Post Modern Media

Post-modern media [1950’s – now ?]

Features of a post-modern society

·         State of hyperreality (media reality is more real than reality)(simulacra)

·         Style over substance ad content (looks good, means nothing)

·         High and low culture – breakdown of distinction

·         Decline of meta-narrative

·         Death of the author – Roland Barnes

·         Subjective over objective

·         Multiple realities

Post-modern = after/against modernism

“there is not definition of post-modernism because we are still living in a post-modern era”

·         Rise of the mass media

·         Magazines/newspaper

·         Advertising

·         Digital media à no one’s had this before so it helps define post modernism

Exploring the nature and impact
how the key concepts

Modernism looked forward – radio, cinema
everything’s been done in post-moderism: narrative e.c.t so no narrative is now new (e.g. western, romance, aliens)

One main feature of post-modernism is nostalgia
it looks to the past
intertextuality – refers to old texts that have been created and mixes them up to make something new (e.g. western + aliens = alien westerns)

Criticism – philosophers only base their ideas on America and western societies (not Africa and Asia e.c.t.) because they argue that those places are the most advanced

Rene Magrite – ‘the treachery of images’ (pipe painting)

We all get out information about everything from media. It no longer reflects society as it is reality and society
New media

Theorists

·         Jean Baudrilard (hyperreality)

·         Jean Francois (yotard)(meta-narratives)

·         Fredrick Jameson (commodification of culture)

·         Strinati (media is society)

What is post modernism?

·         A series of ideas

·         Greeks love nature (classicism)

·         Nature is perfect (neoclassicism)

·         Scientists wanted to prove it is perfect

·         Feelings are more important that facts (romanticism)

·         Modernism and post-modernism

Technology leads to progress                                        mixes ideas up
fixed ideas                                                                            (backwards narratives)
1 channel in 1950s tv                                                         irony – key feature                                                                                                             100’s channels on tv now

Society fragmented – people define themselves through more things now like hair colour, music taste, fashion e.c.t.
meta-narrative – single organising structure e.g. the church/religion
the decline of the meta-narrative – no one goes to church like they used to anymore
we don’t challenge the media representation

Post-modern aesthetic is the look over meaning/style over substance

In the past there was a clear distinction between high and low culture. High culture was more important and now there is none

Classicism Neo – classicism (the Enlightenment) romanticism modernism

Marxism                                                                               
Nietche à ‘God is dead’
Freud

We are living in post-modernity

Post-war Europe – the cold war (WWII)
industrialised murder
rationalised thoughts brought murder and war
                                 ^--and enlightenment
Cold war
Two opposite (places) meta-narratives (west vs east)

Vietnam war – sent people to war
                          - camera crews able to film the war & broadast back to USA  
Segregation