POMO – against the big idea and WHAT NEXT? Easter Essay advice

Your Easter Postmodern essay is in classroom. You will have the rest of the lessons to plan, prepared and research the case studies you want to use in it.  All the resources are in the classroom post.

It is essential that you try not to make the essay purely a list of examples.  You should endeavour to open up the debate, criticise and analyse.  Have some fun with the essay. You should also try and consider the past, present and future of POMO. Here are some ideas that you could develop as to how POMO might develop in the future.  Use some of the buzz phrases you have heard in the example critiques and reviews.  But do remember this is a MEDIA essay – not an historical or political one – bring these elements in but the Media text has to be the focus.

Good luck.

Counter arguments to Postmodernism

  • As soon as something is in the media it is mediated (selected, presented, changed, simplified…) by someone and by definition becomes a representation of reality. Baudrillard is therefore railing against the human impulse to tell stories and to explain the world.
  • Postmodernism mocks. It’s easier to mock than to try to be innovative. Postmodernism takes the easy option.
  • Are there any new stories or are we just telling the same story from our own unique point in history, just as generations before us have done and will continue to do. So Jameson bemoaning the lack of originality is a specious argument.
  • What’s wrong with big ideas that give us a sense of who we are, how we should behave, that give us a sense of identity & purpose? If all grand narratives are nonsense then everything is relative to the individual experience and we have no society / community, humanity becomes just a bunch of self absorbed relativists.

Some might argue that the world needs to change – as everything is being corrupted or has been corrupted, perhaps we all need a new direction?  ‘Do not – focus on the shadows on the wall but on the light source itself’.

Could this mean civilisation, needs to redefine itself?  Will the freedom of the internet eventually bring about our disintegration? Do we need Big Brother to come in and censor our lives? Are they spiralling out of control and is POMO media feeding that descent?

In fact, do we need a BRAND NEW GRAND NARRATIVE?