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- postmodern texts tend to dispense with traditional narrative forms. They challenge the convention of beginning-middle-end.- postmodern texts tend to avoid conventional limitations of time/space
- self-reflexiveness….postmodern texts draw attention to their own making and to their fictional nature. Conventional media texts disguise their own making and encourage audiences to suspend their disbelief
- intertextuality/bricolage make postmodern texts much less self-contained, ie they refer to and borrow from other texts. Traditional media is much more self-contained.
- Traditonal media texts are ultimately about conveying meaning, whereas postmodern texts deny the possibility of meaning or truth.
Possible Essay Questions:
What is the difference between postmodern media and traditional media?
How do postmodern texts challenge the concept of representation?
How does postmodernism challenge the notion that texts can represent reality?
What modernist ideas has postmodernism challenged?
The word ‘postmodern’ requires us to consider, briefly, what is meant by modernism. Modernism is a term applied to various movements in art and culture at the end of the C19th and in the first half of the C20th. Much as there is not a single definition of postmodernism, it is impossible to define a single, coherent set of ideas to which we can attach the name modernism. Wikipedia suggests that ‘The term encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the “traditional” forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world.’
The word ‘postmodern’ requires us to consider, briefly, what is meant by modernism. Modernism is a term applied to various movements in art and culture at the end of the C19th and in the first half of the C20th. Much as there is not a single definition of postmodernism, it is impossible to define a single, coherent set of ideas to which we can attach the name modernism. Wikipedia suggests that ‘The term encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the “traditional” forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world.’
For our purposes, the most relevant thing to remember is that modernist artists and writers experimented with the representation of reality.
By comparison, in postmodernism, ‘the idea of representation gets ‘remixed’, played around with, through pastiche, parody and intertextual references – where the people that make texts deliberately expose their nature as constructed texts and make no attempt to pretend that they are ‘realist’.’ (JM, 137)
Postmodernism also reacts against modernism’s optimistic belief in the benefits of science and technology.
Much modernist work was seen as difficult, elitist and very much belonging to the world of ‘High Art’ and dismissive of ‘Low Art’.
By comparison, postmodernism, in its deliberate counter-culture positioning and its embrace of popular/low culture, challenges modernism’s hostility towards mass culture
Postmodernism from wmorris
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