Lesson 4

What are the differences? How apparent is intertextuality? How reliant is narrative upon genre. How far can Propp be applied to the music videos you have seen?

Taylor Swift ‘Love Story’ is this really post-modern?

The collapse of the "Grand Narrative"Most famously, in La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge) (1979), Lyotard proposed what he calls an extreme simplification of the "postmodern" as an 'incredulity towards meta-narratives'.[6] 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[who?] 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. [7]

This becomes more crucial in Au juste: Conversations () (1979) and Le Différend (The Differend) (1983), which develop a postmodern theory of justice. It might appear that the atomisation of human beings implied by the notion of the micronarrative and the language game suggests a collapse of ethics. It has often been thought that universality is a condition for something to be a properly ethical statement: 'thou shalt not steal' is an ethical statement in a way that 'thou shalt not steal from Margaret' is not. The latter is too particular to be an ethical statement (what's so special about Margaret?); it is only ethical if it rests on a universal statement ('thou shalt not steal from anyone'). But universals are impermissible in a world that has lost faith in metanarratives, and so it would seem that ethics is impossible. Lyotard argues that notions of justice and injustice do in fact remain in postmodernism. The new definition of injustice is indeed to use the language rules from one 'phrase regimen' and apply them to another. Ethical behaviour is about remaining alert precisely to the threat of this injustice, about paying attention to things in their particularity and not enclosing them within abstract conceptuality. idiom."

What about this one? Is this postmodern?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Edv8Onsrgg

AND THESE?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b601_tUuNDM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJnhaXwK86M

Although theorists like Todorov and Propp can be applied to these Gondry music videos, they are too post modern to fit neatly in to their categories.

Learning so far... Which theorists have you learnt about? How can they be applied to these two music videos?

Which terms can be applied? Narcissistic? Bricolage? Nostalgia? Intertextuality? Eclecticism? Parody? Pastiche? How?

Complete an analysis of all you have learnt so far – you can include todays learning.

Mini Mock – look at the mark criteria.

Read the exam style question sheet and consider the prompts.