Postmodern media is quite simply the rejection of the idea
of modern media; postmodern media has no rules and no boundaries. Unlike modern
media which claims originality and follows set rules and conventions, postmodern
media turns these ideas upside down. Everything is effectively a remix as Kirby
Fergusson said and that everything is connected through the ability to copy
transform and combine. Postmodernism exists in all aspects of media though,
with different music artists sampling music from other artists and using it in
their own work, and directors of films, purposefully creating scenes that look
similar to scenes from another film.
Firstly in music sampling has taken place for a long time
now, with artists creating huge songs by simply stealing bits of songs from other
artists. However this can be looked at in a variety of ways, as you look deeper
into the vast maze of what is postmodernism you can become lost in whether the
meaning of something is actually what it may connote to another reader. For example
the song flight of the Valkyries, originally composed by Wagner for the film
the birth of a nation, a film about the Klu Klux Klan ‘protecting’ their town
from black migrants. It was later used in the film apocalypse now, but used in a
very influential scene of the Americans taking to the sky in their helicopters preparing
for an attack on a Vietnamese village. Both of these seem to glorify Americans
as hero’s despite what now may look as them being villains, but more recently British
gas made a television advert using the same theme tune. Obviously they did not
intend on making themselves look like racists, this is an example of bricolage
(Levi Strauss) bricolage is the idea taking an existing item (flight of the Valkyries)
and putting it into a new context (British gas advert) and creating a new
meaning. The meaning British gas wanted to create was the already installed
idea of heroism from the song, but not with connotations of killing thousands
of innocent people. This is an example of music being postmodern, what may seem
on the surface like a song chosen because the person creating the advert might
have simply liked it, can actually be broken down to have a much deeper
meaning, but it is elements of postmodernism such as bricolage which just make
it work.
Secondly postmodernism is a huge element in film, and has
even led to directors known for being postmodern. Possibly the most postmodern
director there is is Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino is the person behind films
such as kill bill and Inglorious Basterds, these two films are incredibly
postmodern as is the rest of Tarantino’s work, he uses the idea of intertextual
references (Julia kristeva) in his work, this is when he uses references from
other people’s films in his own. Kill bill for example is a martial arts film,
and she wears what seems like an iconic yellow jumpsuit, which it was when Bruce
Bee first war it in his martial arts films. In the war film Inglorious Basterds
there is a never ending amount of intertextual references that keep the
audience on their feet. The trick with intertextual references however is to
make sure the target audience will understand them, in the film scott pilgrim
(directed by Edgar Wright) the intertextual reference come thick and fast
throughout the film but are simply too dated for the target audience to
understand. Along with intertextual references come the theories of homage and
parody. Paying homage to people work is very respectful and great films are
made paying homage to other great films or events in time, on the hand a parody
is not such a good film, hobo with a shot gun for example is an appalling film,
but it has been made to look bad as it is a parody to violent films.
So as a whole postmodern media is a type of media that does
not claim originality or indeed try to be original, but it thrives off of preexisting
work and transforming it into something new. It can be criticized as Jameson
did and call it vacuous and trapped in circular references, but from the eye of
a postmodernism he would probably be seen as correct to say that, but not as a
criticism but as a way of positively describing the ideology. Postmodern media
creates new texts from preexisting texts.
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