Memento trailer

Levi's 'Go Forth' advert

Fever Ray-When I Grow Up

Postmodern Theory

Postmodern theory challenges the modernist’s beliefs or “master narratives” associated with “progress,” “truth,” “human improvement,” “high art,” “science,” “technology” — the assumption that these “narratives” will lead humans to a greater sense of happiness and fulfillment. Postmodern perspectives are evident in much of contemporary art, film, architecture, fiction, and music, that challenges and even parodies traditional forms. For example, the Wiseman Art Museum uses alternative designs to spoof traditional forms of box-like buildings.
A leading theorist of postmodernism is Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard posits that we are living in a word of “hyperreality” constructed largely of surface media images that challenges and undermines modernist notions of reality and truth. Douglas Kellner summarizes his thinking.
Baudrillard’s analyses point to a significant reversal of the relation between representation and reality. Previously, the media were believed to mirror, reflect, or represent reality, whereas now the media are coming to constitute a (hyper)reality, a new media reality — “more real than real” — where “the real” is subordinate to representation leading to an ultimate dissolving of the real. In addition, in “The Implosion of Meaning in the Media,” Baudrillard claims that the proliferation of signs and information in the media obliterates meaning through neutralizing and dissolving all content — a process which leads both to a collapse of meaning and the destruction of distinctions between media and reality. In a society supposedly saturated with media messages, information and meaning “implode,” collapsing into meaningless “noise,” pure effect without content or meaning. Thus, for Baudrillard: “information is directly destructive of meaning and signification, or neutralizes it. The loss of meaning is directly linked to the dissolving and dissuasive action of information, the media, and the mass media .... Information devours its own contents; it devours communication and the social .... information dissolves meaning and the social into a sort of nebulous state leading not at all to a surfeit of innovation but to the very contrary, to total entropy” (SSM, pp. 96-100).
Baudrillard cites the example of Disney World as an artificial construction of reality:
At Disney World in Orlando, they are even building an identical replica of the Los Angeles Disneyland, as a sort of historical attraction to the second degree, a simulacrum to the second power. It is the same thing that CNN did with the Gulf War: a prototypical event which did not take place, because it took place in real time, in CNN’s instantaneous mode. Today, Disney could easily revisit the Gulf War as a worldwide show. The Red Army choirs have already celebrated Christmas at Euro Disney. Everything is possible, and everything is recyclable in the polymorphous universe of virtuality. Everything can be bought over. There is no reason why Disney would not take over the human genome, which, by the way, is already being resequenced, to turn it into a genetic show. In the end [au fond], they would cryogenize the entire planet, just like Walt Disney himself who decided to be cryogenized in a nitrogen solution, waiting for some kind of resurrection in the real world. But there is no real world anymore, not even for Walt Disney. If one day he wakes up, he'll no doubt have the biggest surprise of his life. Meanwhile, from the bottom of his nitrogen solution he continues to colonize the world — both the imaginary and the real — in the spectral universe of virtual reality, inside which we all have become extras [figurants]. The difference is that when we put on our digital suits, plug in our sensorial captors, or press the keys of our virtual reality arcade, we enter live spectrality whereas Disney, the genial anticipator, has entered the virtual reality of death.
The New World Order is in a Disney mode. But Disney is not alone in this mode of cannibalistic attraction. We saw Benetton with his commercial campaigns, trying to recuperate the human drama of the news (AIDS, Bosnia, poverty, apartheid) by transfusing reality into a New Mediatic Figuration (a place where suffering and commiseration end in a mode of interactive resonance). The virtual takes over the real as it appears, and then replicates it without any modification [le recrache tel quel], in a pret-a-porter (ready-to-wear) fashion.
If this operation can be so successful in creating a universal fascination with only a tint of moral disapproval, it is because reality itself, the world itself, with its frenzy of cloning has already been transformed into an interactive performance, some kind of Lunapark for ideologies, technologies, works, knowledge, death, and even destruction. All this is likely to be cloned and resurrected in a juvenile museum of Imagination or a virtual museum of Information.
Click here for more material on Baudrillard.
Michael Real (1996) outlines some of the basic qualities of postmodernism:
Pastiche — combining together different styles and content from different periods within the same text, creating unusual combinations of borrowed styles from different eras. Music videos use a montage of images n from classic films, advertising, television, or rap, and filmed with unusual, non-traditional techniques.
breakdowns of master narratives featuring the final triumph of good over evil through science or human problem-solving, as well as a clear distinction between reality and fiction. This is evident in much of contemporary fiction by DeLillo, Carver, and Atwood, as well as films: Blue Velvet, Pulp Fiction, Mulholland Drive, Run Lola Run, and Memento, and the television series, Twin Peaks. The texts continually elude definitive interpretation of “true meanings,” by parodying and playing with alternative narrative development and assumptions about the meaning of images. The seemingly tranquil town in Blue Velvet is anything but tranquil. Pulp Fiction plays with three different versions of a crime story as borrowed from detective novels and B-crime films. Mulholland Drive, Run Lola Run, and Memento create alternative narratives around the same events, challenging audience assumptions about “what really happened.” Mulholland Drive portrays one version of events based on the traditional story of the innocent female who arrives in Hollywood to become a successful movie star, only to juxtapose that story against a darker version of the same events. Run Lola Run portrays three different versions of the same event. And Memento shows events occurring in reverse, dealing with issues of memory and time. Challenging traditional narratives or ways of knowing conveys the important role of the media in shaping perceptions of reality — that experience as mediated through media images and discourses.
the ways in communication technology creates mass reproduction of texts, creating copies for which there is no original, what Baudrillard (1983) described as a “hyperreality” based on simulation of reality. Much of contemporary art plays with the idea of endless copies or parodying of texts that only create a simulation of reality that focuses on the image or surface of reality. The sculpture, Jeff Koons, creates glossy statues of pop stars such as Michael Jackson, that parody the constant reproduction of pop star images.
the domination of conspicuous consumerism in which everything is commodified or commercialized; to some degree, postmodernism both celebrates and parodies consumer products, as evident in Target ads portraying multiple images of consumer products.
the fragmentation of sensibility and the plurality or multiplicity of perspectives evident in the often random juxtaposition of images in music videos or contemporary art. Films such as Pulp Fiction parodies different versions of reality by using a lot of references to images from previous films, including the image of John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever. This fragmentation and focus on surface images creates self-reflexivity — the need to reflect on the lack of coherent meaning, as well as an ironic humor.
The Po-Mo Page: discussion of different aspects of postmodern theory
Introduction guide to postmodern theory [Dino Felluga]
The Postmodern Turn: Paradigm Shifts in Theory, Culture, and Science
Postmodernism and the Media, Andreas Saugstad
The Simpsons as a postmodern text
Postmodernism and Science Fiction Films
The journal, Postmodern Culture

Dominic Strinati quotes

"Postmodernism tries to come to terms with and understand a media-saturated society. The mass media, for example, 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 surface reflection of the mirror" (1995)

"Media images encourage superficiality rather than substance, cynicism rather than belief, the thirst for constant change rather than security of stable traditions, the desires of the moment rather than the truths of history" (1992)

"Postmodernism is sceptical of any absolute, universal and all-embracing claim to knowledge and argues that theories or doctrines which make such claims are increasingly open to criticism, contestation and doubt" (1992)

Pulp Fiction final scene

I've included this clip as it's a very important part of the film. Jules delivers his Ezekiel 25:17 speech again. This time he knows what it means. Interesting to note that we end the film with Vincent still alive. Why did Tarantino end the film in this way?

Kung Fu

In Pulp Fiction's final scene in the coffee shop a reference is made to Jules wandering the earth like Kaine from Kung Fu. The clip shows Kaine (David Carradine) meeting with Master Po.

Superfly trailer

Shaft trailer

Blaxploitation posters

Examples of the promotional posters from three of the most famous blaxploitation films: Shaft, Foxy Brown and Superfly.

Blaxploitation-a definition

Blaxploitation is a film genre that emerged in the United States in the early 1970s when many exploitation films were made that targeted the urban black audience; the word itself is a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation." Blaxploitation films were the first to feature soundtracks of funk and soul music. These films starred primarily black actors. Variety magazine credited Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song with the invention of the blaxploitation genre. Others argue that the Hollywood-financed film Shaft is closer to being blaxploitation, and thus, is more likely to have begun the genre

The Mason-Dixon line

The Mason-Dixon Line (or "Mason and Dixon's Line") was surveyed between 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in the resolution of a border dispute between British colonies in Colonial America. It forms a demarcation line among four U.S. states, forming part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia (then part of Virginia). In popular usage, especially since the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (apparently the first official use of the term "Mason's and Dixon's Line"), the Mason-Dixon Line symbolizes a cultural boundary between the Northern United States and the Southern United States (Dixie).

Seven Samurai trailer

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre trailer

The Untouchables baseball bat scene

The Toolbox Murders trailer

Marilyn Monroe-The Seven Year itch

The iconic sequence from The Seven Year Itch. Recreated by Tarantino in the Jack Rabbit Slim scene in Pulp Fiction.

Louise Brooks

Louise Brooks in a promo still from GW Pabst's Pandora's Box.

Pulp Fiction intertextuality

Jules quoting from the Bible is reminiscent of Robert Mitchum's character quoting from the Bible in Night Of The Hunter (1955 Charles Laughton)

Mia's haircut styled after Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box (1928 G.W. Pabst)

The moment where Butch waiting at a crossroads in his car has his path crossed by Marcellus Wallace is a direct reference to the moment in Psycho (1960 Alfred Hitchcock) when Marion Crane sees her boss walk in front of her car after fleeing from him, having stolen $40,000.


Marilyn Monroe's skirt flying up over a subway grating in The Seven Year Itch (1955 Billy Wilder)

The weapons that Butch considers before saving Marsellus:

Hammer—The Toolbox Murders (1978)
Baseball bat—Walking Tall (1973); The Untouchables (1987)
Chainsaw—The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974);The Evil Dead II (1987)
Katana (samurai sword)—many, including Seven Samurai (1954); The Yakuza (1975); Shogun Assassin (1980)

Pulp Fiction-Ezekiel 25:17

A key scene from Pulp Fiction. Jules delivers his monologue to a very foolish character who has crossed his boss Marcellus Wallace.

“ The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee. ”

Ezekiel 25:17

The Smashing Pumpkins-Tonight,Tonight & Le voyage dans la lune-George Méliès

'Tonight, Tonight' a track from the 1995 double album 'Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness'. The video takes its inspiration from "Le voyage dans la lune" by George Méliès. The film is the first ever example in the science fiction genre. The film is included below for your consideration. What is remarkable is that an idea thought noteworthy and groundbreaking in 1902 can find an audience through a new version, in a new setting 90 plus years later. It has a certain melancholy charm that works well with the song.

Preliminary Task Evaluation Questions

1. Who did you work with and how did you manage the task between you?

2. How did you plan your sequence? What element did you use for your inspiration?

3. What technology did you use to complete the task, and how did you use it?

4. What factors did you have to take into account when planning, shooting and editing?

5. How successful was your sequence/magazine cover? Identify what worked well, and with hindsight, what would you improve/do differently?

6. What have you learnt from completing this task? Looking ahead, how will this learning be significant when completing the rest of your foundation coursework?

Black Lips-O Katrina

Worth including for the simplicity of the images, the editing, the use of colour and the brilliant song.

Analysing Music Video

QUESTIONS FOR CLOSE TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

Girl Talk-mashups

Gregg Michael Gillis better known by his stage name Girl Talk, is an American musician specializing in mashups and digital sampling. I've include a couple of the mashup videos for his last cd "Feed The Animals." The tracks are Play Your Part and Still Here. Still Here was one of Pitchfork.com's (influential music site-see link) top 40 videos of 2008.

Seinfeld-Frogger

George from Seinfeld tries to cross the road in the style of the frog from the famous video game. The birds eye view shot even replicates the view from the original game. A great example of intertextuality.

John Travolta's dancing skills

Saturday Night Fever (1977)



Grease (1978)



Pulp Fiction (1994)


Quentin Tarantino cast John Travolta in the role of Vincent Vega after Michael Madsen turned it down. The film revitalised Travolta's career. He was nominated for an Academy Award and was feted by the Hollywood elite. The Jack Rabbit Slim segment seems to refer back to Travolta's (the actor) prowess as a dancer.

The Royal Tenenbaums (opening sequence)

Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard (July 27, 1929 – March 6, 2007) was a French cultural theorist, sociologist, philosopher, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.

Hyperreality-A Defintion

The central idea is that there is no longer a distinction between reality and its representing image, or simulacrum.

Baudrillard introduced the idea of hyperreality. He claimed that Disneyland is the best example for understanding how our reality works in the postmodern world - a place which is at the same time a real physical space, but also clearly a fictional, representational world.

You are familiar with basic semiotic ideasthat signs represent ideas, people or places. For Baudrillard, there is now only surface meaning; there is no longer any 'original' thing for the sign to represent - the sign is the meaning.

We inhabit a society made up entirely of simulacra-simulations of reality which replace any 'pure' relality. '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 sensse of the world in postmodern times.

From OCR Media Studies For A2. Author Julian McDougall.