Post Modernism & Modernism

Post modern condition refers to our own reality based upon our internalised preconceptions.
Since there is no longer objective truth, we are free to create our own truth.
"There is no right and wrong just an infinite number of equally valid stories."

Modernism and Post Modernism
-Both styles are formalist: as much concerned with how a story is told as the story itself.
-Both feature -Fragmentation -Self referentiality -Irony -Doubling -Pastiche

Modernist
- is usually destroying
- has a sense of ideology
- is critical and attacking

Post Modernist
- is playful
- has no ideologies
- has many questions asked
- is nostalgic and up for interpretation
- deals with identity and the fractured self
- grand utopias/narratives are impossible
- it accepts that reality is fragmented and personal ideantity is an unstable quatity transmitted by cultural factors
- Post modern theorists are usually failed marxist theorists.

Jameson said that..
- We (Western society) live in a perpectual present
- The idea of media allows us to forget to serve as the very agents and mechanism of our historical amnesia
- The idea of nostalgia

Modern Ideas
- Enclose
- Unselfreferential
- Belief In Values (Sincere)
- Single Narrative (Single Coding)
- Suspicion of Disbelief
- Individualism
- History
- Distinction between high and low art
(King Of The Hills, Lost)
At best: meaningful, engrossing, moving
At worst: deceptive, sentimental

Post Modern Ideas
- Open
- Selfreferential
- Disbelief in values (Ironic)
- Multiple Narratives (Double coding)
- No suspension
- Mass produced individualism
- Past and present same
- No distinction
(The Simpsons, Family Guy)
At best: playful, curious, startling, ironic
At worst: detached, nihilistic (belief in nothing), sexist, despairing, homophobic, racist.

Lady Gaga - Telephone

•Pastiche. The video has it in spades. It references other forms of media (Tarantino, exploitation films, Thelma & Louise) left and right, while parodying none of them. This is because parody relies on an underlying normative standard, which postmodernism categorically rejects. Instead it merely shows the audience a barrage of media, almost a celebration of how clever the director is for cramming so many references into a single video.

•Consumerism. The product placement is obvious, but it is not portrayed as humorous. The camera lingers too long on each product, and the video knows it, but it still manages to avoid parody. Rather, the video uses these consumer images as an integral part of its aesthetic without any comment on their social context.

•Self-reference. The blatant product placement shows a self-awareness in the video, but this particular brand of ironic detachment harms the video’s ability to make any sort of overall message on its own. Instead it implies that celebrating consumer culture is fine as long as we’re appropriately ironic about it, but this is a largely unintended consequence of the video’s aesthetic.

•Appropriation of identity-based struggle. Lady Gaga is interesting for turning the male gaze back on men, and for portraying women as subjects rather than objects in her videos (albeit still scantily-clad subjects). However, the resistance to power on Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s part is purely individual and brief (it’s very telling that Lady Gaga is bailed out of prison rather than escaping) Behind this initial layer of feminism there is still an individuated desire to become rich, given that Lady Gaga was saved from prison by money. She maintains her glamorous image inside and outside the prison’s walls, an implicit message that “excessive materialism is empowering to women, somehow,” as Alyx Vesey observed. Therefore her kind of feminism is integrated neatly into the agenda of neoliberals, who love to talk about glass ceilings being shattered while heaping disdain on poor women.

•Incredulity towards metanarratives. Lyotard’s famous description of the postmodern condition applies even here, as it’s difficult to find an overall message or narrative in the video. There is a sequence of events interspersed with pop culture references and product placement, but little else.

Most works of postmodern culture incorporate the ethic of postmodern philosophy with even less critical engagement than postmodern philosophers themselves, and in so doing implicitly endorse the status quo. This video is no exception.

http://newleft.tumblr.com/post/445851066/lady-gagas-telephone-and-the-postmodern

Popular Music Theory

-Theory underpinning the study of popular music is musicology.
-Howard Goodall- The comparisons between modern and classical.
-In "Look! Hear! The uneasy relationship of music and television (2002) Simon Firth argues that the defining feature of popular music is 'televisual aesthetic'
-"The Sociology Of Rock"-Simon Firth - The emanting from the social influences.

Theorists have tended to focus on issues to do with audiences of popular music and the representation of performers, (Age, race, sex, class)
Emanting from this is a school of media and culture known as Madonna Studies. Influenced by the Queer Theory and the work of Foucault Madonna.
-Judith Butler

-Pamela Robertson - Guilty Pleaures Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna (1996)
>"Is Madonna a glamorised fu*k doll or queen of parodic critique?"

Popular Music and Post Modernism
-Faith in grand narratives have collapsed (science, religion, history, human progress)
-Identity is fluid
-Consumerism is a creative endeavour in which the self is constructed "You are what you consume"
-No distinction between real and the simulated.
-Convergence of information technology and society.

Genre