a way of understanding yourself, your community and the world. – a good way to understand is through music videos – philosophy that is characterised by concepts such as RE-IMAGINING, PASTICHE, PARODY, COPY, BRICOLAGE. 

Parody v Pastiche 

pastiche is a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist ( work that imitates the original)

parody is a work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony (imitates with irony/joke- deliberate)

BRICOLAGE – rearrangment and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning’ (Barker & Jane)

 INTERTEXTUALITY – suggests signs only have meaning in reference to other signs – meaning is a complex process of decoding/encoding with individuals both taking and creating meaning in the process of reading texts.

Shuker

• the fragmentary, decentred nature of music videos that break up traditional understandings of time and space so that audiences are ‘no longer able to distinguish ‘fiction’ from ‘reality’

As Shuker notes, two points are frequently made about music videos: ‘their preoccupation with visual style, and associated with this, their status as key exemplars of ‘postmodern’ texts.

Richard Hoggart

noted the shift in modern societies particularly the impact on our ‘neighborhood lives’, which was ‘an extremely local life, in which everything is remarkably near‘

The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology

is an argument that postmodern culture is a consumer culture, where the emphasis on style eclipses the emphasis on utility or need. 

Fragmentary consumption = Fragementary identities.

• fragmented identity construction.

• individually identity

• individually consumption

• postmodernism is a precarious world

The loss of a metanarrative

• metanarrative = meta = big narrative = big story

Fredric Jameson claimed that Postmodernism is characterized by pastiche rather than parody which represents a crisis in historicity. Jameson argued that parody implies a moral judgment or a comparison with previous societal norms. Whereas pastiche, such as collage and other forms of juxtaposition, occur without a normative grounding and as such, do not make comment on a specific historical moment. As such, Jameson argues that the postmodern era is characterised by pastiche (not parody) and as such, suffers from a crisis in historicity.

This links to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s proposition that postmodernism holds an ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives‘ (1979:7) those overarching ideas, attitudes, values and beliefs that have held us together in a shared belief, For example, the belief in religion, science, capitalism, communism, revolution, war, peace and so on. Lyotard points out that no one seemed to agree on what, if anything, was real and everyone had their own perspective and story. 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.^[28] It can be also characterised as an existence without meaning

a process which the French intellectual Jean Baudrillard would describe as IMPLOSION which gives rise to what he terms SIMULACRA. The idea that although the media has always been seen as a representation of reality – a simulation, from Baudrillard’s perspective of implosion, it is has become more than a representation or simulation and it has become SIMULACRUM not just a representation of the real, but the real itself, a grand narrative that is ‘truth‘ in its own right: an understanding of uncertain/certainty that Baudrillard terms the HYPERREAL.

Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Fredric Jameson explain there is a loss of a metanarrative = we are in a world that is superficial

A process which the French intellectual Jean Baudrillard would describe as IMPLOSION which gives rise to what he terms SIMULACRA. The idea that although the media has always been seen as a representation of reality – a simulation, from Baudrillard’s perspective of implosion, it is has become more than a representation or simulation and it has become SIMULACRUM not just a representation of the real, but the real itself, a grand narrative that is ‘truth‘ in its own right: an understanding of uncertain/certainty that Baudrillard terms the HYPERREAL.