1. Postmodernism dissolves the boundary of high value and low value in judgement for art, as it rejects the idea of any media product or text having greater value than another. Postmodernism suggests that there is no longer nothing original to produce and anything can be art.
2. The post modernistic view of the ideas of truth or reality is that the barrier between reality and hyper reality has faded. Our reality is defined by representations and images displayed by the media. Therefore making it hard to distinguish ideas of truth, media products and texts purposely break the rules of realism to advertise media reality. They reject to represent pure reality and play with a hyper real state that our populations are familiar with.
3. Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard were the two theorists that shared the same concept in their theory. Their belief of truth suggested that during the post modern world the media products will compete with versions of the truth or reality, they will create visible and challenge the ideas of validity this removing the illusion of stories, texts and images will continue to fail to accurately reproduce reality.
4. (Struggled with this question)
5. Disneyland and simulacrum are significant because they are a good example of how a post modern world can appear in reality. For example the whole concept of Disneyland is based on fictional and movies from Disney however it is placed in a real physical place. Our society is made up of simulacra, a simulation of our reality that replaces our pure reality, due to hyper reality replacing pure reality we can no longer claim whats real and whats not a representation or simulation or reality.
6. Baudrillard's perception of the event 9/11 gave us an alternative insight of how the disaster can be seen as hyper real. He suggested that the event was an image shown globally by the media, consistent showings of the live pictures. Thus accelerating the audience into a state of hyper reality, the footage edited and consisted of a variety of camera shots and included a commentary enhancing the live moment in a dramatic way. The electronic experience hyperrealised the real and that the event was as much televised as real making it hard to distinguish the representation of the event and the actual event.
7. The Matrix film was a significant example of Bauldrillard's theory about simulation and hyper reality. Humans being plugged into a virtual world and fighting against machines this post modern film became a viral meme spreading and integrated into popular culture, extending our virtualisation. The film offered the choice to either be inside or outside the Matrix, the fans and public are also caught in a similar matrix that is far greater than the one represented in the film.
8. There are post modern elements we can identify in the programme The Mighty Boosh. There are an eclectic mix of conventions, influences, genre traits and a predominance of intertextual references. The show can be seen as hyper real as it deliberately messes around about with its own status as a television programme rather than aiming to establish that what we are watching is real.
9. The programme Extra's can be seen as post modernism because it deconstructs itself. Real celebrities featured on the programme but as themselves. This left the audience questioning whether they were acting or being themselves, they are forced to respond to a deliberate decontextualisation. This is a unusual example of intertexuality.
10. Video games such as Grand Theft Auto can be seen as post modernism in themselves. Offering the participant to purchase a virtual world with real money. The virtual world is experienced as reality, what happens in this process is virtualisation and we begin to experience 'real reality' as a virtual entity.
11. The Cadbury's advert is an example of post modern advertising as the advert of the gorilla playing the drums had no relation to the product of chocolate itself. However some people argued that it strips back the unspoken pleasure of eating chocolate. The campaign has been seen as very clever and cheap, the gorilla phenomenon spreaded as people on Youtube imitated the actions of the Gorilla.
12. The concept immersion is the gamer invests imagination and is absorbed into the game world and being in that reality. The concept of flow is a state whereby an activity demands incrementally harder, some of its conditions are a clear goal or problem to solve, challenging and facing problems and enjoying the activity for its own sake.
Part Two - 316 Words
I have chosen a video from Youtube that I believe demonstrates an example of Post Modernism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dwimc4cvUmQ It features a young boy that lip syncs famous songs. This already is post modern because the development of technology such as Youtube has allowed him to post a video of himself for the public to view. The boy is called Keenan Cahill and he has posted a number of videos of him miming famous songs. After becoming an internet sensation the young internet star featured on live talk shows. This links to post modernism because it suggests that anything that an audience can reach can be said to be 'art' also it supports the theory that no media video or text can have greater value than another. For example this video has consisted of 48,626,353 views a large amount of people compared to a real artists piece of music that has lower. I selected this video especially because half way through the video 50 cent walks into the room. This is a good example of post modernism because it shows how the boundary between a prosumer and the artist collapses and then becomes meaningless. The gangster hip hop artist is next to a geeky young boy, the normal conventional music video by 50 cent would be very expensive and professional instead he is sitting in this boys bedroom. It is intertexual because it refers to the famous artist himself and also the idea of singing with a celebrity this has been repeated on TV shows like X-factor. The video is hyper real and breaks the narrative structure of a common music video, it can be seen as a simulation and blurs the idea of truth because of the unusual idea of a worldwide famous celebrity singing with an unknown prosumer. Living in a post modernistic time has allowed people like Keenan to become famous because of the internet.
Part Three
Post-modern A historical period in Western culture after theSecond World in which society became dominated by information technology
Post-modern A historical period in Western culture after theSecond World in which society became dominated by information technology
Post-modernity The semiotic landscape of a society dominated
by consumer culture and information technology
Parody To copy something in a humorous and tongue in
cheek way.
Pastiche To copy something without humour, irony or
anything else that communicates difference
Hyper-reality The collapse of the distinction between the real
and simulated
Consumer culture A culture and society in which individual and
collective identity is constructed in material acts of
economic exchange e.g. shopping
Simulacrum A copy without an original
Cultural capital The knowledge and information that informs
people’s cultural consumption in a post-modern
society
Signifier and the signified The basic units of semiotic analysis
Multi-accentuality The way in which meaning changes according to
context and over-time
Ideology A system of belief or ideas
Hegemony The dominant way of thinking about society and
culture enforced by the ruling class
