2. Critical Perspectives:
‘We Media’ and Democracy
Media in the Online Age
Postmodern Media
Contemporary Media Regulation
Media and the Collective Identity
Global Media
3. Dictionary Definition of Postmodernism
The Compact Oxford English
Dictionary refers to postmodernism
as "a style and concept in the arts
characterized by a distrust of
theories and ideologies and by the
drawing of attention to conventions."
4. Postmodern Media
An Introduction from the Media Studies Text Book OCR
Media Studies for A2 – Julian McDougall
Postmodernists claim that in a media-saturated
world, where we are
constantly immersed in media, 24/7 –
and on the move, at work, at home – the
distinction between reality and the
media representation of it becomes
blurred or even entirely invisible to us. In
other words, we no longer have any
sense of the difference between real
things and images of them, or real
experiences and simulations of them.
Media reality is the new reality.
5. Some see this as a historical development:
the modern period came before, during
which artists experimented with the
representation of reality, and the
postmodern comes next, where this idea of
representation gets ‘remixed’, played
around with, through pastiche, parody and
intertextual references – where the people
that make texts deliberately expose their
nature as constructed texts and make no
attempt to pretend that they are ‘realist’.
6. Others say that postmodernism is just a new way
of thinking about media, when really it has
always been this way. One of these is Strinati
(An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture
2005:224)
The mass media…were once thought of as holding
up a mirror to, and thereby reflecting, a wider
social reality. Now that reality is only definable in
terms of the surface reflections of that mirror. It is
no longer a question of distortion since the term
implies that there is a reality, outside the surface
simulations of the media, which can be distorted,
and this is basically what is at issue.
7. Postmodern Ideas
Postmodern media rejects the idea that
any media product or text is of any
greater value than another. All
judgements are merely taste. Anything
can be art, anything can deserve to
reach an audience, and culture ‘eats
itself’ as there is no longer anything new
to produce or distribute.
8. Cont.
The distinction between media and reality has
collapsed, and we now live in a ‘reality’
defined by images and representations – a
state of simulacrum. Images refer to each
other and represent each other as reality
rather than some ‘pure’ reality that exists
before the image represents it – this is the
state of hyperreality.
All ideas of ‘the truth’ are just competing claims
– or discourses – and what we believe to be
the truth at any point is merely the ‘winning’
discourse.
9. Philosophers within the Postmodern
Movement
Baudrillard and Lyotard. Both men are now
deceased but during their life they offered
different theories of what postmodernism was.
What they shared was a belief that the idea of
truth needs to be ‘deconstructed’ so that we
can challenge the dominant ideas that people
claim as truth, which Lyotard describes as
‘grand narratives’.
10. Postmodern Theories cont.
In the postmodern world, media texts
make visible and challenge ideas of
truth and reality, removing the illusion
that stories, texts or images can ever
accurately or neutrally reproduce reality
or truth. So we get the idea that there
are always competing versions of the
truth and reality, and postmodern media
products will engage with this idea.
11. Critics of these theories and beliefs
It is important to understand that many people see
Baudrillard and Lyotard’s views as offensive and hard
to reconcile with their belief systems.
It can be seen as a whimsical luxury to question and
play with the idea of truth and something that people
who live in countries such as Iraq, Tibet and
Zimbabwe cannot do – they have to contest on a daily
basis the existence of truth, justice and human rights.
Some people also find the idea of rejecting their
‘grand narrative’ goes against their whole religious
beliefs and moral principles.
12. Hyperreality and Baudrillard – Julian McDougall OCR
Media Text Book
You should be familiar with the basic
semiotic ideas – that signs represent
ideas, people or places. For Baudrillard,
there is only the surface meaning; there
is no longer any ‘original’ thing for a sign
to represent – the sign is the meaning.
We inhabit a society made up wholly of
simulacra – simulations of reality which
replace any ‘pure’ reality.
13. McDougall Cont.
‘Pure’ reality is thus replaced by the
hyperreal where any boundary between
the real and the imaginary is eroded.
Baudrillard’s work is an attempt to
expose the ‘open secret’ that this is how
we live and make sense of the world in
postmodern times. As you can imagine,
he is considered a pretty controversial
philosopher.
14. Baudrillard – A Postmodern Philosopher
(1929-2007)
Baudrillard wrote a philosophical treatise
called ‘Simulacra and Simulation’
Simulacra and Simulation is most known
for its discussion of images, signs, and
how they relate to the present day.
Baudrillard claims that modern society
has replaced all reality and meaning with
symbols and signs, and that the human
experience is of a simulation of reality
rather than reality itself.
15. Simulacra and Simulation
Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies
each with a historical period:
First order
associated with the pre-modern period, where the image
is clearly an artificial placemarker for the real item.
Second order
associated with the industrial Revolution, where
distinctions between image and reality break down due
to the proliferation of mass-produced copies. The item's
ability to imitate reality threatens to replace the original
version.
Third order
associated with the postmodern age, where the
simulacrum precedes the original and the distinction
between reality and representation breaks down. There
is only the simulacrum.
16. Baudrillard theorizes the lack of distinctions between reality
and simulacra originates in several phenomena:
Contemporary media including television, film, print and
the Internet, which are responsible for blurring the line
between goods that are needed and goods for which a
need is created by commercial images.
Exchange value, in which the value of goods is based
on money rather than usefulness.
Multinational capitalism, which separates produced
goods from the plants, minerals and other original
materials and the processes used to create them.
Urbanization, which separates humans from the natural
world.
Language and ideology, in which language is used to
obscure rather than reveal reality when used by
dominant, politically powerful groups.
17. Baudrillard’s Famous Assertion…
Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that
it is the ‘real’ country, all of real America,
which is Disneyland (just as prisons are
there to conceal the fact that it is the
social; in its entirety, it its banal
omnipresence, which is Carceral).
Banal = commonplace
Omnipresence = present everywhere
Carceral = A Carceral state is a state
modelled on the idea of a prison
18. He goes on to say…
That Disneyland (with its Pirates, Frontier, and
Future World fantasy set-ups)
is presented as imaginary in order to make us
believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of
Los Angeles and the America surrounding it
are no longer real, but of the order of the
hyperreal and of simulation. It is no longer a
question of a false representation of reality
(ideology), but of concealing the fact that the
real is no longer real, and thus of saving the
reality principle.
19. The Disneyland imaginary is neither
true nor false; it is a deterrence
machine set up in order to
rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of
the real.
Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (1983)
20. With such reasoning, he characterised the
present age — following Ludwig
Feuerbach and Guy Debord — as one of
"hyperreality" where the real object has
been effaced or superseded, by the signs
of its existence. Such an assertion — the
one for which he is most criticised — is
typical of his "fatal strategy" of attempting
to push his theories of society beyond
themselves.
21. Rather than saying, that our hysteria
surrounding pedophilia is such that we no
longer really understand what childhood
is anymore, Baudrillard argued that "the
Child no longer exists". Similarly, rather
than arguing — as did Susan Sontag in
her book On Photography — that the
notion of reality has been complicated by
the profusion of images of it, Baudrillard
asserted: "the real no longer exists".
22. Postmodern Media Texts
There are many examples of texts or
products which deliberately set out to
explore and play with this state of
hyperreality. These texts are said to be
intertextual and self-referential – they
break the rules of realism to explore the
nature of their own status as constructed
texts. In other words, they seek not to
represent reality, but to present media
reality.
23. Examples We Will Look At
Televised images of the 911 attacks on the World Trade
Center
The Matrix and Blade Runner
The music of DJ Shadow
An advert for Cadbury
The films of Michael Winterbottom, the Coen brothers,
and Wong Kar-wai
Postmodern TV such as Big Brother; The Mighty Boosh;
the television of Ricky Gervais; The Wire and Echo
Beach/Moving Wallpaper
Postmodern magazine readers
Grand Theft Auto as a postmodern video game
Second Life as the ultimate hyperreal media experience
24. Postmodern Film
We will begin our investigation of
postmodern media texts looking at a
selection of films which are thought to
reflect the ideas of postmodernism
25. Postmodern Film
Postmodernist film can be seen to voice
the ideas of postmodernism through the
cinematic medium. Postmodernist film
upsets the mainstream conventions of
narrative structure and characterization
and destroys (or, at least, toys with) the
audience's suspension of disbelief to
create a work in which a less-recognizable
internal logic forms the film's means of
expression.
26. By making small but significant changes to
the conventions of cinema, the artificiality
of the experience and the world presented
are emphasised in the audience's mind in
order to remove them from the
conventional emotional link they have to
the subject matter, and to give them a new
view of it.
27. An example is Michael Winterbottom's 24
Hour Party People in which the character
based on Tony Wilson frequently breaks
out of the constructed world of the film
and talks directly to the audience straight
through the camera lens. Jarring in effect,
it suggests the characters' pre-occupation
with breaking free of the cultural and
economic constructions of the world they
live in.
28. Winterbottom's postmodernist effect, however, is
hardly new: Federico Fellini, among other master
filmmakers, used it memorably in Satyricon
(1969) and Amarcord (1973).
David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001) exploits
postmodernist aesthetics to an unusual degree
while Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is
considered an example of Postmodernist film
because of a range of techniques used.
29. We are going to watch ‘The Matrix’ and try to pick out
aspects of the film which make it a postmodern film.
Think about:
the narrative structure
the idea of changing established
conventions
Drawing the viewers attention to the
construction of the film – ‘bullet time’
sequences
Taking existing ideas from earlier films and
using them in a different way – paying
homage
Suggestions it makes about society and its
troubles
30. The Matrix
The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action
film written and directed by
Larry and Andy Wachowski
and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence
Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe
Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving.
It was first released in the USA on March
31, 1999, and is the first entry in The
Matrix series of films, comics, video
games, and animation.
31. In Postmodern thought, interpretations of
The Matrix often reference Baudrillard's
philosophy to demonstrate that the movie
is an allegory for contemporary
experience in a heavily commercialized,
media-driven society, especially of the
developed countries. This influence was
brought to the public's attention through
the writings of art historians such as
Griselda Pollock and film theorists such
as Heinz-Peter Schwerfel.
32. The Wachowski Brothers were keen that all
involved understood the thematic
background of the movie. For example,
the book used to conceal disks early in
the movie, Simulacra and Simulation, a
1981 work by the French philosopher
Jean Baudrillard, was required reading for
most of the principal cast and crew.
33. The Matrix makes many connections to
Simulacra and Simulation. In an early scene,
Simulacra and Simulation is the book in which
Neo hides his illicit software. In the film, the
chapter 'On Nihilism' is in the middle, rather
than the end of the book.
Morpheus also refers to the real world outside
of the Matrix as the "desert of the real", which
was directly referenced in the Slavoj Žižek
work, Welcome to the Desert of the Real. In the
original script, Morpheus referenced
Baudrillard's book specifically.
Keanu Reeves was asked by the directors to
read the book, as well as Out of Control and
Evolution Psychology, before being cast as
Neo.
34. Merrin – Baudrillard and the Media
(2005:131)
The Matrix has us. Our consumption of
the films, the merchandise, and the
world and myth the Wachowskis sell us,
and our collective orgasm over the
effects and phones, guns, shades and
leather, represent our integration into the
virtuality it promotes. The Matrix became
a viral meme spreading through and
being mimetically (mimicked i.e. copied)
and absorbed into modern culture,
extending our virtualisation.
35. Merrin cont.
Just as the film offered the stark choice of
being inside or outside the matrix so you
were either inside or outside the
zeitgeist (the spirit of the times). To
paraphrase Morpheus: The Matrix is
everywhere. As Baudrillard makes clear,
however, its fans and public are caught
in a similarly invisible matrix that is far
greater than depicted in the film, and
that the film itself is part of and extends.
36. Other Postmodern Influences
The film describes a future in which reality
perceived by humans is actually the Matrix: a
simulated reality created by sentient machines
in order to pacify and subdue the human
population while their bodies' heat and
electrical activity are used as an energy source.
Upon learning this, computer programmer
"Neo" is drawn into a rebellion against the
machines. The film contains many references
to the cyberpunk and hacker subcultures;
philosophical and religious ideas; and homages
to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Hong
Kong action cinema and Spaghetti Westerns.
37. Challenging Film Making Conventions
The film is known for popularizing the use of a visual effect known as
"bullet time", which allows the viewer to explore a moment
progressing in slow-motion as the camera appears to orbit around
the scene at normal speed.
One proposed technique for creating these effects involved propelling
a high speed camera along a fixed track with a rocket to capture
the action as it occurred. However, this was discarded as
unfeasible, because not only was the destruction of the camera in
the attempt all but inevitable, but the camera would also be almost
impossible to control at such speeds. Instead, the method used
was a technically expanded version of an old art photography
technique known as time-slice photography, in which a large
number of cameras are placed around an object and triggered
nearly simultaneously.
38. The evolution of photogrametric and image-based
computer-generated background
approaches in The Matrix's bullet time shots set
the stage for later innovations unveiled in the
sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix
Revolutions. Virtual Cinematography (CGI-rendered
characters, locations, and events)
and the high-definition "Universal Capture"
process completely replaced the use of still
camera arrays, thus more closely realizing the
"virtual camera".
This film overcame the release of Star Wars
Episode I: The Phantom Menace by winning
the Academy Award for Visual Effects
