2. POSTMODERNISM "Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?" he asked."Begin at the beginning," the King said gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 12) where to begin?
3. Traditional model The traditional perspectives tend to emphasise a similar model Assumed to have similar responses NOISE Sender messages medium Mass audience Feedback ? Assumed UNIVOCAL Shannon & Weaver
4. Structuralists1950s-1960s SASSURE – saw language as a cultural creation rather than something innate: as a social system that was ordered, coherent and governed by a set of rules. PEIRCE - took Sassure’s ideas and expanded them to include not just language but other ‘social constructs’ in society. Peirce introduced the term ‘Semiotics’. He also differentiated signs into SYMBOLIC (or ARBITRATED), ICONIC and INDEXICAL. LEVI-STRAUSS – (a structuralist anthropologist) worked on the importance of structuring oppositions in myth systems and in language – linked to binary oppositions as these structures are often used/constructed as pairs. BARTHES took things further in his seminal text ‘Mythologies’ (1972) and applied these ideas to daily life and popular culture – we’ll come back to Barthes later.
5. BINARY Man Active External Public Producer Provider Woman Passive Domestic Private Consumer Dependent OPPOSITION structuralists Sassure, Peirce, Levi-Strauss, Barthes
6. Did you see ‘signs’? What do they mean? How do you know? Does it matter? Semiotics- the study of signs
7. The current discussions of stereotyping and representation is widespread. Does this mean things have changed in any way? Have we just moved on to new groups? So we’re all PC now – right?
8. “The Red Queen made no resistance whatever” The thing with resistance is that it almost always happens AND contrary to what you’re told, Has always been happening…
15. BINARY Man Active External Public Producer Provider Woman Passive Domestic Private Consumer Dependent OPPOSITION Structuralists ? Sassure, Peirce, Levi-Strauss, Barthes
16. Modern applications ? WEST EAST Foreign Strange Irrational Barbaric Backward Extreme Dangerous Inferior Criminal THEM Western Normal Rational Civilised Modern Moderate Responsible Superior Justice US Bite back? Sometimes our understanding is better explained by what it is NOT than what it IS
17. *hypodermic If we change West and East to something like CHRISTIAN and MUSLIM or STRAIGHT and GAY what happens to this model? It’s still useful right? Well that’s the problem with a lot of these media theories – they all have strengths and weaknesses and someone always comes along to debunk or update your model BUT rarely do theoretical models become completely obsolete in Media Studies*. What you’re left with is a whole series of models you can use to critique your text – the trick is to treat your arsenal of models as a TOOLBOX where you pick the tool (model) that is the most apt for the particular work you’re doing. "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
Hinweis der Redaktion
The problem with looking at postmodernism is that unless you understand a bit about MODERNISM it’s harder to appreciate what POST-modern is all about – it’s very conception and existence relies thoroughly upon Modernism.We view postmodernism through modernism as a stance – when we stop doing this, we’ll stop calling it ‘post’ something perhaps but at some stage we ought perhaps to realise that postmodernism is becoming so ubiquitous it’s hard to continue to call it ‘post-modernism’. Is it not now just part of ‘The Way Things Are Now’ whatever that is?This is a modified version of the original channel-medium-code model from Shannon and Weaver (1948)In this model, the media can still be seen to be providing “a window on the world” (which we REFUTE absolutely now in Media by the way!!!)
Structuralism argues that all human social order is determined by large social or psychological structures with their own irresistible logic, independent of human will or intervention.Freud and Marx began to work on interpreting the social world in this structured way.Later structuralists argued that meanings can only be understood form within this over-arching structures and the differences or distinctions they make.SASSURE – saw language as a cultural creation rather than something innate: as a social system that was ordered, coherent and governed by a set of rules. PEIRCE - took Sassure’s ideas and expanded them to include not just language but other ‘social constructs’ in society. Peirce introduced the term ‘Semiotics’. He also differentiated signs into SYMBOLIC (or ARBITRATED), ICONIC and INDEXICAL.LEVI-STRAUSS – (a structuralist anthropologist) worked on the importance of structuring oppositions in myth systems and in language – linked to binary oppositions as these structures are often used/constructed as pairs.BARTHES took things further in his seminal text ‘Mythologies’ (1972) and applied these ideas to daily life and popular culture – we’ll come back to Barthes later.
Explore and examine these ideas.
Feminists perhaps created the biggest wave in bringing issues of representation into the forefront of ‘media studies’ (as was – perhaps we should say studies of the media??). Their work gave way to other studies about issues of representation and other studies looking at the actual representations themselves, but of groups other than women – for example Focusing on representation and gender in advertising and how we wouldn’t accept negative representations of MEN as we might have done 10 years ago. Is this the post-post –feminist backlash?
But people always resist ideas – they always have. We’ll come back to this later as resistance to ‘meanings’ (in ideological terms) is also something that Media Studies cherishes at its core. There has been much discussion about what forms this resistance takes and whether the ruling hegemony (the dominant model or culture) can merely subsume this resistance into itself, thus negating its power.
Discuss – Graffiti? Resistance? Art? Playful? Just Subvertising?
Notice the dress of the lady in the ‘Born Kicking’ picture – you can see this was photographed in the early eighties. If you’re interested in this work, the key person is Jill Posener – ‘Spray it Loud’ (1982).
Jill Posener again – her ‘breakthrough picture’ as she calls it.
Loving ‘Think harder fcukwit – gorilla tactics? On the ground resistance?Intertextual AVATAR with Chevron (US Oil Giant) – clever advertising execs?“Revile’ – using the style of adverts but using only the anchorage to alter the message – using only language – highlighting Sassure!
‘Window on the world”? Still white??
So if things have moved on and we’re all avoiding gross negative stereotyping etc etc yaddayaddayadda but what is this? Is it post-modern irony? Are these images knowingly sexist? Is that the point – ‘Hey we know it’s sexist but we don’t mean it and you know we don’t….right?’ . Think about it.In some ways, the lines of what is acceptable and what isn’t have been pushed even further back – we can be this rude, this risque – it’s self-mocking, knowing, self-referential…..Like I said…THINK ABOUT IT
Examining these binaries in modern concepts can show how much we still use structures (and often BINARY structures) to conceive and perceive meaning.SAID – in ‘Orientalism’ posited the notion of OTHER. This works where we construct one set of values as stronger and more desirable and assign the weaker, negative values to another group or place which is OTHER than us – it is a form of gross (if subconscious) negative stereotyping.
So to sum up at this point – The transmission model was a basic system that allowed for some interference which they called ‘noise’. In the 1950s and 1960s, in European circles, a whole school of semiologists arose who questioned the traditional model which provided ‘a window on the world’. They were structuralists as all their versions of how meaning works using signs operate in a system, a structure.This is the basic model behind media studies at the moment, although there is an understanding that post-modern ideas have huge sway but post-modernism has been ‘swallowed’ by the mainstream of theory in media and things moved around to fit it in without changing this basic structure – therefore we still engage in semiotic deconstruction of texts, with added frills, as if all that the thinkers behind ‘post-modernism’ had never uttered their thoughts – LACAN, DERRIDA, FOUCAULT & BENEVIDES