Post-modern Precis

Play-plays with the genre conventions etc. Also a sense of play, makes it quite funny, they do not take themselves seriously.
Aesthetics- They way it looks. Could look different or similar to another production as if it is mimicking it.
Intertexuality-referencing other texts or media forms to enable meaning to be made.
Nihilistic- total rejection of established laws and institutions.
Parody-A text which doesn't simply imitate the style of another, but instead mocks or shifts the original texts conventions in some way.
Irony- Presenting something to mean something very different from what they appear on the surface to mean. This is used humorously.
Pastiche- Directly imitating a style of another text.
Eclectism- Drawing upon multiple style or genres. Often contrasting.
Self-referential- Refers to themselves.

- Rejects the idea that one media product can be more valued than the other. Anything can be art, culture has ‘eaten’ itself and there is no longer anything new to produce or distribute. Which is why there is so much intertexuality in media products today.

- The distinction between media and reality has collapsed. We now live in state of simulacrum, reality defined by images and representations.

- Ideas of truth are just competing discourses; the one we believe to be true is just the wining discourse for that moment in time.

- Hyperreality, using intertexuality and self-references breaks the rules of realism by exploring the nature of their own status as a constructed text, seeking not to represent reality, but media reality. No distinction between reality and what’s been represented. Baudrillard believes there is no longer any ‘original’ thing to represent; we live in a society made up of simulacra. Pure reality is thus replaced by hyperreal, where the boundaries of real and imaginary are eroded.

- There are many examples of Post-modern media on this blog for example The Matrix, Michael Winterbottom films, Coen brothers films.

- Michael Winterbottom: Offers films with fictionalised versions of real life, or docudramas, breaking the fourth wall. To some extent he mocks post-modern media, but this approach keeps up with postmodernism as the audience is in on the joke.

- The Coen brothers: Famous for intertexuality. Lots of pastiche and hybrid elements, for example characters often seen watching TV shows. Lots of irony and the effect that cinema is recycling itself.

- Post-modern TV: The Mighty Boosh, eclectic mix of conventions, influences and genre traits that make it impossible to product it to any one style, a form of bricolage. Ricky Gervais, The Office and Extras, self-reflective approach, Docusoap convention, pathos.

- Post-modern soap operas: Echo Beach and Moving Wallpaper. To be expanded.

- The Cadbury Gorilla.