Post Modern Theory
Many Films and Television Programmes exhibit postmodern traits. Descriptions of the most significant Postmodern themes in Television and Films are below:
pastiche is a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist
parody is a work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony
Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was a French sociologist, cultural theorist, author, political commentator. His best known theories involve hyperreality and simulation. Baudrillard described hyperreality as “the generation by models of a real without origin or reality”.
What is Baudrillard theory?
Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is a simulation of reality.
Hyperreality is an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in advanced postmodern societies. Hyperreality is seen as a condition of what is real and what is fiction are blended together so there is no clear distinction to where one ends and the other begins.
What makes a text postmodernism
Criticism of metanarratives – postmodern texts usually try to distance themselves from traditional ways of making meaning, and will break the rules of existing metanarratives such as religion or science
Rejection of high culture – postmodern texts will often use a deliberately ‘trashy’ aesthetic
Breaking rules – postmodern texts often break fundamental rules of making media, for example by ‘breaking the fourth wall’
Intertextuality – postmodern texts often routinely make reference to other texts, cultures and times
Style over substance – surface meanings are seen as more important in a postmodern text than any deeper meaning
Peripeteia – a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances.
Anagnorisis – where a character recognizes or discovers another character’s true identity or true nature.
Catharsis – the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.
- Bricolage – Bricolage is a technique or creative mode, where works are constructed from various materials available or on hand, and is often seen as a characteristic of postmodern art practice.
- Intertextuality – can be a reference or parallel to another literary work, an extended discussion of a work, or the adoption of a style.
- Referential –
- Surface and style over substance and content –
- Metanarrative – theory that tries to give a totalizing, comprehensive account to various historical events, experiences, and social, cultural phenomena based upon the appeal to universal truth or universal values.
- Hyperreality – something that give a representation of characters that aren’t socially normal or acceptable. eg disney world. exaggerated otherness
- Simulation (sometimes termed by Baudrillard as ‘Simulacrum’) – an image or representation of someone or something
- 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.