Homework this week - due Thurs 3rd May

1. Read the following articles:

XFactor Case Study: How is the audience/text relationship changing?

Post-Modern Futures: A different kind of reality TV

2. On your blogs, cut the highlighted statements from the articles that demonstrate how these texts are Post-modern - 

Then write 25 words expanding on how these are postmodern and challenge traditional forms and style of TV. please to cover the following (as you did with Gorillaz):

1. Blurring the boundaries between Audience, Text & Producer

2. Simulacra

3. Vacuous Narratives (empty, superficial, fame for fame's sake - no 'Grand-narrative')

4. Self Reflexive (being aware of its construction/making the production process apparent)

5. Voyeurism

6. Style over substance (Celebrity culture, superficial, vacuous, fame for fame's sake - no 'Grand-narrative')

7. Intertextuality (think about how other Media & Celebrity Culture re-enforces the Show)

8. Consumerism (music, culture, relationships become a commodity or product)

9. Hyper-reality (obviously this is crucially important: 'Reality TV?')

Write a 15 word outline for each explaining how it applies to the example

3. Post-Modern Futures

Its 2022. Write a 50 word treatment for a new TV show format that shows your opinion of where Post-Modern TV will go based on what we have studied. 

(Think of  the development of Interactivity, Web 2.0, Facebook, Social Networking, The Active Audience & Prosumers, Youtube, how the changes in the Music Industry you studied last year could affect the TV Industry?) 

Prize for the best 1!!!

4. Could those of you who took the Gorillaz A3 sheets you made from this week please photograph and send them to me asap please so I can upload them to the blog - some students may find this helpful for this weeks task. Thanks

Lady Gaga Fan Made Parody

Lady Gaga parody

Link these up with our Case Study examples to define Post-modernism

Fragmented structure/non-linear narrative, stories with no resolution, dialogue about burger king (“royale with cheese”)

An exhaustion of progress, originality, purpose

cynicism (lack of trust & Faith) towards authority, control, institutions

no agreed absolute morality – relative to personal code (micro-narrative)

the falling apart/LACK OF FAITH IN/questioning of 'normal' WESTERN social institutions – heterosexuality, EDUCATION, COMMUNITY, COMMON MORALITY/VALUES, RELGION, DEMOCRACY, TANGIABLE RELATIONSHIPS, the nuclear family, mass production/manufacture

eclecticism, diversity, hybridity

prosumers & dissolution of boundaries between audience, text & producer

Challenging of meta-narrative & truth

Playing with (Dislocation of) time and space

Self-reflexivity, being aware of the process of construction

Emphasis of style over substance

Mash-up, remix and eclecticism

Blurring boundaries between audience, text and producer

Voyeurism – notions of looking, visualisation, dependency on the visual

Consumerism and popularism only value

Conventions of genre challenged/subverted

Intrusion of/reliance on technology in social relationships

Breakdown of distinctions between high art and pop culture

Asks questions not giving answers, allowing audience interpretation

Juxtaposing old and new to make new meaning (bricolage)

Intertextuality

Multiplicity of meanings linked to audience interpretations

CELEBRATES IRONY OR A DETACHED POSITION - CHALLENGING CULTURAL JUDGEMENT (SO BAD ITS GOOD) BEING PLAYFUL

Parody and pastiche – creating something new through imitation, homage (tribute)

Web 2.0 and new technologies allowing people to become 

producers/celebrities outside traditional/mainstream methods

Media Saturation & Instantaneity – 24hr and accessibility now

Culture is no longer viewed as art mirroring life but a reality in itself

Experimentation with new forms – not necessarily the ‘glossy’ Hollywood approach

Meaning and purpose holds more significance than the skill involved in making it

State of hyper-reality: Photoshop movement changing how we see reality

Cult of celebrity – celebrity obsessed society – style over substance

Truth is created and doesn’t exist in any objective sense

Text goes beyond what it is and comments on society

A rejection of Modernism – progress, truth, structures

Deconstruction – the influence of historical/cultural structures on meaning, there is no truth or 'centre' to meaning

Copy of a copy of a copy = Authenticity not important any more, the simulation is the real/preferred

Vacuous & Viceral, not saying anything of substance, gratification and feeling EG Retro, celebrity culture (fame for fames sake)

Summary of what Post-Modernism is: a culture of choice, is no fixed morality, being tired of being new, we're going nowhere

Great Link

Vacuous - empty and surface
No agreed morality
Exhausted new idea/challenging conventions
Retro
Remix
Cynical of Institutions

XFactor Case Study: How is the audience/text relationship changing?

Artifice is the name of The X Factor game

15 December 2011
The real deal?

The gigantic, apocalyptic glittering ball of The X Factor reflects back only what we give it, argues Will Brooker

Credit: Rex Features
Little Mix: 'an escalation of the true, of the lived experience...a panic-stricken production of the real'

In 1988, Fredric Jameson wrote - half in mourning, half in warning - of a contemporary "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". If 1980s postmodernism was a hall of mirrors, recycling and reflecting the past, Wembley Arena on the night of The X Factor final is a fractured mosaic, a spinning mirrorball of snatched images thrown up on the big screen. The irony is as thick as the fog thrown up by the dry ice. Dermot O'Leary urges the crowd to vote for the winner, although the guest appearances are from JLS (runners-up, 2008) in a mash-up with One Direction (runners-up, 2010), hosted by Olly Murs (runner-up in 2009). Every loser wins, it seems, and yet the audience is told repeatedly that fame rests on this final performance.

"When the real is no longer what it used to be," Jean Baudrillard proposed, "nostalgia assumes its full meaning'.

That 1980s trend of recycling and dressing up, of desperate searching for scraps in the cultural wreckage; that breathless, blink-and-you'll-miss-it aesthetic of multiple masks, voices and styles, reaches hysterical levels in Saturday's show. Little Mix, the first band to reach the final, is in essence a tribute act to Girls Aloud, the winners of another pop music reality show nine years ago; each of their songs is drilled with military precision, complete with glitter cannon, snappy salutes and airborne leaps on to the stage. Despite the slick spectacle and the rehearsed soundbites, their mentor, Tulisa, insists constantly that her "little muffins" are genuine and authentic; as evidence, they're shown crying, hugging their mums and talking about bullying. One of them, Jesy, worries about her weight, which is translated as having "real" curves and being a "real" girl.

Their rival is Marcus Collins, the first out gay man to reach the final; he performed on a real plane surrounded by short-skirted dolly birds in a pastiche of television's Pan Am, itself a pale copy of Mad Men, itself a nostalgia trip back to a 1960s that never was. The "mode rétro" discussed in Jameson's article - films in the style of an earlier time - now seems quaintly simple and straightforward, compared with this mise en abyme of frames within frames. There is no "original" at the heart of this performance, any more than Girls Aloud are "authentic" artists inspiring a copy in Little Mix. Open up one postmodern parcel, and there's always another inside. Derrida - Deconstruction (everything can be linked to a reference to something else)

"If I was looking for a perfect pop star and fed everything into a computer...I'd get Marcus Collins!" shrilled Louis Walsh, meaning it as a compliment. (Irony?) In the audience, a boy held up a simulation of Marcus' face, sculpted from toast and Marmite. "When he's onstage, everybody just wants to look at him," Gary Barlow announced proudly; but the camera lingered longer on the toast-and-Marmite replica of the singer than on Marcus himself.

In Wembley Arena, where the show is broadcast live, nobody was actually looking at Marcus, either; they were looking at the big screen, or at the tiny windows on their own phones. There were 10,000 people in a hangar together watching a giant television, and half of them were filming the television to watch later (fascinated by/preferring the simulation). Marcus himself, grinning bravely onstage, had become almost irrelevant; he looked like a little man who's wandered out of a huge screen. "Something has changed," as Baudrillard mused. "With the television image - the television being the ultimate and perfect object for this new era - our own body and the whole surrounding universe become a control screen." The larger-than-life close-up of the singer has become more fascinating than the diminutive, silhouetted figure onstage (heightened simulation); but more important yet is the home-made, hand-held digital video, the grainy, shaky video ready to be uploaded to Facebook as an authentic souvenir, the proof that they were actually there (Hyper-real). If it can't be tweeted or uploaded, it could be argued that it didn't happen at all.(the death of the real)

The members of the audience know that they are also part of a structured reality show, and they embrace the artifice. They're told to boo when the judges say something they don't like, and to cheer when they approve, but they already know the routine. This is a church of the devoted, a place of happy ritual. They cheer the playback of the songs performed an hour ago because they look much more exciting on video, with the camera swooping and swirling around static performers. They cheer last night's show, already colour-coded in washed-out blue as "history". They cheer the bursts of flame, because the heat feels authentic and reminds them that this is "live". They cheer the Coldplay wristbands when they light up, transforming them into part of the show. They cheer the confetti falling from the ceiling: a wedding between audience and the TV, between simulation and the real.

Dermot O'Leary asks the contestants and their families how they feel, digging for an emotional response. Tears come, on cue. But hidden beneath a camera is another, far smaller and more subtle screen: black, with white text. "HOW DOES IT FEEL, AND WHAT WOULD YOU WANT TO SAY?" Dermot's words appear on screen before he recites them. "THEY EXIT," the screen commands, like a Shakespeare stage direction. Dermot and Marcus exit obediently. Enter Little Mix. The screen scrolls upwards. "JADE: THERE'S STILL A LITTLE BIT OF YOUR TASTE IN MY MOUTH." Onstage, Jade reads the words, and dutifully sings the first line of Cannonball, the winner's song. THIS IS THE REFERRING TO AUTOCUE (RICH)

So it really is karaoke; the lines are scripted, the lyrics are provided. But does it matter? The people in the audience aren't stupid: it's not that they believe it's improvised, it's that they don't care. The difference between simulation and the real doesn't matter any more. The two are mashed-up, mixed-up, merged. It's the 2011 show, the ultimate end-of-the-pier show, the penultimate end-of-the-year show, the all-singing, all-dancing post-apocalypso, the panto at the end of the universe. And it's our show, whether we like it or not, because Wembley Arena is not a bubble of spectacle and showmanship, isolated from the rest of society. The gigantic, apocalyptic, glittering ball of The X Factor reflects back only what we give it:

Outside is the world of fake bloggers, rigged political votes, structured reality, YouTube pop stars, holograms in pantomime and protesters in comic-book masks; albums from dead singers, scripted political debates, simulated flash mobs, arrests for Facebook pages, Twitter rumours, online bomb threats and TV marriages shorter than an advert break. As Baudrillard said of Disneyland, the arena's artifice exists to convince us that the world outside is real. In fact, that world looks an awful lot like The X Factor.

"Illusion is no longer possible," Baudrillard asserts, "because the real is no longer possible." Nevertheless, as Jade reads the words from the screen, she breaks rank and pronounces one lyric in her own speaking voice, and Perrie, her band partner, echoes it in a South Shields accent. "What's goin' on?" these two girls ask each other, onstage in front of 10,000 people. "We're seeing four little pop princesses being born," Louis exults, like a proud father. "How do you feel?" asks Dermot again.

Is this a last glimpse of the "real", as four young women exchange incredulous glances and can't believe what's going on, as they make the transition from authenticity into celebrity? The glitter cannon fires, demanding an encore. It's time for Little Mix to face the crowd, to read the autocue, to embrace the autotune, to face the music.

Post-Modern Futures: A different kind of reality TV

A different kind of reality TV
The Only Way is Essex has won a Bafta and Made in Chelsea is the talk of Twitter. So is this strange blend of fact and drama the future of entertainment TV?

Julia Raeside
The Guardian, Wednesday 1 June 2011

The cast of The Only Way is Essex celebrate winning a Bafta award in May 2011.





The inexorable rise of constructed reality television was boosted last week when ITV2's The Only Way is Essex took home Bafta's YouTube Audience Award, beating the likes of Downton Abbey, Miranda and Sherlock to the prize. As the canny director at the ceremony cut to a close-up of Martin Freeman, the actor's expression spoke volumes about the television establishment's reaction to a bunch of spray-tanned amateurs waltzing off with a trophy more usually afforded to skilled craftspeople. (judgements of taste over populism) He wasn't angry with the voting public, just disappointed.

In an age when TV fakery scandals have caused public uproar, why is a huge audience buying into something so obviously artificial? Most television involves a level of artifice. Everything from The Apprentice to Top Gear uses sleight of hand to better convey the story of each episode. But this new hybrid genre – of which E4's Made in Chelsea is another example – is neither fiction nor reality but a strange marriage of the two. Are we supposed to believe it?

The Only Way is Essex arrived soon after the end of Channel 4's Big Brother last year and is a crossbreed of soap and documentary. It features a cast of real people, living around Brentwood, Buckhurst Hill and Chigwell, going about their daily lives. They are brash, fake-tanned and young. And, most importantly, they conform to the stereotypes of Essex man and woman. He is flash, arrogant and sexually prolific. She is obsessed with beauty treatments and snaring the aforementioned Jack-the-lad.

Programme makers Lime Pictures advertised in various Essex publications, on Facebook and via word-of-mouth to assemble their key players. Mark Wright and Lauren Goodger have been together for nine years and spent most of the first series splitting up and reuniting. Amy Childs, beautician and glamour girl, and a group of friends had already made attempts to break into television, auditioning for Big Brother, The X Factor and various other reality shows.

"They had a pre-existing relationship and they wanted [to do] something like this. So when we met one of them – it was Amy first, actually – all of the others were queuing up behind. This was not a particularly difficult group of people to find," says Tony Wood, creative director of Lime Pictures.

What you see on screen looks like drama but it is, the producers claim, based on the real lives of their subjects. "Story producers" plot out what they are going to film in advance after discussion with the cast – they prime their subjects to discuss certain topics, with an outcome in mind, although they cannot always predict that outcome.

Daran Little, who acted as story producer on the first series of The Only Way is Essex and E4's Made in Chelsea, which is about rich young adults in west London, says it's a delicate process that requires careful handling. "If there's a boy and a girl in a scene, you'll pull them over individually and you'll say: 'Right, in this scene I want you to ask her what she did last night.' Because I know what she did last night, but he doesn't. Then we start the scene and they just talk it through and if it gets a bit dry, we'll stop and pull them to one side and we'll say: 'How do you feel about him asking you that? Because I think you feel more emotional about it. I think you're pulling something back. Do you think it's fair that he's asking you this?'"

The Only Way is Essex was not the first structured reality show to hit British screens but it's certainly had the biggest impact – it has attracted a peak audience of 1.5 million. Interestingly, many of the production team have backgrounds in drama and not factual television. Lime Pictures also makes the long-running teen soap Hollyoaks, and Wood previously spent two years as the show runner on Coronation Street.

Lime began the UK trend for these documentary/drama hybrids back in 2006 when MTV asked it to make a British version of the hit US show Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, altering it to be about a group of rich teenagers in Alderley Edge, Cheshire. The US show was inspired by teen drama The OC and borrowed many of its techniques to create a kind of real-life soap. "Living on the Edge was essentially a reality show that was repackaged a little bit to make it look glossy and look like drama," says Wood. "There were very few contrivances within it but you had the latitude to be able to put an emotional mix on it, in a sense."

Living on the Edge ran for two series and, although not a ratings hit, set a pattern for programmes that followed. British TV executives couldn't fail to notice the huge US success of programmes such as The Hills and The City (spin-off shows from Laguna Beach); staged documentaries that followed beautiful, wealthy teenagers as they went about their privileged lives. They were aspirational, escapist and focused almost exclusively on the romantic attachments of the cast.

Little, who has previously written for EastEnders, Coronation Street and the US soap All My Children, says that during his time in America, the schedules were overrun with similar reality dramas. "There are so many reality TV shows in the States and if you're going to avoid them, then you might as well avoid television," he says. And now they are springing up all over our digital schedules amid press accusations that scenes are being "faked" and relationships are being "manufactured" to assist the narrative.

Little insists the production process is very much at the mercy of the participants and not the other way around. "I get to know them," he says. "They tell me what's going on in their own lives. They tell me things they want to do, or hope to do. I structure, scene by scene, what should happen in each episode to draw out the drama and the comedy. Then we schedule the scenes."

A drama is only as good as its actors and, at first glance, these shows appear to be almost entirely peopled by artless hams – yet they're hugely popular with their target audiences. When Little interviewed Made in Chelsea cast members Ollie Locke and Gabriella Ellis, he instantly spotted their potential. "They had been together for a year. I talked to them together and their body language was completely different to what they were saying. And I thought, this is a relationship which is crumbling and she's not too aware of it. And he's hurting her. Oh my goodness, this will actually make very good television."

And, sure enough, in episode three, Ollie dumped Gabriella on the deck of a Thames pleasure cruiser, surrounded by fairy lights. Little says Ollie had called the production team and told them he needed to end the relationship so they swung into action to set up a suitable shot. While Ollie gave it his all in the scene, Gabriella looked genuinely upset. The next episode, he came out as bisexual. Faked content is one thing, but the idea that it's all real is perhaps even more disturbing.

The shows have the glossy production values of a soap but are performed by people who don't have the skill to convincingly communicate emotion in full makeup, under bright lights, while hitting their marks. Wood says filming scenes more than once isn't always an option with real people. "We very, very rarely go to multiple takes. I spend a lot of time in the edit and if in the cutting room you're presented with a take where they're clearly manufacturing their emotions, it's tough to make a decent scene out of that."

But it's clear that this is often the only option. It's the lack of emotional truth that has so confused and repelled some viewers. Wood claims that the confusion is exactly what the makers were aiming for when they made their chronicle of the Essex community.

"At the heart of this was always a desire to put in the audience's mind: 'Is it real? Are they acting? Is it scripted? Is it not?' and to leave that as an open question for them," he says.

What he describes almost sounds like Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt or "alienation effect". (Brecht described this as "stripping an event of its self-evident, familiar, obvious quality and creating a sense of astonishment and curiosity about [it]".) Wood laughs off the comparison but agrees their techniques aren't dissimilar. The usual soap tricks – music, editing, a narrative arc – encourage the viewer to engage, while they are simultaneously held at arm's length by the cast's apparent lack of emotional integrity.

But to what end? To generate debate on social networking sites, drive curious viewers to the TV product and keep the advertisers happy? It's as if what's actually in the shows has ceased to matter.

"The content seems to be a Marmite issue for people: you love it or you hate it," says Fergus O'Brien, the documentary-maker responsible for BBC2's The Armstrongs, a fly-on-the-wall documentary that itself had audiences questioning whether the hilarious titular couple could really be the genuine article. (They were.) "Some people think it's deceiving people to suggest there is anything real about it; others say it's harmless fun," he says.

O'Brien directed Channel 4's Seven Days earlier this year. The series chronicled the lives of residents of London's Notting Hill over a week and, although it didn't use staged scenes, gave the audience a chance to interact with the cast during filming. It proved less successful than The Only Way is Essex in terms of ratings, but it attempted to do something new with the documentary form at a time when every production company in the land was trying to predict what would come along to fill the yawning chasm left by Big Brother.

"It covered the real events and interactions of the characters over a seven-day period and embraced the feedback loop that naturally generated around the characters as the week went by," O'Brien explains. The participants would see their stories play out on the screen while filming continued thanks to a fast turn-around production schedule. Whereas Made in Chelsea was already finished when it started transmission, the Essex cast are able to see themselves on television as each episode is shot, edited and broadcast within a three-day period.

Wood traces his fascination with the genre back to the moment when, in 2007, Jade Goody emerged from the Celebrity Big Brother house and into the media hurricane of the Shilpa Shetty race row. It was that moment of simultaneous celebrity and sudden self-knowledge that he hoped to expand on in The Only Way is Essex.

"What I wanted to do was set up a situation in which people are living in the full glare of the beam of that fame. And they're realising what the public are saying about them and it's completely open and they're potentially on quite a difficult ride as a result of that," he says.

"We deliberately showed, at the top of episode two, the cast watching the episode that had just gone out. So we gave the message that this is what the game is," he adds. When Lime pitched the show to ITV originally, it described it as "Big Brother without the walls".

But during a decade of Big Brother, despite the presence of storyline producers and careful editing, the reality created inside a bungalow in Borehamwood felt somehow more honest than the shaped and refined sagas currently coming out of Essex and Chelsea, which have hints of real emotion but nothing to touch the visceral highs and lows of Big Brother at its best. These new shows remain in the digital hinterland for now but are having a significant impact thanks to Twitter and the tabloids' interest in the cast. As the Bafta-night reaction highlighted, The Only Way is Essex has replaced Big Brother as the programme people sneer about at dinner parties without having seen it. But is it any worse, in terms of artifice, than character-driven factual shows such as The Apprentice or MasterChef?

Little says hindsight will invest this apparently superficial genre with cultural importance, just as it did with the Carry On films. "Retrospectively, these wonderful programmes are being made about what a genius Kenneth Williams was and how tortured Hattie Jacques was and the great art of the Carry On film. Well, give it 10, 15 years and people will be writing theses on The Only Way is Essex."

Check your learning to make sure you are on track

Chief Examiners Comments on Post-Modernism and how to prepare

Check your learning against this:

Are you able to define what Post-Modernism is style & culture, philosophy, this era in history?
Are you able to formulate an argument & be critical of postmodernism?

Are you able to explain why we are in Post-Modern times - Media Saturation, Consumerism, Globalisation?
Are you able to discuss why Post-Modernism is POST(after)-Modern or POST (rejection of)-Modern?
Are you able to discuss how they differ in terms of Modernist Concepts like Narrative, Genre, Representation?
Are you able to contrast examples of postmodern symptoms from at least 2 recent media forms (see below)

new forms of representation,
post-modern cinema,
reality TV,
music video,
advertising,
post-modern audience theories,
aspects of globalisation,
parody and pastiche in media texts or a range of other applications of post-modern media theory

Are you able to discuss Jameson Cultural Recycling, Parody, Pastiche, Intertextuality? 
Are you able to discuss Lyotards cynicism of meta-narratives & truth?
Are you able to discuss Baudrillard Simulacra & Hyper-Reality (Artificial, copy of copy, style over substance?)
Are you able to discuss Derridas Deconstruction - Meaning is influenced by our culture

Are you able to discuss  how post-modern media texts challenge traditional text-reader relations (Post-Modern Audiences as active consumers/prosumers)
Are you able to discuss the Music Industry as an example of how post-modern has effected the relationship between audiences & institutions?

How are Video Games Post-Modern?

Video games and postmodernism

View more PowerPoint from keirmorrison

L4 Response

G325 Postmodern Media  

10) How do postmodern media differ from other media? 

Post modern media differs from other media in that it opposes the traditional 

movement of modernism. First appearing after World War 1 due to western 

frustration and disillusionment, Papa is an example of early post modern art which 

strived to be different in order to send a certain message. Postmodernism rejects the 

traditional idea of art replicating nature and reality theorised by Aristotel and states a 

huge emphasis on reality as a constructed fiction. Postmodern media places a high 

importance of the unconscious mind as a key feature in producing and reading media 

texts, while reflecting the modernist idea of an ‘objective truism’. Instead, it believes 

in relativism and subjective ideas, irony and toys with the audience suspension of 

disbelief. It has influenced many aspects of culture including sociology, art, music 

and cinema. 

Scream is a postmodern horror film produced in 1996 and directed by Wes Craven. A 

key postmodern feature which distinguishes it from other media is its reflexivity.  

Scream is a horror film about the horror genre, and it mocks and celebrates this. An 

example of this is the characters discussing the ‘rules of horror films’ e.g.  “rule 1: 

never have sex”. They also use self conscious parody humour when the female main 

character mocks horror films because “there’s always a stupid girl running up the 

stairs when they should be running out of the front door”. They create ironic humour 

by Sydney then running up the stairs away from the killer. Scream mocks its own 

genre, and itself acknowledging that the text is a constructed fiction which is a key 

element of postmodernism. 

Although Scream uses humour about horrors it also sticks to many generic codes and 

conventions of horror films. This supports the postmodern theory that ‘there is no 

more originality’ and that everything is a mixture of bricolage and intertextuality. 

Scream uses bricolage to include many stereotypical aspects of horror films, which 

makes it a pastiche – or homage. These include the masked, dehumanised killer, 

teenage victims acting illicitly, a penetrative weapon, an isolated setting, mystery as 

of the identity of the killer and Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze theory – it forces the 

viewer to see female victims in a male point of view to heighten the predatory sense. 

It also incorporates the Final Girl Theory by Carol Clover, in Sydney’s female 

character who appears androgynous, more innocent than her friends and survives to 

the end to seek revenge on the killer. In this concept this post modern film has 

similarities to others of the horror genre. 

Intertextuality is a key concept of postmodern media which is not so much used in 

other media texts. Postmodernists believe that referring to other texts is essential 

when creating a text, and these references are often designed to be read by literates. 

There are many examples of this in Scream. Wes Craven, the director, appears in one 

background looking very similar to Freddy Kruger. This emphasises the lack of self- 

seriousness in post-modernism. The characters constantly refer to other horror films in 

dialogue. Examples of this are: “The Exorcist was on”, “We used the same blood they 

used in Carrie” and “nobody cares why Hannibal Lector liked to eat people”. This 

highlights how a modern society is constantly made up from other representations and 

media – Baudrillard’s theory of the State of Simulacrum. Also, a character is killed by 

a TV screen showing the film ‘Halloween’. This could be argued to mock the 

modernist notion that viewers are influenced by horror films and could replicate it – 

postmodernists instead argue that every reading of a text is determined by each 

viewer. None is right or wrong. 

This concept that ‘each member of an audience have different readings all which are 

correct and the intended meaning by the producer is no longer significant’ is Barthes 

‘Death of the Author’ theory. Postmodernists do not construct texts for one meaning 

they place more impact on how a text looks than the meaning of it. 

A key concept which differs postmodern media from others significantly is Lyotard’s 

argument of ‘the collapse of the grand narratives.’ He argues that traditional views 

held by the traditional movement are now disappearing. Thus, postmodern media 

often opposes ideas such as Christianity, Good vs Evil and progress. 

A postmodern text which highlights this is the cartoon Family – which is a reflexive 

family sitcom with a dysfunctional twist. Family Guy is well known for being 

controversial and outrageous when covering sensitive subjects. An example of this is 

a shot of God trying to seduce a woman at a bar, showing the lack of care for waht is 

traditionally believed. 

Family Guy includes the typical postmodern feature of acknowledging that is a 

constructed fiction txt, which most media texts do not do. An example of this is when 

Peter fears that “the network will cut Family Guy’s budget.” A self mocking humour 

is created which has proved very popular. Brian also acknowledges the irony and 

dysfunction that “I’m a talking dog for god’s sake!!!”. This shows the audience that 

it’s a careless, non serious comedy and makes humour out of everyone possible. A 

key feature of most texts which postmodernism opposes is linear narratives. 

Fragmentation and chaos is a key element to postmodern media and Family Guy is a 

perfect example of this. The episodes contain random and ‘silly’ story lines which are 

interrupted by flash backs, flash forwards or completely irrelevant material many 

times in an episode. Examples are when Peter and Louis talk of changing Chris’ 

school and giant chicken appears to fight with Peter. A very long, irrelevant scene of 

about five minutes of violent fighting occurs, after which Peter simply returns to talk 

to Louis. Another example is the cartoon randomly being interrupted by a David 

Bowie music video, after which Peter comments “As if we let that happen”, then 

continues the storyline. This fragmentation, audience confusion and creation of a 

sense of chaos is a key element of postmodern art. It places much less importance on 

a main narrative then other medias and doesn’t place emphasis on ‘happy endings’ 

unlike traditional media. 

Family Guy highlights the lack of morality and regard for an ‘objective truth’ which is 

an area where postmodernism opposes other medias. They play on, and mock 

stereotypes of race, culture and disability and gender carelessly. An example is where 

Brian the dog is turned human and he’s white, Peter remarks “You’re so luck you 

came out white”. Another example is Peter wishing for a “Jewish money man” and 

interviewing for “a new black friend” when Cleveland moves. It has no care for right, 

wrong or truth simply the appearance of the finished text. Family Guy is ripe with 

intertextual references to pop culture – another element of postmodernism. 

A key concept, one of the most significant that separates postmodernism from other 

media is Baudrillard’s theory of hyper reality. He theorises that modern society prefer 

simulated images of reality rather than reality itself – and that this is better. He 

believes that we are living in a state of simulacra – a reality made up of 

representations and other media. Examples of this are airbrushing and CGI. A perfect 

example of this postmodern text is videogames. Videogames are postmodern in 

themselves because they never represent reality – it is always a constructed world. 

Grand Theft Auto uses this – a world in which the character can explore a huge range 

without having to complete the challenges (Sandbox effect). Modern audiences seem 

more and more enthusiastic for a simulated world which they can explore and be 

involved in. This may suggest that future media will develop the ideas of virtual 

realities and ‘made up’ worlds even further with developed technology. 

Amorality is a controversial issue in postmodernism. Lack of regard for morals, 

emotions or political correctness is a key feature which is not often shown in other 

texts.  Grand Theft Auto includes prostitution, sex, brutal killing, theft and crime and 

this has been criticised. However a modern audience made this very popular 

suggesting postmodernism is growing. 

Postmodern media differs in many ways from other texts. It uses parody, pastiche, 

bricolage and intertextuality to refer to other texts. It has a lack of concern for 

historical correctness, objective truths, or morality which may imply very extreme 

forms of media for the future! Fragmentation, reflexivity and self mocking irony all 

distinguish postmodern media from other medias. 

This is a clear level 4 response,  meeting most of the criteria in all three areas 

(explanation, analysis and argument; examples and terminology) . The candidate 

uses a range of contemporary examples and relates these to a wealth of 

theoretical perspectives from gender parody to Lyotard’s death of the grand 

narrative. A range of postmodern traits are understood and discussed and 

throughout the response the question – of how these traits ‘mark out’ texts as 

postmodern  - is answered.       

     

Deconstruction & Post-MODERNISM

Deconstruction

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Applied to the question of modernism, deconstruction examines the assumptions that sustain the modernist worldview through what appears to be an anti–modernist worldview. It ‘deconstructs’ the tenets and values of modernism by taking apart or ‘unpacking’ the modernist worldview in order to reveal its constituent parts.

Uncovered and subjected to analysis, fundamental modernist ideas such as ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’ are shown to be not ‘true’ or ‘natural’ to human nature but are intellectual ideals that have no basis in the reality of the human condition.

Questions are then raised about who constructed these intellectual ideals and what were their motives. Who does modernism serve? When considered in a global context modernism serves Western social and political aspirations.

Modernism Vs. Postmodernism

The term postmodernism is used in a confusing variety of ways. For some it means anti–modern, while for others it means the revision of modernist premises. The seemingly anti–modern stance involves a basic rejection of the tenets of modernism, such as belief in the supremacy of reason, the notion of truth, and the idea that it is possible through the application of reason and truth to create a better society.

Modernism began in the 1890s and lasted till about 1945. Postmodernism began after the Second World War, especially after 1968. Modernism was based on using rational, logical means to gain knowledge while postmodernism denied the application of logical thinking. Rather, the thinking during the postmodern era was based on unscientific, irrational thought process, as a reaction to modernism. 


The fundamental difference between modernism and postmodernism is that modernist thinking is about the search of an abstract truth of life while postmodernist thinkers believe that there is no universal truth, abstract or otherwise.

Modernism attempts to construct a coherent world-view whereas postmodernism attempts to remove the difference between high and low. Modernist thinking asserts that mankind progresses by using science and reason while postmodernist thinking believes that progress is the only way to justify the European domination on culture. Modernist thinking believes in learning from past experiences and trusts the texts that narrate the past. On the other hand postmodernist thinking defies any truth in the text narrating the past and renders it of no use in the present times - history written by the winners. Modernist historians have a faith in depth & meaning. They believe in going deep into a subject to fully analyze it (Media Studies?). This is not the case with postmodernist thinkers. They believe in going by the superficial appearances, they believe in playing on surfaces and show no concern towards the depth of subjects. Modernism considers the original works as authentic while postmodernist thinkers base their views on hyper-reality; they get highly influenced by things propagated through media.

During the modernist era, art and literary works were considered as unique creations of the artists. People were serious about the purpose of producing art and literary works. These works were believed to bear a deep meaning, novels and books predominated society.


During the postmodernist era, with the onset of computers, media and advancements in technology, television and computers became dominant in society. Art and literary works began to be copied and preserved by the means of digital media. People no longer believed in art and literary works bearing one unique meaning; they rather believed in deriving their own meanings from pieces of art and literature. 


Interactive media and Internet led to distribution of knowledge. Music like Mozart, Beethoven, which was appreciated during modernism became less popular in the postmodern era. World music, Djs and remixes characterized postmodernism.

Postmodernist film attempts to articulate postmodernism (its ideas and themes and methods) through the medium of film. Postmodernist film attempts to subvert the mainstream conventions of narrative structure and characterization and destroys (or, at least, toys with) the audience's suspension of disbelief. ^[1][2] [3] Typically, such films also break down the cultural divide between high and low art and often upend typical portrayals of gender, race, class, genre, andtime with the goal of creating something different from traditional narrative expression.