metanarrative:

• overall stories – an overall narrative that makes sense
• the loss of metanrrative – the loss of a convenient overarching metanarrative -if we don’t believe anything big that brings us together there is a sense of isolation
• alienation/difficulty from others

Jean Baudrillard

• implosion – everything fell in to eachother – a loss of everything
• a ‘simulation’ of the real based on consumerism
• simulacra – mass media produces versions of reality to help explain our place and function in the universe
• the ecstasy of communication: the process of meaning making has exponentially expanded in the postmodern era, permeating modern life in ways that lie far beyond the cultural capacities of previous historical periods
• he describes the effects of postmodernity:
• 1. the media is everywhere: every corner of public space is an advertising opportunity. our public spaces are so saturated with media that it is impossible to avoid the tidal wave of cultural messages beamed at us
• 2. our private spaces have been invaded: baudrillard states that one’s private living space is conceived as a receiving and operating area, as a monitoring screen endowed with telematic power
• 3. authenticity is impossible to find or hard to keep: cultural products in postmodernity construct throw-away messages, forgotten almost as instantly as they are consumed
• 4: repetition and duplication effects: the postmodern media repeats and repurposes successful content to attract and maintain audiences
• implosion: where there is one political viewpoint there is always an opposing source or contradictionary analysis – as a result a world is presented where two simultaneous truths exist, leaving audiences with an inability to act

postmodernism & surface level intertextuality

• purely ‘surface level’ – links to tomb raider (lara croft as a character – advertising to the male gaze, also doesn’t have much of a character)
• surface signs over substance
• links to teen vogue article – kim kardashian surface level concern for incarceration – not actually doing anything to aid just advertising her show
• much more about imagery than work
• surface and style over substance

parody and pastiche

• satire – irony and ridicule
• pastiche – imitates a style/concept
• surface-level play

postmodernism and history

• population grew in the 20th century by 4 billion
• massive rise of people
• massive rise in things
• massive rise in consumption
• the more we consume the less we are satisfied
• more isolated and individual and alienated consumption

theorists

• habermas – transformation of the public sphere