1. Postmodernism – what is it?
Historical period? Style? Theoretical approach?
Academics such as Jean Baudrillard and Francois Lyotard would argue that
we are now living in a post-modern era for the following reasons:
1. Culture and society have collapsed into one another
o Marxists such as Gramsci and Althusser saw the media as an
integral part of maintaining the existing social structure (Althusser
defined the mass media as one of the Ideological State
Apparatuses), thus being part of the system that holds people in
their social positions, and, for Gramsci, being one of the
‘battlefields’ in which the cultural ‘war’ is fought.
o Theorists such as Baudrillard and Lyotard argue that the mass
media has come to increasingly dominate how we learn about the
outside world – the events of September 11th are a good example –
disasters in America are told to us by the mass media virtually as
soon as they happen. Also, with the development of television
programmes such as Big Brother, we now have a situation where
people lives are shaped by TV – both the participants and the
viewers. So, for Baudrillard, we now live in a media-saturated
society.
2. Emphasis on style over substance
o Because we can be said to be living in a media-saturated society,
we live in an age where style matters so much more than ever
before – style determines if someone will become Prime Minister or
not – one of the reasons Tony Blair became leader of Labour and
got elected as PM was because of his grasp of the importance of
style – making sure he wears the right clothes for the right
occasions, making sure he always smiles in photographs. This
obsession with style over substance in politics has become known
as ‘spinning’ – which essentially means putting the best possible
gloss on things.
3. Breakdown over distinction between art and popular culture
o With an increasing emphasis in style over substance in a number of
areas, traditional demarcations between art and popular culture, or
high and low culture are breaking down. Taking the BBC’s annual
coverage of ‘The Proms’ – a series of classical music concerts. A
ticket for the biggest events in the series – the Last Night – can
change hands for £900 – plus there is a very firm dress code too –
you would have to spend money on the right clothes. Therefore, to
attend the concert, you would need a substantial amount of money
– which directs to the relatively wealthy middle classes and upper
class of Britain. However, the BBC show this concert series on TV
– therefore making it accessible to all, and all also hold Proms in
the Park concerts at a variety of venues around Britain to enable
you to participate too – therefore breaking down barriers between
high and popular culture and making culture accessible to all,
regardless of social class or income.

2. 4. Confusion over time and space
o With advances in technology, the world is now a smaller place – the
‘global village’ predicted by media theorist Marshall McLuhan in the
early 1960s has materialized – through increased access to travel –
more people than ever are flying to destinations – many European
cities are within an hours reach of Birmingham – Dublin, Paris,
Amsterdam, Brussels. Also, technological advances have made
things like the internet possible – where ‘virtual communities’ have
sprang up, particularly using social networking sites like Facebook
and Twitter where you can join groups and communicate with
strangers, enabling people across time zones and continents to be
communicate with each other. These ‘virtual communities’ offer a
stiff challenge to older notions of communities being centered on
geographical factors – such as ‘Brummies’ ‘Geordies’ ,‘ Cockneys’
and ‘Brits’.
o This compression of time and space makes things like September
11th that much more immediate to us and has the capacity to affect
us more personally than the murder of millions of Jews,
communists, gypsies and disabled people by the Nazis during
World War 2 – this is what makes this era a postmodern one.
However, the sharing of information is not always perfect – how
many people died in the war in Congo in the 1990s?
5. Decline of grand narratives
o With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the end of communism
with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unification of Germany,
and the spread of capitalism through eastern Europe and into
China, ideologies – or grand narratives such as Marxism are said to
have crumbled, because, arguably they have been proved to be
unable to give a complete account of the movement of societies as
Marxism has tried to do.
o As scientific knowledge has grown and we have increasing
understanding of the world, in some parts of the world, with some
religions, religion is ceasing to be the grand narrative that it once
was

4. A2 Media Studies
Postmodern Media
Post-modernism and media texts
Here are some qualities to look out for in post-modern texts:
1) Self-reflexivity and subversion: texts that refer to themselves are known
as self-reflexive, for example, in a movie, when an actor looks directly
at the audience and says, “Hey, don’t worry, it’s only a film!” Post-
modern directors like to position their audiences at some distance, as if
to compel them to realise that what they are seeing is only a
constructed reality. Recent examples – the comedy series ‘The Trip’
with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing versions of themselves
and the new series ‘Episodes’ with Matt LeBlanc playing a version of
himself.
2) Intertextuality: many post-modern films make playful references to
other texts, teasing the audiences to spot the references. This is done
constantly in the popular TV animations The Simpsons and can also be
seen in The Matrix where lots of references to Baudrillard, Lewis Carol,
and martial arts films are made, to name but a few. The best example
of intertextuality can be found in the blockbuster Shrek, see how many
you can spot.
3) Mixing genres and periods: post-modern texts often deliberately mix up
different genres and periods to create interest in their audience. A good
example of this is in A Knight’s Tale where the high culture of medieval
literature (Chaucer) meets the popular culture of the 1970’s bands
Queen and Thin Lizzy. Recent example – Night at Museum 1 and 2 –
characters from a variety of time periods and places exits within the
same fictional space
4) Using representation deliberately: audiences have become very
sophisticated, post-modern directors like to show how fragmented our
world has become, how we make sense of the world through media
images, that are themselves copies of other texts. Life has become a
hall of mirrors, which image is real?

5. Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard, a French media theorist, has been dubbed the prophet of
postmodernity. Baudrillard’s best-known work is a series of essays called
Simulacra and Simulation, in which he examines the power of representations
in the pre-modern, modern and post-modern worlds. If you watch the first ten
minutes of The Matrix you will see Neo/Anderson reading Baudrillard’s
essays, a telling insertion by the directors, hinting at the narrative to follow.
According to Baudrillard in the pre-modern world (before 1500) audiences
were rarely confronted with representations of the real because the
technology was simply not available, so there could be no confusion between
the virtual and the actual.
In the modern world (1500-1900) industrialisation and mass production
allowed an endless series of representations to enter the collective
consciousnesses of the audience (starting with the invention of the printing
pressin 1439), but it was still more than likely that people could distinguish
between the simulation and the real.
In the post-modern world, audiences are so saturated in representations, that
these now precede perceptions of the actual, subtly changing them in the
process. An example of this can be seen in how many victims of 9/11
described their trauma as the twin towers collapsed as “..like a film…” This
small comment has enormous consequences when one considers it fully – a
simulation of the real (a film) was the reference point for something actual, a
bizarre reversal of normality.
Another interesting aspect of Baudrillard’s description of post-modern society
is the multiplication of simulacra: texts that are copies of each other, with no
hard bed rock reality behind the original creation.
Baudrillard discovered more and more simulacra appearing in post-modern
societies, from themed pubs, theme parks, computer simulation ‘God games’
(The Sims), virtual online communities – all ‘realities’ that have no actuality
behind them. A study of Baudrillard’s ideas can be extremely disconcerting as
you realise the degree to which post-modern societies have no anchor to
anything substantial. Baudrillard’s prophetic role is assured, and his
questioning of where the world of simulacra may end is of critical importance
to media students who want to really think about the societal consequences of
their studies. The best text that explores many of Baudrillard’s questions is
The Matrix: study the French master, then see the film again, and it will
become clear how much the film owes to his work