24 Hour Party People is a mockumentary based on real events that dramatizes the rise and fall of the Manchester music scene in the late 1970s and 1980s. It uses several postmodern techniques, including being self-referential through characters breaking the fourth wall, blurring the lines between fiction and reality, and using a range of stylistic techniques like mixing documentary footage with recreations. These postmodern elements make the film more playful and unconventional in its storytelling.

1. A2: Post modern film
24 Hour Party People

2. 24 Hour Party People
• A ‘ mockumentary’
• Based on real events from 1976 to the late 80s.
• Featuring Steve Coogan as the main character (who plays Alan Partridge)
• The story is the rise and fall of the Manchester (Madchester) music scene,
which was known for being a pivotal time in music history, with the
introduction of the Hacienda nightclub.
• Dramatises the rebellious and anarchic spirit of punk and new wave youth
culture at the time.

3. Why is it post modern?
• It is self referential
• The narrative and characterisation is playful
and unconventional
• It blurs reality and fiction
• It uses a range of stylistic techniques
• It has inter-textual references

4. 24 Hour Party People
• Characters break the 4th wall and directly
address the audience.
• This technique, combined with what the
characters actually say, deliberately draws
attention to the process of film-making.
• This is called being self-referential.

5. 4th wall and blurring of
fiction and reality
• The characters are performing as themselves in the past
(it’s quite a confusing concept when you stop to think about
it);
• The opening scene of the film where Tony Wilson is hand
gliding for Granada Tonight for example is done by editing
sections from the real programme into the reconstruction,
then Tony Wilson (as played by Steve Coogan) breaks the
fourth wall and speaks directly to camera rather literally
introducing the film.
• Steve Coogan never stops being Tony Wilson, but Wilson
switches from Wilson of the time to Wilson at some unknown
point narrating his story.

6. Self-referential and
playful
• The narration is far from straightforward. Characters often speak to the
camera. The first occasion on which this occurs is in the pre-title sequence,
so that this directing style is established from the outset.
• He says:
• “As the character of Wilson states in the film: “I’m a supporting character
in my own story”.
• This scene is just one example of the way in which the film is consistently
self-referential.
• This is a post modern technique that is playful and self-referential.

7. Mode of address: talking
to camera
• Wilson's narration plays a particularly important role as it is a
style within the film and provides information about the
differences between the film's factual basis and the
liberties taken in reconstructing events.
• Tony Wilson weaves in and out of the story through alternating
news segments and biographical events, engaging and disengaging
himself from his world.
• Using dialogue addressed directly to the viewers, he introduces
characters, reveals future plot twists, cracks jokes, delivers the
news — all in a dry, devil-may-care attitude.

8. Blurring of fiction and
reality
• 24 Hour Party People has Wilson pointing out the characters
that would define the whole Manchester music scene.
• He introduces the major players: Howard Devoto and Pete
Shelley from the Buzzcocks, Stiff Kittens – soon to be Warsaw -
then Joy Division, Mick Hucknall from Simply Red.

9. Blurring of reality and
fiction
• There are many celebrity cameos in the film: Coogan says“......didn't
actually make it to the final cut. I'm sure it will be on the DVD.”
• One comic scene shows the musician Howard Devoto with
Wilson's first wife Lindsay getting close in a club toilet.
• At the same time, a cleaner, played by the real Devoto, tells us
that he has no recollection of such an event ever having taken
place.
• There are other cameos - musicians such as Vini Reilly of the
Durutti Column and Clint Boon
• By using the real actor in a fictional narrative, this blurs the
distinction between reality and fiction.

10. Blurring of reality
• Michael Winterbottom, the director is
interested in the concept of reality.
• This is shown through his blurring of fact,
fiction, reality and exaggeration.

11. Playful use of different
sources for material
• Winterbottom uses a tapestry of sources and forms a collage of differing
formats, mixing actual archive footage from Granada Tonight (the show Tony
Wilson formally hosted) with reconstructions and the main film itself, all of
which are shot on mixture of video and film, and as the narrative
progresses it appears that the quality of the film and video improves as the
technology did in reality,.
• As a result the film feels like a mix of documentary and knowing
reconstructions.

12. Post modern because it is playful in its
range of stylistic techniques
• Postmodernist film upsets the mainstream conventions of narrative
structure and characterisation and destroys (or, at least, toys with) the
audience's suspension of disbelief.
• In 24 Hour Party People, documentary and fictional footage,
historical and mythological representations, narrative and non-
narrative impulses, realism and stylisation are intermixed.
• Remember the reference at the beginning to the mythological
Icarus? A pompous way of referring to himself as a
mythological. In Greek mythology, Icarus had wings that his
father constructed from feathers and wax. He ignored
instructions not to fly too close to the sun, and the melting wax
caused him to fall to his death. Metaphor for Tony Wilson and
the building of the doomed Hacienda. Mixing classical arts with
popular culture. What is this called??

13. Intertextual references
• 24 Hour Party People has lots of intertextual references:
• Live performances of the Buzzcocks, the Sex Pistols, Mick Hucknall, The
Jam.
• There is a reference to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and David
Bowie - their posters are hastily ripped off a wall — a powerful metaphor
signifying the compelling change that was happening during that time.
Progressive pretentious arts school rock being replaced by new wave punk.
• In coming up with the name ‘The Factory’, there is a dialogue reference to
Warhol and L S Lowry.
• Lowry is famous for painting scenes of life in the industrial districts of
Northern England ... peopled with human figures often referred to as
"matchstick men".

14. Post modern relation to
Alan Partridge
• Steve Coogan often is berated for his portrayal of Tony Wilson.
• Some critics of the film feel that Coogan merely adopted his Alan
Partridge persona
• This is where 24 Hour Party People takes its post modern approach
to another level, as the fictional character of Alan Partridge is in fact
partly based on the real life Tony Wilson, it’s not that Coogan is
simply playing the role as if Wilson was Partridge, he was in fact
playing Partridge as if he were Wilson.

15. Blog task
• To identify the main post modern techniques
in 24 Hour Party People.
• To provide examples where they exist in the
film
• To explain WHY they are used.