

• sexism including the treatment of women

• homophobia and masculinity

• inappropriate language/terms

• smoking

• drinking

• swearing

• references to people from our time ( in some episodes)

• ideology ( out of place beliefs )

• violence

• driving

• police behaviour and other inappropriate behaviour

• your ideas

4. How useful are technical forms of representation for understanding this “text” as postmodern? (Camerawork, mise-en-scene, editing, lighting, etc.) For example, Gene Hunt’s POV shot of the female witness with the close up of her chest.

 

Here is just ONE of the intertextual links that you might easily miss. The main villain, Kim Trent, triumphantly whistles "Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" (1967) as he leaves the police station. Listen to the song's lyrics and consider why. Identify other intertextual references and think about the meaning(s) that they add to the episode.

Simulation, Simulacrum, Simulacra and the representation of the reality

Reality is dead With the invention of photography the image of reality could be copied ad infinitum. You no longer needed to paint it. Now we have the biggest copying machine ever invented in the Internet. Jean Baudrillard's ideas on simulacra and simulacrum and the representation of reality through the media and mass communication are very cleverly put across in this must-see video by Jimmy Weng.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETykZgS176M&feature=player_embedded

Scott Pilgrim and its post modern features

Here's a few reviews, etc. to read on this film. I'll be asking you after Half Term to give brief presentations of post modern films and will expect you to be able to identify post modern features in scenes and trailers as well as in a macro sense across the films.


scott pilgrim takes us to strange new worlds 


Scott Pilgrim director Edgar Wright

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Pilgrim_vs._the_World

Simulacra & simulation

http://asanda2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2010/11/simulacra-and-simulation.html

Really interesting link
Of a suburban battle in Iraq. If you click through to the You Tube video the people's comments show that they are lost in hyperreality. They cannot tell the difference between the simulation and the "real". They relate to the real from their knowledge of a video game.

Postmodernism & ways of identifying postmodern texts

http://asanda2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2010/12/postmodernism-and-ways-of-identifying.html

really useful post for beginning/recapping

Postmodern theories & texts

http://asanda2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2011/01/postmodernism-theories-and-texts_26.html

g325 contemporary media issues - videogames and postmodernism

http://asanda2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2011/01/05-g325-contemporary-media-issues.html

Assassin's Creed and Enae Volare by Era: postmodern blurring of genre boundaries in "historical" video games

http://asanda2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2011/02/assasins-creed-and-music-by-era.html

a follow up on assassins creed discussing the blurring of genre

Assassin's Creed: the franchise explores later historical periods

http://asanda2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2011/02/assassins-creed-franchise-explores.html

fantastic post about the blurring & dislocation of time & place

Intertextuality - how it makes texts richer

http://asanda2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2011/03/intertextuality-how-it-can-make-texts.html

Postmodernism -popular culture is at the crossroads where capitalism and technology meet

The overwhelming immersive experience of various media in our lives actually creates what we think is "real" and therefore, our reality. If someone, idea, etc. is no longer in the media in any of its forms - that person or idea gradually ceases to exist in people's consciousness. What we have is a world in which the superficial is elevated above any deeper reality; a world in which relativism crowds out any single truth. Do you think that any of this is true? Or is it partly true?


http://asanda2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2011/04/postmodernism-our-culture-is-at.html

The Making of True Blood

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfShWIOoxkA&feature=player_embedded

Prezi on postmodernism introduction

Link

Has Post Modernism Been Killed by The Web?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/sep/15/postmodernism-cutting-edge-to-museum


A taste:

"This is the essence of postmodernism: the idea that there is no essence, that we're moving through a world of signs and wonders, where everything has been done before and is just lying around as cultural wreckage, waiting to be reused, combined in new and unusual ways. Nothing is direct, nothing is new. Everything is already mediated. The real, whatever that might be, is unavailable. It's an exhilarating world, but uncanny too. You look around at your beautiful house and your beautiful wife and you ask yourself, like the narrator of the Talking Heads song: 'Well, how did I get here?" After that, it's only a short step to deciding that this is not your beautiful house and your beautiful wife at all. The world of signs is fast, liquid, delirious, disposable. Clever people approach it with scepticism. Sincerity is out. Irony is in. And style. If modernism was about substance, about serious design solving serious problems, postmodernism was all manner and swagger and stance."