Exemplar Student Essay -

G325 Section B (30/50) 

Q11 Postmodern Media 

Examiner’s comments 

In relation to the mark scheme this candidate provides a response on the level 2/3 border. 

Explanation, analysis and argument is at the top of level 2 – there is limited ability to 

answer the question and the argument presented is basis and not always coherent. 

Examples are level 3 with some connections and proficiency, whilst the use of terminology 

is also level 3 with relevant media theory understood in places. There is nowhere in the 

response where the examiner can credit an inference of a future projection so this is also 

taken into account. The analysis of The Truman Show is credited as the historical context. 

The discussion areas are sound – hyper-real advertising, Baudrillard and Disney / 

simulation and The Mighty Boosh as a postmodern text. However the emphasis on textual 

description and the lack of balance – any discussion of the contested nature of 

postmodernism – prevent this response from being comfortably marked in level 3 for which 

a proficiency in engaging with issues and debates is required.  

Candidate answer 

We are constantly immersed in media so much that we have come to blur the boundaries 

between media and reality. A perfect example of this is in advertising. Lynx adverts 

commonly feature an average man who sprays himself and the becomes immediately 

irestible to women. This is highly unlikely in real life but we are sold this simulation to make 

us buy their product. The product is readily available to buy in shops so we can bring 

something from a simulation into reality, and that distorts the boundaries. 

Baudrillards theory on post-modernism explains how we are living in hyperreality. We use 

places like Disneyland to try to legitimise the rest of the world as truth but the rest of the 

world is not a truth due to the extent of media influence. 

Whilst Disneyland is a real physical place it is a simulacrum. Everything is a representation 

and not the real thing eg people dressed in suits to look like Mickey Mouse are real in the 

sense they have a physical presence but are representations because of the fact they are 

not real mice. After having spent time being immersed in a world of Disney characters by 

means of watching them on TV in cartoon form where they are obviously fictional going to 

Disneyland confirms it as a truth because you can ‘be’ there, so ‘it must be real right?’ but 

by asking yourself that question you are confirming that your blurred the boundaries 

between reality and representation – you believe in a false truth. 

A perfect example of hyperreality is the sitcom The Might Boosh episode The Jungle. 

There is a jungle room relative to Disneyland in the sense that is a world within a world. 

The characters even blur the boundary between reality and representation themselves 

when they bring back grated cheese from the Jungle room making the Jungle room 

experience seem real. The episode is hyperconscious of this fact because the fact the 

door to the Jungle room was locked and they couldn’t get out shows there are boundaries. 

To get out Vince Noir blows a magic pipe and locksmith dissolves into the shot to unlock 

the door. This shows how easy it is to overcome and blur the boundaries as they do when 

they return to the real world with the cheese. 

The episode itself is rather subversive as such a storyline: going into a world within a world 

to rescue a previously thought to be dead man only to kill him yourself to save a zoo, is 

highly unrealistic. Sitcom storylines are meant to be about everyday life and appear to be 

natural to: simulate our world. The Mighty Boosh does nothing of this sort a prime example 

being Naboo, who is an enigma. He too dissolves into thin air and has magical powers. 

When he drops his necklace and Vince picks it up, Vince becomes hyperconscious. He 

puts the necklace in his pocket and the intertextual mystery drama music stops and he 

keeps doing this until he speaks directly into the camera to address the audience, as him 

and Howard do at the start of the episode to introduce the show. He is aware that he is 

part of a construct but has blurred the boundaries between reality and representation 

because one minute he is a fictional character for us to observe and then he is trying to 

engage us in conversation. 

Vince further confuses reality with representation when he speaks to other characters in 

the episode. He speaks to wolves, or rather, a representation of wolf as the use of 

broclage means it is in fact a man in a wolf suit. He is unaware that they are not real. 

The Truman show is another media text where it is clear boundaries have been distorted. 

The main character, Truman is living in a simulate world, nostalgic – historical of 1950s 

America. He is unaware of this though as it is all he knows. All the people in the city are 

actors and they sometimes fall out of character and speak to the camera 

hyperconsciously. Just like Disneyland it is a world within a world the actors can be in but 

also watch at home as Truman’s life was being recorded and broadcast throughout the 

world. For the actors the boundaries are blurred because they can travel to and from that 

world and for Truman they blurred when he becomes to question the nature of reality when 

he begins to work out what has been going on the city is both real and fake at the same 

time. It is his reality because it is what he always known and it is a physical place but it is 

fake because that world is a construct. 

In the Mighty Boosh the characters also question the nature of reality in a hyperconscious 

way. The characters constantly ask questions like, ‘we dream, but do we really dream’ and 

it is interesting that the producers have chosen to include this. 

EAA 11 

EG 12 

T 7 

(30)