Postmodern Media Precis (pages 136-167)

Summery of Postmodern Media:

Postmodern media is simply a new way of looking at the media world, its the way we inteprate media products.

Pain Pipesh - a usefull way of remembering what defins postmoderisim

Parody: A text which does not simply imitate the style of another (pastiche) but instead is transformative in that it eaither mocks or shifts in some way the origonal text's convestions. e.g Family guy's 'something something something dark side'
Aesthetic: Visual appearance, related to taste e.g cinematography in blade runner aposed to Ugly betty or Glee
Intertextual: The chain of signification in which texts make references to one another. When one text refers to another it is called "intertextual" while "intermedial" describes a media form which relies on understanding and experience of other media (e.g film and music) to make meaning.
Nihilistic: Total rejection of established laws and institutions e.g breaking the 4th wall
Plays: Playing with the genera conventions, can make the media funny.
Irony: e.g "50 first dates". Adam Sandlers' character doesn't want to establish a lasting relationship until he meets Drew Barrymore's character who has no long term memory
Pastiche: Like Parody is a form of humor directly imatating another subject.
Eclectism:Drawing upon multiple style or genres. Often contrasting. This can be found in black comedies.
Self-referential: refering to themselfs.
Hyperreality: Something that is hyper-real over real, can be confuzing to watch if media is film or tv.

Some basic postmodern ideas:

• Rejects the idea that a media product of text is of any greater value than another. All judgements of value are merely taste. Anything can be art, anything can deserve to reach an audience, and culture "eats itsself" as there is no longer anything new to produce or distribute.
• 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 exsits 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