Discuss two or more media texts that you would define as 'post-modern' and explain why you would give them this label.
The term 'post-modern' describes an approach to culture which sees all texts as being intertextual, and meaning as mediated rather than representative of a state of original reality. Postmodernists believe that it is no longer sensible to describe media texts in terms of how they represent real life or events, and that instead we should understand that the boundaries between reality and media-reality are increasingly blurred. When looking at film in particular, many techniques can be used to make a film post-modern such as bricolage (genre cross-over etc.), intertextuality, pastiche, metafiction, hyper-reality and style over content.
Most of these techniques and others appear in the recent film 'Inception' which achieved huge popularity, mainly due to the post-modern features aside from the familiar main character. The characteristic used predominately is the confusion over time and space, with the introduction of time-bending in particular. With dreams being the theme that runs throughout the film, the overlapping of dreams brings in the slowing down of time because time does not work similarly in different layers of the dream. For example, what would be five minutes in reality is actually one hour in a dream, meaning that the film is deeply fragmented. Because outside of film and other media texts the subject of dreams often wants to be understood, by producing a film around this theme audiences may have watched it in the hope that it will explain the concept of dreams to them, whereas it was likely to just confuse them even more. This characteristic can link in with another post-modern technique used in 'Inception', which is hyper-reality. In the film, hyper-reality appears in the form of dreams, which are often more desirable than real life. An example of this involves the central character Mr Cobb and his wife Mal, who seems to appear in the dreams but not in real life. Although the audience and Cobb see her die, this is within a dream state so it becomes unclear whether she is real in the dreams and this remains unclear even at the end. This is hyper-reality because of course Cobb wishes Mal was still alive and believes she is when he sees her within dreams.
The flattening of effect is associated with post-modernism within film meaning that the audience and characters become to feel emotionless about something. A way to get out of a dream in 'Inception' is through death and when this happens frequently the emotion that should be felt with it becomes detached, both for the characters involved and the audience watching. In terms of intertextuality, the music that features throughout the film when the characters are coming out of a dream state was originally sung by French singer Edith Piaf, who was played by the actress playing Mal in a film about the singer.
Another film that can be described as 'post-modern' is 'Bladerunner'. This was less of a box office success when it was released in 1982 and was notorious for being misunderstood at the time. Replicants make up the majority of characters and the plot line is based around them, which immediately makes it post-modern, because these are effectively more perfect than humans. A predominate characteristic of post-modern films is genre cross-over and 'Bladerunner' is now a cult classic partly due to this. The film is a mixture of Science Fiction and Film Noir which causes confusion throughout, and the Film Noir element could also be viewed as a pastiche, copying the style in tribute to classic Film Noir films. When examining style of content, it can be assumed that the overall visual style and content was strong at the time it was released, but with the development of technology it no longer appears this way to audiences because of the continuous technological advances and what we are now used to and expect. However, it can be appreciated for being advanced for its time. Like 'Inception', confusions over time and space also feature in 'Bladerunner'. A particular lack of light causes confusion over the time of day and whether the time of day ever changes. In relation to the replicants who are supposed to be 'perfect humans' or more perfect than possible, they only have four years each to live, but do their other features and characteristics make up for this? Again, hyper-reality appears which brings confusion over the location with it for the audience. The main location or city is made to look like a mixture of LA and Japan in the future with flying cars and other advanced technology along with the replicants. The use of a combination of Japanese, English, Spanish and German as a language also disrupts what the audience expects of the location.
Many concepts, characteristics and techniques can be described as 'post-modern' and in essence it is anything unfamiliar to us, that we do not expect to find in modern society or the modern world. Boundaries between the media and reality are increasingly becoming blurred and this 'post-modern' element seems to be featuring more frequently in media texts, and also more being more popular with different audiences. 'Inception' in particular was a huge breakthrough for the post-modern genre.
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