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Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a label given to a cultural movement or a state of society, but it is very hard to define. It is rather more useful to think of the characteristics of postmodern texts:
Intertextuality
Playful with genre conventions
Unreliable narrators
Reflexive
Pastiche
Bricolage
Parody
Weak Modality
Blurring of the differences between private/public or real/fantasy or producer/audience
Sometimes style over substance
Non-linear narratives
An barrage of signifiers
Baudrillard - Hyperreality
Baudrillard was a French philosopher who wrote Simulacra and Simulation (1981). In this work he suggests that modern life has become a confusing network of signs - that we are surrounded by a barrage of signifiers that are no longer related to any signifieds. Instead signs only refer to other signs. This is a state of hyperreality.
Baudrillard infamously claimed that the Gulf War never happened. Of course it did happen, but Baudrillard meant that the only way we have any understanding of the war is through a 24hrs rolling media that used footage prepared and edited by the military.
Macluhan - The Medium is the Message
This is a phrase used by Macluhan to describe the way that the form or medium of a text becomes embedded in the meaning.
An example of this is:
The message of a tv news report about a heinous crime may be less about the individual news story itself — the content — and more about the change in public attitude towards crime because such crimes are in effect being brought into the home to watch over dinner. In this way the medium becomes part of the message.
Liminal Spaces
Liminal spaces are places between places. A space is liminal if it is on the threshold. The concept of teenager can be considered a liminal space because teens exist in a place between childhood and adulthood. The representation of teens in media texts is often constructed through conflicting ideas of innocence and experience.
Many texts constructed for a teen audience have titles that draw attention to the liminal space occupied by teens - 'Inbetweeners' and 'Kidulthood' for example.
Roland Barthes - Semiotics and Codes
Roland Barthes was a French philosopher and academic. He could be described as a Structuralist as he believed that texts are like a code that can be decoded - that they have a structure. He developed a theory of Semiotics - the study of signs.
Semiotics
At the simplest level an image is a Signifier and the meaning is the Signified. The two components together form a sign.
Signifier + Signified = Sign (Image + Meaning = Sign)
In studying the media, we often need to carry out a semiotic analysis - this is particulary the case when studying advertising or representations. When the relationship between the Signifier and Signified is clear and sufficient for the audience, it is called a denotative relationship.
When the relationship between a Signifier and Signified is more complex, the relationship is connotative.
Signs operate in a complex network within a text and and meanings are often transferred from one sign to another.
In the Herbal Essences print advert an orange is denoted in the centre of the frame. This has connotations of freshness and nature suggesting that the shampoo is good for hair and a natural product.
Narrative Codes
In a similar way, Barthes saw texts as constructed using various codes:
Action Codes - Actions in the narrative that suggest something else will happen
Enigma Codes - An element of the story that creates a mystery for the audience
Semantic Codes - The connotations of the elements of the narrative
Symbolic Codes - Very similar to Semantic Codes - a deeper structural principle - often constructed through oppositions and contradictions
Cultural Codes - These codes are dependent on the audience's body of knowledge derived often from science and Religion
Theses codes can be difficult to understand and even Barthes was often unclear on the differences between them. However, Action, Cutural and Enigma Codes are especially useful in analysing media texts.
Laura Mulvey - The Gaze
In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey suggests that firstly the specator identifies with the characters in a film. Soon the gaze of the specataor becomes sadistic. We want our movie heroes to suffer as the events of the narrative unfold. Of course we also want them to overcome their suffering and triumph.
Mulvey also points out three kinds of gaze:
1. The Diegetic Gaze - the way that characters look at each other in the film.
2. The Non-Diegetic Gaze - the way that the audience view the characters in the film
3. The Look of the Crew - the way that film crew look at the characters
Mulvey suggests that each of these modes of looking positions the viewer as masculine. This means that women are often the passive object of the male gaze.
Freud - Psychoanalytic Theory
Of course Freud was not writing about the media, but was writing about the mind and mental illnesses. The basic points of Psychoanalysis are:
1. Besides the inherited constitution of personality, a person's development is determined by events in early childhood
2. Human behavior is largely influenced by irrational drives
3. Irrational drives are unconscious
4. Attempts to bring these drives into awareness meet psychological resistance in the form of defense mechanisms
5. Conflicts between conscious and unconscious (repressed) material can result in mental disturbances such as neurosis, neurotic traits, anxiety, depression etc.
6. The liberation from the effects of the unconscious material is achieved through bringing this material into the consciousness
Film and Media theorists have used these ideas in a number of different ways. Some of these include:
1. Psychoanalytic examination of narratives/themes
2. Psychoanalytic exploration of the appeal of advertising
3. Explaining the experience of the spectator when watching a film
4. The way women are viewed in film (see Mulvey - The Gaze)
5. Understanding the appeal and purpose of horror films
Stuart Hall - Encoding/Decoding Model
This is an active audience theory of mass communication. Hall suggests that media producers encode meaning in a text and the audience decode the text to access the meaning. In this way the text positions the audience through the codes used to hold certain beliefs or values. For example:
The Apprentice uses dramatic music and shots of Alan Sugar in a helicopter to position the audience to believe that Sugar is a powerful businessman and deserves respect.
Different audiences will have different responses to this positioning. Hall outlines three types of response:
Preferred Reading -The audience willingly accept the the meanings constructed by the text
Negotiated Reading - The audience accept some of the meanings constructed by the text
Resistant Reading - The audience reject the meanings of the text
According to Hall's Theory of Audience Positioning, different audiences will respond differently to this representation of Lord Sugar. A middle-class male audience may take a preferred reading of this text as they may admire Lord Sugar for his business success; a middle-class female audience may take a negotiated reading as they might acknowledge that Lord Sugar is successful but be offended by a representation that highlights masculine aggression. Some audiences may not share the capitalist ideologies of the text - maybe they are socialists who do not approve of "fat cat" city bosses; these audiences would take a resistant reading of the text.
Gauntlett - Pick 'n' Mix Theory
David Gauntlett's theory attempts to explain how an active audience use media texts. His theory has mainly been used to explain the appeal of magazines.
The theory is very simple - audiences enjoy and use some parts of the magazine and disregard others. The theory can be used to explain the appeal of other types of media texts - The One Show on BBC1 has a wide variety of content and therefore, according to Gauntlett's Pick 'n' Mix Theory, will appeal to different audiences at different times.
Blumler and Katz - Uses and Gratifications Theory
This is an audience and communication theory that attempts to explain why audiences like and use particular texts. The theory developed as a response to the effects model of communication which suggested that audiences were passive receivers of media messages that they accepted without question.
Uses and Gratifcations Theory takes a very different view of audiences and communication. This theory suggests that audiences are active consumers that make the choice to use a text for particular pleasures and functions. The basic version of Uses and Gratifcations is as follows:
Diversion - Audiences use media texts to escape their everyday lives
Personal Identity - Audiences use media texts to construct their sense of themselves
Surveillance - Audiences use media texts in order to learn about the real world or virtual worlds
Community - Audiences use media texts in order to connect with other people - this can be through face to face interactions or online
According to Uses and Gratifications Theory, Game of Thrones offers audiences surveillance as they are able to learn about the history and culture of the fantasy world of Westeros. In addition, audiences experience diversion becuase the programme has high production values and engaging narratives.
Marxist Theory
Marx theorized that there are ruling elites that control the means of production. Media organisations such as News International, owned by Rupert Murdoch, create and distribute texts to audiences. The texts created by powerful, global organisations such as News International generate ideologies that reinforce the values of these elite organisations. From a Marxist perspective, the elite ruling classes control the masses (that is, the general population) using media texts.
Contrast Marxist theory with hegemony. Marx suggested the elite control the masses, whereas the concept of hegemony suggests that the masses consent to the power of the elite.
Tessa Perkins - Rethinking Stereotypes
Conventionally, stereotypes have been viewed as bad for the following reasons:
1. Stereotypes are always erroneous in content
2. They are pejorative concepts
3. They are about groups with whom we have little or no social contact; therefore, they are not held about one's own group
4. They are about minority (or oppressed) groups
5. They are simple
6. They are rigid and do not change
8. The existence of contradictory stereotypes is evidence that they are erroneous, but of nothing else
9. People either 'hold' stereotypes (believe them to be true) or do not
10. Because someone holds a stereotype of a group, his or her behaviour towards the group can be predicted
Tessa Perkins suggests that these views of stereotypes are too simplistic and in facts we can view stereotypes in the following ways:
1. Positive Stereotypes - Stereotypes are not always negative - think about how Scotland advertises itself
2. You can hold a stereotype without actually believing in it
3. You can hold a stereotype of a group to which you belong - Teachers are a good example
4. Not all stereotypes are of oppressed groups or minorities - for example stereotypes of men or police officers
5. Not all parts of stereotypes are false - for example cowboys do wear hats
6. Stereotypes appear simple but they mask complexity - they are often about complex social relations
7. Holding a stereotype does not necessarily affect behaviour. I might know the stereotype of a traffic warden but I might still treat them with respect
8. Stereotypes change over time - they are not fixed
9. Stereotypes are a concept - all concepts rely on a certain amount of reduction and simplification
10. Sometimes stereotypes are used in a postmodern and reflexive way - they challenge audience perceptions
Edward Said - Orientalism
Said's book Orientalism (1978) was concerned with the way that the Western art, media and academics misrepresent eastern cultures - in particular the Middle-East.
According to Said, eastern culture is represented as static and underdeveloped in opposition to dynamic and developed western culture. Eastern people are often represented as exotic, erotic, savage, deviant, fanatical and cruel. Representations of eastern women are often the constructions of western patriachal power fantasies - the seductive dark women of the harem.
Said suggested that this orientalist way of representing the east reinforces western hegemony by constructing the culture and people of the east as "other".
Said's theory of orientalism can be applied to the film 300 (Snyder, 2007). The Persians are represented as a cruel and exotic other who are a threat to western hegemony.
Daniel Chandler - Representations
Chandler outlines the differences between two different perspectives on representations - Realist and Constructivist.
Realists are concerned with how accurate or realistic is a representation.
Constructivists reject the notion that a representation can be regarded as accurate or realistic. A constructivist approach accepts that all representations are scoial constructions and therefore thwe cannot simply regard them as true or false. A constructivist approach also regards all representations as ideological.
Chandler outlines some key questions to ask about any representation:
What is being represented?
How is it represented? Using what codes? Within what genre?
How is the representation made to seem 'true', 'commonsense' or 'natural'?
What is foregrounded and what is backgrounded? Are there any notable absences?
Whose representation is it? Whose interests does it reflect? How do you know?
At whom is this representation targeted? How do you know?
What does the representation mean to you? What does the representation mean to others? How do you account for the differences?
How do people make sense of it? According to what codes?
With what alternative representations could it be compared? How does it differ?
A reflexive consideration - Why is the concept of representation problematic?
Chandler also suggests that rather than discuss representations in terms of truth or realism, we should instead consider the text's claim to realism or the strength of its modality.
United 93 (Greengrass, 2006) is a film that aims for a greater claim to realism. In order to achieve this, Greengrass used many non-professional actors and even used real pilots and flight crew to play these roles. In addition, the natural improvised performances gave the film a stronger modality. Chandler uses this term to describe how willingly the audiences accept the representation of events as possible or likely.
Judith Butler - Gender Performance
Butler (1990) suggests that society is organised around a myth of heterosexuality as ‘normal’ and ‘true’: “acts, and gestures, articulated and enacted desires create the illusion of an interior and organizing gender core, an illusion discursively maintained for the purposes of the regulation of sexuality within the obligatory frame of reproductive heterosexuality.” She suggests that heterosexuality is obligatory in society, and that individuals consent to the performance of heterosexual roles which are used to create an ordered society – a status quo benefitting the elite.
Butler (1990) believes that gender is a performance; an exterior act: “words, acts, gestures and desire produce this on the surface of the body” (her italics). Butler suggests that gender is a construction, something performed by an individual so they are accepted and fit into society.
Levi-Strauss - Binary Oppositions
Levi-Strauuss was an anthropologist with an interest in the development of language. His theory suggests that the meaning of a word is understood by the difference between the word and its opposite. So we understand "good" because it is not "bad", or we understand "rich" because it is not "poor".
The narratives of many media texts are constructed using binary oppositions.
The film 300 (Snyder, 2007) constructs the Spartans in binary opposition to the Persians. While the Spartans are represented as pure and morally good, the Persians are represented as corrupt and morally bankrupt. The Spartans are represented as ruggedly heterosexual, while the Persians are represented as homosexual and perverse.
Propp's Theory of Characters
Vladimir Propp analyzed the narrative of Russian folk tales. He focused on the use of characters and outlined 7 character functions:
The villain — struggles against the hero.
The dispatcher — character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.
The (magical) helper — helps the hero in their quest.
The princess or prize and her father — the hero deserves her throughout the story but is unable to marry her because of an unfair evil, usually because of the villain. The hero's journey is often ended when he marries the princess, thereby beating the villain.
The donor — prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.
The hero or victim/seeker hero — reacts to the donor, weds the princess.
The false hero — takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess
Many media texts have narratives that are structured using these character functions.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Spielberg, 1984) has a simple narrative structure that conforms to Todorov's Theory of Narrative Equilibrium. In addition, the characters fulfil clear functions as described by Propp's Theory of Characters; Indie is the hero and must rescue Willie, the princess, from the clutches of the evil villain.
Todorov's Theory of Narrative Equilibrium
Todorov was concerned with the way that narratives are structured. He suggested that most narratives are structured in the following way:
1. Equilibrium - where opposing forces are in balance
2. Agent of Change - an event takes place to disrupt the equilibrium
3. Disequilibrium - the main characters recognise that the equilibrium is disrupted and try to fix it
4. Equilibrium Restored
Some people describe the theory as having 5 parts - but the structure is essentially the same.
Todorov's Theory can be used to describe the structures of whole texts or sequences of texts.
The overall narrative of Grand Theft Auto IV is concerned with Niko Bellic's desire for both revenge and redemption. The compete narrative conforms to Todorov's Theory with most of the gameplay focused on Niko's attempts to restore the equilibrium. In addition, each mission is also a complete narrative that follows Todorov's structure.
