An excellent resource on Postmodernism

Postmodernism

View more PowerPoint from anniapple

Postmodern Film Example

This is a whole film right there on Youtube (totally legally).

• Who made this film?
• How was it made?
• When was it made?
• What's it about? - describe the narrative.
• Explain how it can be described as postmodern.

Media Language: Semiotic Analysis

Media Language essentially means the codes, conventions and symbols of a media text. For example women's magazines use codes such as French words for titles to indicate style - Elle, Vogue etc. They use conventions such as certain types of editorial which appear month after month (letters to the editor, fashion news, reviews etc). Symbols (things used to represent something else) are often used to create a brand identity, in magazines the masthead is the focus of the brand identity and small logo symbols are used throughout the magazine such as at the end of articles.

Semiotics is the study of signs and how we make sense of them.

I want you to produce a semiotic analysis of one of your coursework productions.

In it you should make reference to:

• Ferdinand do Saussure
• Roland Barthes
• signifier and signified
• denotation
• connotation

Audience: Reception Theory

To demonstrate understanding of the key media concept of Audience, you should discuss who you made the text for (age, gender, socio-economics, psychographic, subculture etc). .. but to take this to a deeper level of analysis you should also consider how different audiences will interpret the production differently.

Task:

Read the article on Stuart Hall paying particular attention to the section on  “Preferred/negotiated/oppositional readings”. (Blackboard - Course Materials - Theoretical Evaluation)

Chose one of your coursework productions and write a description of its target audience and the preferred reading of the production. Now consider what negotiated and oppositional readings the production might offer.

Write this as a post on your blog. Introduce your blog post with a brief outline of Stuart Hall and Reception Theory. 

Representation - how to apply Laura Mulvey (even if you think it doesn't apply)

Laura Mulvey was a famous feminist theorist whose main work on the ‘Male Gaze’ theory was conducted in the 1970s.

In basic terms Mulvey suggested that Hollywood films are made from a male perspective for a largely male audience. As a result, she theorised, these films tend to reinforce patriarchal ideology (the social structure where men have all the power).

The ‘Male Gaze’ is a term to describe the empowerment experienced by the male audience when they look upon female characters in the film. The male audience is empowered because the female character is objectified in either a voyeuristic or fetishistic way – in other words the audience is in the position of looking at the female character as an object of beauty or virtue, or as an object of sexual desire. Either way, the ‘gaze’ gives the audience power over the character primarily because the subject – it is assumed – does not know she is being looked upon, in the way a prey animal has less power than the predator watching them.

Terminology:

Identification – when the audience recognises an aspect of themselves in a character. This can be manipulated, for example through the use of POV or over the shoulder shots which force the audience to witness events from the perspective of a certain character.

Scopophilia – the pleasure of watching. The term suggests a certain sexual pleasure in watching something with social taboo, such as pornography, but also includes taking pleasure in watching horror films.

The spectator gaze – updating the theory to incorporate a wider demographic of audience than the heterosexual male assumed by the theory to begin with.

Intra-diegetic gaze – when one character looks at another character. Usually the audience is positioned to identify with the character who is in possession of the gaze. An example is this scene from Psycho: http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_315426&list=PL04F34CE35556C984&src_vid=I9mJ2oBONug&v=ghew-s2zPjE&feature=iv

Extra-diegetic gaze – when a character within the text looks out of the media text at the viewing audience.

How to apply this to your work:

• Don’t over-simplify the theory. Ask yourself:
• What is the power-relationship between audience and characters?
•  Are the audience given power over the characters through ‘the gaze’? (Male gaze, spectator gaze etc)
• Are any of the characters objectified in any way?
• Are there any instances of the ‘intra-diegetic gaze’? What is the representational result?
• Are there any instances of the ‘extra-diegetic gaze’? Again – what is the result?
• Does the power-play between the characters and the audience have anything to do with gender?

Representation

You are going to begin by looking at two theorists, Laura Mulvey and Roland Barthes.

Your task is to find and read the two articles on these theorists on Blackboard. They are in Course Materials => Theoretical Evaluation. Then write a blog post on how these theories apply to one of your coursework pieces.

What you should write:

1. Who each theorist is, and give an outline of their main theory or book/essay/research (in your own words).
2. Give one or two examples (for each theorist) of how their theory does – or doesn’t – relate to one of your coursework projects.
3. Lastly state why representation is an important concept in media studies... (if you can pick apart the seams of how a representation has been constructed, what information does it give you about the producers of that text and about the audience for that text?)

Q1 B: Genre

The exam paper will pose the question like this:

"Apply theories of genre to one of your coursework productions".

Remeber to look over the PowerPoint in Blackboard.

Write a 30 minute practice essay using the agreed essay plan. (Or not - you don't have to)

1. Introduce the c/w production you will use including a very brief description of it.
2. Provide an outline of the three broad purposes of genre... (see PowerPoint)
3. Apply theories of Genre to your c/w. Be specific, relate points to ideas of theorists.
4. How useful is Genre as a tool of analysis? (It provides context for understanding ideology... but is it as useful as Narrative?)
5. Conclusion, summarise how genre informed your work.

Do this by next lesson.

Blade Runner and postmodernism

Blade Runner was made by Ridley Scott (Thelma and Louise, Gladiator etc) in 1982. It was a ground-breaking vision of the future which has been copied again and again since. It was based on a book by Philip K Dick called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?...

Wierd title I know, but let me explain - both the book and the film are about the nature of what it means to be human. In the future depicted by Dick in the book animals are so rare that owning a real one (rather than a synthetic copy) is seen as a status symbol. The central character ponders the question: if I dream of owning a real sheep, do androids dream of owning android sheep?

Of course it's much deeper than that, but you can appreciate this theme - if androids dream at all, what's the difference between them and humans? Androids are copies of humans, but when the copy is as real as the real thing, the definition of 'real' is called into question. Perhaps I'm not real. Perhaps you're not real etc.

Anyway - what I want you to do is real the article Blade Runner's Postmodern Legacy which can be found on Blackboard (http://vle.havering-college.ac.uk/) or on this link http://cinemism.com/2009/05/25/the-details-blade-runners-postmodern-legacy/

It might be quite hard going at times, but read it and respond in some way on your postmodernism blog. I'm looking for 200-300 words on what you learned from the article. I'm not expecting full comprehension, just whatever you got from it.

Do this for next lesson.