Postmodernism in music video: blog tasks

Media Magazine Theory Drop - Postmodernism

Create a new blog post called 'Postmodernism in music video: blog tasks'. Read ‘The Theory Drop: Postmodernism’ in MM66  (p26). You'll find our Media Magazine archive here - remember you'll need your Greenford Google login to access. Answer the following questions:

1) How does the article define postmodernism in the first page of the article?

If modernism is beginning to question authority, then postmodernism is making fun of authority to its face. Postmodernism takes this concept of questioning traditional structures, representations and expectations and pushes things a step further.

2) What did media theorist and Semiotician Roland Barthes suggest in his essay 'The Death of the Author'?

The Death of the Author is the next step after Nietzsche’s ‘God is dead’ statement and with it comes a need to test the boundaries of what a text is.

3) What is metatextuality?

Metatextuality is where a text draws attention to the fact that it is a text. It points to the process of its own creation.

4) What is the repeated phrase on the cartoon on postmodernism on page 28?

"Postmodernism is a cultural movement that distrusts all established philosophies and frequently experiments with the medium it is presented in"

5) How does postmodernism link to media representations and reality?

People are forced to rely on media institutions to give us a global picture of the world we live in. As media audiences have become more sophisticated over the years, we realise on some level or other that the images we see are mediated to give us only a partial version of the story. This has led to an anxiety over what is ‘real’ and what is not. As the key postmodern thinker Jean Baudrillard put it; ‘the distinction between what is real and what is imagined is continually blurred and meaning is systematically eroded’.

 

Music video CSPs and postmodernism

Now apply postmodern ideas to our music video CSPs by answering the following questions:

1) How does the music video for Ghost Town incorporate elements of postmodernism?

- Blurring of high and low culture (use of arthouse and pop music)

- Bricolage - narrative and the road movie 

- Postmodern take on the road movie - no destination or narrative resolution offered 

2) What film genres are alluded to in the music video for Ghost Town? Which scenes in particular created these links?

Two important genres that are addressed are horror and road films. The Specials are in a car for the whole of the music video, and despite their lack of a sense of direction, they are still travelling. Due to the eerie way the city is depicted at the beginning of the music video—low perspectives that make the skyscrapers appear to be looming above the camera—horror is vividly emphasised.

 

3) How does Old Town Road use postmodern elements in its music video?

- Bricolage and pastiche - yeehaw movement/agenda 

- Henry Jenkins - textual poaching: Red Dead Redemption videogame

4) How does the Old Town Road music video reflect technological convergence and modern digital culture?  

Old Town Road music video reflect technological convergence and modern digital culture as it main source of success was through the digital medium of tiktok.

5) What do YOU think Lil Nas X was trying to say about reality and American culture in the music video for Old Town Road?

Lil Nas X may have been attempting to blur the lines between different cultures in which he mainly focused on black and country culture.