1. Lesson 4

2.  What are the differences?
 How apparent is intertextuality?
 How reliant is narrative upon genre.
 How far can Propp be applied to the music
videos you have seen?
 Taylor Swift ‘Love Story’ is this really post-
modern?

3. The collapse of the "Grand Narrative"
Most famously, in La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (The
Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge) (1979), Lyotard
proposed what he calls an extreme simplification of the
"postmodern" as an 'incredulity towards meta-narratives'.[6] These
meta-narratives - sometimes 'grand narratives' - are grand, large-
scale theories and philosophies of the world, such as the progress of
history, the knowability of everything by science, and the possibility
of absolute freedom. Lyotard argues that we[who?] have ceased to believe
that narratives of this kind are adequate to represent and contain us
all. We have become alert to difference, diversity, the
incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs and desires, and for that
reason postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of
micronarratives.
[7]

4. This becomes more crucial in Au juste: Conversations () (1979) and Le Différend (The
Differend) (1983), which develop a postmodern theory of justice. It might appear that
the atomisation of human beings implied by the notion of the micronarrative and the
language game suggests a collapse of ethics. It has often been thought that universality is
a condition for something to be a properly ethical statement: 'thou shalt not steal' is an
ethical statement in a way that 'thou shalt not steal from Margaret' is not. The latter is
too particular to be an ethical statement (what's so special about Margaret?); it is only
ethical if it rests on a universal statement ('thou shalt not steal from anyone'). But
universals are impermissible in a world that has lost faith in metanarratives, and so it
would seem that ethics is impossible.
Lyotard argues that notions of justice and injustice do in fact remain in postmodernism.
The new definition of injustice is indeed to use the language rules from one 'phrase
regimen' and apply them to another. Ethical behaviour is about remaining alert
precisely to the threat of this injustice, about paying attention to things in their
particularity and not enclosing them within abstract conceptuality. idiom."

5.  What about this one? Is this postmodern?
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Edv8Onsrgg

6.  AND THESE?
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b601_tUuNDM
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJnhaXwK86M

7.  Although theorists like Todorov and Propp can be
applied to these Gondry music videos, they are
too post modern to fit neatly in to their categories.
 Learning so far... Which theorists have you learnt
about? How can they be applied to these two
music videos?
 Which terms can be applied? Narcissistic?
Bricolage? Nostalgia? Intertextuality? Eclecticism?
Parody? Pastiche? How?

8.  Complete an analysis of all you have learnt so far
– you can include todays learning.
 Mini Mock – look at the mark criteria.
 Read the exam style question sheet and consider
the prompts.