according to http://uktribes.com, my persona seems to fit under the stereotypes of Young Alts, due to the description given;
'They’ll read about or listen to a huge variety of bands and try Skater, Emo and even Urban fashions. They also love a lot of mainstream fashion and music. The Young Alts make for a largely safe and non-judgemental Tribe in which to experiment with all of these styles.As they advance into later years, Young Alts specialise and move into different Tribes, but while they are still deciding they are some of the most voracious consumers out there: music, magazines, clothes makeup and haircuts are all sampled and discarded with abandon.
Young Alts are wide eyed to the world and can be influenced by TV, radio and mainstream media. Some of them are still listening to their parents! Of course, the biggest influence is the playground and their friendship groups, and they constantly scour specialist magazines and the internet for news and clues about their favourite scenes.
Young Alts generally adopt their passions from Emos, Scene Kids, Indie Scenesters and Hipsters and rarely create a trend for themselves. Their huge buying power combined with this predictable nature makes them a hugely exciting market. Careful analysis of social media can put marketers ahead of the curve, as can access to Young Alt tastemakers like Zane Lowe.'
Intertextual references: film within a film e.g. inglorious basterds
Hyperreality – the arches on a mcdonalds ‘m’ It is just an ‘m’ yet it means good food due to the association with it. Self-reflexivity: this involves the seemingly paradoxical combination of self-consciousness and some sort of historical grounding
Irony: Post modernism subverts conventions and negotiates contradictions through irony
Boundaries: Post modernism challenges the boundaries between genres, art forms, theory and art, high art and the mass media, blurring the boundaries of genres.
Constructs: Post modernism is actively involved in examining the constructs society creates including, but not exclusively, the following:
Nation: Post modernism examines the construction of nations/nationality and questions such constructions Gender: Post modernism reassesses gender, the construction of gender, and the role of gender in cultural formations Race: Post modernism questions and reassesses constructs of race Sexuality: Post modernism questions and reassesses constructs of sexuality
POSTMODERNISM, QUESTIONS/CHALLENGES THE CONVENTIONS OF EVERYTHING. It challenges, genre conventions, gender stereotypes, racial stereotypes, social stereotypes etc. For example, the conventions of what is right and what is wrong within society are blurred. Scott Pilgrim • Intertextual references of old games • Action/love/adventure movie – blurs boundares – fits into more than one thing. Kick-Ass • Female hero – not stereotypical ‘damsel in distress’ • Soundtrack comprised of many other superhero film soundtracks put together. • Little girl with guns/ killing people/swearing unrealism is realistic its unrealistic yet we believe it to be real else the film wouldn’t work
Jonathan Kramer 1. Is not simply a repudiation of modernism or its continuation, but has aspects of both a break and an extension 2. Is, on some level and in some way, ironic – Timbaland having animal sounds etc layered behind the track. 3. Does not respect boundaries between sonorities and procedures of the past and of the present 4. Challenges barriers between 'high' (classical) and 'low' (pop, rock, dance etc) styles e.g. Dan Black- Symphonies. 5. Shows disdain for the often-unquestioned value of structural unity – boundaries blurred. 6. Questions the mutual exclusivity of elitist (classical) and populist (pop) values – questions whether they merge together or not. 7. Avoids totalizing forms (e.g., does not want entire pieces to be tonal or serial or cast in a prescribed formal mold) 8. Considers music not as autonomous but as relevant to cultural, social, and political contexts – doesn’t just operate on its own, relevant within cultural, social and political things. E.g. charity singles, Diamonds - Sierra Leone 9. Includes quotations of or references to music of many traditions and cultures – taking elements from different cultures e.g. Kanye West – Drunk & Hot Girls and Can- Sing Swan Song 10. Considers technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music e.g. DJ Shadow, auto tune etc. 11. Embraces contradictions (different to what you expect) 12. Distrusts binary oppositions 13. Includes fragmentations and discontinuities e.g. sampling things, uses sound effect only once. 14. Encompasses pluralism and eclecticism 15. Presents multiple meanings and multiple temporalities 16. Locates meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers – depends on how it relates to you as a person, different cultural expectations etc. has any meaning you want.
Title of the mix because all the songs are either about having fun or love or whatever, but most are very melodic like lullabies (apart from the odd one or two!
1) Trouble by NeverShoutNever! (Reminds me of highschool and my first girlfriend) 2) Miss Sobriety by Cute Is What We Aim For (Reminds me of growing up and going separate ways with friends) 3) Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off by Panic! At The Disco (reminds me of my teenage years so far) 4) Forever And Always by Bullet For My Valentine (falling in love and forgetting the complications) 5) If it Means a Lot to You by A Day To Remember (summer ’09) 6) Remembering Sunday (live) by All Time Low (how in life nothing goes the way its supposed to ) 7) Fireworks by You Me At Six (reminds me of losing people who I was really close to) 8) Cute Without The 'E' (Cut From The Team) by Taking Back Sunday (being stabbed in the back) 9) Small Talk by Saving Aimee We're The Good Guys (I sung this in the microphone at the bands concert! unforgettable) 10) (I Used To Make Out With) Medusa by Bring Me The Horizon (destresses me through its raw sound) 11) Dammit by Blink 182 (reminds me of Reading festival & my childhood memorys) 12) Blunt Cruisin' by Asher Roth (good times with the lads) 13) Young by Hollywood Undead (feeling like society is against my generation) 14) Let's Hang The Landlord by The King Blues (fun filled punk rock song!) 15) I Love College by Asher Roth (summer ’10) 16) Last Train Home by Lostprophets (is like a backing track to every good memory)
At A level, my research and planning skills have progressed and allowed me to make more creative decisions, which can be seen from looking at my AS music magazine foundation portfolio and my A2 music video blog. At AS, I used many things for my research and planning, which I have improved upon and added to at A2. In AS I used Youtube to find the style of music artists to incorporate into my music magazine, therefore giving it a more authentic and realistic feel. I used Blogger to present my work in an easily interpreted way so my peers and teachers could evaluate my ideas and comment on them, thus using web 2.0 to help improve my final piece of work. Within my blog, I used slideshare to share my slideshow presentations on my blog to also let people see what I was doing and to give feedback on. I used Tubechop to show specific parts of footage so that I could interpret the style into my own work and see if other people agreed that it would enhance my work, and to add to my knowledge, I used Wikipedia and Google in the way of the DIKY Triangle by Tim O’ Reilly, I gained data from Google and Wikipedia, extracted information that was relevant to my task, gained the knowledge for example of specific style conventions of a genre of music, and used my wisdom to understand it and use my knowledge within my work to create a realistic looking music magazine. However, at A2, I used these same methods, and various others, showing a very articulated knowledge of research and planning which allowed me to make more creative decisions. My use of youtube, to gain understanding of conventions for my music video let me have the knowledge to question and subvert those conventions to make my music video more creative and interesting, and I used google and wikipedia turning my knowledge from the previous year of usage of these tools into wisdom as I learnt to incorporate more of my researched knowledge into my music video enhancing it greatly. I used blogger not only to gain feedback, but to see other peoples ideas and plans for their media products and though how the could enhance my own, along with the addition of using widgets on my blog for example the weather forecast to tell me when it was a good day to shoot my video and pictures. The introduction of my Macbook Pro led to even faster and simpler compiling of knowledge through the internet and its simplicity, with the added bonus of professional editing programs to enhance and add to the creativeness of my research, letting me make animatics simply by the use of iMovie to create the effect of the type of music video I was creating. Web 2.0 was a great influence on my planning and research, as interaction on websites such as Facebook, twitter and blogger all allowed a variety of peers to help enhance my ideas and offer other ones, to broaden my creative skills, by introducing new ways of adapting data and challenging it for effect within specific media conventions, which links into the UGC (user Generated Content) in which ‘amateur comment is now taken as seriously as information created by the professionals’ Andrew Keenan
In order to be creative, we have to know what to do to make it creative. For example we were told to make a music video to fit or challenge stereotypical conventions by choosing the song, shots and the whole video making it very creative. Therefore I believe that creativity has to be started by some guidelines that aren’t not very creative to make something very creative.
Creativity seems capable of disruption and even anti social outcomes. For example Hitler was creative at killing many people very fast, this could be viewed as creative however it is not a good thing. Creativity is also as much individual as it is collective, as I worked independently on my music video, and was still successful in being creative and making my music video.
Creativity is ubiquitous meaning everyone has the capacity to be clever, however, just because we have this capability doesn’t mean we necessarily use it, and therefore meaning that if we are forced into a situation where we have to be creative, we can be creative, shown through how being set the task to make a realistic looking music video, it shows the creative effort put in to make a very creative realistic music video.
Creativity is an external social or cultural phenomenon, but only if we are forced into the situation, which requires us to be creative, for example the societal need to not conform within society for example the clothes we wear. This links also to the task of creating a music video that forced creativity due to needing to create a video that is interesting, and unique, which would therefore get me the best grade.
Inglourious Basterds and Fight club can both be considered postmodern film's, as they both incorporate many post modernistic features, for example the heavily distributed intertextual references throughout the film, and the blurring of reality and fiction through various techniques between both media texts.
Inglourious Basterds, a 2009 war film by Quentin Tarantino, was a huge hit at the box office, grossing over $300,000,000 in theatres worldwide, making it Tarantino’s most successful film to date. The film is about a group of Jewish American Assassins, on a mission to kill any Nazi they come across and take no prisoners, with a mission to kill Hitler. The whole fantasy element which is evident from the start of the film as it is introduced ‘Once upon a time…’, and ends in the woods, a very generic setting for fairy tales, the fantasy of killing Hitler is a postmodern feature in its self, as it is trying to rewrite past events, due to the very evident historical truth that Hitler committed suicide, another postmodern element within this context is the fact that Hitler is assassinated by the race of people he is trying to destroy; the Jews.
Quentin Tarantino's foot fetish is another postmodern feature which occurs through many of his films, and is postmodern due to the fact he is putting the personal into the public, and although it is a very strange scene, it somehow fits the film giving a fairytale ‘cinderella’ element to it, also making the audience notice how it isn’t real life and is a fictional film, which is a very postmodern feature.
Within Inglorious Basterds, there are many intertextual references for example, The Battleship Potempkin with the Odessa steps sequence. The ‘film within a film’ Nations pride also has two Battleship Potempkin sequences, with the soldier being shot in the eye and the baby in a pram rolling across the town square. Also, within Inglourious Basterds the British officer makes a reference to the film 'White hell of pitz palu'.
Another postmodern feature of Inglorious Basterds is the over the ‘parodic' acting style, using famous well known actors such as Brad Pitt (Aldo Raine) playing the role of a South American Lieutenant, who is very merciless as he wants 100 Nazi scalps from every member of his assassin group. Mike Myers, who is best known for comedy films takes the part of a British Colonel. The high contrast in the sheer professionalism of a colonel portrayed by a comedian is entirely postmodern because the audiences buy into the idea that he is this serious colonel, rather than the Mike Myers from other well-known films.
The Violence within Inglourious Basterds is so brutal and gory, that it is comical. It adds to the sheer insanity of the fact they are killing humans as if it were a game, and shows the true brutality of these actors through violent acts, for example, when Eli Roth (Sgt. Donny Donowitz) smashes in the head of a German soldier with a baseball bat, commentating as if he were playing for a proper team and had hit a home run.
Fight Club a 1999 film by David Fincher movie which grossed over $100,000,000 worldwide. The film is about an unnamed character played by Ed Norton who is leading a very boring day-to-day life, so boring infact that he attends social meetings for problems he doesn’t even have. He meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a soap seller who is everything Ed Norton's character is not, he has the looks, the talent and the body Ed Norton’s character aspires to have. Tyler Durden and Ed Norton’s character start a Fight Club for men, to try re-masculinise men within today’s society. As the Fight Clubs grow. they start performing ‘homework assignments’ which are normally criminal or violence, which Tyler Durden had set to give everyone the chance to live their dreams and start afresh on a level playing field. This violent ‘justice’ for example threatening to kill a supermarket owner because he is running a store and not doing what he Tyler scares him into promising he will become what he always wanted to be. In a sense the contrasting element of pain giving pleasure is very postmodern as they are conflicting elements, along with more realistic sound effects which make the viewer question how much we tolerate what could be considered ‘fake’ sounding fights instead of convincing ‘real’ sounding ones.
One major postmodern aspect within Fight Club is the IKEA catalogue scene where everything in Ed Norton’s apartment is shown to be labeled and priced, linking to how the film teaches you that society is now overcome by consumer goods, and Tyler Durden proves that these materialistic things aren’t needed, by blowing up Ed Norton’s apartment to prove his point of "What you own ends up owning you".
Participation Daft Punk allows people to participate within 'harder, better, faster, stronger' through the use of an app which gives the sound samples used by Daft punk so anyone could attempt to replicate their song.
Modification DJ Shadow uses modification to mix many various different sound samples to create his own brand new song, through the use of DJ decks and scratching etc.
Authenticity Disrupted Dan black uses his music and video to emphasise that it is a copy of something else, nearly every element within the music video and song has been copied, except from its song lyrics.
Originality Dan Black and DJ Shadow can all be questioned about their originality, as although they all use other songs, which is unoriginal, they create brand new, never before heard music which could be called 'original'.
Does knowing how to make it, or making it easy to reproduce make it less impressive? yes it does kind of because it makes everybody feel like they have the same amount of skill as daft punk for example in the app, however, not everyone does it because everyone can try to recreate the songs, however it will never be exactly the same as the original song.
1. Bloc Party – Song For Clay (Disappear Here) 2. The Blackout – I Know You Are, But What Am I 3. Asher Roth – She Don’t Wanna Man 4. Marina & The Diamonds – Obsessions 5. Lady Gaga – Eh,Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say) 6. 3OH!3 – Don’t Trust Me 7. Papa Roach – Days Of War 8. Panic At The Disco – But It’s Better If You Do 9. Forever The Sickest Kids – Breakdown 10. The All American Rejects – Dirty Little Secret
just a quick blog to say i was watching this music video and it weaves fight club video into it (i think) and uses subliminal messaging and many other conventions shown within the film. one of my favourite songs, and now ive found intertextuality within it. enjoy!
Scott pilgrim only got $10 million in earnings and made almost half of its total on opening night, whilst its $60 million budget is extremely out of grasp. Here are 5 reasons for why it was such a box office flop.
People Over 30 Don't Get It The movie's marketing was such an accurate representation of the film I think it's fair to say that most of the people who saw ads for it had a good idea of what they were going to see, And they didn't want to see it. In particular people over the age of 30 didn't want to see it. It's a movie about the kinds of individuals anyone over 30 with a job would like to see introduced to a cattle prod, watching a kid whine about how he has to be in bands and stuff and hang out a lot is a very accurate representation of this whole film. It looked like a movie about kids, for kids. However, the target audience wasn’t as good as it seems as you will see in my next point.
People Under 30 Don't Get It While Scott Pilgrim is about teens and recent teens, the way it goes about telling its story isn't exactly teen friendly. The film is full of video game culture references. However, it’s evident right from the movie's first frame where the Universal Pictures logo is redone using 8-bit graphics, which look like they were created for the original NES, which is when the target audience wasn’t even born, which is a pretty major mistake. The movie's steeped not just in video games, but in classic video game references which kids probably aren't interested in and even if they were, almost certainly wouldn't get. However, even more references that only an older generation would get are included in the film, such as a Seinfeld scene and the desert sequence is a reference to Wayne's World 2. For most kids, the Atari 2600 is just something you get on a t-shirt, and if you reference Super Mario Bros. 2 in a movie, there's a pretty good chance they won't know what it is.
Geeks Don't Get It Scott Pilgrim is not exactly a geek film. This is a movie about a slacker musician who's biggest problem is choosing which of the two ‘hot’ girls he's dating he most wants to sleep with. He spends his nights hanging out at cool clubs where he rocks out on stage and his days planning another balls to the wall brawl with an enemy. This is a movie about guys who are in bands, not geeks sitting around in their parents' basements playing World of Warcraft. It doesn't have any geeks in it and, apparently, none of them showed up to see it either. Odds are most geeks simply didn't get the appeal of a movie about cool guys with guitars pretending to like video games and stayed home with an actual video game called Starcraft II.
People Hate Michael Cera There's a reason this viral video containing a collection of shots in which Michael Cera gets punched in the face was insanely popular, and no it isn't because people were excited about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. While he has his fans, people hate Michael Cera. In particular they hate that he always plays the same character and he did it again in Scott Pilgrim. Which is another reason it flopped, too many people hate the leading man.
Scott Pilgrim Is A Musical Without Songs Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a musical. Not because of the indie-rock soundtrack, there aren't really many songs in the film and there's definitely no dancing. Instead what Edgar Wright has done is take the musical format and apply it to, fighting. In a musical characters break into song and dance whenever there's something too big to be expressed by words. Scott Pilgrim uses its fights in the same way. Scott Pilgrim fights whenever there's something too big to express with dialogue, something too important to simply say. It's through these elaborate, colorful, fights that Scott's personality changes and grows. It's because of his fights that he eventually realizes he lacks self-respect, and when he gets some, that's part of a fight too. Except musicals aren't for everyone. the same things which people hate about musicals are present in the trailers and, whether they knew it or not, probably had a hand in keeping them away. Some people simply don't get musicals. Normally that's ok since there's a dedicated crowd of moviegoers who do get it, and show up for a musical anyway, but the musical moviegoer isn't showing up for a fight movie and neither did anyone else.
There were big expectations for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but only from the handful of people who'd already seen it. But it was always a movie without a specific audience. It's a broad movie built on a lot of different niche elements, and as much as we'd like to believe moviegoers are open-minded enough to step outside their comfort zone, most of the time they won't. The mistake was in thinking that all the different audiences Scott Pilgrim speaks to were the same audience, when they're not.
People say it's become cool to be a geek. That's not true. People have just started applying the word geek to cool people. Hipsters aren't geeks and geeks aren't rock musicians and rock musicians aren't old school gamers and aging gamers don't like musicals. In a perfect world none of that would matter and people would simply show up to the theater and be blown away by the innovative level of creativity on display in Scott Pilgrim, but you have to get them there first.
Maybe Universal could have lied more in the marketing, but it's hard to fault them for being honest about the movie they had to offer. They were proud of Edgar Wright's work, and advertised it accordingly. Deadline says Universal knew it would flop, but they also knew it was good, and simply didn't care. Perhaps they're banking on it finding new life as a massive cult hit on DVD, and that's exactly what it deserves to be. Scott Pilgrim's a flop and it'll take a minor miracle to turn that around before theater owners give up and stop showing it. But maybe, if it's lucky, Pilgrim will find new life somewhere down the road as a must-see Netflix rental. Whether they're potheads or nerds, ravers or comic book readers, they'll thank you for it. It's Scott Pilgrim fans vs. the World.
Pluralism is a belief that there is no one answer to anything, which is much like postmodernism. There are two types of pluralism:
Firstly there is Normative pluralism/relativism (or nihilism) is the acceptance of all narratives, expressions and norms, claiming that no one is better than all the others, which is a very bleak view.
Secondly, (the view we have looked at) there is a kind of postmodernism which is pluralist in the sense that it accepts different views, without denying that something is better than other things. For example accepting someone’s view, but not agreeing with it. It is this second kind, which allows some form of rebuttal to criticisms of Postmodernism (like those put forward by Jameson) and perhaps stops it being so annoyingly smug a theory.
Remember Marshall McLuhan view that 'the medium is the message', this is certainly the case with Hollywood cinema. In terms of medium, film genre serves as the medium
There is a view that only 7 narratives exist
Overcoming the Monster A terrifying, all-powerful, life-threatening monster whom the hero must confront in a fight to the death. An example of this plot is seen in Beowulf, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Dracula. Rags to Riches Someone who has seemed to the world quite commonplace is shown to have been hiding a second, more exceptional self within. Think the ugly duckling, Jane Eyre and Clark Kent. The Quest From the moment the hero learns of the priceless goal, he sets out on a hazardous journey to reach it. Examples are seen in The Odyssey, The Aeneid, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Voyage and Return The hero or heroine and a few companions travel out of the familiar surroundings into another world completely cut off from the first. While it is at first marvellous, there is a sense of increasing peril. After a dramatic escape, they return to the familiar world where they began. Alice in Wonderland and The Time Machine are obvious examples; but Brideshead Revisited and Gone with the Wind also embody this basic plotline. Comedy Following a general chaos of misunderstanding, the characters tie themselves and each other into a knot that seems almost unbearable; however, to universal relief, everyone and everything gets sorted out, bringing about the happy ending. Shakespeare’s comedies come to mind, as do Jane Austen’s perfect novels. Tragedy A character through some flaw or lack of self-understanding is increasingly drawn into a fatal course of action which leads inexorably to disaster. King Lear, Madame Bovary, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Bonnie and Clyde—all flagrantly tragic. Rebirth There is a mounting sense of threat as a dark force approaches the hero until it emerges completely, holding the hero in its deadly grip. Only after a time, when it seems that the dark force has triumphed, does the reversal take place. The hero is redeemed, usually through the life-giving power of love. Many fairy tales take this shape; also, works like Silas Marner and It’s a Wonderful Life. Jean-François Lyotard Lyotard rejected what he called the “grand narratives” or universal “meta-narratives.”
Basically, the grand narratives (big stories) refer to the great theories of history, science, religion, politics. For example, Lyotard rejects the ideas that everything is knowable by science or that as history moves forward in time, humanity makes progress, and therefore he also rejects that everyone follows one of three grand narratives, and introduced the idea of micronarratives. Lyotard favours ‘micronarratives’ (little stories) that can go in any direction, that reflect diversity, that are unpredictable, which show that everyone is different and everyone has their own stories.
Rosenau (1993) Rosenau identifies seven contradictions in Postmodernism: 1. Its anti-theoretical position is essentially a theoretical stand. 2. While Postmodernism stresses the irrational, instruments of reason are freely employed to advance its perspective. 3. The Postmodern prescription to focus on the marginal is itself an evaluative emphasis of precisely the sort that it otherwise attacks. 4. Postmodernism stress intertextuality but often treats text in isolation. 5. By adamently rejecting modern criteria for assessing theory, Postmodernists cannot argue that there are no valid criteria for judgment. 6. Postmodernism criticizes the inconsistency of modernism, but refuses to be held to norms of consistency itself. 7. Postmodernists contradict themselves by relinquishing truth claims in their own writings.
Lyotard rejected what he called the “grand narratives” or universal “meta-narratives.”
Basically, the grand narratives (big stories) refer to the great theories of history, science, religion, politics. For example, Lyotard rejects the ideas that everything is knowable by science or that as history moves forward in time, humanity makes progress, and therefore he also rejects that everyone follows one of three grand narratives, and introduced the idea of micronarratives. Lyotard favours ‘micronarratives’ (little stories) that can go in any direction, that reflect diversity, that are unpredictable, which show that everyone is different and everyone has their own stories.
Not to be confused with a pastiche, the homage is a kinder and more respectful way of making use of an existing style. Homage is in a simple way a sort of tribute to the thing they are copying. Tarantino makes use of homage in all of his films. For example, Tarantiono’s soundtrack to Inglorious Basterds is a tribute to Ennio Morricone as his music is used throughout the whole film and owns the majority of music on the soundtrack to the movie.
Sees postmodernism as empty and trapped in circular references (never-ending arguments).
Nothing more than a series of self-referential 'jokes' which have no deeper meaning or purpose. (Ironically Postmodernists don't disagree but use his criticism as their purpose, by not having a purpose, that in itself is the purpose creating the paradoxical nature of Postmodernism)
For Jameson, literary and cultural output has more purpose than postmodernism and therefore remains a modernist in a world increasingly dominated by postmodern culture.
Contrasting this however, Jameson sees reason for the present generations to express themselves through postmodernity due to them being the product of such a heavily globalised, multinational dominated economy, which carries the multinational media industry as one of its main branches. By the media being everywhere, all the time bombarding the generation, explains why postmodernists’ merging of all discourse into an undifferentiated whole "there no longer does seem to be any organic relationship between the American history we learn from schoolbooks and the lived experience of the current, multinational, high-rise, stagflated city of the newspapers and of our own everyday life” (p.22 Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1991.)
Pastiche in its simplest form is an imitation of an existing style. Normally it is used in a lighthearted way but more often it is very satirical. A satire attempts to mock topical issues, which means that its humour and purpose is fleeting as it relies on the audiences knowledge of the issue that is being sent up. Pastiche is now seen as part of Postmodernism and is used in both support and criticism of postmodernism.
“The centre is not the centre. The concept of a centered structure…is contradictorily coherent. And, as always, coherence in contradiction expresses the force of desire.”
The centre actually doesn’t exist, but because we have a need for it to make sense of the world around us, we perceive it to be there – however, according to Derrida, the need for and perception of a centre doesn’t necessarily mean that centre exists.
Talcott Parsons was a sociologist in the 1950s who made observations of society leading to the structural functionalist view. This view suggests that society (like literature and film) has necessary structures that keep it together.
Post-Modernism is fundamentally the diverse mixture of any tradition with its immediate past: it is the continuation of Modernism and its transcendence (Charles Jencks, What is Post-Modernism? 1986).
One easy to understand example of hyperreality is the McDonald's "M" arches create in the eyes of the viewer, the huge foodchain that it is known as today, when in "reality" the "M" represents nothing, and the food produced is neither identical nor infinite. (Shown in simulacra and simulation) Marshall McLuhan who created the phrase ‘the medium is the message’ heavily influenced Baudrillard’s idea of hyperreality. Marshall’s phrase basically means that the way the message is presented becomes more important than the meaning of the message itself.
From the 9/11 example of 'it was like a Movie', Baudrillard gives this Derrida’s point a name, Simulacra Simulation. Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience of things is of a simulation of reality. He believes that we cannot separate the image from the 'reality', for example, when we eat a Big Mac, we eat the marketing and lifestyle associated with it, giving the impression that the Big Mac we are eating is the great thing advertised on the television, rather than just one of millions mass produced, we believe the one we see on the television is the one that we eat.
Levi Strauss developed the theory of 'bricolage'. Bricolage is a change that takes place giving traditional objects or language a new, often subversive, meaning and context.
A very obvious example was the use of a safety pin by punks as a piercing. Strauss believed that texts were constructed from various parts of other texts, which means that all texts used elements from other texts in order to create something new. That DOESN'T make it postmodern. However, for a text to become postmodern, it deliberately takes elements from outside its 'genre' and makes you notice them (like the safety pin piercing). Levi-Strauss saw any text as constructed out of socially recognizable debris from other texts. He saw that writers construct texts from other texts by a process of: Addition Deletion Substitution Transposition
Jacques Derrida said that 'a text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without... a genre. Every text participates in one or several genres, there is no genreless text' (Derrida 1981, 61).
Derrida’s point explains why commentators on September 11th could only understand what they were seeing as ‘like a movie’. And also why Kick-Ass is thought of as ‘like a superhero’. This is perhaps what Fiske means by saying ‘we make sense of it by turning it into another text.’ Steve de Souza, the director of Die Hard says that: “[T]he image of the terrorist attacks ‘looked like a movie poster, like one of my movie posters” (119). Film experts were not the only ones to resort to cinematic examples that they remembered when confronted with the events of September 11, unable or unwilling to believe their own vision of horrific events, people do not think back to imagery of the nightmare, but compare that nightmare to films they have seen.
Fiske thought that we make sense of the world not through our own experiences but through the media's portrayal of them. We use 'codes' to create meaning, for example, within Kick Ass, we view the character ‘Kick Ass’ as a superhero, just because he is dressed like a superhero, showing that our perception of a superhero is only apparent through intertextuality from other films for example batman and Spiderman. Infact Kick Ass isn’t a superhero, because he has no super powers and is therefore no different to any other normal person.
René Magritte was an artist, who’s work, which showed a juxtaposition of everyday items in an unusual context, which gave a new meaning to familiar things. For example, he showed this through his painting, The (La trahison des images), displays a pipe, which looks like it could be used as an advertisement for a tobacco store. Magritte painted below the pipe "This is not a pipe" (Ceci n'est pas une pipe), which appears to contradict what he has just painted, but is actually true: the painting is not of a pipe; it is an image of a pipe. When Magritte was asked about this image, he replied that of course it was not a pipe, just try to fill it with tobacco.
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and occasional actor. In the early 1990s he began his career as an independent filmmaker whose films used nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence. His films include Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill (2003–2004), Death Proof (2007) and Inglourious Basterds (2009). His films have earned him an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA and a Palme d'Or and he has been nominated for Emmy and Grammy awards. Filmography. 1987 My Best Friend's Birthday 1992 Reservoir Dogs 1994 Pulp Fiction 1995 Four Rooms 1997 Jackie Brown 2003 Kill Bill: Vol. 1 2004 Kill Bill: Vol. 2 2005 Sin City 2007 Death Proof 2009 Inglourious Basterds
Reviews of Inglourious Basterds.
'Tarantino swaps fact for pulp fiction; Quentin Tarantino has made a glorious, silly, blood-spattered return' - BBC
'QT is rediscovering his form: Basterds is a tense, punchy and darkly funny film.' -FHM
'The endless twists and turns coupled with Tarantino's trademark black comedy help take the edge off the violence a little' -Sun Online
If the accomplishment of this 'first scene were upheld throughout then we might have a masterpiece on our hands. Alas, it is uneven as well as unpredictable.'-Anthony Quinn, Independent
Music used in the film.
1."The Green Leaves of Summer" - Nick Perito (Originally in The Alamo) 2."The Verdict (La Condanna)" - Ennio Morricone (mislabled "Dopo la condanna") 3."White Lightning (Main Title)" - Charles Bernstein (Originally in White Lightning) 4."Slaughter" - Billy Preston (Originally in Slaughter) 5."The Surrender (La resa)" - Ennio Morricone 6."One Silver Dollar (Un Dollaro Bucato)" - Gianni Ferrio 7."Davon geht die Welt nicht unter" - Zarah Leander 8."The Man with the Big Sombrero" - Samantha Shelton & Michael Andrew 9."Ich wollt, ich wär ein Huhn" - Lilian Harvey & Willy Fritsch 10."Main Theme from Dark of the Sun" - Jacques Loussier 11."Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" - David Bowie (Originally in Cat People) 12."Tiger Tank" - Lalo Schifrin (Originally in Kelly's Heroes) 13."Un Amico" - Ennio Morricone 14."Rabbia e Tarantella" - Ennio Morricone
Description of Blaxploitation.
Blaxploitation is a film genre that emerged in the United States circa 1971 when many exploitation films were made specifically (and perhaps exclusively) for an audience of urban black people; the word itself is a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation". Blaxploitation films were the first to feature soundtracks of funk and soul music. These films starred primarily black actors. Variety magazine credited Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, released in 1971, with the invention of the blaxploitation genre. below are some examples of blaxploitation films:
Description of Spaghetti Western and Western.
Spaghetti Western
also known as Italo-western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western film that emerged in the mid-1960s, so named because most were produced and directed by Italians, usually in co-production with a Spanish partner and in some cases a German partner. The partners would insist some of their stars be cast in the film. The typical team was made up of an Italian director, Italo-Spanish technical staff, and a cast of Italian and Spanish actors, sometimes a fading Hollywood star and sometimes a rising one like the young Clint Eastwood in three of Sergio Leone's films. The films were typically shot in inexpensive locales resembling the American Southwest, primarily the Andalusia region of Spain, Almería, Sardinia, and Abruzzo. Because of the desert setting and the readily available low-cost southern Spanish or southern Italian extras, typical themes in spaghetti westerns include the Mexican Revolution, Mexican bandits, and the border region shared by Mexico and the United States. below is an example of a typical spaghetti western film:
Western The Western is a genre of art that may be found in film, television, radio, literature, painting and other visual arts. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of the Alamo in 1836 but most are set between the end of the American Civil War (1865) and the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. There are also a number of films about Western-type characters in contemporary settings, such as Junior Bonner set in the 1970s and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada in the 21st century. below is an example of the western genre of films
Ennio Morricone. A classmate of director Sergio Leone with whom he would form one of the great director/composer partnerships (right up there with Eisenstein & Prokofiev, Hitchcock & Herrmann, Fellini & Rota), Ennio Morricone studied at Rome's Santa Cecilia Conservatory, where he specialized in trumpet. His first film scores were relatively undistinguished, but he was hired by Leone for A Fistful of Dollars (1964) on the strength of some of his song arrangements. His score for that film, with its sparse arrangements, unorthodox instrumentation (bells, electric guitars, harmonicas, the distinctive twang of the jew's harp) and memorable tunes, revolutionized the way music would be used in Westerns, and it is hard to think of a post-Morricone Western score that doesn't in some way reflect his influence. Although his name will always be synonymous with the spaghetti Western, Morricone has also contributed to a huge range of other film genres: comedies, dramas, thrillers, horror films, romances, art movies, exploitation movies -making him one of the film world's most versatile artists.
A Simple World War 2 Timeline
Tarentino being a very skilled filmmaker uses many postmodern features within his film to connect with the audience, whilst highlighting the fact that they are watching is only a film.
Film within a film- Nation’s Pride, the film the Germans are watching at the cinema, is a film Tarantino made as an Intertextual reference to be quite obviously post modern. However, within this film, there are also elements of intertextuality such as the ‘baby in the battle’ scene from Battleship Potemkin and the man being shot in the eye.
Text On Screen- In important scenes, to highlight parts of the movie and emphasizing the fact that the audience is watching a movie, it mirrors that of the propaganda movie which uses text on screen, where there are the leaders of the country such as Hitler. Tarentino uses of text and arrows on the screen pointing at certain people, which on one hand highlights again the sense that this is just a film not reality, and that the audience can establish a connection with the people in the cinema, as they know more about them.
Costume: Within Inglorious Basterds, the characters' costumes are always in pristine condition, which conveys a sense of unrealism, for example Brad Pitt's character Lt. Aldo Raine, has had a bag over his head, been thrown to the floor, and got in many fights within the film, however, in the end of the film, after enduring all of this ‘floor time’ his white tuxedo looks as if he’s just got t back from the drycleaners! And also, his hair stays perfect throughout the whole movie; he’s a lucky basterd isn’t he!
Hitler's Death- in the real world war, it is well known that Hitler had a pact suicide with his girlfriend Eva and therefore both died. Whereas in Inglorious Basterds, we see the American kill squad the basterds succeed in killing him in the cinema, drawing the audiences attention to how this film cannot be seen as reality, as the Americans who directed this in a way wanted to do what the propaganda film ‘Nations Pride’ did to the Nazis, this film had a clear message of ‘we are Americans, we won the war on our own’ showing their superiority.
