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).
Monday, 7 February 2011
Baudrillard Hyperreality
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.
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.
Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation
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.
Claude Levi Strauss - Genre
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
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 - Genre
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.
(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 - Genre
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
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.
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