How and why postmodern media plays with the verisimilitude of a text.

Postmodern media is a fairly newly named style of media in which the media plays with the audience's interpretation of reality and over-arching morals. It has an anti-foundationalist attitude which feel the need to deconstruct every myth and accepted modern standard. Every kind of media text can be explained as post modern if you are to look deeply enough into them but I feel that the Internet, some kind of Art and Film are the most experimental platforms with this style of media.

Verisimilitude is how close to reality the representation is to the real self. For example in art, a realist painting, such as Manet's Olympia would have more verisimilitude than an abstract peice of art such as Picasso's Weeping Woman because it is a closer representation of reality. Media text often try to get so close to reality that they make things over-real. This i called Hyper-reality. This is excelently demonstrated in the Hudsucker Proxxy by the Coen Brothers in which the film is set more in a film-reality than in verisimilitude. For example the imagary within The Hudsucker Proxxy is very much ideolised to be like the 1950's posters. Not like the 1950's reality. This supports Baudrillard's theory that reality can no longer be seperated from media reality.

Chandlers model suggets that the audience only sees the reality through the production. The representation of reality can be called simulacrum. The simulacrum mutually relies on the audience to understand what it is simulating. So allready reality is interpreted through a pre-existing interpretation. Post modernism is just playing whith this pre-interpreted past and media reality by replacing it with it's own, ironic and playfull reality. I feel that post modern texts ask for the audience to make their mind up on what they feel is reality themselves, interprate things in a new light, with their own eyes and mind.

little confused at the plan, not comfortable with doing esssays in this style. Not all of the essay due to this being a draft on my blog, sorry.

The way the production uses them, referring to things the audience believes in - what happens to the referent in a Postmodern text - through the understanding of the referent in the media text of the past (in which the audience is aware of) Examples, such as Directors, Platforms (not just British!) etc. Possibility to mention it as Global.


The reader must be aware of the way Hyper-reality works, such as analysis of Coenn Brothers, Michael Winterbottom, Camera Shots. Representation of the film world.


Why are Postmodern texts playful and not serious? Lack of values and morals lead to the playfulness (Nihilism). Examples! Go through PAINPIPES - No need to mention them all! Sharing the fact they are a construction. The Simpsons for example relate to self-referential.

Coen-Brother Films.

All three films are very American as well as being very much to do with the American Dream. (Not so much the Big Lebowski)

O, Brother where art thou?
A 1950's setting film about three escaped prisoners and their jorney through life and back to reality and comfort.



The Big Lebowski.
A film about "The Dude" a washed up bum, his relationships with his friends and the scenario he gets into for having the same name as a rich pensioner with a gold-digging floozy for a wife.


The Hudsucker Proxy.
A 1950's style film about the rise of an individual to the very top of a company, through luck, and his overcomming of the evil company manager, with luck.

Hyper Reality lesson

Baudrillard.

- Hard to disgunguish reality from Media reality.
e.g. 9/11 when you think of it, you think of the media images.

Image consumed event
- Absorbs the event and offers it for the consumption of the audience.

Technocracy - Technology ruling instead of humans (Democracy)

Jameson - "Postmodernism is the inevitable state of late capitalism" (all about the individual)

Dystopian (Oposite of Utopian)

Utopia

Dystopia

Random Key words.

Ideology - The idea of perfection within a group or persons mind
Connote - A link that the audience interprates themselves, more general than...
Denote - A direct link from the object/image.
Semiotics - Signs and meanings within society
Stereotype - Expected characteristics and type-casting
Hegemony - "A concept from Gramsci suggesting that power is achieved by dominant groups through successful struggles to persuade the subordinate that arrangements are in their interest. Using cultural power to maintain the status quo." (from http://www.heanorgate.org.uk/visualarts.asp?pageID=MediaKeywords)
Pluralistic - General and equal ownership, no particular leaders. e.g. Youtube
User Generated Content - Content added by users e.g. youtube
Iconic - Someone or something that has become an icon e.g. Martin Luther King.
Diagetic - Natural sound e.g. someones boots clicking as they walk along.
Non-Diagetic - Non-natural sound, e.g. music over the top of a scene
Moral Panic - Where a certain group or movement is over-covered and exadurated by the media, causing irrational fear.
Folk-Devils - Scapegoats
Verisimilitude - The closeness to reality of a text (remember by VerySimilarTo)
Overarching Morals - The main beleifs and social rules of a group or society
Meta/Grand narrative - A generally accepted way of life working, for example in England, education and healthcare.

Michael Winterbottom Films.

I studied two very different pieces; 24 Hour Party People and Genova.
24 Hour Party People is about the development of the music culture in Manchester with narration from a music manager. A very post modern piece, due to several factors which I will go on to explain.

Genova is a film about greiving and the loss of someone important in your life. There is no narrator or particular main character as it follows two daughters and their father through a new life in Italy after their mothers death. The story dosen't have a plot realy but is more about the greivence prosess and the meta-narrative of family values.

Work in progress, need to find my notes, which are currently downstairs.
24 Hour Party People.
- Breaks fourth wall
- Talks about being post modern within the film
- Intertextual, has TV, Music
- Refers to other texts
- Nihilistic plot - does not just stick to it e.g. pigeons dieing scene (random)


Genova.
- Stedicam style camera work
- No real plot
- Hyper reality

Stedicam style and Postmodernism.

Here for usefull source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steadicam

The stedi-cam style of filming can be considered post modern due to the fact it is self referencial, refering back to the audience, who can easily relate to the hand-held camera style. As well as video texts using the Stedi-cam becoming hyper real, allowing the audience to gain a more personal viewpoint of the scene, for example in Genova where the camera is often folowing action, rather than the action fitting into the frame, much more like reality. Your eye follows action rather than visa versa.

Media Essay. How do Moral Panics form a Fragment of Cultural Identity?

How do Moral Panics form a Fragment of Cultural Identity?

I feel that cultural identity is basically just the same as a collective identity within boundaries of generation and location. I also feel that moral panics are situations that the media blow out of proportion.

Fragments of cultural identities are small parts of a collective identity that have fragmented off from the rest of society usually because of more extremist viewpoints. For example the Nazis started off as a fragment group of socialism because of their extreme views which where too extreme for most allthough over time people grew to support it due to their frustration at the state of government at the time, this shows that even fragment groups can grow to become generally accepted. Fragment groups in the sense of the media are most likely people who are within different classes, genders, ethnicities and ages than the target audiences of specific texts. For example someone who is not middle classed and educated reading the 'Guardian'. They could then be a fragment group of their typical sect in society if they where to be untypical the would simply become fragments of a larger, or parent group. These are usually called "splinter groups". These groups consist of the same overarching moral agenda as the parent group but have a different, usually contrasting, veiwpoint on one or several of the parent group's beleifs. These can be created in the context of moral panics.

For a moral panic to happen you need an emergance of some behaviour and then an irrational fear of the certain behaviour catalysed by the media. This can happen with statistics. For example, "75 women raped by plumbers". This phrase does not mention over what time period this has happened, it could be over 400 years for all we know but never the less, some of the audience will take this as the hypodermic needle model suggests, without any real thought or external input. These members of the audience will form a collective identity who dislike and judge the moral agenda of a general group of people, the plumbers.

In terms of a real scenario; the rave culture hype. A relatively harmless movement of youth, where they had an anarchic, unlawfull and pluralistic style of rule, with no real heads and secret meeting places. It provided the three main missgivings for it to become a moral panic; "drugs, sex and pleasure". People became so worried about it several acts where passed so that the raves had to be stopped. For these conclusions to occur there needs to be

In conclusion, moral panics form a fragment of cultural identity by making the problem seem much worse than it actually is and then different people from the same cultural identity disagree on certain factors of the 'panic'.