Surface and style over substance: If it the priority is play, then the emphasis is on the surface, in other words, if the main focus is the idea of just connecting one product to another, then the focus is superficial, shallow, lacking depth, so ‘in a postmodern world, surfaces and style become the most important defining features of the mass media and popular culture

In terms of the key principles of art and design the priority is informal elements: of shape, colour, texture, movement, space, time and so on. As opposed to more discursive principles of narrative, character, motivation, theme, ideology. Or put simply: STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE.

For example, The Art of Noise was a group of white experimental musicians from the 1980s who presented themselves through abstract, impressionistic videos. The focus is therefore on image, surface, style. Meaning and interpretation are obtuse, disguised, removed and difficult to apprehend. No surprise then that this group of middle-aged white art-school musicians ‘were voted the second-best new black act’ because ‘they think we’re black‘ 

we live in a fake news society as we become more fragmented, anxious and vulnerable as a society

In 1959, Richard Hoggart (Uses of Literacy) noted the shift in modern societies particularly the impact on our ‘ neighbourhood lives’, which was ‘an extremely local life, in which everything is remarkably near‘ (1959:46). As John Urry comments, this was ‘life centred upon groups of known streets’ where there was ‘relatively little separation of production and consumption‘ (2014:76). Urry goes on to note that ‘because the global population grew during the twentieth century from 2 to 6 billion. Cities, towns, villages and houses all became high-consuming energy centres’ (97). Thus, a characteristic of modern (postmodern?) societies, is the creation, development and concentration of centres of high consumption, with a displacement of both consumption and production that has radically altered the nature of societies and individuals living in them.

 expression of a new phase of capitalism, one which was aggressively consumerist, rampantly commodifying all of society as potential new markets. For many, this is reflective of the new global economy (globalisation), which has created a high polarized class division between the rich / the real super-rich and the poor / underclass (ie the really, really poor) made possible through the rapid increase of new forms of technological developments. For instance, it may be possible to identify the extent to which our economic experience is now characterised by what we buy (consumption) than what we make (production).

There is an argument that postmodern culture is a consumer culture, where the emphasis on style eclipses the emphasis on utility or need. So that ultimately there is no real value to a postmodern culture other than the need for consumption. If this is the case, then it is possible to link postmodernist cultural expression with broader shifts in society, specifically around economics and politics.

 new communications technologies, such as mobile telephony, which has created new (digital) worlds connected across time and space in ways which were completely unimaginable to previous generations. Often these are acts of individualised and personal consumption, where we are more likely to consume what we want when we want, where we want and how we want.

“consumption by its very nature bolsters a self-centred individualism which is the basis for stable and secure identities

Fragmentary consumption = Fragementary identities: This process of fragmented consumption separating, splitting up and dividing previously homogeneous groups such as friends, the family, the neighbourhood, the local community, the town, the county, the country and importantly, is often linked to the process of fragmented identity construction.

 mobile telephony which is now able to construct multiple possibilities identities, at multiple moments in time and space. Think about the way we construct, our (multiple) digital identities, visible and varying across different digital platforms – work identity, social identity, family identity etc, which is most often not consistent with our analogue (human?) identity – look for example, at your profile pictures?

As an example, mobile telephony (both hardware and software) now appears to proliferate and connect every aspect of our lives, and generally does so from the perspective of consumption – consuming images, sounds, stories, messages etc – rather than production. We don’t make mobile phones, mobile networks (hardware) or Apps, content and platforms (software).

The loss of a meta-narrative:  concepts of PASTICHE and PARODY, as 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.

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, as Žižek suggests it is an existence without ‘The Big Other’, an existentialistic crisis of existence when we realise we are alone (Lacan).

the distinction between culture and society is being eroded’ (231) and suggests that our sense of reality (the overarching metanarrative) appears to come from the culture (eg the media), rather than from society which is then reproduced, represented and relayed through media communication. In terms of media studies, this marks a juncture from previous conceptions of mass media communication, for example, as a ‘relay system’ – a process which just relays information and events in real-time to mass society or the conception of the media as a ‘window on the world’

societal perspective the ‘real’ seems to be imploding in on itself, a ‘process leading to the collapse of boundaries between the real and simulations’ (Barker & Emma, 2015:242). 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 reality itself, a grand narrative that is ‘truth‘ in its own right: an understanding of uncertain/certainty that Baudrillard terms the HYPERREAL.

Another way to understand this approach is to reflect on the emergence of, often off-shore, leisure and theme parks which are ‘highly commercialised, with many simulated environments more ‘real’ than the original from which they are copied’ (Urry 2014:81). Illustrating this point with references to ‘newly constructed sites of consumption excess’ (79) Urry highlights Macao described as ‘a laboratory of consumption, as the Chinese learn to be individualised consumers of goods and services being generated on an extraordinary scale’ (81). Or Dubai, which up to 1960 was one of the poorest places on earth and yet by the 2000s was the number one global site for ostentatious shopping’ and other forms of hyperreal consumption

Paul Gilroy: His theme of Double Consciousness, derived from W. E. B. Dubois, involves ‘Black Atlantic’ striving to be both European and Black through their relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency

Gilroy highlights Enoch Powell’s notorious 1968 ‘rivers of blood speech’ full of the ‘terrifying prospect of a wholesale reversal of the proper ordering of colonial power . . . intensified by feelings of resentment, rejection, and fear at the prospect of open interaction with others.’ (2004:111) Put presciently, ‘it has subsequently provided the justification for many a preemptive strike’