Copley and Herbert (2013)

Postmodernism Theory

What You Are About To Learn…

What postmodernism looks

like

How postmodernism fits into

narrative and genre

So what’s this postmodernism business?

• It can be quite a general term, and applied in a lot of areas – we’re looking at film

• Modernism was the term to describe rejection of traditional beliefs in early 20th century – so postmodernism is going one step beyond

• Postmodernism is most easily described as layering and combining new ideas with old ones from multiple sources to create something new – but this can be extended to lots of things

• Whilst a modernist may see man as a creation, a postmodernist may see him as a construct, in which all parts of him have been created, and mixed together to form a construct

A postmodernist film will subvert mainstream conventionsOf narrative, representation, character, genre.

For instance, a character may look/talk to the camera

There may be circular narratives or cliffhangers for endings

How to spot postmodernism

• Postmodernism can be a toughy to spot but

crikey when u do it’s a beauty

Get writing these key terms you media wizzards

• Hybridity: - mixing and sampling all kinds of crazy fun stuff from old tv shows and mixing it into one crazy postmodern media flash flood

Parody

• A text taking an old idea or concept or even whole storyline and making it a version of it’s own, often in a funny way

• Like when Family Guy did Star Wars

Hyperreality

• A reality created in the text that is a bit like real reality but in reality is not real at all. (People often get drawn into this distant not real reality because it’s more attractive than the one they are living in)

• Like the only way is essexswag

If you don’t want to think about TOWIE

• Then think Matrix

• A technologically

• Created hyper-reality

• More desirable

• Than the real world

More examples

• Time: time bending is used to affect reality to create an off-beat story line – Donnie Darko

• Artificial Intelligence: perhaps there is the usage of cyberspace, intelligent robots trying to take over reality – i Robot

Baudrillard - Simulacra

• Simulation and Simulacra

• Simulation – process of representations of things becoming the reality of what’s represented

• Simulacrum – a modern representation that may deceive what is actually there in reality

Types of Simulation

• 1: Faithful Simulation – simulation reflects real reality – like a portrait of someone

• 2: Perversion Simulation – the simulation masks reality with a simplification of it’s depth – like an icon on a computer screen

• 3: Pretence Simulation – masks the absence of reality – Disneyland, forget you’re in a make believe place

• 4: Pure Simulation – simulation has no relevance to reality, it’s just a construct

Now over to my fellow theorist HERBERT for his

take on how postmodernism affects genre and narrative

The Effects of Postmodernism on our Key Concepts

Hi folks, due to postmodernism we have the ability to change narratives

and genre’s because we are going post the

traditional views of them

Narrative• Well often with postmodern narratives they DO

NOT CONFORM to the traditional narratives• It’s like a rom com where a nervous Hugh Grant

meets an attractive Jennifer Anniston and they date but then they both end up being abducted by Cantonese pirates and held hostage but hey guess what the government wont pay for their ransom so they get slaughters

• Often these postmodernist narrative affect the ending of films, perhaps there will be multiple endings, perhaps there will be ironic or parodying endings perhaps the endings wont even be finished.

• Think: fight club, matrix, donnie darco, waynes world

Summary

Postmodernism is taking the old and adapting it to make it new and to continue to be appealing. Most often it is done by changes in narratives or character, but also it can completely change how reality is viewed.