Production TheoriesSanjana Nahar

Postmodernism is expressed through several techniques, the techniques of postmodernism that may appear in music videos include : Parody - An imitation of the style of a genre, artist or writer with exaggeration for a comedic effect. An example of this would be the song “82” by Shane Dawson, which is a direct parody of the Taylor Swift song “22”, Dawson even has someone featured in the song who is made to look like Taylor Swift. Intertextuality - A media product refers to another, usually through subtle homage. An example of this would be the Katy Perry song, ‘Last Friday Night’. There are credits at the start and end, creating a movie like effect, and each of the people appearing in the song are dressed in 80s fashion, moreover, briefly on the computer screen, there is a page for the social network site, ‘friendplace’, a brief not to facebook. Pastiche - Imitates the style of the work of one or more other artists. However pastiche celebrates, the work rather than mocks. An example would be ‘Hey Ya’ by OutKast, the setting of the music video imitates a Beatle's performance in 1964 performance on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’. Hyperconsciousness - A text’s awareness of itself. An example is the video for ‘Who’s Laughing Now’ by Jessie J, the artist plays over-exaggerated, stereotypical characters, but you can tell that each new character, is the artist dressed up. Fourth Wall breaking - The character or artist becomes aware of it’s audience and addresses them. An example of this would be in the Shawn Mendes video for ‘Something Big’, Mendes maintains eye contact with the camera throughout a vast majority of the video, and continuously walks towards it, as though he is directly addressing the audience. Homage - To pay tribute or respect. Marilin Manson’s ‘Dope Hat’, created a video inspired by the 1970’s movie. ‘Willy

Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’, and made a bizarre and unsettling adaption of the film.

New Americana by Halsey. In the music video for New Americana by the artist Halsey, it is clear that there are elements of post-modernism involved. For instance, upon first glance of the video, it is clear that the video has been influenced by young adult movies such as Divergent, The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner, due to the dystopian/post-apocalyptic aesthetic that the video has. Everything from the costume to the narrative of the video has been influenced by the movies. The narrative of the video itself, a young rebel leader is captured by a larger figure of power and is then rescued by their own people, this is paying subtle homage to these movies and potentially even their novels. The song itself, describes the normalization of counterculture (a subculture whose values/norms of behaviour differ from those of mainstream society, often in opposition of mainstream social norms.) such as the recreational use of marijuana and same-sex marriage. Moreover, the song in itself is a parody, the lyrics differ widely from Halsey’s other songs and the artist herself stated that she wrote a song criticizing pop culture whilst making it sound like a pop song. She also stated that she was making fun of pop culture thus drawing in the parody trope.