Postmodernism in music video: Blog tasks

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 Media Magazine Theory Drop - Postmodernism


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'?

In 1967 the French literary critic Roland Barthes released his essay The Death of the Author. In it, he challenged tradition when he said that a writer’s opinions, intentions or interpretation of their own work are no more valid than anyone else’s. To give a simple example, this means that just because Ridley Scott thinks Deckard is a replicant, doesn’t mean that you, the viewer, have to think this if you don’t want to. Readers are free to interpret a work however they choose, irrespective of what the creator thinks.

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 airbrushes all established philosophies and frequently experiments with the medium it is represented 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



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

  • Intertextuality and hybridity- bricolage and pastiche
  • 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?

  • Blurring of high and low culture - arthouse v pop music
  • Bricolage - narrative and the road movie

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

  • Henry Jenkins - textual poaching - Red Dead Redemption videogame
  • Riff bought from Youtube ; song made famous via Twitter and TikTok
  • Yeehaw agenda - bricolage and pastiche
  • Reality - Old Town Road 2019 - plays with our sense of reality

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

  • Celebrity cameos - BRC, Chris Rock
  • Knowing, self referential elements: BRC saying don't worry you're with me now - country chart controversy

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?

He talks about how old and new culture of America will always be evident and through his representations through the music video he is able to show this and celebrate that older aspect of American culture through redefining it into a modern feature.

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