Postmodern Media – 50 marks, 1 hour.

Mark scheme:

o Make an argument (20)

o Back up with examples (20)

o Use terminology accurately (10)

You have a choice of two questions - one of which will always ask you simply to discuss texts across

two media in terms of why they are postmodern.

Why are some media texts described as postmodern?

or

“Postmodern media blur the boundary between reality and representation”. Discuss this idea with

reference to the media texts you have studied

What is meant by ‘Postmodern Media’

Or

Explain why the idea of postmodern media might be considered controversial.

Television Film Internet

Family Guy Harry Hill’s TV Burp The Simpsons Big Brother

Pulp Fiction (1994, Tarentino) Moon (2009, Jones)

YouTube Facebook

Help with language

First paragraph:

According to Dominik Strinati postmodernism has five identifiable features:

1. The breakdown of the distinction between culture and society.

2. An emphasis on style at the expense of substance and content.

3. The breakdown of a distinction between high culture (art) and popular culture.

4. Confusions over time and space.

5. The decline of the meta – narrative

I will discuss (Your chosen texts with full references) in relation to the above.

Sentences you may use to start off a paragraph.

o Society today is saturated with media images. The cultural products we create therefore

reference each other constantly, in the form of intertextuality, parody and pastiche.

o Postmodern products often place higher importance on the look or style than the underlying

meaning.

o In media texts, the meta-narrative reveals itself in the form of generic conventions, traditional

narrative structures and technical codes. Postmodern texts very often disobey or are playful

with these rules.

o Advancing technology has given us a distorted view of time and space. Postmodern media texts

are playful with the way they represent time and space.

o A postmodern society treats artefacts of high and low art with equal worth. Postmodern texts

blend the two.

Once you have begun your paragraph with one of the sentences above, or one similar, you should

then go into your examples. You can talk about more than one media text in the same paragraph, for

instance, discuss the way in which Pulp fiction distorts the notion of time, then discuss how YouTube

distorts time in a different way.

NB: There is no need to keep writing “This is the decline of the meta-narrative”, “This is the

confusion over time and space”!

To summarise, a paragraph should follow the following structure:

1. A way in which a text might be postmodern

2. Examples across one or more texts

3. What the audience do in understanding the text.

Questions to help you plan out your essay.

How does your chosen text:

Reference other texts (in the form of intertextuality, parody or pastiche)?

Lack depth of meaning but be stylish or spectacular on the surface?

Combine the conventions of more than one genre or style (become a hybrid)?

Change the traditional relationship between the text and the audience?

Disobey traditional narrative structure?

Represent a time period in a distorted or playful way?

Represent places in a distorted or playful way?

Involve the audience watching in an ‘ironic’ way?

Reject the importance of ownership/authorship?

In what way does audience need to use their existing cultural reference points in order to

understand the text properly?

Also consider:

In what ways might the notion of postmodernism be problematic? Have we discussed any piece of

film, art, literature or architecture which seems to be postmodern but was created much earlier than

the concept of postmodernism had been conceived?

In your opinion, are postmodern artists innovators or are they simply suffering from a lack of

inspiration?

Is postmodern media empty and devoid of meaning or can it bring something new to society?