Postmodernism Within The Midnight Beast

First Postmodern Question Plan.

"Postmodern media manipulate time and space". To what extent does this definition apply to texts you have studied?"


Task One - My opinion in 26 words.
Postmodernism media manipulates everything. Time and space within 'Inglorious Basterds' and 'Inception' manipulates time and space within film; postmodernism media has the potential to manipulate everything.

Lesson Six Homework - Bricolage Images.

 

Lesson Six Homework - Uncool Playlist

Fuck - Bring Me The Horizon (Heavy Metal)
What Did You Expect? - Neck Deep (Alternative)
Circle The Drain - Katy Perry (Pop)
Last Friday Night - Katy Perry (Pop)
Home/Sick - Heart In Hand (Rock)
Destabalise - Enter Shikari (Rock)
Jumping Ship - Counterparts (Rock)
Far Q - Lower Than Atlantis (Alternative)
Warrior - Blitz Kids (Alternative)
Blessed With A Curse - Bring Me The Horizon (Heavy Metal)
Deadliest Catch - Lower Than Atlantis (Alternative)
Call Me Hopeless, But Not Romantic - Mayday Parade (Alternative)

The postmodern meaning to my uncool playlist

There is no "cool" anymore, it is impossible to be "cool", people are too opinionative for there to be a right and a wrong in what is "cool". My playlist to someone else may seem unusual or different and not of their taste, but it is not "uncool". The phrase "cool" is unusable anymore as it has lost all of its meaning due to it being over analysed and used. Some may associate myself to have an unusual playlist as there are Heavy Metal Songs as well as Pop Songs.
Due to music being so easy to reach with online streaming, YouTube and iTunes, it is easy to have no knowledge of any music genres as being separate. It is entirely possible for everyone to be interested in all music genres and not generalising them into categories and sub-categories. Would it not have been for the internet enabling me to reach out to find more genres, then I would still just be a fan of Pop music, and only like specific artists and it would be very difficult for my knowledge and understanding of music to expand.

Lesson Four, Five and Six - Inception

Post Modern elements of inception

·         Intertextual references

-          Refers to itself, constant links from other parts in the film.

-          Sai Tao at the other side of the table to Comp at the beginning of the film and end.

-          Several people waking up in the Sea at different times.

-          The room code, Females phone number and Safe code all being the same number.

-          Paradox’s (two conflicting ideas which cannot co-exist) The stairs, and not knowing if they are asleep or awake.

·         Textual reference, the old man at the end linking to a Hospital in another film.

·         There are 6 Grand Narratives within the film and all of them interconnect and show different genres, which is what makes it postmodern.

·         He questions what time is. Time is not linear. Time has just happened. Time is an event. A fallacy. Everything has already happened.

·         Simulacrum.

·         The original cut shows that the spinning top falls over whereas in the final cut it is left as a cliff hanger.

·         The film has no depth.

Lesson Three - Homework

I shall embed the videos in ASAP

Three – The Pony

Cadburys – The Eyebrows

O2 – Be More Dog

Postmodernism in adverts involves not showing the product, creating an image of something completely different to what you would expect for the product of the advertisement. It involves being weird for the sake of being weird, creating something which will make people remember it. Therefore when they talk about it with their peers and therefore they receive free advertising through word of mouth.

Jean-Francois Lyotard

“Lyotard rejected what he called the “grand narratives” or universal “meta-narratives.”

Principally, the grand narratives refer to the great theories of history, science, religion, politics. For example, Lyotard rejects the ideas that everything is knowable by science or that as history moves forward in time, humanity makes progress. He would reject universal political ‘solutions’ such as communism or capitalism. He also rejects the idea of absolute freedom.

In studying media texts it is possible also to apply this thinking to a rejection of the Western moralistic narratives of Hollywood film where good triumphs over evil, or where violence and exploitation are suppressed for the sake of public decency.

Lyotard favours ‘micronarratives’ that can go in any direction, that reflect diversity, that are unpredictable.”

Lesson Three - Simulacrum and authenticity

“Adverts are creating copies of copies so you too can aspire to a lifestyle that doesn't exist via a romantic connection to a product. You can now hear songs which sound like songs reminding you of memories you've never had and the emotions (which you've never experienced) connected to these memories."

5 + 5 = 1 on PoMo advertising

-          Create experiences which haven’t happened

-          Makes audiences question their belief

-          Play on viewers emotions making us forget it is not real

-          Products image based

-          Attempt to mimic pre-existing ideas

·         Experiences

·         Question

·         Emotions

·         Image

·         Mimic 

……UNOBTAINABLE

Lesson Two - Introduction into Patents, Hyper Reality and Image Rich.

Patent / Copyrights / Law Suits = PoMo

Hyper-Reality

Fractured identity, certainties of class, gender, place fade. Emphasis on lifestyle means identity is dynamic. Globalisation and the internet. Ethnicity, race, sexuality, age are not all recognised as significant. Everything is equal.

Levi Strauss

Saw any text as constructed out of socially recognisable ‘debris’ from other texts. He saw that writers construct texts from other texts by a process of: Addition, deletion, substitution and transportation.

Image Rich

-          Style over substance

-          Hyper reality – an image, aspiring to look / be perfect

-          Representations dominate

-          Simulacra; Everything is a copy

-          Boundaries between high and low culture no longer fixed

-          Everything is replaced by a copy.

Lesson One / Two - Everything Is A Remix.

Underlined questions are still to be answered.

1.What is a remix?

To combine / edit to create something new.

2.What style of music was it most commonly associated with?

Hip-Hop

3.Who and what did the Sugar Hill gang sample?

Bass/Riffs

4.Which two other artists have used the same sample?

Father MC / Will Smith / Daft Punk

5.Which band formed in 1968?

Led Zepplin

6.What term is coined in Paris in 1961?

Heavy Metal

7.What novel did it come from and who wrote it?

William Burrows

8.What were the band formed in 1968 labeled as?

Rip Offs

9.“Stairway to Heaven” was based on which existing song?

Spirits ‘Taurus’

10.What’s the ‘problem’ with what Led Zeppelin did?

No fundamental changes

11.What’s the difference between a cover and a knock-off?

Credited / Uncredited changes

12.What do most box office hits rely on?

Existing material

13.How many films out of 100 are sequels/remakes/or adaptations?

74

14.What is a ‘genre movie’?

A movie of a popular genre – Sci-Fi etc.

15.List 4 sub genres of Horror

Slasher, Zombie, Creature Feature and Torture.

16.What happens to their standard elements?

17.List the elements of Star Wars.

18.Which TWO genres were huge sources for Star Wars?

War films / Westerns

19.What does creation require?

Influence

20.Who is now the most movie saturated director?

Quentin Tarantino

21.What are they myths of creativity?

Inspiration and Thought

22.Why do we need copying?

We can’t do anything without it

23.When was Guttenberg’s printing press invented?

1440

24.What elements were combined to create the model T in 1908?

25.What are the basic elements of creativity?

Copy, Transform and Combine

26.Who invented the PC?

Xerox

27.What is multiple discovery?

The same innovation and merging at different places

28. What is evolution?

Copy, Transform and Combine.

29. What is the term for this in culture?

Social Evolution

30. What is this called?

31. What doesn’t law acknowledge?

32. What was the side effect of a market economy?

33. What was the point of the copyright and patent act?

To protect inventors

34. What term was created to protect ideas?

35. What is loss aversion?

“We hate losing what we’ve got”

36. How did Disney use the public domain?

Snow White etc, and then copyrighting Mickey Mouse

37. “We have no problem with copying as long as...”

We’re the ones doing it

38. Which song did George Harrison subconsciously copy?

Do Op “He’s so fine”

39. What connects Kanye West to “It Must Be Jesus”?

R. Charles, R. Richard

40. What is a patent?

A blue print on how to make an invention

41. What is a software patent?

42. What % of patent lawsuits are over software?

62%

43. How much wealth is estimated to have been lost?

Half a trillion dollars
44. What are sample trolls and patent trolls?
Corporations which don’t produce anything
45. Who is the most famous sample troll and why?
Bridgeport Music
46. How long was the sample from 2005 and where was it from and where was it used?
Two seconds, 100 miles and running
47. Why has this been bad for hip hop?
Because they can’t sample music

48. Why are patent laws bad for postmodernism?

Because PoMo isn’t possible without copying

Side Notes

·         Paul Allen ‘Idea Man’

·         Not Pomo – Hiding, Not owning up to copying, not attributing the other artists

·         Hip-Hop IS PoMo – Samples which don’t fit together, supposed to notice the copying as they want people to see it, it’s always different.

Lesson One - A Brief History Of Time.

·         A God created the Earth – through a “Grand Narrative” of the world – Creating the world in 7 days.

·         All questions asked were answered by “God did it”.

·         If you were to look out for information, then God would answer it.

·         18^th/19^th Century all things changed.

·         Romanticism came along and it is personal, where you look in for answers.

·         God chose the Queen, God decided that she would rule.

·         They looked inside for the Grand Narrative.

·         A specialist was needed for everything.

·         Industrialisation is where all things were created together.

·         Everyone does something, Mass Production to consume.

·         There was no skill in being a human.

·         People became reliable.

·         There was a great social inequality.

·         Modernism was an era where “Machines were for living in” – 1922.

·         Modern techniques to improve everything.

·         Mass Production.

·         Socially improve people’s life.

·         Quick/innovative.

·         New technology to improve everything.

·         “Shock of the new”.

·         Doesn’t fit in with the time period at all therefore it doesn’t work in terms of society.

·         Bauhaus – 1925.

·         Shut down by the Nazis due to too much forward thinking.

·         1931 Artistic Housing.

·         Beauty and Elegance.

·         1952 New flats which were impossible to live in “Too futuristic”.

·         “Art to the masses” to create a better living.

·         Alienated buildings.

·         Modernism for business – inappropriate, style over substance, losing ideology.

·         POST MODERNISM “After Modern”.

·         Rejection of Modernism due to the lost purpose.

·         The Basics: End of grand narratives, image rich culture, fractured identity, intertextuality.

·         End of Grand Narratives

·         Jean Francois Lyotard – A French Philosopher, big stories were the world. Morals etc. Christianity, murder, homosexuality etc.

·         Morality is personal, relative truth, decline of traditional religion, political cynicism, science and technology is fallible, Authority is untrustworthy, Marxism and capitalism is flawed.

·         Opinions, Beliefs and Questioning.