It is a brilliant satire (parody / pastiche) on stand up comedy, musicals, social media, children’s TV, music videos, the audience, lockdown. (Jameson)
He even takes a swipe at the monetisation of children’s attention by tech giants. (Ecology)
It draws attention it it’s own constructed and contrived nature as ‘content’. Hugely self reflexive (Jameson)
Burnham also challenges and questions many grand narratives directly, through parody and quotation. (Lyotard)
Finally, he is even hinting at the internet as a hyperreality and that the audience are lost in the consumption simulation. (Baudrillard)
Watch the whole thing on Netflix and then watch some selected clips below…or just the clips below, but you won’t quite get it!
A parody of Instagram profiles, posts, ideologies and audience narcissism.
A pastiche of music video performances and edits.
A self reflexive parody of a reaction video.
The Internet, The Audience and Consumption…and club singer performances.
That sense of disconnected in a world of more and more images and less and less meaning. Also known as The Postmodern Condition
There are two Lizzo videos that you could choose from.
Special
About Damn Time
All Music Videos in a sense are postmodern as they are a media form that has only been in existence in postmodern times (post 2nd World War).
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.
Andrew Goodwin, a renowned media theorist sums up the postmodernism of music videos:
Blurs high art and low art – it is media for everyone with no boundaries.
Abandons/challenges grand narratives – incomplete narratives, no sense of resolution, rejection of the overarching ideologies of society/history – love conquers all, men are the breadwinners, god is the answer etc.
Intertextuality – borrows from other texts; deliberately, unknowingly, alludes to, knowing nod to – all of which fits with Jameson’s ideas on ‘nothing new, a flatness’ or as he puts it ‘blank parody’.
Loss of Historical reality – pastiche and intertextuality blur history and chronology so that conventional notions of past, present and future are lost in a melange of images, all of which appear to be contemporary.
Audience/Text relationship – Breaking the 4th Wall and lip syncing
Intertextuality
Pastiche – use of a previous text as the basis for the whole music video.
Mixture of styles – cartoons, animations, dance, drama, acting, documentary, other footage.
Self-referential
Draws attention to its own construction – breaking the 4th wall, lip syncing.
GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE relating to Music Videos and Postmodernism
They manipulate time and space – flashbacks, incomplete narratives usually present and they often challenge the grand narratives – there is not always a happy ending, a dominant male, success after working hard for a living.
Play with the relationship between audience and text – breaking the 4th wall and there is often a presumption they are culturally competent, deliberately playing with their expectations. Expected to understand the media language for the intertextual references.
Play with the distinction between reality and representation.
They blur the lines between high art and what is considered low art.
This is a little old now but it shows a self-referentiality (this is a music video that we have constructed) but it also points the finger at a wider postmodern scope i.e. the idea that people are lost in their hypereal worlds, unaware of their real lives and surroundings.
Plays with time and space – HOW? (historical eras blurred, references Ghost, parody of Pride and Prejudice/hip hop dancing/anachronic narrative/key quotation – Garlic Bread) – Jameson
Challenges the usual ‘audience/text’ relationship – HOW? (comedian playing himself playing a character/see the cameramen/catch him out of character/ad libs/consumer culture is dressed up as entertainment), expected to recognise the media language and be culturally competent- Jameson and Baudrillard
Tinkers with the conventions of representation – HOW? (comedy representation of a serious period drama) – Lyotard