A2 Media Studies
Critical Perspectives in Media
Modernity - A period of history marked by
industrialisation, secularisation, rationality.
What do these terms mean??
Can you remember time period of modernism??
Differing views on exact times but following the
Age of Enlightenment/Age of Reason.
Postmodernity - The time period following
modernity. Can you remember time period?
Modernity - A period of history marked by:
*rationality (using reason to provide answers)
Postmodernity - The time period following modernity. Arguably
1960s to the present day.
*industrialisation (following the Industrial Revolution),
*secularisation (a move away from religious values and
institutions toward non-religious values and secular institutions),
Differing views on exact times but following the Age of
Enlightenment/Age of Reason (Mid 1850s onwards).
What is post
A state of affairs in society
The prefix post- means after and modern can be taken to mean
current or up-to-date. How then is it possible to be after the
A set of ideas which tries to define this state of affairs
An artistic style or approach to the making of things
A word used in many different contexts to explain many different
aspects of the above
Postmodernism - A literal definition is After
Postmodernism – noun
a late 20th-century style and concept in the arts,
architecture, and criticism that represents a
departure from modernism and has at its heart a
general distrust of grand theories and ideologies as
well as a problematical relationship with any notion of
From – The Apple Dictionary!
A useful starting point.
The Compact Oxford English Dictionary refers to
postmodernism as "a style and concept in the arts
characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies
and by the drawing of attention to conventions.”
Useful definition – part at the end about drawing
attention to conventions was not in the first definition
but is useful.
Postmodernism was originally a reaction to
modernism. Largely influenced by the Western
European disillusionment induced by World War II,
postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural,
intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central
hierarchy or organising principle and embodying
extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity,
diversity, and interconnectedness or
Rejecting traditional ideas
about realism and
Postmodernism as a reaction to twentieth-century aesthetic
modernism emerged soon after WW2. It still carried most of
the features of twentieth-century aesthetic modernism. So,
some have argued that it is essentially just an outgrowth of
modernism, and not a separate movement. But, there is a
fundamental difference. It is that while aesthetic modernism
had presented fragmentation, for example, as something
tragic to be lamented (as in Eliots' "The Waste Land"),
postmodernism no longer laments it but rather celebrates it.
Thus, postmodernism is inclined to stay with
meaninglessness, playing with nonsense. Dino Felluga sees
this difference and lists some of the things "that distinguish
postmodern aesthetic work from modernist work" as follows:
Extreme self-reflexivity, more playful
and even irrelevant (as in pop artist Roy
Lichtenstein's "Masterpiece" or architect
Frank Gehry's Nationale-Nederlanden
Building in Prague)
Irony and parody (many examples in
pop culture and media advertising. eg The
A breakdown between high and low
cultural forms in more immediately
understandable ways (as in Andy Warhol's
painting for Campbell's Tomato Soup cans).
4. Retro. It is to use styles and fashions from the
past with fascination but completely out of their
original context (as in postmodern architecture
in which medieval, baroque, and modern
elements are often juxtaposed). Fredric
Jameson and Jean Baudrillard tend to regard it
as a symptom of our loss of connection to histor
y in which the history of aesthetic styles and
fashions displaces real history.
A further questioning of grand narratives
(as in Madonna videos such as "Like a Prayer"
and "Material Girl," which question the grand
narratives of traditional Christianity, capitalism,
Visuality and the simulacrum vs. temporality. The predominance of visual
media (tv, film, media advertising, the computer) has lead to the use of visual forms
(as in Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus: A Surviver's Tale through the medium of
comics). Visuality also explains some other related features of aesthetic
postmodernism: a more breakdown between high and low cultural forms, and a retro.
Baudrillard and others have argued that a retro involves copies ("simulacra") of the
past without any connection to real past history, blurring the distinction between
representation and temporal reality.
Late capitalism whose dominance
is generally feared (as in the predominance
of paranoia narratives in movies such as
"Blade Runner" and "the Matrix"). This fear
is aided by advancements in technology,
especially surveillance technology, which
creates the sense that we are always being
Disorientation (as in MTV or those
films that seek to disorient the viewer
completely through the revelation of a truth
that changes everything that came before).
Return of orality (based on an influx of
oral media sources such as tv, film, and radio).