This is fun to watch. It might help you iron out some issues you have with postmodern media.
Otherwise, you should revise from the following slideshare:
Why not do your own flyer on Nosedive and Chained to the Rythmn so that you can really go over those key points from these texts.
In short, hegemony is dominant ideology & the dominance of values attitudes and beliefs of an elite social group.
It’s important to note that we’re not talking about absurd conspiracy theories like the Illuminati.
This is not some elite shadow government. Much more mundane, but no less important, we are typically talking about white, middle class, usually male values. It is this group who control the media and, as such, are in positions of cultural and social influence.
The question that hegemony poses is; ‘Who controls representations in the media and whose values, attitudes and beliefs do they reflect and whose do they marginalise?’
Here is a key article by Clare Pollard about hegemony and which uses some great examples from a movement called Legally Black, which challenges the dominant ideology by subverting texts that are dominated by white middle class male characters and their view of society.
This is a link to a very up to date report on how white privilege and dominance is still alive and kicking in America.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47712096
And of course this recent music video and song really do point the finger at how society thinks it is fair, diverse and equal but in reality – it just isn’t and how much of that is a result of the media?
Postmodernity and the Katy Perry Video
Newstatesman article with examples and ties in with Nosedive!
Student analysis on Chained….
POSTMODERN MUSIC VIDEO ESSAY Katy Perry- Chained To The Rhythm is an example of a postmodern music video, it was released February 10th 2017 and was featured on her new album ‘Witness’. The video was produced by Max Martin and Ali Payami and was directed by Mathew Cullen. Music videos can be postmodern through a number of factors which may be featured in the music video, these include irony, intertextuality, pastiche, parody and fragmentation.
There are a number of artists in the industry today who portray postmodernity throughout their videos however Katy Perry’s video to her new song stood out the most and gave me a number of postmodern factors to talk about. Firstly, postmodernism is a way of thinking about culture, philosophy, art and other meanings. However, in relation to media postmodern media rejects the idea that any media product or text is of any greater value than another and that the distinction between media and reality has collapsed and we now live in a ‘reality’ defined by images and representation. In relation to my case study, the video features intertextuality and is mainly reference the political issues currently taking place is the US.
The first scene in the music video is people walking into a theme park called ‘Oblivia’, seeing as the video is highly political it is believed ‘oblivia’ is meant to mean ‘oblivious’ and is suggesting that people are unaware of the political problems current. Another scene which stood out was a sign stating ‘The Great American Dream Drop’ which clearly has reference to the American Dream and suggests that society today has made it harder for people to achieve the Great American Dream whereas before people were able to work hard and in return receive this big dream everyone wished for. One scene also has intertextual reference to the Disney film Sleeping Beauty where the female character cuts her finger on a sharp object in this case a rose thorn, this scene is portraying a message to the audience that although something may look good it will always have a negative side effect. The next two scenes have a very obvious reference to political issues and President Trump. There is a scene featured in the video of characters being thrown over a wall into another area we do not see, to me this clearly has reference to Trumps promise policy of building a wall between two countries and may be the singers way of mocking his promise. Another scene sees a sign stating ‘bombs away’ with bombs flying all in frame of the camera, this highlights the threats beings thrown between the US and Korea and suggests the singer is trying to get these issue across to her audience to spark debates and see if any solutions can be found to resolve the problem.
To conclude, postmodern music videos like this one are good to cause debates and get opinions across to an audience although some may be seen as controversial however it allows an audience to think about issues they may not realise are a problem which could spark a positive or negative reaction.
As a media art form, music videos are often conduits for various elements of postmodern culture. Sometimes they also, point a self-accusing finger at themselves for doing so and sometimes the videos and lyrics are about postmodern society too.
Andrew Goodwin, a renowned media theorist sums up the postmodernism of music videos:
The Rizzle Kicks – is made in a postmodern fashion but also points the finger at postmodern society.
Lilly Allen, The Fear is also made in a postmodern fashion but also points the finger at postmodern society.
We will be studying in depth some current music videos, one of which you should choose to focus on as your 2nd media text in your essay (the other one will be Nosedive, Black Mirror by Charlie Brooker).
Music Videos are often examples of postmodern media, not only because their place as a recognised art form has come about in the postmodern era but mainly because they evidence a range of ideas about what makes a text postmodern.
Is the inevitable consequence of our postmodern distrust grand narratives: religion, politics, the rule of law, education; a world in which there is no truth? Are we doomed to increasingly acrimonious arguments over our personal truths, which are often simply uninformed opinion and those with the loudest voice (or more dominant media presence) getting to define the truth for the rest of us, which is the definition of hegemony?
In the past the news was controlled by TV & Newspaper editors who used ethical guidelines developed over time to define news values which were used to decide which stories to run and which stories got the most interest.
The values were defined in a work but Galtung and Ruge in 1965. They showed that stories about the homes of the news outlet took more importance than stories about other people and cultures. So hegemony is certainly not a new phenomena.
However newspapers and TV news are in decline. News is expensive to make and people don’t want to pay for it.
Reuters reported that 28% of 18-24 years olds use Facebook as their main source of news! Who edits the content we receive on Facebook?
Answer: nobody!
Well these days it is algorithms which are the news editors of the 21st Century. These bits of software are designed to predict what we like and promote those preferences based our search history & location on on our feeds.
This leads to…
An algorithm can find it very difficult to distinguish fact from opinion. They can’t tell if the story they are promoting in our feeds is irrelevant or massively biased in favour of one groups opinions.
This means that fake news will appear next to genuine news stories that do follow the journalistic imperatives of balance and evidence. It then is down to the audience to use their critical faculties to distinguish the genuine stories from the fakes.
The truth is a hostage to the narratives of the elites. This is HEGEMONY!!!!
The top story is all about the lovely Lorraine Kelly…she is just so genuine, so ‘real’, so cosy’ so authentic and so honest’. But start to consider how and why many presenters are able to connect to the audience in such a ‘meaningful’ manner. How real are they? Are they just a brand? Are they just acting? Click on the image to go to the story. What would Baudrillard say about this?
This is a link to a recent video about the Christchurch massacre (scroll down to the video at the end of the article). It starts to open up the questions that New Zealand, and to be fair most countries in the world, do not want to ask or answer. The idea of ‘white superiority’ is a grand narrative that has permeated society for centuries. It is a hard one to square up to and acknowledge. New Zealand, have taken claim to the image and idea that they are a peaceful, multi-cultural society where all is good and dandy. The reality may not be as it seems. The difficulties in race relations between the ‘colonising’ nations and the indigenous Maori population is one they would prefer not to advertise – but it is an issue and one that has to be addressed. The grand narrative that lurks ominously in the wings is that this idea of entitlement, and ‘white superiority’ is to blame. Lyotard would love this to be tackled – questioned – aired and challenged. Does it take a tragedy though to make us ‘own’ something we would rather not?
Finally, on the same subject, this is a cartoon that appeared in the Guardian last week. It again focuses a light on how the new grand narrative of us now living in an anti-racist society. In other words the narrative is that as the human race, we have questioned the, ‘it’s never ever White people’s fault’ grand narrative that has permeated history, and we have and are successfully challenging this. Problem sorted. No racism, no inequality – it’s all good.
However, stop and revisit how the press, the media who have a direct impact on our ideologies about racism, Islamaphobia, homophobia, sexism are still reporting issues. How responsible are they for the grand narratives that may not shape the world – and not in a good way? Perhaps Lyotard would argue that it takes a tragedy for the world to wake up to its own failings?
The Simpsons’ use of postmodernist techniques, such as fragmentation, serve to highlight the diversity of our culture and the impossibility of establishing moral authority in the pluralism of postmodern society.
It is a sentiment closely related to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s theory of metanarratives, which involves a distrust of totalizing explanations of the world.
In effect, The Simpsons’ stance is the same as Lyotard’s; to reject systems that aim to exert their authority in order to proclaim absolute truths. Lyotard’s view is that these metanarratives, which purport to explain and re-assure, are really illusions,fostered in order to smother difference, opposition and plurality.Through various implicit and explicit methods,The Simpsons essentially takes the same stance, criticizing any and all who perpetuate such metanarratives. One of the ways The Simpsons does this is by making anti-authoritarianism one of its most prominent recurring themes.
Task:
Consider the metanarrative (dominant opinion) that is commonly held about one of the following groups in society:
You will then be allocated a character from The Simpsons. You need to research their characters, narratives and how they represent someone that may or may not, help bring about the destruction of the grand narrative. Create a slide in the shared presentation on google drive that compares the dominant opinion with the one that is actually constructed, conveyed, portrayed in The Simpsons by the various characters.
Some reading for anyone interested enough in how The Simpson’s can be described as a postmodern text.
Grand Narrative used to refer to the ‘Big Story’ or ‘organising principle’ of a country or religious movement but nowadays this applies to large corporations, especially multinationals by virtue of their size. It also shows how the postmodern world is blurring boundaries as large corporates of today have many characteristics similar to religions and kingdoms.
A way in which identity is expressed (created?) is through stories that underpin the Grand Narrative. The big stories become especially powerful because they are often retold and referred to in the media.
Grand Narrative is vitally important. In the absence of a good guiding story, when the narrative collapses, people become become capable of anything. The media is filled with examples of this every day.
Equally important are the stories told by multinational companies and organisations that make people want to queue to buy the latest iPod, take Prozac, listen to music or even go to war. The Grand Narrative serves to create a collective identity for an organisation or community – a way in which shared values are expressed and within which people do what they do.
In multinationals.and larger organisations identity is expressed in a statement of mission, vision, values, purpose and measures and is told in stories that underline certain key organisational values and aspects of the organisational dynamic such as customer-centricity, integrity, innovation amongst others. These stories are generally told by those in leadership and positions of influence. Particularly good stories in this genre create a sense of meaning and history. This is our collective experience. Or is it? What do you think makes a story motivating? Are you living in a motivating story?
The time has come for us to rise above difference and start telling a story about the future of us: the human species. We have a great common history, but we’re too defensive and fearful to see similarity with our competitors and enemies; the others, the strangers, the foreign and obscure. This belongs in our Grand Narrative:
This is Lyotard, our last theorist (yay).
Lyotard is a theorist who is a bit more positive about Postmodernism. In so far as rebellion, subversiveness and rejection of big ideas can be described as ‘positive’.
Lyotard was sceptical of anyone who layed claim to ‘the truth’. He felt rather than society was better made up of competing views of the world (discourses).
He suggested that postmodernism ‘signaled the end of the grand narrative’.
Charlie Brooker love to challenge a grand narrative. He critiques the way the media presents the world to us and also he critiques our distorted relationship with the media (as described by Baudrillard). He has also written a series of dystopian (near future) sci fi TV programmes called Black Mirror. In these programmes he challenges the big ideas (grand narratives) that are communicated in the media and Lyotard and quite possibly Baudrillard would approve (I think).
Here is Charlie Brooker happliy and brutally deconstructing news reports
Consider the ways in which even the news media can be described as an example of hyper-reality and blurring the boundaries between a media constructed reality and the real life..
Is it possible that we know far more about the media, celebrity news & popular culture than we did about significant events and people in the ‘real’ world.
It is important to consider news values and understand how some important pieces of news are pushed off the news agenda because they don’t fulfill the editorial agenda and so the news we do consume is highly selected. This selection is often about what will make a popular / entertaining story rather than reporting other bigger world events but ones that are more remote, ‘foreign’ and ones for which they don’t have pictures.
Finally, the news is packaged up into easily understandable narratives, indeed news items have narrative structure, ‘characters’ cast into simple types & roles and there is often highly emotive use of language and symbolic imagery in order to represent the events / people in a particular way.
Here is a really funny and insightful video from TV critic Charlie Brooker, who incidentally wrote one of our key texts Black Mirror. Here he is talking about the formulaic structure of a TV news item and how they are neatly packaged up for consumption.
