Big Question:

How could ‘Memento’ be classed as a postmodern text?

• Intertexuality: sampling artistic styles, plot or character conventions from other forms and genres
• The ‘writerly text’ (Roland Barthes): a text whose meaning is created by the reader/consumer rather than being fixed in the text by the writer/producer.
• There is no cohesive identity, no ‘real you’; we are different people in each individual situation, virtual and actual. Our identities are in constant flux.
• There is no ‘truth’ in history (personal or national), memory cannot be relied upon as evidence for knowledge;
• People who claim to know the ‘truth’ can’t be trusted;
• Fiction and fact depend on each other to the point that they can’t be divided – in the end they can’t be separated;
• Knowledge doesn’t ‘add up’ cohesively to ‘truth’; there are too many contradictory elements.

Rhizomatic thought = ‘rhizomes’ are plant life that don’t follow the root-tree system e.g. fungus or mould. There is no ‘core’, no lesser or greater elements. If you destroy the centre of a mould the rest doesn’t die (like if you destroyed the trunk of a tree), it continues to thrive. Modern terrorist movements have a ‘rhizomatic’ structure: there is no single leader, issuing orders down the chain of command with an overall goal that every unit is working towards.

When looking at moving image products, it is therefore possible to look for patterns, codes, conventions that share a common features. 

it is clear that narratives are a combination of many individual elements (sound, image, text etc) which are edited (connected) together. Narratives are organised around a particular theme and space and are based in an idea of time.

STORY is often associated with themes and meaning and can be decoded from all of the different elements that are used, for example, the characters, setting, props and themes etc. Whereas the PLOT is the way in which the story (elements/themes/ideas/meaning) is organised and sequenced.