Critical Perspectives: themes

OCR Media Studies – A2

Critical Perspectives:

‘We Media’ and Democracy

Media in the Online Age

Postmodern Media

Contemporary Media Regulation

Media and the Collective Identity

Global Media

Dictionary Definition of Postmodernism

The Compact Oxford English

Dictionary refers to postmodernism

as "a style and concept in the arts

characterized by a distrust of

theories and ideologies and by the

drawing of attention to conventions."

Postmodern Media

An Introduction from the Media Studies Text Book OCR

Media Studies for A2 – Julian McDougall

Postmodernists claim that in a media-saturated world, where we are

constantly immersed in media, 24/7 –and on the move, at work, at home – the

distinction between reality and the media representation of it becomes

blurred or even entirely invisible to us. In other words, we no longer have any sense of the difference between real things and images of them, or real

experiences and simulations of them. Media reality is the new reality.

Some see this as a historical development:

the modern period came before, during

which artists experimented with the

representation of reality, and the

postmodern comes next, where this idea of

representation gets ‘remixed’, played

around with, through pastiche, parody and

intertextual references – where the people

that make texts deliberately expose their

nature as constructed texts and make no

attempt to pretend that they are ‘realist’.

Others say that postmodernism is just a new way of thinking about media, when really it has

always been this way. One of these is Strinati(An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture

2005:224)

The mass media…were once thought of as holding up a mirror to, and thereby reflecting, a wider

social reality. Now that reality is only definable in terms of the surface reflections of that mirror. It is no longer a question of distortion since the term implies that there is a reality, outside the surface simulations of the media, which can be distorted,

and this is basically what is at issue.

Postmodern Ideas

Postmodern media rejects the idea that

any media product or text is of any

greater value than another. All

judgements are merely taste. Anything

can be art, anything can deserve to

reach an audience, and culture ‘eats

itself’ as there is no longer anything new

to produce or distribute.

Cont.

The distinction between media and reality has

collapsed, and we now live in a ‘reality’

defined by images and representations – a

state of simulacrum. Images refer to each

other and represent each other as reality

rather than some ‘pure’ reality that exists

before the image represents it – this is the

state of hyperreality.

All ideas of ‘the truth’ are just competing claims

– or discourses – and what we believe to be

the truth at any point is merely the ‘winning’

discourse.

Philosophers within the Postmodern

Movement

Baudrillard and Lyotard. Both men are now

deceased but during their life they offered

different theories of what postmodernism was.

What they shared was a belief that the idea of

truth needs to be ‘deconstructed’ so that we

can challenge the dominant ideas that people

claim as truth, which Lyotard describes as

‘grand narratives’.

Postmodern Theories cont.

In the postmodern world, media texts make visible and challenge ideas of

truth and reality, removing the illusion that stories, texts or images can ever

accurately or neutrally reproduce reality or truth. So we get the idea that there are always competing versions of the

truth and reality, and postmodern media products will engage with this idea.

Critics of these theories and beliefs

It is important to understand that many people see Baudrillard and Lyotard’s views as offensive and hard

to reconcile with their belief systems.

It can be seen as a whimsical luxury to question and play with the idea of truth and something that people

who live in countries such as Iraq, Tibet and Zimbabwe cannot do – they have to contest on a daily basis the existence of truth, justice and human rights.

Some people also find the idea of rejecting their ‘grand narrative’ goes against their whole religious

beliefs and moral principles.

Hyperreality and Baudrillard – Julian McDougall OCR

Media Text Book

You should be familiar with the basic semiotic ideas – that signs represent

ideas, people or places. For Baudrillard, there is only the surface meaning; there is no longer any ‘original’ thing for a sign to represent – the sign is the meaning. We inhabit a society made up wholly of simulacra – simulations of reality which

replace any ‘pure’ reality.

McDougall Cont.

‘Pure’ reality is thus replaced by the hyperreal where any boundary between

the real and the imaginary is eroded. Baudrillard’s work is an attempt to

expose the ‘open secret’ that this is how we live and make sense of the world in postmodern times. As you can imagine, he is considered a pretty controversial

philosopher.

Baudrillard – A Postmodern Philosopher

(1929-2007)

Baudrillard wrote a philosophical treatise called ‘Simulacra and Simulation’

Simulacra and Simulation is most known for its discussion of images, signs, and

how they relate to the present day. Baudrillard claims that modern society

has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that the human experience is of a simulation of reality

rather than reality itself.

Simulacra and Simulation

Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies

each with a historical period:

First order

associated with the pre-modern period, where the image is clearly an artificial placemarker for the real item.

Second order

associated with the industrial Revolution, where distinctions between image and reality break down due to the proliferation of mass-produced copies. The item's ability to imitate reality threatens to replace the original

version.

Third order

associated with the postmodern age, where the simulacrum precedes the original and the distinction

between reality and representation breaks down. There is only the simulacrum.

Baudrillard theorizes the lack of distinctions between reality

and simulacra originates in several phenomena:

Contemporary media including television, film, print and the Internet, which are responsible for blurring the line between goods that are needed and goods for which a

need is created by commercial images.

Exchange value, in which the value of goods is based on money rather than usefulness.

Multinational capitalism, which separates produced goods from the plants, minerals and other original materials and the processes used to create them.

Urbanization, which separates humans from the natural world.

Language and ideology, in which language is used to obscure rather than reveal reality when used by

dominant, politically powerful groups.

Baudrillard’s Famous Assertion…

Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the ‘real’ country, all of real America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are

there to conceal the fact that it is the social; in its entirety, it its banal

omnipresence, which is Carceral).

Banal = commonplace

Omnipresence = present everywhere

Carceral = A Carceral state is a state modelled on the idea of a prison

He goes on to say…

That Disneyland (with its Pirates, Frontier, and Future World fantasy set-ups)

is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it

are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality

(ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the

reality principle.

The Disneyland imaginary is neither

true nor false; it is a deterrence

machine set up in order to

rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of

the real.

Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (1983)

With such reasoning, he characterised the

present age — following Ludwig

Feuerbach and Guy Debord — as one of

"hyperreality" where the real object has

been effaced or superseded, by the signs

of its existence. Such an assertion — the

one for which he is most criticised — is

typical of his "fatal strategy" of attempting

to push his theories of society beyond

themselves.

Rather than saying, that our hysteria surrounding pedophilia is such that we no longer really understand what childhood is anymore, Baudrillard argued that "the Child no longer exists". Similarly, rather than arguing — as did Susan Sontag in her book On Photography — that the

notion of reality has been complicated by the profusion of images of it, Baudrillard

asserted: "the real no longer exists".

Postmodern Media Texts

There are many examples of texts or products which deliberately set out to

explore and play with this state of hyperreality. These texts are said to be intertextual and self-referential – they

break the rules of realism to explore the nature of their own status as constructed

texts. In other words, they seek not to represent reality, but to present media

reality.

Examples We Will Look At

Televised images of the 911 attacks on the World Trade Center

The Matrix and Blade Runner

The music of DJ Shadow

An advert for Cadbury

The films of Michael Winterbottom, the Coen brothers, and Wong Kar-wai

Postmodern TV such as Big Brother; The Mighty Boosh; the television of Ricky Gervais; The Wire and Echo

Beach/Moving Wallpaper

Postmodern magazine readers

Grand Theft Auto as a postmodern video game

Second Life as the ultimate hyperreal media experience

We will begin our investigation of postmodern media texts looking at a

selection of films which are thought to reflect the ideas of postmodernism

Postmodern Film

Postmodern Film

Postmodernist film can be seen to voice

the ideas of postmodernism through the

cinematic medium. Postmodernist film

upsets the mainstream conventions of

narrative structure and characterization

and destroys (or, at least, toys with) the

audience's suspension of disbelief to

create a work in which a less-recognizable

internal logic forms the film's means of

expression.

By making small but significant changes to

the conventions of cinema, the artificiality

of the experience and the world presented

are emphasised in the audience's mind in

order to remove them from the

conventional emotional link they have to

the subject matter, and to give them a new

view of it.

An example is Michael Winterbottom's 24

Hour Party People in which the character

based on Tony Wilson frequently breaks

out of the constructed world of the film

and talks directly to the audience straight

through the camera lens. Jarring in effect,

it suggests the characters' pre-occupation

with breaking free of the cultural and

economic constructions of the world they

live in.

Winterbottom's postmodernist effect, however, is

hardly new: Federico Fellini, among other master

filmmakers, used it memorably in Satyricon

(1969) and Amarcord (1973).

David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001) exploits

postmodernist aesthetics to an unusual degree

while Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is

considered an example of Postmodernist film

because of a range of techniques used.

We are going to watch ‘The Matrix’ and try to pick out

aspects of the film which make it a postmodern film.

Think about:

the narrative structure the idea of changing established

conventions Drawing the viewers attention to the construction of the film – ‘bullet time’

sequences Taking existing ideas from earlier films and

using them in a different way – paying homage

Suggestions it makes about society and its troubles

The Matrix

The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by

Larry and Andy Wachowski

and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe

Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving.

It was first released in the USA on March 31, 1999, and is the first entry in The Matrix series of films, comics, video

games, and animation.

In Postmodern thought, interpretations of The Matrix often reference Baudrillard's

philosophy to demonstrate that the movie is an allegory for contemporary

experience in a heavily commercialized, media-driven society, especially of the

developed countries. This influence was brought to the public's attention through

the writings of art historians such as Griselda Pollock and film theorists such

as Heinz-Peter Schwerfel.

The Wachowski Brothers were keen that all

involved understood the thematic

background of the movie. For example,

the book used to conceal disks early in

the movie, Simulacra and Simulation, a

1981 work by the French philosopher

Jean Baudrillard, was required reading for

most of the principal cast and crew.

The Matrix makes many connections to Simulacra and Simulation. In an early scene,

Simulacra and Simulation is the book in which Neo hides his illicit software. In the film, the chapter 'On Nihilism' is in the middle, rather

than the end of the book.

Morpheus also refers to the real world outside of the Matrix as the "desert of the real", which

was directly referenced in the Slavoj Žižekwork, Welcome to the Desert of the Real. In the

original script, Morpheus referenced Baudrillard's book specifically.

Keanu Reeves was asked by the directors to read the book, as well as Out of Control and Evolution Psychology, before being cast as

Neo.

Merrin – Baudrillard and the Media

(2005:131)

The Matrix has us. Our consumption of the films, the merchandise, and the

world and myth the Wachowskis sell us, and our collective orgasm over the

effects and phones, guns, shades and leather, represent our integration into the virtuality it promotes. The Matrix became

a viral meme spreading through and being mimetically (mimicked i.e. copied)

and absorbed into modern culture, extending our virtualisation.

Merrin cont.

Just as the film offered the stark choice of

being inside or outside the matrix so you

were either inside or outside the

zeitgeist (the spirit of the times). To

paraphrase Morpheus: The Matrix is

everywhere. As Baudrillard makes clear,

however, its fans and public are caught

in a similarly invisible matrix that is far

greater than depicted in the film, and

that the film itself is part of and extends.

Other Postmodern Influences

The film describes a future in which reality perceived by humans is actually the Matrix: a

simulated reality created by sentient machines in order to pacify and subdue the human population while their bodies' heat and

electrical activity are used as an energy source. Upon learning this, computer programmer "Neo" is drawn into a rebellion against the

machines. The film contains many references to the cyberpunk and hacker subcultures;

philosophical and religious ideas; and homagesto Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Hong

Kong action cinema and Spaghetti Westerns.

Challenging Film Making Conventions

The film is known for popularizing the use of a visual effect known as "bullet time", which allows the viewer to explore a moment

progressing in slow-motion as the camera appears to orbit around the scene at normal speed.

One proposed technique for creating these effects involved propelling a high speed camera along a fixed track with a rocket to capture

the action as it occurred. However, this was discarded as unfeasible, because not only was the destruction of the camera in the attempt all but inevitable, but the camera would also be almost

impossible to control at such speeds. Instead, the method used was a technically expanded version of an old art photography technique known as time-slice photography, in which a large

number of cameras are placed around an object and triggered nearly simultaneously.

The evolution of photogrametric and image-based computer-generated background

approaches in The Matrix's bullet time shots set the stage for later innovations unveiled in the sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Virtual Cinematography (CGI-rendered characters, locations, and events) and the high-definition "Universal Capture" process completely replaced the use of still

camera arrays, thus more closely realizing the "virtual camera".

This film overcame the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace by winning

the Academy Award for Visual Effects