Post modernism is about consumption overtaking production, in which people are more socially separated and are not grouped within local groups
DEFINITIONS
- Pastiche – piece of work which piggybacks ideas from other works (imitates)
- Parody – a recreation of a genre or a piece of work with a comical twist to it
- Bricolage – media or a piece of art that is made up of a mix of ideas and themes
- Intertextuality – When one text heavily references another
- Metanarrative – an overarching account or interpretation of events and circumstances that provides a pattern or structure for people’s beliefs and gives meaning to their experie
- Hyperreality – an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies.
- Simulacrum – A simulacrum is a representation or imitation of a person or thing. The word was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god
- Conumerist Society – A consumerist society is one in which people devote a great deal of time, energy, resources and thought to “consuming”. The general view of life in a consumerist society is consumption is good, and more consumption is even better.
- Fragmentary Identities – idea of a many personalities (digital or analog )
- Implosion – idea of society collapsing due to offshoring and other corrupt practices within our world
- cultural appropriation – the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.
- Reflexivity – How a person is shaped by societies standards, a person with low reflexivity will be greatly shaped by society.
Intertextuality: surface signs, gestures & play
A good place to look for illustrations of postmodern culture, in terms of media studies, is the music video. 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.’ (2001:167). Shuker refers Fredric Jameson’s (1984) notion of the ‘metanarrative’ (discussed in more detail below) that ’embody the postmodern condition’ (168). For example, 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’, part of the postmodern condition’ (ibid). Alongside their similarity to adverts (essentially the music video is a commercial tool to sell music products) ‘making them part of a blatantly consumerist culture‘ (ibid). And of course, the ‘considerable evidence of pastiche, intertextuality and eclecticism‘ (ibid) which is the focus of this next section.
A brief economic, historical and societal backdrop to Postmodernism.
In 1959, Richard Hoggart (Uses of Literacy) 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‘ (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.
The loss of a metanarrative
A good starting point would be to return to the 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.
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, as Žižek suggests it is an existence without ‘The Big Other’ , an existentialistt crisis of existence when we realise we are alone (Lacan).
Strinati points out that ‘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 a mass society, or the conception of the media as a ‘window on the world’ (Strinati:233). From a 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 real itself, a grand narrative that is ‘truth‘ in its own right: an understanding of uncertain/certainty that Baudrillard terms the HYPERREAL.