1. Postmodern Media Aesthetics (Style)
'What Pomo looks like'
Theorist 1: Jameson

2. Postmodern Media Aesthetics
 Our key 3 theorists Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Jameson
argued recent social-economic changes mostly thanks to
television, and MTV in particular, we now live in a 'threeminute culture' (the length of most people's attention
spans, it is said, shaped by advertising and zapping).
 Another theorist Debord suggested that we are part of a
'society of the spectacle’ - ‘a social relationship
between people that is mediated by images’.
 Baudrillard concluded we are involved in an overvisual
‘ecstasy of communication’ due to our reliance on
television, films and the Internet to replace ‘real’
connections with each other.

3. Postmodern Media Aesthetics
 This has implications for any realist form of media like
X-Factor, since our sense of reality is now said to be
dominated by popular media images;
 Cultural forms can no longer 'hold up the mirror to
reality’ (Strinati), since reality itself is saturated by
advertising, film, video games, and television images.
 The idea of 'truth' or 'reality' becomes problematic when
we are surrounded by a landscape of advertising and
image.
 Think about the use of Photoshop in magazine and
advertising images…

6. Postmodern Media Aesthetics
 Advertising no longer tries seriously to convince us of its
products' real quality but just shows us a cool joke about
the product…

7. Postmodern Media Aesthetics
 Postmodernism suggests that we’ve run out of things to say.
 Lyotard wrote of the 'death of the metanarratives' - this
refers to previous Modernist ideals importance of reason,
scientific theory, technological invention and 'the knowability'
of the world.
 If the world could be known, it could be changed – even for
the better…human progress and 'utopian' ideals
 Postmodernism, however, describes these ‘grand narratives’
- Environmentalism, Consumerism, Democracy, belief in
scientific progress etc - as nothing more than 'stories' about
history, naively structured with happy endings.
 More cynically Postmodernism views these 'grand narratives'
as 'constructed truths' to re-enforce the interests of mainly
European Cultures
 Instead postmodernism offers micro-narratives (ie
conspiracy theories) which do not necessarily add up, but
which may be woven together, in a jumble of forms and styles.

8. Postmodern Media Aesthetics
Argument – The Hypocrite
 Remember that postmodernism is in itself only a theory...
 There is some truth in the perception that large claims to truth
often serve the
 But however conscious we are of narratives in science and
politics, it seems we cannot easily do without them and the
meaning they give to experience.
 Just to confuse things, what else is postmodern theory but
another such story or ‘grand narrative’?
 Isn’t it just a very cynical one, pretending to not be a
‘metanarrative’ at all?

9. Postmodern Media Aesthetics
Does it look PoMo?
The exam will ask you to explain to what extent
a media text is Postmodern
This will help you decide if the text you are
analysing contains elements of the postmodern.
Aesthetic is what Postmodernism 'looks like' but
is linked to the Theories behind it

10. Postmodern Media Aesthetics
This will help you spot the ‘structures of
feeling’ – to see the ‘cultural logic’ that
gives rise to Postmodern Media forms.
It will allow you to spot ‘spectacle’ and
‘micronarratives’ that we weave together
to make a coherent theory of
postmodernism.
First up…

11. 1. Hybridity
 Definition - something heterogeneous – from more than
one source - in origin or composition.
 Examples include the mixing and sampling of different
kinds and levels - of music, of material in television
adverts, in films and TV Drama or comedy etc.
 Hybrid forms are said to level hierarchies of taste - all
distinctions between high culture and popular culture,
have gone, or become blurred.
 Postmodern texts 'raid the image bank' which is so richly
available through digital technologies, recycle some old
movies and shows on television, the Internet.
 Music, film and TV all provide excellent examples of
these processes.

12. 2. Bricolage
Similar to hybridity - ‘bricolage’ is a French word
meaning 'jumble‘.
This is used to refer to the process of adaptation
or improvisation where aspects of one style are
given quite different meanings when mixed with
stylistic features from another.

13. 1. Hybridity
Hybridity and bricolage can take various
forms across most media.
I’m going to use a couple of examples to
show you how to apply these two similar,
yet distinct, terms accurately.
First hip-hop…

14. The Beatles (1968)
The White Album
Jay-Z (2004)
The Black Album
Danger Mouse (2005)
The Grey Album

15. Danger Mouse (2005)
The Grey Album
So is the Grey Album
Hybrid?
Bricolage?
Parody?
Pastiche?
Intertextual?

16. 3. Simulacra (Simulation)
 Based on the work of Jean Baudrillard - the blurring of
real and ‘simulated’, especially in film and reality TV or
celebrity magazines is a familiar feature of postmodern
texts.
 Simulation or hyperreality refers to not only the
increasing use of CGI in films like ‘The Lord of the Rings’
films (2001-2004) and ‘Avatar’ (2009), but also in the use
of scripted documentary and actors in TOWIE, or in the
narrative enigmas of science fiction such as ‘The Matrix’
(1999) or ‘Blade Runner’ (1982) - 'Is it human or
artificial’?

17. 4. Intertextuality
From referencing the structure of the slasher
horror film in ‘Scream’ (1996) to the Italian
American gangsters watching ‘The Godfather’
films in ‘The Sopranos’ television series (2001),
intertextuality is now a familiar postmodern
flourish across most moving image media.
Jameson also specifies pastiche and parody as
belonging to a similar idea.
This self-reflexive awareness of itself as a text is
also termed hyperconsciousness.

19. 4. Intertextuality
 Pastiche, parody and intertextuality are
terms that come from Fredric Jameson’s
(1991) theories.
 Jameson saw parody as the comic
intention to ‘produce an imitation which
mocks the original’ that acknowledges
what it imitates.
 Pastiche, however, is less about comedy
and more about plagiarism.
 ‘Pastiche is blank parody. Parody that
has lost its sense of humour’.
Just copying really…

20. 5. Disjointed narrative structures
 These contemporary narratives often won’t guarantee
identifications with characters;
 Or the 'happy ending‘
 Or metanarratives like the 'Freedom overcomes
Oppression' which have traditionally been achieved at
the end of films.
 They often manage only a play with multiple, or heavily
ironic, perhaps 'unfinished' or even parodic endings - see
‘Memento’ (2000), ‘Fight Club’ (1999), or ‘Atonement’
(2007).
 Narratives can also be disjointed in time and space –
Inglorious Basterds.

22. 6. The erosion of history
This can be seen in Inglorious Basterds
where Hitler is shot
Historical facts and characters are
telescoped, merged or discarded entirely.
History can be viewed nostalgically or with
suspicion.

24. 7. Kitsch Culture
 It's easy to spot how boundaries between 'high' and 'low'
culture have been eroded.
 This idea is alluring because of the democratic
implications - there's no such thing as bad taste; you can
enjoy, consume, shop for what you like - all class
hierarchies have disappeared.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hpEnLtqUDg

26. 9. Style over Substance
Postmodern media texts share a delight in
surface style and superficiality;
A delight in trivial rather than ‘dominant
forms’ - from conversations about burgers
in ‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994) to Lindsay Lohan
or Victoria Beckham appearing in Ugly
Betty (2008); or One Direction covering
songs
The tone of this is Ironic and Playful and
sceptical and cynical about serious values.

28. 9. A society of spectacle
Debord sees celebrities as people who have
become ‘role models’ for us to identify with to
‘compensate for the crumbling of directly
experienced…productive activity’.
Celebrities provide us with false representations
of life and ultimately become the reality of our
everyday lives.

29. 10. Alienation
This delight in superficiality is countered
by a different postmodern approach that
involves an atmosphere of decay and
alienation - dystopia
These find echoes in the music videos of
Radiohead or Aphex Twin, the films ‘Blade
Runner’ and ‘Fight Club’, the television of
Charlie Brookers 'Dead Set' Zombies