OCR Media Studies – A2

Critical Perspectives: themes

Critical Perspectives:

‘We Media’ and Democracy Media in the Online Age

Postmodern Media Contemporary Media Regulation Media and the Collective Identity

Global Media

Postmodern MediaOver the next term we will be studying the critical

perspective – Postmodern Media and looking at a range of examples from different media to try to work

out what it is all about.

By the time you complete this section you will be able to understand a range of theories relating to postmodern

media and will be able to apply those theories to specific texts which we will have studied. You will be tested on this critical perspective in the A2 exam and

the question may look something like this…

Unit G325: Critical Perspectives in Media – Section B Contemporary Media Issues

Postmodern Media Specimen Questions Discuss two or more media texts that you

would define as ‘postmodern’ and explain why you would give them this label. Cover

at least two media in your answer.Or

Consider the ways in which postmodern media challenge conventional relations between audience and text. Refer to at least two media forms in your answer.

Back to the Beginning

So now you know the outcomes lets start at the beginning….

Aim: To gain an understanding of what the term ‘postmodern’ actually means and how it relates to a range

of media texts.

Dictionary Definition of Postmodernism

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary refers to postmodernism as "a style

and concept in the arts characterized by a distrust of theories and

ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions."

Postmodern Media An Introduction from the Media Studies Text Book

OCR Media Studies for A2 – Julian McDougall

Postmodernists claim that in a media-saturated world, where we are constantly

immersed in media, 24/7 – and on the move, at work, at home – the distinction

between reality and the media representation of it becomes blurred or

even entirely invisible to us. In other words, we no longer have any sense of the

difference between real things and images of them, or real experiences and

simulations of them. Media reality is the new reality.

Some see this as a historical development: the modern period came before, during which

artists experimented with the representation of reality, and the postmodern comes next,

where this idea of representation gets ‘remixed’, played around with, through

pastiche, parody and intertextual references – where the people that make texts deliberately expose their nature as

constructed texts and make no attempt to pretend that they are ‘realist’.

Others say that postmodernism is just a new way of thinking about media, when really it has always been this way. One of these is Strinati (An Introduction to

Theories of Popular Culture 2005:224)The mass media…were once thought of as holding up a

mirror to, and thereby reflecting, a wider social reality. Now that reality is only definable in terms of the surface

reflections of that mirror. 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 basically what is at issue.

Postmodern Ideas

Postmodern media rejects the idea that any media product or text is of any

greater value than another. All judgements are merely taste.

Anything can be art, anything can deserve to reach an audience, and culture ‘eats itself’ as there is no

longer anything new to produce or distribute.

Cont.

The distinction between media and reality has collapsed, and we know 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 exists before the image represents it – this is the

state of hyperreality.

Cont.

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.

Philosophers within the Postmodern Movement

Baudrillard and Lyotard (not to be confused with the outfit you wear for gymnastics!) Both men are now deceased but during

their life they offered different theories of what postmodernism was.

What they shared was a belief that the idea of truth needs to be ‘deconstructed’ so that we can challenge the dominant ideas that

people claim as truth, which Lyotard describes as ‘grand narratives’.

Postmodern Theories cont.

In the postmodern world, media texts make visible and challenge ideas of

truth and reality, removing the illusion that stories, texts or images can ever

accurately or neutrally reproduce reality or truth. So we get the idea that there are always competing

versions of the truth and reality, and postmodern media products will

engage with this idea.

Critics of these theories and beliefs It is important to understand that many people see

Baudrillard and Lyotard’s views as offensive and hard to reconcile with their belief systems.

It can be seen as a whimsical luxury to question and play with the idea of truth and something that people

who live in countries such as Iraq, Tibet and Zimbabwe cannot do – they have to contest on a daily basis the existence of truth, justice and human rights.

Some people also find the idea of rejecting their ‘grand narrative’ goes against their whole religious

beliefs and moral principles.

Hyperreality and Baudrillard – Julian McDougall OCR Media Text Book

You should be familiar with the basic semiotic ideas – that signs represent

ideas, people or places. For Baudrillard, there is only the surface

meaning; there is no longer any ‘original’ thing for a sign to represent – the sign is the meaning. We inhabit a society made up wholly of simulacra – simulations of reality which replace

any ‘pure’ reality.

McDougall Cont.

‘Pure’ reality is thus replaced by the hyperreal where any boundary

between the real and the imaginary is eroded. Baudrillard’s work is an

attempt to expose the ‘open secret’ that this is how we live and make sense of the world in postmodern times. As you can imagine, he is considered a pretty controversial

philosopher.

Baudrillard – A Postmodern Philosopher (1929-2007)

Baudrillard wrote a philosophical treatise called ‘Simulacra and Simulation’

Simulacra and Simulation is most known for its discussion of images, signs, and

how they relate to the present day. Baudrillard claims that modern society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that the

human experience is of a simulation of reality rather than reality itself.

The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are signs of culture and media that

create the perceived reality; Baudrillard believed that society has

become so reliant on simulacra that it has lost contact with the real world on

which the simulacra are based.

Simulacra and SimulationSimulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra

and identifies each with a historical period:

First orderassociated with the pre-modern period, where the image is

clearly an artificial placemarker for the real item. Second order

associated with the industrial Revolution, where distinctions between image and reality break down due to the

proliferation of mass-produced copies. The item's ability to imitate reality threatens to replace the original

version. Third order

associated with the postmodern age, where the simulacrum precedes the original and the distinction between reality

and representation breaks down. There is only the simulacrum.

Baudrillard theorizes the lack of distinctions between reality and simulacra originates in

several phenomena:

Contemporary media including television, film, print and the Internet, which are responsible for blurring

the line between goods that are needed and goods for which a need is created by commercial images.

Exchange value, in which the value of goods is based on money rather than usefulness.

Multinational capitalism, which separates produced goods from the plants, minerals and other original materials and the processes used to create them.

Urbanization, which separates humans from the natural world.

Language and ideology, in which language is used to obscure rather than reveal reality when used by

dominant, politically powerful groups

Baudrillard’s Famous Assertion…

Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the ‘real’ country, all of real

America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social; in its entirety, it its banal

omnipresence, which is Carceral).Banal = commonplace

Omnipresence = present everywhereCarceral = A Carceral state is a state

modelled on the idea of a prison

He goes on to say…That Disneyland (with its Pirates, Frontier, and

Future World fantasy set-ups)is presented as imaginary in order to make us

believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America

surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. It

is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of

concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality

principle.

The Disneyland imaginary is neither true nor false; it is a deterrence machine

set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real.

Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (1983)

With such reasoning, he characterised the present age — following Ludwig

Feuerbach and Guy Debord — as one of "hyperreality" where the real object has

been effaced or superseded, by the signs of its existence. Such an

assertion — the one for which he is most criticised — is typical of his "fatal

strategy" of attempting to push his theories of society beyond themselves.

Rather than saying, that our hysteria surrounding pedophilia is such that we

no longer really understand what childhood is anymore, Baudrillard argued

that "the Child no longer exists". Similarly, rather than arguing — as did

Susan Sontag in her book On Photography — that the notion of reality has been complicated by the profusion

of images of it, Baudrillard asserted: "the real no longer exists".

Postmodern Media Texts

There are many examples of texts or products which deliberately set out to

explore and play with this state of hyperreality. These texts are said to be intertextual and self-referential –

they break the rules of realism to explore the nature of their own status as constructed texts. In other words,

they seek not to represent reality, but to present media reality.

Examples We Will Look At Televised images of the 911 attacks on the World Trade

Center The Matrix and Blade Runner

The music of DJ Shadow An advert for Cadbury

The films of Michael Winterbottom, the Coen brothers, and Wong Kar-wai

Postmodern TV such as Big Brother; The Mighty Boosh; the television of Ricky Gervais; The Wire and Echo

Beach/Moving Wallpaper Postmodern magazine readers

Grand Theft Auto as a postmodern video game Second Life as the ultimate hyperreal media experience

Postmodern Film

We will begin our investigation of postmodern media texts looking at a selection of films which are thought

to reflect the ideas of postmodernism

Postmodern Film

Postmodernist film can be seen to voice the ideas of postmodernism through the cinematic medium. Postmodernist film upsets the mainstream conventions of

narrative structure and characterization and destroys (or, at least, toys with) the

audience's suspension of disbelief to create a work in which a less-recognizable

internal logic forms the film's means of expression.

By making small but significant changes to the conventions of cinema, the

artificiality of the experience and the world presented are emphasised in the

audience's mind in order to remove them from the conventional emotional link they have to the subject matter, and to give them a new view of it.

An example is Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People in which the character based on Tony Wilson frequently breaks out of the constructed world of the film

and talks directly to the audience straight through the camera lens. Jarring in effect, it suggests the characters' pre-

occupation with breaking free of the cultural and economic constructions of

the world they live in.

Winterbottom's postmodernist effect, however, is hardly new: Federico Fellini, among other master

filmmakers, used it memorably in Satyricon (1969) and Amarcord (1973).

David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001) exploits postmodernist aesthetics to an unusual degree

while Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is considered an example of Postmodernist film

because of a range of techniques used.

The Matrix – A Postmodern Film?

We are going to watch ‘The Matrix’ and try to pick out aspects of the film which make

it a postmodern film.Think about:

the narrative structure the idea of changing established

conventions Drawing the viewers attention to the

construction of the film – ‘bullet time’ sequences

Taking existing ideas from earlier films and using them in a different way –

paying homage Suggestions it makes about society and

its troubles

The Matrix

The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by

Larry and Andy Wachowski and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence

Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving.

It was first released in the USA on March 31, 1999, and is the first entry in The Matrix series of films, comics, video

games, and animation.

Box Office Info

It earned $171 million in the U.S. and $460 million worldwide, and later became the first DVD to sell more than three million copies in

the U.S. The Ultimate Matrix Collection was released on

HD DVD on May 22, 2007 and on Blu-ray on October 14, 2008.

The movie is also scheduled to be released stand alone in a 10th anniversary edition on Blu-ray in the Digibook format on March 31,

2009, 10 years to the day after the movie was released theatrically.

The Matrix was a co-production of Warner Bros. Studios and Australian Village Roadshow

Pictures, and all but a few scenes were filmed at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia, and in the

city itself. Recognizable landmarks were not included in

order to maintain the setting of a generic American city. Nevertheless, the Sydney

Harbour Bridge, Anzac bridge, AWA Tower, Martin Place and a Commonwealth Bank

branch are visible in some shots, as is signage on buildings for the Sydney offices of Telstra

and IBM Corporation among others.

Other clues remain, such as the sign next to the elevator in the famed lobby scene reading "do

not use lift during fire." (as opposed to elevator); and the "Authorised Personnel Only" sign (American spelling would be Authorized Personnel Only) on the door of the rooftop of

the building where Morpheus was kept. In addition, in some scenes, traffic flow on the left

hand side can be observed, which is another give-away for the filming location.

In Postmodern thought, interpretations of The Matrix often reference Baudrillard's

philosophy to demonstrate that the movie is an allegory for contemporary

experience in a heavily commercialized, media-driven society, especially of the

developed countries. This influence was brought to the public's attention through

the writings of art historians such as Griselda Pollock and film theorists such

as Heinz-Peter Schwerfel.

The Wachowski Brothers were keen that all involved understood the thematic

background of the movie. For example, the book used to conceal disks early in the movie, Simulacra and Simulation, a 1981 work by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, was required reading for most of the

principal cast and crew.

The Matrix makes many connections to Simulacra and Simulation. In an early scene, Simulacra and

Simulation is the book in which Neo hides his illicit software. In the film, the chapter 'On Nihilism' is in

the middle, rather than the end of the book. Morpheus also refers to the real world outside of the

Matrix as the "desert of the real", which was directly referenced in the Slavoj Žižek work, Welcome to the Desert of the Real. In the original script, Morpheus

referenced Baudrillard's book specifically. Keanu Reeves was asked by the directors to read

the book, as well as Out of Control and Evolution Psychology, before being cast as Neo.

Merrin – Baudrillard and the Media (2005:131)

The Matrix has us. Our consumption of the films, the merchandise, and the world and

myth the Wachowskis sell us, and our collective orgasm over the effects and

phones, guns, shades and leather, represent our integration into the virtuality

it promotes. The Matrix became a viral meme spreading through and being

mimetically (mimicked i.e. copied) and absorbed into modern culture, extending

our virtualisation.

Merrin cont.

Just as the film offered the stark choice of being inside or outside the matrix so you were either inside or outside the zeitgeist

(the spirit of the times). To paraphrase Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. As

Baudrillard makes clear, however, its fans and public are caught in a similarly invisible matrix that is far greater than depicted in the film, and that the film itself is part of

and extends.

Other Postmodern Influences

The film describes a future in which reality perceived by humans is actually the Matrix: a

simulated reality created by sentient machines in order to pacify and subdue the human population while their bodies' heat and

electrical activity are used as an energy source. Upon learning this, computer programmer "Neo" is drawn into a rebellion against the

machines. The film contains many references to the cyberpunk and hacker subcultures;

philosophical and religious ideas; and homages to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Hong

Kong action cinema and Spaghetti Westerns.

Challenging Film Making Conventions

The film is known for popularizing the use of a visual effect known as "bullet time", which allows the viewer to explore a moment

progressing in slow-motion as the camera appears to orbit around the scene at normal speed.

One proposed technique for creating these effects involved propelling a high speed camera along a fixed track with a

rocket to capture the action as it occurred. However, this was discarded as unfeasible, because not only was the destruction of the camera in the attempt all but inevitable, but the camera

would also be almost impossible to control at such speeds. Instead, the method used was a technically expanded version

of an old art photography technique known as time-slice photography, in which a large number of cameras are placed

around an object and triggered nearly simultaneously.

The evolution of photogrametric and image-based computer-generated background

approaches in The Matrix's bullet time shots set the stage for later innovations unveiled in the sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Virtual Cinematography (CGI-

rendered characters, locations, and events) and the high-definition "Universal Capture" process

completely replaced the use of still camera arrays, thus more closely realizing the "virtual

camera". This film overcame the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace by winning the

Academy Award for Visual Effects

Half-Term Homework

Discuss the concept of postmodernism as you understand it so far, and link

your ideas to The Matrix to show how it can be read

as a postmodern film.

You should write about one to two sides of A4

This is due in on Monday 8th June