Is "The Road to Coronation Street" a post modern text?

In what ways is "The Road To Coronation Street"  postmodern? on Prezi

Postmodernism clearly explained

I like the clarity with which this page illustrates rather challenging ideas.

http://www.sfu.ca/english/Gillies/engl207/pomo.htm

Spectacle and Emotion in Post Modern Media

These are two important terms for establishing how postmodern adverts, films, TV programmes, music videos, video games, etc. become "viral" and emotionally connect with audiences. This piece by an advertising agency is a must-read. Consider how audiences encounter spectacle and emotion(s) in Mad Men, the Sony bouncy balls TV advert, the Cadbury's Gorilla advert and Grand Theft Auto IV.

http://blog.orourkehospitality.com/2009/10/spectacle-story-and-emotion-can-make-your-video-go-viral/

However, the use of 'spectacle' in this piece is not Guy Debord's view of this concept which he sets out in "Society of the Spectacle" (1967.) A difficult but very enlightening read.
Society of the Spectacle

An argument against Jean Francis Lyotard's postmodernist argument on Grand Narratives

The collapse of the "Grand Narrative"

Most famously, in La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge) (1979), he proposes what he calls an extreme simplification of the "postmodern" as an 'incredulity towards meta-narratives'. These meta-narratives - sometimes 'grand narratives' - are grand, 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 have ceased to believe that narratives of this kind are adequate to represent and contain us all. We have become alert to difference, diversity, the incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs and desires, and for that reason postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of micronarratives.  From Wikipedia

One of the old, modernist grand narrative was, and for some still is, that science will solve nearly all our problems. Of course, apart from religious narratives, there are a number of other "grand narratives", too. Hollwood draw on most of the'grand' narratives listed below. One major flaw in Lyotard's argument is that postmodernism, itself, offers its own "grand narrative".

Modernism and Postmodernism Compared

This table by Martin Irvine from Georgetown University is invaluable for making comparisons between modernism and postmodernism.

Beware, the willingness to make distinctions between characteristics like this is a modernist trait. Postmoderns tend to blur distinctions.

For our case studies to date: Mad Men and GTA IV, I've coloured the most important comparisons in blue.

What is most important here is how modernism and postmodernism perceives reality.

Modernism/Modernity	Postmodern/Postmodernity
Master Narratives and meta narratives of history, culture and national identity as accepted before WWII (American-European myths of progress). Myths of cultural and ethnic origin accepted as received.	Suspicion and rejection of Master Narratives for history and culture; local narratives, ironic deconstruction of master narratives: counter-myths of origin.
Faith in "Grand Theory" (for explanations in history, science and culture) to represent all knowledge and explain everything.	Rejection of grand theories but is prepared to give credit to local theories
Faith in, and myths of, social and cultural unity, hierarchies of social-class and ethnic/national values, seemingly clear bases for unity.	Social and cultural pluralism, disunity, unclear bases for social/national/ ethnic unity.
Master narrative of progress through science and technology.	Skepticism of idea of progress, anti-technology reactions, neo-Luddism; new age religions.
Sense of unified, centered self; "individualism," unified identity.	Sense of fragmentation and de-centered self; multiple, conflicting identities.
Idea of "the family" as central unit of social order: model of the middle-class, nuclear family. Heterosexual norms.	Alternative family units, alternatives to middle-class marriage model, multiple identities for couplings and childraising. Polysexuality, exposure of repressed homosexual and homosocial realities in cultures.
Hierarchy, order, centralized control.	Subverted order, loss of centralized control, fragmentation.
Faith and personal investment in big politics (Nation-State, party).	Trust and investment in micropolitics, identity politics, local politics, institutional power struggles.
Root/Depth tropes. Faith in "Depth" (meaning, value, content, the signified) over "Surface" (appearances, the superficial, the signifier).	Rhizome/surface tropes. Attention to play of surfaces, images, signifiers without concern for "Depth". Relational and horizontal differences, differentiations.
Crisis in representation and status of the image after photography and mass media.	Culture adapting to simulation, visual media becoming undifferentiated equivalent forms, simulation and real-time media substituting for the real.
Faith in the "real" beyond media, language, symbols, and representations; authenticity of "originals."	Hyper-reality, image saturation, simulacra seem more powerful than the "real"; images and texts with no prior "original". "As seen on TV" and "as seen on MTV" are more powerful than unmediated experience.
Dichotomy of high and low culture (official vs. popular culture). Imposed consensus that high or official culture is normative and authoritative, the ground of value and discrimination.	Disruption of the dominance of high culture by popular culture. Mixing of popular and high cultures, new valuation of pop culture, hybrid cultural forms cancel "high"/"low" categories.
Mass culture, mass consumption, mass marketing.	Demassified culture; niche products and marketing, smaller group identities.
Art as unique object and finished work authenticated by artist and validated by agreed upon standards.	Art as process, performance, production, intertextuality. Art as recycling of culture authenticated by audience and validated in subcultures sharing identity with the artist.
Knowledge mastery, attempts to embrace a totality. Quest for interdisciplinary harmony. The encyclopedia.	Navigation through information overload, information management; fragmented, partial knowledge; just-in-time knowledge. The Web.
Broadcast media, centralized one-to-many communications. Paradigms: broadcast networks and TV.	Digital, interactive, client-server, distributed, user-motivated, individualised, many-to-many media. Paradigms: Napster and the Web.
Centering/centeredness, centralized knowledge.	Dispersal, dissemination, networked, distributed knowledge
Determinacy, dependence, hierarchy.	Indeterminacy, contingency, polycentric power sources.
Seriousness of intention and purpose, middle-class earnestness.	Play, irony, challenge to official seriousness, subversion of earnestness.
Sense of clear generic boundaries and wholeness (art, music, and literature).	Hybridity, promiscuous genres, recombinant culture, intertextuality, pastiche.
Design and architecture of New York.	Design and architecture of LA and Las Vegas
Clear dichotomy between organic and inorganic, human and machine.	Cyborgian mixing of organic and inorganic, human and machine and electronic.
Phallic ordering of sexual difference, unified sexualities, exclusion/bracketing of pornography.	Androgyny, queer sexual identities, polymorphous sexuality, mass marketing of pornography, porn style mixing with mainstream images.
The book as sufficient bearer of the word. The library as complete and total system for printed knowledge.	Hypermedia as transcendence of the physical limits of print media. The Web as infinitely expandable, centerless, inter-connected information system.

http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/pomo.html

Martin Irvine
irvinem@georgetown.edu
© 2004-2009
All educational uses permitted with attribution and link to this page.

Key Terms for Post Modern Media

Click on the image to enlarge

Click on the images to enlarge

Semiotics- the study of signs

We've been touching on some of this stuff in lessons: "the sign structures that we call culture". This is a great little video which illustrates signs as icons - indexes - symbols.

Theoretical Approaches: Postmodernism

A great link to a page where postmodernism is well explained with lists.

http://www.communicationandculture.co.uk/postmodernism.html

Here's a link to a page which influenced the one above.

http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html

Parody and postmodernism

This is as good as any formal argument that sums up the pros and cons of post modernism


Click on the cartoon to enlarge.

Arguments for and against Postmodernism

Here are a few links to articles which consider the pros and cons of the theories and arguments of post modernism.

POSTMODERNISM AND ITS CRITICS

This is very helpful, particularly with arguments against post modernism

http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/436/pomo.htm

Post Modernism: what is it? And what is wrong with it?

http://goinside.com/01/1/postmod.html

What are the recurrent features of post modern style ?

"Postmodernism is cultural movement that came after modernism, also it follows our shift from being a industrial society to that of an information society, through globalization of capital. Markers of the postmodern culture include opposing hierarchy, diversifying and recycling culture, questioning scientific reasoning, and embracing paradox. Postmodernism is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding modernism"

"Postmodern style is often characterized by eclecticism, digression, collage, pastiche, and irony. Postmodern theorists see postmodern art as a conflation or reversal of well-established modernist systems, such as the roles of artist versus audience, seriousness versus play, or high culture versus kitsch."

By R. Lee from Media Studies 180 Hunter College, Sections 102, 103

Of course, intertextual references are often found in post modern texts.

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Critical Perspectives for OCR's A2 Media Studies

The critical perspective focused on here is our one too - postmodern media. We will examine two to three areas of the media in which learn to argue over the application and relevance of this critical perspective. The first area will be TV's Mad Men.

Postmodernism

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