Jean-François Lyotard is our third theorist. He had some pretty radical things to say about post modern society. Unlike Jameson and Baudrillard, he quite likes the idea of postmodernism!
He made the remarkable assertion that: All ideas of ‘the truth’ are just competing claims (or discourses) and what we believe to be the truth at any point is merely the ‘winning’ discourse.
So essentially, he is saying there is no such thing as any absolute universal truth (or meta narratives) on any subject .
The first thing to realise is that when Lyotard talks about ‘meta-narrative’, he is not using it in the sense of a narrative as we have studied it so far, i.e. a story that uses characters, conflict, events, structure… To Lyotard a ‘meta-narrative’ means, a view of the world and what is considered natural, right or inherently true.
Here is a great image which looks at the recurring ideas underpinning of Hollywood films, which have seem to suggest a simplified / mythical view of life and how things should resolve and which perhaps also communicate ideas which are widely held as being ‘true’, or in other words ‘meta-narratives’.
What are the meta-narratives of school life – what do you, the teachers, the public perceive to be universally accepted truths about what happens here between 9 and 4 each day? How far are those preconceptions met or not met during the day?
Now, watch this video with Russel Brand talking to Jeremy Paxman about the phone call scandal which got him fired from the BBC & now the story was exaggerated by The Daily Mail, edited by Paul Dacre.
Also what does Brand suggest about the meta narrative of celebrity?
Just think about the tragic news of the Love Island celebrity this weekend – the grand narrative of celebrity – tragically exploded.
What does Brand mean by the idea of ‘cultural narrative’?
To develop Lyotard’s ideas. He said these meta narratives (sometimes called ‘grand narratives’) are large-scale theories and philosophies of the world, such as the progress of history, the knowability of everything by science, and the possibility of absolute freedom. Lyotard argues that we (society) have ceased to believe that ‘narratives’ of this kind are adequate and are true for all of us.
The result of this rejection of single universal ideas being true for all of us is reflected by and explored in media texts that are rebellious and subversive towards widely held views and ideas, as well to figures in positions of authority and a distrust of what they claim is right or true.
Think also about the various different shows that feature different types of families, groups or individuals.
How the news is reported is a clear indication of hegemony – look at how the news was reported for several world changing events.
And all this co-exists alongside the frivolous and fantastical – hypereality and consumer culture at its best. Airbrushed and aspiring – we lose ourselves in the banality of it all. An antidote to the stark realities on the front pages but sadly somehow more important for most. I wonder why we are encouraged to be distracted – cynically, could it be hegemony in action?
For many of these stories – they are lies – and have since been proved to be lies (Hillsborough, WMD). At the time though, the narrative that ‘suited’ the ruling powers was one much more likely to leave us ‘spell bound and stupid.’ Whatever, you do – don’t as Baudrillard would encourage, look for the light source itself – just carry on believing the shadows on the wall.
Have you considered how postmodern selfies are? Our artificial image, simulation becomes the focus of a moment – we want people to focus on us and our image. The rest almost becomes irrelevant. We are also so self-absorbed – just recreating ourselves somewhere else – same face, different place. A pastiche of our own lives constantly uploaded.
You either love reality TV or you hate it. Mr Gregson loathes it – Mrs Cobb loves it! But why?
Mrs Cobb would argue she is a pluralist viewer, who watches it with a critical academic mind whilst Mr Gregson doesn’t even afford it the time, saying it is vacuous, boring, skin thin and pointless.
Whether you love it though or hate it, it is part of our media landscape and a great example for postmodern media.
So take some time to consider Reality TV in all its varying forms as it could give you some really good, up to date and pertinent examples to mention in your exam.
In case TOWIE turns your stomach….you could choose to talk about MiC instead. Just a posher version of TOWIE – that’s all.
Above is a really good blog post on hypereality and Made in Chelsea.
Made in Chelsea paints a very vivid picture of the rich and elite in London. From an outsider looking in, it suggests to a large extent that all ‘English’ people live this way. I have friends from different countries who have said to me ‘Is that what England is like?’ (referring to the show) …well quite simply no. London is very diverse and has many different cultures, yet Made in Chelsea does not have one ethnic person in the show. Whilst it is true that Chelsea is very elite, not everyone who lives there is white (believe it or not). Yet the programme tells another story.
This show definitely blurs the distinction between fiction and documentary and soap opera. The cast are exposed by producers in a certain way to show them off as distinct characters that the audience can relate to for entertainment purposes. Spencer is shown as the ‘villain’ of the show, Jamie, Proudlock and Francis are shown as the ‘laddish’ bachelors and the girls Lucy, Rosie and Louise etc. are the upper class women, who are obsessed with material possessions and their taste in fashion is nothing less than a six figure digit. The whole aesthetic of the programme is to exude wealth, high society members and their lavish lifestyles, which is somewhat a fantasy for many of the viewers.
Consumer Culture – features all the right brands: Harrods, Dorchester Hotel, Sloane Square etc. The programme is even sponsored by Rimmel – Get the London Look. You too could be this gorgeous!
Hegemony – capitalist, bourgeois, conservative view on life. Work hard and you too could be like this. The fact that most of the characters are wealthy by inheritance and none of them seem to do a day’s work between them is irrelevant. Capitalism pays off and MiC is evidence of this (the fact that it is completely constructed and contrived should not deter you from aspiring to this lifestyle). This is quite a good powerpoint on examples of ‘hegemony’ in action – it is very USA based but you will get the idea of how the messages of what is right, expected and wrong are constantly reinforced from ‘up above’ or ‘elsewhere’ although there are some steps to counteract this mindset, as you will see at the end of the presentation.
Hypereality – the blurring between the real people and their on screen characters is blurred. This is endorsed by them tweeting when it is unclear as to whether they are ‘in character’ or as themselves. We talk about them as though they are real.
Simulacra – the original becomes irrelevant. We believe the simulated world. This is how it is. We value the simulated world more than we do the ‘real’ world.
Watch any of the other ‘scripted reality’ TV shows – The Real (really? come on!) Housewives series, Teen Mom etc and you will see exactly the same elements that indicate they are part of this type of postmodern phenomena.
Charlie Brooker takes his usual side swipe at modern media and hits the nail right on the head. Focus on the last couple of paragraphs where it is clear their ‘creation’ is all part of consumer culture. Elements of ‘scopophilia’ are involved in wanting to watch and hate them and not wanting to watch and kind of liking them all at the same time. ‘Hyperreality’ is involved too in their caricaturing personas.
Watch these Charlie Brooker critiques on TV. There may be some soundbites you can use in your writing. He has a fantastic turn of phrase and you can quote him too.
Watch any of the other ‘scripted reality’ TV shows – The Real Housewives series, Geordie Shore, The Only Way is Essex and you will see exactly the same elements that indicate they are part of this type of postmodern phenomena.
The other TV shows – so called ‘reality fly on the wall’ shows – that are less scripted i.e. KUWTK, Dance Moms, Teen Mom are still no less constructed. See an extract below from an article that outlines how the new series of Teen Mom will now be produced without the 4th wall.
Are you happy this season breaks the fourth wall and shows production?
Maci: I love it. Before, such a huge part of our life was hidden and it was hard to be 100 percent real because we’re pretending we’re not on TV or that we don’t have a million followers on Twitter. Also, there are many situations in the past when we’re filming a scene and we’re aggravated and all of our anger is escalated because there are people in your house, audio, lights, cameras and then you have a kid running around who can’t get up because [production] doesn’t want to mess up the scene, so on top of the aggravation from what’s really going on, you have all this other sh–. It’ll really show how overwhelming being on a TV show is.
This is evidence that the TV show was completely constructed – think about it – the baby is crying but the camera crew is not ready so you can’t pick up the baby to comfort it. How ‘managed’ ‘unreal’ the footage must have been.
I think that the way that football spectatorship has been copied & recopied by a succession of media texts has lead us to a state of hyper-reality. I’ll try to illustrate:
Grass roots / local football (The Real Thing)
The real thing, standing at the touchline watching a football game in real time, with no media to enhance our experience.
Stadium Football (The Real Thing Max)
A spectator watches a football match from a static position in a stadium, often far away from the action, although the size of the occasion adds to the emotional impact of the spectacle. They watch the match in real time, although their spectatorship is enhanced by replays on a large screen. Also there is music and other entertainment to keep people occupied.
Football on TV – A copy of stadium max, maxed
Cutting to LS to see individual players
Football on TV follows the action as if we were a spectator in the stands, but also cuts between different camera angles, gives us replays, a running commentary with extra information and ‘expert’ opinion gives us insights into the style of play and management decisions. Also creates player/celebrities and heightens drama .
Fifa – An interactive copy of a copy of stadium max
Fifa simulates the football on TV experience, but goes further. The spectator is now the player, from the POV of a fan in the stands. Except now the camera tracks with the player that the audience is on control of. It includes the voice over commentary to simulate the TV watching experience. Players can play any team they like, play the role of the manager and also enter leagues and goals of the month competitions.
Fifa Communities
A Simulation which becomes more significant than real football?
Here is a community page about Fifa in which players organise Fifa tournaments, chat about Fifa, give each other tips, compare management strategies, compete in leagues with each other and other groups. Baudrillard would say that these people are in a state of Hyper-reality, where they feel involved in football but completely removed from the real thing and that don’t really understand football as it is in real life, only as it exists in the media.
The philosopher Plato wrote a famous work called ‘The Republic’.
He wrote The Republic as a series of conversations, which often featured Plato’s famous teacher Socrates. Here is the translated text of the ‘Allegory of the Cave’:
An allegory is a story in which characters and events stand for real life situations.
‘Socrates begins by asking Glaucon (Plato’s brother) to imagine a cave inhabited by prisoners who have been imprisoned since childhood. These prisoners have been imprisoned in such a way that their legs and necks are fixed, forcing them to gaze at a wall in front of them, unable to move their heads. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway. Along this walkway is a low wall, behind which people walk carrying objects “…including figures of men and animals made of wood, stone and other materials.”. In this way, the walking people are compared to puppeteers and the low wall to the screen over which puppeteers display their puppets. Since these walking people are behind the wall on the walkway, their bodies do not cast shadows on the wall faced by the prisoners, but the objects they carry do. The prisoners cannot see any of this behind them, being only able to view the shadows cast upon the wall in front of them. There are also echoes off the shadowed wall of sounds the people walking on the road sometimes make, which the prisoners falsely believe are caused by the shadows.’
Socrates suggests that, for the prisoners, the shadows of artifacts would constitute reality. They would not realize that what they see are shadows of the artifacts, which are themselves inspired by real humans and animals outside of the cave.
Here is a video version of the allegory:
This allegory can be usefully applied to postmodern ideas about the media:
We are the prisoners
The media is the fire and the puppeteers who cast shadows
We think of the media as ‘reality’
We will be free if we can see beyond and behind the illusion.
Or as Russell Brand suggests: ‘Look for the light source itself, don’t follow the shadows on the wall.‘ – in other words, look beyond the images and try and find the truth, whatever that is.
Re-read the Rizzlekicks lyrics – any links to Plato’s cave?
Baudrillard is the next theorist we are going to explore in the unit on Postmodern Media.
He takes Jameson’s ideas about media and starts exploring what impact these will have on the audience. He suggested a number of key ideas:
Consumer Culture: We are living in a world in which we define ourselves through the product we buy and the brands we support. Consumption is not just about need, it’s also about personal identity.
Hegemony: That we are controlled / conditioned by the media, which encourages us to buy into a culturally dominant set of ideas, as Russell Brand said, ‘..to keep us spell bound and stupid, it’s bread and circuses.’ Or as Matty Healy says – we are just ‘sheeple‘!
Simulacra: As Jameson says we have lost contact with the original idea (or referent) through the continued recycling of ideas and images. Baudrillard takes this one step further and suggests that we now believe that the copy of the copy of the copy is reality. We are like the prisoners in the Allegory of Plato’s Cave.
Hyper-Reality: By living in a world of recycled images and ideas that have lost the connection to the original idea/image we are the boundaries between reality and media reality are becoming blurred and confused. In other words, we are all residents in the media reality, which are merely shadows on the wall.
Here is a PowerPoint on these ideas and which gives two thought provoking examples:
Chained to the Rhythm…
…which you have already examined, includes many references both in its comments and the way it is constructed that would fit with Baudrillard’s criticisms of Postmodern Media and Postmodern times. Try and identify where she seems to be referring to Hyper-reality, Consumer Culture, Simulacra & Hegemony.
Hyper-reality – Theme Parks, Tablet obsession, 3D, Living life through the lens, living in a bubble
Consumer Culture – Hamster Wheel, The American Dream
Simulacra – Theme parks
Hegemony – Chained to the Rythmn, you think you’re free, zombies, 2.4 Nuclear family.
Remember, intertextuality is apparent in a wide range of media texts, not just music videos, adverts or music.
Here are some more examples that will help evidence, and illustrate texts that Jameson would critique as being flat and unoriginal.
Try and find your own examples from your own film and TV consumption. There are loads of examples out there and the more you can evidence your ideas in the exam and support your two main texts, the better.
Are we losing our sense of historical reality as a result of postmodern media? Does blur high art and low art.
A recent mini series on BBC 3 highlights the absurdity of the Vloggers we are all so involved in on youtube. Using mockumentary (bricolage of documentary and parody) it highlights how the industry works. Lots of self-reflexivity as it shows that it is making a documentary on Vloggers but also shows how highly self-reflexive Vloggers are (shows the sound boom, shows the camera, includes the outtakes and how they bend, play with representation through editing, post production and distort time and space etc). It is subtle because you have to be in it, to get it i.e. culturally competent to get the nuance references and jokes.
A postmodern take on a postmodern phenomena! Great example of how postmodern media plays with time, space and the audience.
Have a look at it – it made me laugh, especially Episode on Health and Beauty.
And another mockumentary currently on TV, really does run the risk of completely skewing our understanding of history. It parodies the documentary tropes but also parodies the intellectuals associated with dissecting history for the ‘sheeple’.
Self reflexive? Authentic? Presenting the pretence? Some youtube vloggers reflecting on the self-reflexive nature of their presentations. Fake/Real/Authenticity – is that possible?
Weaponised intertextuality is now almost a well recognised convention of modern movies. Do you think this is a good move and how does it manipulate the relationship between text and audience?
Try and find your own examples from your own film and TV consumption. There are loads of examples out there and the more you can evidence your ideas in the exam with up to date examples to illustrate your debate, the better your mark will be.
It seems hard to escape the postmodern ‘flatness’ that Jameson argues is prevalent in postmodern media texts of today.
And finally, it’s nearly Easter so why not celebrate and see how many Easter Eggs you can see in these Pixar clips – this is now an interelated universe of ‘knowing nods’ to their brand.