Postmodernism influences film by constructing new texts through references and borrowing from existing works, leaving outcomes and realities open to interpretation and constantly changing. For example, in the film "Run Lola Run", a small change can drastically alter the plot outcome, keeping viewers constantly guessing. Postmodern films also subvert conventions through self-referentiality. The author argues postmodernism keeps audiences engaged by not allowing them to predict what will happen next. They cite "The Simpsons", "Family Guy", "Scream", and "Scary Movie" as examples that follow this by making plots unpredictable and exploiting conventions ridiculously. The author plans to use postmodernism in their own film by both surprising audiences with unexpected outcomes and addressing social issues
1. Postmodernism and its influence on my A2 film
The term postmodernism is widely known as a very tricky concept to define.
From my research a basic definition I have come across suggests that
postmodernism applies to the ways in which new texts are constructed by
making reference to, or ‘borrowing’ from, already existing ones. Within a
postmodern media text such as a film, everything is open to interpretation.
There is no universal themes and the outcomes and realities of the text can be
constantly changing.
An effective example of these ever changing outcomes is a German film called
‘Run Lola Run’. The storyline of this film is completely random and no one is sure where
the storyline could end up. One simple change of direction or word or any tiny detail can
have a huge impact on the entire outcome of the plot. A postmodern media text
purposely aims to wrong foot the audience leaving viewers constantly guessing.
Postmodernism also dives into the concept of self-referentalism-when a film will make
the audience aware of the typical conventions. For example in a horror film a typical
convention would be a young vulnerable girl hearing a noise and walking towards it, she
is then attacked/killed by the sinister male murderer.
I think that the concept of postmodernism is very effective in terms of keeping the
audience acutely aware that they have no control over what could possibly happen next. For this
reason I think that audiences may be more inclined to
continue watching as they would want to find out where
the story will take them. Examples of this postmodern
genre are comedy cartoons such as ‘the Simpsons’ and
‘Family guy’ or parody films such as ‘Scream’ and ‘Scary
movie’.
These examples of postmodern media texts follow the
comedy genre by firstly making the plot unquestionable
difficult to predict, and secondly exploiting the typical
conventions to a ridiculous level. If I was the use
postmodernism within my film I would follow a different
routesuch as an older film called ‘Brazil’ (1985).‘Brazil’
focuses a lot on several social issues that affected
American during this period of time such as the large
increase of depressing office jobs and an unnecessary
2. amount of pointless paper work characters are required to fill out. As a result this film allows the
audience to relate specifically to the text and therefore to the characters. This is something I would
like my audiences to be able to have.
Alongside this, I am fond of the idea of wrong footing the audience. I think it would be interesting to
create a film where the audience are surprised or unaware of the possible outcome in which the text
leads. For this reason, postmodernism has influenced me heavily to create an interesting plot.