Post Modernism For Essays

Individuals focus on, understand, can cope with and are knowledgeable about surface and style. As opposed to substance, content, meaning and truth.

Creates a world built around uncertainties and half truths, its a virtual world.

First define / explain postmodernism —> Then define the key concepts and who’s said them. —> After that mention the print product and how it relates to the key concepts[Futuristic, dystopia, individualism, escapism ] —> Lastly, express thoughts on postmodernism itself.

 Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality.

  1. Pastiche – imitating previous work.
  2. Parody – Imitating previous work in a joking and funny manner.
  3. Bricolage – something constructed or created from a diverse range of things.
  4. Intertextuality – the relationship between texts, especially literary ones.
  5. Referential – containing or of the nature of references or allusions.
  6. Surface and style over substance and content –
  7. Metanarrative
  8. Hyperreality – the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality.
  9. Simulation (termed by Baudrillard as ‘Simulacrum’) 
  10. Consumerist Society
  11. Fragmentary Identities
  12. Alienation
  13. Implosion
  14. cultural appropriation
  15. Reflexivity – acknowledging your role in the research.

How valid are Baudrillard’s ideas of simulation and hyperreality to understanding the media?
You should refer to the Close Study Products Score and Maybelline to support your answer.
[20 marks]


Unseen CSP Postmodernism

Hyperreality – Being unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Simulation (sometimes termed by Baudrillard as ‘Simulacrum’) – Where events are played out as if they are real when in fact they are not.

Simulation – CSP has unrealistic connotations – dominate signifier has otherworldly physical features which would never be seen in reality – shows that our visions of reality are ever changing and uncontrollably morphing.

Hyperreality – Wondering if the games cover is reality in some form.

Postmodernism

Jean Baudrillard – Simulation, Hyperreality; Baudrillard observes that the contemporary world is a simulacrum, where reality has been replaced by false images, to such an extent that one cannot distinguish between the real and the unreal.

Essay Structure:

Define Postmodernism, define simulation and hyperreality, Take out examples from the example, then a concluding sentence saying what you think Postmodernism has come to.

definitions: Hyperreality – Being unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Postmodernism –

  1. Deliberately playful, intertextual, reflexive
  2. Fragmentation, disorder, displacement
  3. A disconnection between cerebral and physical (ie mind and body Descartes – The Cartesian dilemma)
  4. A lack of coherent time and place creates a world built around uncertainties and half-truths = a virtual world
  5. A lack of knowledge and understanding
  6. Lack of Metanarrative – the new postmodern world is structured and built upon complex and sometimes contradictory layers of organisations, instructions, ideas and individuals.
  7. Individuals struggle to make sense and meaningful connections with this postmodern world.
  8. No rational explanation, for cause and effect.
  9. A loss of faith in scientific, empirical evidence.
  10. Emphasis on repetition = Simulation – a series of simulated events, sequences and characters
  11. Lack of overall Truth or coherent meaning
  12. Memento represents a world of nobody’s living in nowheresville!
  13. Individual and community alienation Individualistic / isolated narrative
  14. Results in individuals becoming isolated and vulnerable
  15. So individuals on focus on (understand, can cope with, are knowledgeable about) surface and style. As opposed to substance, content, cohesion, meaning, truth.
  16. Individual personal pleasure and gain is the only significant motivating factor
  17. Role of big organisations in dividing up society and individuals
  18. pastiche (re-makes of familiar genre, Film Noir, Thriller or Who dunnit?) re-make
  19. Fractured / split / multiple identity
  20. hypperreality – it seems real, but unreal? exaggerated reality? an un-reality?

postmodern ideas for essay question.

  • Individual and community alienation Individualistic / isolated narrative
  • Results in individuals becoming isolated and vulnerable
  • So individuals on focus on (understand, can cope with, are knowledgeable about) surface and style. As opposed to substance, content, cohesion, meaning, truth.
  • Individual personal pleasure and gain is the only significant motivating factor
  • A disconnection between cerebral and physical (ie mind and body Descartes – The Cartesian dilemma)
  • creates a world built around uncertainties and half-truths = a virtual world

STRUCTURE(9 marker)

first define/explain postmodernism

then define the key concepts and who said them

after that mention the print product and how it relates to the key concepts.(Futuristic, dystopia, individualism, escapism)

lastly, express thoughts on postmodernism itself.

Simulation-when reality is replaced with signs and representations.

hyperreality- where audiences cant tell the difference between simulation and reaslity

postmodernism essay prep

what is postmodernism?

what is the truth and knowledge behind it?

Structure – Define Postmodernism -> Define key concepts & theorists -> Link the CSP to postmodernism and it’s concepts

Simulacrum & Hyperreality – Baudrillard

Individuals focus on, understand, can cope with and are knowledgeable about surface and style. As opposed to substance, content, meaning and truth.

Creates a world built around uncertainties and half truths, its a virtual world.

First define / explain postmodernism —> Then define the key concepts and who’s said them. —> After that mention the print product and how it relates to the key concepts[Futuristic, dystopia, individualism, escapism ] —> Lastly, express thoughts on postmodernism itself.

Postmodern movies aim to subvert highly-regarded expectations, which can be in the form of blending genres or messing with the narrative nature of a film. For example, Pulp Fiction is a Postmodern film for the way it tells the story out of the ordinary, upending our expectations of film structure.

post modernism

  1. Pastiche =  a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist.
  2. Parody =  an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.
  3. Bricolage = the process of improvisation in a human endeavour
  4. Intertextuality = can be a reference or parallel to another literary work, an extended discussion of a work, or the adoption of a style.
  5. Referential= of, containing, or constituting a reference
  6. Surface and style over substance and content= although someone looks immaculately dressed or styled, behind the façade, there is no substance or content.
  7. Metanarrative=  concerns narratives of historical meaning, experience or knowledge and offers legitimation of such through the anticipated completion of some master idea
  8. Hyperreality= the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality
  9. Simulation (sometimes termed by Baudrillard as ‘Simulacrum’) 
  10. Consumerist Society= a society in which people often buy new goods, especially goods that they do not need, and in which a high value is placed on owning many things.
  11. Fragmentary Identities= multidisciplinary collaboration, involving visual communication, performative arts and fashion
  12. Alienation= a withdrawing or separation of a person or a person’s affections from an object or position of former attachment
  13. Implosion=  a situation in which something fails suddenly and completely, or the fact of this happening
  14. Cultural appropriation= an inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.
  15. Reflexivity= the fact of someone being able to examine their own feelings, reactions, and motives
  16. Deconstructive postmodernism = deconstructionism is a challenge to the attempt to establish any ultimate or secure meaning in a text.

Postmodernism can therefore be understood (more than other creative movements) as deliberate, intended, self-conscious play (about play?), signs about signs, notes to notes? 

 It may even be ironicjoking, or literally, ‘just playing’. However, it is always a deliberate copy (of the old).

 clearly entails a recognition (a nod and a wink) to what it was and where it came from.

INDIVIDUALISM’

, 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

 the extent to which the UK and much of Western Europe has shifted from manufacturing economies to consuming economies – ie we are structured around consuming things more than making things.

it is possible to link postmodernist cultural expression with broader shifts in society, specifically around economics and politics.