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.

Intertextuality

• Pastiche – use of a previous text as the basis for the whole music video – in the style of
• Parody – making fun of a previous text
• Homage and Quotation – sampling
• Weaponised intertextuality – those deliberate Easter Eggs – we will look more closely at Ariana Grande and This is America as a detailed texts later in the term.

Bricolage – a melange, mixture of styles – cartoons, animations, dance, drama, acting, documentary, other footage.

Self-referential – this is a music video (think of Katy Perry winking at the end of xxx) – let’s draw attention to its own construction.

They manipulate time and space – flashbacks, incomplete narratives usually present and they often challenge the grand narratives (more on this later) – 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.

Play with the distinction between reality and representation.

They blur the lines between high art and what is considered low art.

Examples:

See how many intertextual references you can see in this Taylor Swift video.

Poppy is a social media phenomena who not only makes her own fascinating blog posts but also sings and creates music videos. This one is particularly self-referential and deliberately questions the music industry.

The 1975 are a really interesting band. The approach their music with a wry sense of intellectual cyncism and often end up evidencing postmodern trends in their work.  Here is Matty Healy talking us through his music videos.

Here is one example in full.

Top 10 Music Videos inspired by Movies: they are all examples of how music videos pastiche, parody previous texts. Again, you have to be culturally competent to ‘get it’ but you could also argue it is singers being lazy and unimaginative – why not just copy someone else’s art?

Andrew Goodwin, a renowned media theorist sums up the postmodernism of music videos:

1.  Blurs high art and low art – it is media for everyone with no boundaries.
2.  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.
3. 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’.
4. 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.

Don’t be frightened about the term ‘postmodern’.  If the context confuses you i.e. what went before that is not overly important. In fact why not just approach the topic as this is us looking at the media that surrounds us at the moment and we are looking at various criteria that can be used to analyse, critique and review it.

Postmodern is a term used to describe much of contemporary media that surrounds us today! SIMPLES – and is can be analysed, critiqued in reference to various ideas, theories, terms etc.

Here are the key ideas that encapsulate what postmodernism is all about:-

Postmodernism:

• is a movement from the late 20th century
• represents a departure from modernism
• challenges authority
• rejects the idea of status/ value
• makes fun of existing texts – parody/satire
• is a critique of what we assume to be real
• copies ideas/styles from existing texts
• suggests there is no absolute ‘truth’ – merely socially constructed truths
• gives a skeptical interpretation
• is a reinterpretation of classical ideas, forms and practices
• questions our perception of art
• distrusts dominant ideologies
• mixes styles
• plays with reality
• challenges ‘fixed’ ideologies
• challenges the rebellion of modernism
• it is playful
• blurs reality and representation
• it looks to the past
• is really hard to define

to name just a few things…

Some key terms that we will consider over the coming weeks – pastiche, parody, quotation, intertextuality, loss of historical reality, cultural competence, hyper reality, simulacra, consumer culture, hegemony, grand narratives.