Sainsbury's Advert About the Famous Football Match Between British and German Soldiers During Christmas 1914

This emotive advert has provoked strong debate over whether it should have been made. With its cinematic feel and its underlying commercialism, Sainsbury's advert is natural fare for a range of Media Units, across several exam boards. It is one of the most striking adverts ever made, where the competitors: Marks & Spencers, John Lewis, Debenhams, etc. seem tamely anodyne in comparison.

Has Post Modernism Been Killed by The Web?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/sep/15/postmodernism-cutting-edge-to-museum

A taste:

"This is the essence of postmodernism: the idea that there is no essence, that we're moving through a world of signs and wonders, where everything has been done before and is just lying around as cultural wreckage, waiting to be reused, combined in new and unusual ways. Nothing is direct, nothing is new. Everything is already mediated. The real, whatever that might be, is unavailable. It's an exhilarating world, but uncanny too. You look around at your beautiful house and your beautiful wife and you ask yourself, like the narrator of the Talking Heads song: 'Well, how did I get here?" After that, it's only a short step to deciding that this is not your beautiful house and your beautiful wife at all. The world of signs is fast, liquid, delirious, disposable. Clever people approach it with scepticism. Sincerity is out. Irony is in. And style. If modernism was about substance, about serious design solving serious problems, postmodernism was all manner and swagger and stance."

A Prezi on Postmodernism

Postmodernism? on Prezi

The Making of True Blood

Postmodernism -popular culture is at the crossroads where capitalism and technology meet

The overwhelming immersive experience of various media in our lives actually creates what we think is "real" and therefore, our reality. If someone, idea, etc. is no longer in the media in any of its forms - that person or idea gradually ceases to exist in people's consciousness. What we have is a world in which the superficial is elevated above any deeper reality; a world in which relativism crowds out any single truth. Do you think that any of this is true? Or is it partly true?

Intertextuality - how it can make texts richer in meaning

This is a great video for illustrating how meaning is enhanced for audiences from picking up intertextual references.

Assassin's Creed: the franchise explores later historical periods

The later games are described here with their postmodern, historical "environment'.



The level of detail and space in this trailer for "Assassin's Creed" for 1503 is astonishing. With its camera shots, style and mise-en-scene, genre boundaries are blurred - it's more like a film than a game.


Player skills, challenges and competing against the world all contribute towards players pleasure from FLOW.

Cadbury's Gorllia Advert Analysis repost

For Raveena,
http://asanda2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2009/11/analysis-of-cadbury-gorilla-advert-from.html

Assassin's Creed and Enae Volare by Era: postmodern blurring of genre boundaries in "historical" video games

The use of space and reality in this example of "trailer-like" exchange are worth considering for identifying and evaluating the post modern player experience. Certainly the genre boundaries between cinema and videogames are being blurred in this game - and this is an increasing feature of films and videogames these days. With this piece of exchange uploaded on You Tube this also becomes a music video. Even the song-track by ERA is not real Latin but a pseudo mix of old Occitan (from where the Cathars used to live in sourthern France and Latin.) A pretty good mix for a hyperreal and immersive playing experience.  By the way, Era's song was the on the ending credits for "Les Visiteurs" in 1993 in which a postmodern medieval film in which knight and his servant gets transported into our age and how he deals with our modernity. The  ambiguous setting for Assassin's Creed appears to be in "The Holy Land" and in one of the Christian Kingdoms before "the fall of Jerusalem" in 1187 to Saladin and during the Crusades. Historical settings are often favoured in post modern texts as they involve copying, pastiching, parodying and remodelling the past.

On a macro level the blurring is across several media genres. On a micro level the blurring is in the contours of the city, its grey ambiguity, as an undefined place, and especially in the "hoody" character whose face and thus identity is never fully seen. The player mode can be sandbox and thus can form a narrative that pleases the player.

Check out Ben Medler's great-looking analysis on why "Assassin's Creed" is a post modern game. He compares this game to "Mirror's Edge," a game which he considers modernist. It is a must read!

Ben Medler's Analysis of Assassin's Creed

Here is also an academic player's view of the game for space and increasingly diverse and complex player-skills.

http://www.icosilune.com/2010/01/diegesis-and-progress-assassins-creed-versus-prototype/

What follows is a good all-round review of this relatively new game and how it appropriates history.  Very useful for understanding the postmodern plundering of history as historical fiction. Later versions of the game on the same theme have since been released. Tarentino's ambiguously spelled, "Inglourious Basterds" follows along similar lines.
"What’s interesting about the series is its successful use history as a game mechanic, and its ability to construct realistic environments around the largely fantastical story. The evocations of cities such as Jerusalem and Rome, while not always painstakingly accurate, have a sense of place and life that is almost unique in the video game sector."

http://thelonggoodread.com/2010/11/23/assassins-creed-and-the-appropriation-of-history/

Another academic and challenging article on the game by G. Christopher Williams in which he argues that that this game is "a meta fictive frame tale."

What is controversial about this game?

"In the Simulation, Nothing is True, and Everything is Permitted

While I had heard prior to its release that some game journalists were concerned that Assassin’s Creed could be controversial given that its protagonist is an Arab assassin, I was, nevertheless, both surprised and intrigued as the game loaded up that I was met with a rather unusual disclaimer for a video game: “This work of fiction was designed, developed, and produced by a multicultural team of various faiths and beliefs.”"

for more

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/assassins-creed/

Argument against postmodernism

The link to this post.
http://asanda2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2011/01/arguments-against-post-modernism.html

05. g325 contemporary media issues - videogames and postmodernism

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

05. g325 contemporary media issues - videogames and postmodernism

View more documents from Alleyn’s School Media Studies Department.

Postmodernism theories and texts

Check out this SlideShare Presentation with its film examples.

Postmodernism theories and texts

View more presentations from raybloggs.

Postmodernism and ways of identifying post modern texts

A glossary of useful terms with explanations.
http://www.onpostmodernism.com/terms/default.aspx#Simulacra

Just one of the links to one area of text, television. You might easily explore music videos or films instead.
http://www.onpostmodernism.com/television/default.aspx

simulacra and simulation

Of a suburban battle in Iraq. If you click through to the You Tube video the people's comments show that they are lost in hyperreality. They cannot tell the difference between the simulation and the "real". They relate to the real from their knowledge of a video game.

Scott Pilgrim" and its post modern features

Here's a few reviews, etc. to read on this film. I'll be asking my students after Half Term to give brief presentations of post modern films and will expect them to identify post modern features in scenes and trailers as well as in a macro sense across the films.

Scott Pilgrim review which touches on its post modern features


The Director, Edgar Wright, talks about his film


http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/theatrical-reviews/scott-pilgrim-vs-the-world/ ( a review which touches on reality).


Wikipedia/Scott_Pilgrim_vs._the_World


Scott-Pilgrim-vs-the-World-Notes  Useful also for producing an institutions and audience case study.

Simulation, Simulacrum, Simulacra and the representation of the reality

With the invention of photography the image of reality could be copied ad infinitum. You no longer needed to paint it. Now we have the biggest copying machine ever invented in the Internet. Jean Baudrillard's ideas on simulacra and simulacrum and the representation of reality through the media and mass communication are very cleverly put across in this must-see video by Jimmy Weng.

"Life on Mars," Series 1, Episode 2 essay task on postmodernism

 Transition class from AS to A2

Prepare by writing notes for this essay question.

In what ways is Life on Mars a post modern TV drama?
You can watch the first part of the episode again by clicking this link
Find the others so you can fill out your notes further.

Pick up the final intertextual references and contrasts between the reality of 1973 and 2006 in this last part of the episode. Use the info. below to help you make notes and points. ( The 1968 film, The Good, The Bad and Ugly and the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. Why are these references there? What meanings do they add to "Life On Mars" or it characters?)
CLICK HERE for the link to the end of this episode.

Essay Task: how do audiences react to this post modern TV drama?

As you watch the second episode of Life On Mars (2006)  pause sometimes so you can write notes on the following points:

How is reality represented?

1. What is real and what is hyperreal? How does the programme suggest Sam Tyler may be dreaming up the early 1970s while in a coma from his hospital bed? How does the programme show that this may just be an immersive dream?

2. Intertextuality – Can you identify references to other texts/programmes/music from the past: the 1970s buddy cop shows, The Sweeney (UK) and Starsky and Hutch (USA). When you spot or hear an intertextual or cultural reference try to explain how to adds meaning to your text.

3. The historical context - How the programme’ meaning(s) for our time comes out of being set in the past. Consider the issues of Sam Tyler’s identity and his political correctness from 2006 and how this clashes in particular with Gene Hunt. Consider also how Sam's ethics and police methods clash with Gene Hunt's: a scientific approach verses instinct.

How does the programme consciously show politically incorrect behaviour and attitudes for audiences to judge them in our time:

• racism

• sexism including the treatment of women

• homophobia and masculinity

• inappropriate language/terms

• smoking

• drinking

• swearing

• references to people from our time ( in some episodes)

• ideology ( out of place beliefs )

• violence

• driving

• police behaviour and other inappropriate behaviour

• your ideas

4. How useful are technical forms of representation for understanding this “text” as postmodern? (Camerawork, mise-en-scene, editing, lighting, etc.) For example, Gene Hunt’s POV shot of the female witness with the close up of her chest.

 

Here is just ONE of the intertextual links that you might easily miss. The main villain, Kim Trent, triumphantly whistles "Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" (1967) as he leaves the police station. Listen to the song's lyrics and consider why. Identify other intertextual references and think about the meaning(s) that they add to the episode.

A review of episode 2 from the first series of Life on Mars ( 2006 )

A review of episode 2 of the first series of "Life on Mars"
The episode was first broadcast in late 2006.

The Difference Between Modernism and Postmodernism

A challenging read for beginners - but worthwhile.
The difference between modernism and postmodernism

Here's and explanation of post modernism with images from Metapedia
Postmodernism

A comedian's view of postmodernism

Postmodernists reject any notion of grand "truth",  such as say belief in God or the narratives associated with God. Similarly,  the idea or narrative that science is going to improve our lives is rejected also. Indeed any grand narratives are held suspect. For postmodernists "truth", if it exists at all, is all relative and may only be found in little stories or micro narratives and experiences of ordinary people and those living on society's fringe. No one religion has the answer as each faith group has its own beliefs - and "may" have some "truth" on its side. The main French theorist who advances this idea is Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924-1998).

Of course, you do not need to believe in any of this, as this comedian makes clear. And in any case, to argue that there can be no "truth" is somewhat contradictory as one is trying to advance a grand "truth" that there is no "truth"!