Postmodernity on my case studies

How can texts in Music videos and television be described as postmodern?

Postmodernism is a term which describes the postmodernist movement in the arts, its set of cultural tendencies and associated cultural movements. It is in general the era that follows Modernism. It frequently serves as an ambiguous overarching term for sceptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism. It is often associated with deconstruction and post-structuralism because its usage as a term gained significant popularity at the same time as twentieth-century post-structural thought. A quote which explains postmodernity and I believe is very clear says “In our postmodern culture which is TV dominated, image sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant.” - David F. Wells, No Place for Truth: Or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology.

My own case study of the music video ‘Telephone’ by Lady Gaga which was released on January 2010, by Rodney ‘Darkchild’ Jerkins has a synthpop/dance-pop genre. This music video follows a lot of postmodern conventions, taking into consideration the producer who is also known to make postmodern music.
Postmodernism can be expressed through a wide variety of Media texts, one of which are music videos. However as in the case with many other outlets of postmodernism, it is not always clear which are and which are not postmodern. This is because there is no real consensus of to what postmodernism actually means. Therefore any postmodern labels attached to a text are merely a reflection of personal choice.

One example of a music video what I believe is postmodern or at least appears to be influenced by the subject is the video for “Telephone” by the artist Lady Gaga.

Postmodernism can be expressed visually via the presence of postmodern techniques. These techniques can include many of the following: Parody, playfulness, pastiche, intertextuality, eclectism, hyper consciousness and narcissism. These postmodern techniques have been shown in Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” music video and therefore have attached a label to the text as ‘postmodern’.

The first reason to why Lady Gaga is a postmodern artist comes from Baudrillard’s idea of hyper reality where he states that we cannot separate the images that we are shown from what is the reality. In relation to Gaga, her name is a clear symbol of hyper reality as it allows her to have two personalities as she is never referred to as Stefani Germanotta. This also allows her to keep her different lives separate; ultimately allowing her to control her image and get away with wearing outrageous outfits as this is the hyper reality presented to us for Lady Gaga. Furthermore, with the creation of a hyper – real version of herself, she is able to keep attention away from the reality of her everyday life.

Intertextual referencing is another key aspect into the bravado of Lady Gaga and this factor is used in almost every one of her videos. In relation to the “Telephone “video, Gaga calls Beyonce “Honey Bee” which is indirectly a reference to “honey bunny” who is a character in Quintin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Moreover, the label of “pussy wagon” on the car they drive is taken from “Kill Bill” where the same name is used. These intertextual references give the audience something to relate to, but also makes the original content and boosts her image.

To conclude, bricolage is another major influence on Lady Gaga’s persona and it could also be argued that the way she dresses alone is a bricolage due to the fact that it is so outrageous and creates a totally different image. Bricolage could also be denoted in her video “paparazzi” where she uses the iconic signifier of a cup and saucer and continues to style herself around that item. This has then become an iconic signifier of Lady Gaga, therefore highlighting a new image of an item has led to have a different meaning.

On the other hand, TV is also seen to be very postmodern, and in some cases in a very similar way as music videos are made to be postmodern, and they follow the same conventions and theorists such a Lyotard, Baudrillard and Jameson.

 The Simpsons manages to reflect the pluralism of postmodern society in a parodying yet symbolic manner. The Simpsons does not limit its subject matter to particular age groups, ethnicities or social classes, but merges all the binary opposites of society together to form the chaotic, diversified town of Springfield. But it is not only the composition of characters that affects this seeming chaos ‘melting pot’, but also the subject matter itself.

An episode may begin with a portrayal of elementary school banality and end on the issue of gay marriage, blindsiding the viewer entirely with its unforeseeable shifts in trajectory. The inability to pin the program down to one genre is indicative of its representation of America as framed by the postmodern paradigm. The conscious decision has been made not to localize The Simpsons to any distinct region besides America, nor to any one period of time besides the postmodern era. The creators of the program have gone to great lengths to not demarcate Springfield within any region such that it has become a running gag through the episodes. What’s more, the Simpson children never age or progress in school. In 17 years the Simpson’s infant has not learned to walk or talk, and has yet to give up her pacifier.

The family is as timeless as they are placeless. In this understanding the creators’ efforts are such that The Simpsons are nowhere, living at no time, and representing no specific family – but paradoxically they are every American family everywhere at any point in the postmodern era.

Despite these efforts, the show inevitably focuses more on white middle-class
America than other sectors of society. But few mainstream programs have featured these other sectors as prominently as The Simpsons. The popularity of the Apu character in the early 1990s marked the appearance of the first recurring South Asian character in a major American sitcom who is not only featured regularly but has been made the centre of several individual episodes. The show’s refusal to adhere to the norms of accepted sitcom subject matter is one of its foremost postmodern traits. It is an attitude that corresponds well to postmodernism’s aim to celebrate cultural differences and bring them to the surface. The Simpsons is a testament to the postmodern decentring of contemporary mass consciousness, by embracing diversity of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and socio-economic status as part of the heterogeneity of society.

Postmodern fragmentation in The Simpsons is not limited to its subject matter but

extends to its narrative form as well. The erratic structure of The Simpsons’ storylines
results in a broken-down, fragmented narrative, another characteristic of postmodernism. The episodes are deliberately “all over the place” and non-linear: the first five to ten minutes usually have little or nothing to do with the main storyline. The show makes rich use of the plot-drift technique, interjecting stories with so many tangents and digressions into non-related subjects that it can at times be difficult to determine what a given episode is “about”. In many of its episodes, The Simpsons breaks down its already short time period of 22 minutes into several shorter mini-stories.