Postmodernism Flashcards
The basics…
> More individual choice – Pick n Mix societies
> The rejection of metanarratives – No story line
> Participatory culture – Involved in creation
> The globalisation of protest - Media has been used effectively to fight oppression
> Cultural hybridity – Mix and Diversity
3 key scholars…
Strinati – Surface style vs depth in TV
Lyotard – Cynicism about meta narratives
Baudrillard – Decline in absolute truth
Strinati…
Strinati suggests that, post-modern TV and film become preoccupied with basic surface style and imagery, rather than deeper underlying themes, which might relate to the ‘realities’ of the human condition.
Action movies dwell on special effects, rather than strong plots and TV drama departs from realist plots of the 1960’s (which attempted to look at serious issues such as homelessness).
For example, Twin Peaks, or more recently The X Files and American Gothic.
Kaplan (1987) identified pop and rock videos as perfect examples of postmodernist culture because they abandon all notion of narrative structure – there is no attempt to ‘tell a story’, rather the power of the rock video lies purely in the collage of images mixed with music.
Lyotard…
The post-modern world is characterised by a spreading cynicism about ‘metanarratives’ or general belief systems, including world religions, political ideologies such as Socialism or Liberalism, and even science and reason.
We have become disillusioned and no longer expect the world to become a better place.
Metanarratives have partly been discredited because, in an era of global media in which we learn more and more about other peoples’ beliefs and lifestyles, it becomes less and less possible to regard one lifestyle or one belief system as the ‘true one’.
Baudrillard…
Postmodern sociologies contain the observation that in post-modernity, as opposed to modernity, we witness the decline of absolute truth and the rise of relativism, see my notes on this – where no single dominant meanings can be widely agreed on in society regarding the nature of social life.
Simulations…
In his essay. Simulations, Baudrillard attempts to explain the differences between ‘reality’ as lived by individuals in their day-to-day life, and the so-called reality portrayed by the media.
Baudrillard, like other post modernists, contends that everyday reality and media have become blurred.
Individuals obtain what they experience as real knowledge about the real world from the media, but this is actually reproduced knowledge about an entirely simulated or reproduced world.
This he calls the hyperreal. Moreover, Baudrillard views consumption not only as merely economic and material activity but also a symbolic and meaningful and status differentiating activity.
Example…
Coke at a conscious level are recommending a drink, at a secondary level, they are recommending that the drink may be fun, acceptance, romance, or whatever, and at a more general level, reinforce the belief that such consumption is ‘good’. The whole package is ‘the real thing’.
In fact, Coke is mainly coloured sweetened water and largely market researchers create the values associated with it.
Umberto Eco (1987) an Italian most modernist philosopher and literary figure, defines the hyperreal as that which is more real than real.
Hyperreal…
In using the concept of the hyperreal, some post modernists claim that increased importance of the media in contemporary society, the nature of relationships between the media and audiences is changing.
Baudrillard claims that audiences, especially of TV, have undergone rapid and profound change in their experiences.
Audiences live their real lives through simulations of reality given by the media. Thus the knowledge and experience social actors believer they have of ‘real life’ becomes indistinguishable from that given to us by the media.
An example of this was the ‘instant’ 24-hour images of warfare produced by CNN from the Gulf War.
Audiences felt that they had experienced the war themselves, yet they only did so through manufactured TV images.
Why do postmodernists talk about the media?…
According to Jameson and Baudrillard, with the decline of engineering and manufacturing in many advanced capitalist economies, the provision of the cultural and media services becomes a key economic sector.
In the UK for example, the record industry is one of the leading export sectors of the economy.
Media saturated world…
For Baudrillard, we live in a world, which is ‘media saturated’, a world in which we are bombarded by media and advertising messages through multi-channel TV, globalised electronic and cable networks, a profusion of radio stations, newspapers and street billboards.
Baudrillard argues that the consequences of this are profound. The ‘codes’ generated by the agencies of signification become our rules for organising our lives. So powerful are these codes that according to Baudrillard, that we lose the ability to distinguish between reality (for example, the real practical values of a commodity) and its image.
Thus for Baudrillard, the post modern world is dominated by ‘simulacra’ literally, false or deceptive images, in which we no longer try to distinguish reality from image, the two blur together.
Strinati’s 5 categories…
- The breakdown of the distinction between culture and society
- An Emphasis On Style at the Expense of Substance
- The Breakdown of the Distinction between Art and Popular Culture
- Confusions over Time and Space
- The Decline of Metanarratives
The breakdown of the distinction between culture and society…
Post modernism is said to describe the emergence of a social order in which the importance and power of the mass media and popular culture mean they govern and shape other forms of social relationship.
The idea is that popular culture signs and media images increasingly dominate our sense of reality, and the way we define ourselves and the world around us.
It tries to come to terms with and understand the media in society. The mass media, for example, were once thought of as holding up a mirror to, and thereby reflecting society, and thereby reflecting a wider social reality.
Reality…
Now reality can be defined by the surface reflections of that mirror. Society has become subsumed within the mass media.
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 precisely what is at issue according to postmodernists.
Linked to this is the idea that in a postmodern condition that it is more difficult to distinguish the economy from popular culture.
The realm of consumption - what we buy and what determines what we buy - is increasingly influenced by popular culture.
Consumption is increasingly bound up with popular culture because popular culture increasingly determines consumption.
Surface style…
A crucial implication is that in a post-modern culture, surfaces and styles become more important, and evoke in turn a kind of ‘designer ideology’. Alternatively, as Harvey puts it…‘images dominate narrative’.
The argument is that we increasingly consume images and signs for their own sake rather than for their ‘usefulness’ or for deeper values that they might symbolise.
Consumption…
We consume images and signs precisely because they are images and signs, and disregard their questions of usefulness and value. Consequently, qualities like artistic merit, integrity, seriousness and authenticity, realism, intellectual depth and strong narratives tend to be undermined.
Moreover, virtual reality computer graphics can allow people to experience various forms of reality second hand. These surface simulations can therefore potentially replace their real life counterparts (Virtual reality sex for example).
