Postmodernism

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Postmodernism
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What?
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BS Postmodernism is

• A period
• A cultural view associated with the period
• A style with definable features
• ..
• A conceptual framework for analysing /
  approaching the above

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Discussion

• What are some of the key debates within
  postmodernism?
• What are the defining features of post-modern
  texts?
• In what ways can these be problematic?

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Cultural Hierarchies

• Theatre is life
• Film is art
• Television is furniture
• ..
• "I find Television very educational. Every time
  someone switches it on, I go into another room
  and read a good book." Groucho Marx

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• The Times
• Superman comic
• Laurence Olivier film of Pride and Prejudice
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• La Boheme
• McFly
• The Sun
• The complete works of Shakespeare
• BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice
• Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice
• The Beatles
• Bach

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Case Studies activity

• Using the prompt sheet and your reading of BS,
  suggest a media text which you feel can usefully
  be defined as postmodern.
• Justify your choice.

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postmodernism in action

• Teen TV
• Horror
• Cyberculture

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from Helpless (Season 3)

• The gang are in the library researching possible
  causes of Buffys loss of powers
• XANDER You know, maybe we're on the wrong track
  with the whole spell, curse and whammy thing.
  Maybe what we should be looking for is something
  like, um, Slayer kryptonite.
• OZ Faulty metaphor. Kryptonite kills.
• XANDER You're assuming I meant the green
  kryptonite. I was referring, of course, to the
  red kryptonite, which drains Superman of his
  powers.
• OZ (thinks) Wrong. The gold kryptonite's the
  power-sucker. The red kryptonite mutates Superman
  into some sort of weird...
• BUFFY (impatiently) Guys? Reality?

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from Buffy vs. Dracula (Season 5)

• Buffy has just staked Dracula. After
  everyone's left, a fog starts forming, and
  Dracula reappears. As soon as Dracula has fully
  appeared, a hand appears and stakes him again. He
  gasps.
• BUFFY You think I don't watch your movies? You
  always come back.
• Dracula explodes into dust again. Buffy folds
  her arms and
• watches. The fog begins to collect - again.
• BUFFY I'm standing right here! The fog
  dissipates.

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from Shakespeares Henry V

• This story shall the good man teach his son
• And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
• From this day to the ending of the world,
• But we in it shall be remember'd
• We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
• For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
• Shall be my brother be he ne'er so vile,
• This day shall gentle his condition
• And gentlemen in England now a-bed
• Shall think themselves accursed they were not
  here,
• And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
• That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

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from The Gift (Season 5)

• BUFFY Stay close but don't crowd her. We'll
  follow in a minute. Everybody knows their jobs.
  Remember, the ritual starts, we all die. And I'll
  kill anyone who comes near Dawn.she exits
• SPIKE Well, not exactly the St. Crispin's Day
  speech, was it?GILES "We few...we happy
  few..."SPIKE "We band of buggered..."

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Postmodernism and Horror

• Horror constitutes a violent disruption of the
  everyday world
• Horror transgresses and violates boundaries
• Horror throws into question the validity of
  rationality
• Postmodern horror repudiates narrative closure
• Horror films produce a bounded experience of fear
• From Pinedo, IC (1997) Recreational Terror
  Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing
  New YorkSUNY

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Postmodernism and cyberculture

• Postmodernism is a term sometimes used to
  describe the age of computer technology and
  cybernetics, as coming after the era of factory
  production also known as late modernity
• What other areas of resonance can you identify
  between postmodernism and cyberculture/new
  technologies?

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Postmodernism and cyberculture

• Cyberculture enables us to be producers rather
  than consumers of texts again, small,
  fragmented production units
• Studies of cyberculture often focus on multiple
  and unstable identities
• Blurring of real and simulated virtual
  realities, CGI
• Blurring of cultural hierarchies bricolage,
  appropriation
• Absence of narrative/cultural authority
  single/scientific truth

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• Postmodernisms and McLuhans Rear-View Mirror

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McLuhans Rear-View Mirror is

• A way of describing our relationship with new
  technology. We define the new through its
  resonance with the familiar
• Eg
• electric keyboards look like pianos why?
• We still talk about dialling phone numbers
• The file icons on computer desktops
• The term desktop
• Hence, terms become divorced from contexts

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Levinson on McLuhan

• The internet as new media
• Levels hierarchies
• Form more important than content
• McLuhan as a technological determinist
• People as the products/effects of the media,
  rather than vice-versa
• diminishment of human control

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Stances Toward Technological Determinism
Commentators on technology take four main
standpoints

• Extreme (also called "strong" or "hard")
  technological determinists Information
  technology (or some other) will radically
  transform society and/or our ways of thinking (or
  has already done so).
• In a more cautious variation of this stance, weak
  (or "soft") technological determinists present
  technology as a key factor which may facilitate
  such changes in society or behavior.

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In opposition, two groups downplay the role of
technology

• Socio-cultural determinists present technologies
  and media as entirely subordinate to their
  development and use in particular
  socio-political, historical and
  culturally-specific contexts.
• Voluntarists emphasize individual control over
  the tools which they see themselves as "choosing"
  to use.
• from Technological or Media Determinism Daniel
  Chandler http//www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/tec
  det/tdet11.html

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To think about

• Where would you place yourself?
• McLuhan?
• Levinson?
• How do you perceive the relationship between
  postmodernism and technological determinism?

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Further reading

• Daniel Chandler on technological determinism
• http//www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/tecdet/tecde
  t.html
• Imagining Futures, Dramatizing FearsThe
  Portrayal of Technology in Literature and Film
• Technological or Media Determinism
• Passages from Neil Postmans Technopoly The
  Surrender of Culture to Technology.
• http//www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/kimble/teaching/ci
  s/cis4.html
• Article reflecting on Cyberpunk, cyberspace
  the global village Marshall McLuhan Meets
  William Gibson in "Cyberspace by Michael E.
  Doherty, Jr.
• http//ibiblio.org/cmc/mag/1995/sep/doherty.html

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Terry L. Heaton perspectives on the web, the
news and postmodernism

• TV News in a Postmodern World Beyond the World
  Wide Web August 2004 http//dirckhalstead.org/i
  ssue0408/heaton.html
• TV News in a Postmodern World The Rise of the
  Independent Video Journalist October 2003
  http//dirckhalstead.org/issue0310/tvpomo.html

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And for your amusement at the expense of
postmodern theorists and their impenetrable
writing

• intellectual writing doesn't have to have any
  conscious direction at all
• http//www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern
• http//www.brysons.net/generator.html
• http//www.info.ucl.ac.be/people/PVR/decon.html
  How to Deconstruct Almost Anything--My Postmodern
  Adventure Chip Morningstar, Electric Communities