Practices of Looking: Chapter 8 - Postmodernism, Indie Media, and Popular Culture

Postmodernism, Indie Media, and Popular Culture

1. Simulacra and Simulation (Jean Baudrillard): rise of medial technologies making models of the real, the relationship between the model and real society shifted
1. Postmodern area lost sight of the "real": the simulator "offers all the signs of the real"
1. ex. Beijing's World park - the ability to visit a different "real" places without leaving Beijing
2. We do not live in a postmodern world; a world where postmodernity is in constant tension with modernity and premodern existence; pre and post industrial
1. Speeding of time, compression of space, etc have become conditions with flow of information and technology
2. Images becoming more real than real - hyperreality
1. Images are "sites of the disappearance of meaning and representation apart from the judgement of reality" (Baudrillard)
2. Collapse between the real and the copy around digital copies
3. Attempting to analyze effects of globalization, post-industrialization, computerization and communication with the self and world views
1. Postmodern globalization and trade

Postmodern And its Visual Cultures

1. No precise origin of postmodernism, but critics say around 1968.
1. Opinions differ whether postmodernism is a period, set of styles, or broader set of ideologies / politics
1. "Postwar cultural logic of late capitalism"- Fredric Jameson
2. Postmodernism - formative role of economic and political conditions, including postwar globalization, new information technologies, breakdown of nation-state, and postmodern modes of cultural production
3. Set of styles
4. Postmodernism - a response to the conditions of late modernity liked to late capitalism, changes in social and economic conditions. Demise of nation and state, dissolution of national sovereignty, skeptical embrase of science and technology, promotion of trade liberalization, travel importance.
5. Modernity - characterized by industrialization, value of science for achieving progress, ethos of progress and freedom with Enlightenment philosophy and political theory
6. Speed up of culture in late capitalism frames the "postmodern condition" with material and economic conditions
1. Outsourcing of labor, management for production and labor, accelerated turn over for production, new production technologies
7. Postmodern and Modernism intersect and permeate 
1. Neoliberalism - classical liberalism was revived to rationalize the use of economic and trade liberalization as a means of promoting economic growth and democratic freedom
8. The concepts of postmodernism and modernism are not period specific
9. Social aspects of poster-modernity from modernism
1. modern thought - sense of knowing was forward looking and positive; was is objectively true and real. Truth can be discovered by accessing the right channels of knowledge for structural and material basis. The questioning of meta-narratives (master narratives) 
2. postmodern thought - questioning of supposed universality of structural knowledge, skepticism about modern belief and progress. There is not one, but many truths
1. Is progress a good thing?
2. Puts all assumptions under scrutiny - social institutions
3. Meta-narratives - purports to explain society, involve inevitable linear progress toward a particular goal - enlightenment, emancipation, self-knowledge etc
4. Ethos - a set of sensibilities or a politics of cultural experiences and production 
10. Styles of modernism and post-modernism
1. modernism - critique of elitism and popular culture
2. postmodern - popular with origins - relies heavily on style and image to produce its worlds. popular culture in order to criticize that culture. Dispels idea that the surface doesn't have meaning. Emphasizes irony and ones own self involvement in low or popular culture. It complicates the divisions between high and lower culture, elite and mass consciousness; consumerism is integrated into life and identity in complex ways. Sensibilities come with technology, can be political in jaded iron
1. Politically regressive - imagines new ways of creating communities, having local and global involvement; networking, viral marketing, consumer savviness

Addressing the Postmodern Subject

1. Media texts (Postmodern) speak to viewers as subjects that are in the know about codes and conventions of simulations; someone who will not be fooled by propaganda. Understands the realm of consumer products tied to characters
1. Ex. Transformers - show with marketing and toy: futuristic world with artificial life with real toys
2. Comic books - media for children and adults
1. can readily identify with apocalyptic postmodern life in ruins of modernity
1. emerged after WW2
3. Shrek; references to other movies and fairytales
1. the constant reference and quotation; doesn't refer to real life but other texts 
2. uses mass culture and popular culture
2. The modern thought was about the new, avant-garde
3. Postmodernism everything has been done before, gets noticed as ironic

Reflexivity and Postmodern Identity

1. Modernism - the process of making the viewers aware of means of production by incorporating them into the context of the cultural product. Used  by artists as a from of political critique asking viewers about structure; distancing
2. Reflexivity - the text refers to its own means of production, undermines the illusion of fantasy aspects of the narrative, encouraging the viewer to be a critical thinker about ideology in the narrative
3. Postmodern texts
1. with humor or its not present
2. self-awareness of inevitable immersion in everyday and popular culture
1. Ex. Cindy Sherman - spectatorship, identification, female body, appropriation of the gaze
2. Nikki S. Lee - cultural immersion but her identity is still relevant - imitation through disguise
4. Irony - refers to a deliberate contradiction between the literal or dominant meaning of something and its intended meaning; contexts of appearance and reality are in conflict
5. Postmodernism embraces the surface and appearance as important aspects of meaning.
1. The surface is crucially meaningful element of social life
2. The body can be easily become transformed through workout and surgery
1. infinitely malleable 

Pastiche, Parody, and the Remake

1. Richard Dyer: pastiche is an imitation that announces itself as such and involves combining elements from other sources
1. assemblage, collage, montage, capriccio (composing that combines elements of different places)
2. often pilfers from history and historical meaning; questioning of the original
3. Can also fall into the category of parody
4. The remake of something in different mediums
5. The re-evaluation of the dialogue of the past
1. Ex. Sherrie Levine - rephotographed famous images and referred to them as her own
2. Ex. The Simpsons - constantly drawing from other parts of popular culture
3. Ex. Jeff Wall - derived a photograph from a Hokusai print
4. Ex. Boltanski's work on holocaust

Indie Media and Postmodern Approaches to the Market

1. Changes that have taken place in the production, dissemination, and marketing of media forms
1. Independent film and media on the web - through redefinition of authorship and relationship to production, distribution, and consumption
1. Indie film makers in the 80's used reflexive narrative form
1. play the line between counter-culture and culture critic
2. Fragmentation of the market leads to growth of independent sector
1. Music and bypassing restrictive record labels and contracts
1. Ex. Radiohead's free release of In Rainbows
1. The ability to work within the accepted system of the free market
2. Working within the framework to achieve publicity
2. Postmodernism as politics that relies on style for its expression, runs the risk not only of reducing real social conditions to mere media effects but reducing the political expression to image

Postmodern Space, Geography and the Built Environment

1. Rise of urbanization and communication technologies creating separation of time and space and a distinction between space and place while creating new space experiences
1. Ex. Second life - online social network site based on the real experiences of the people in the site
2. "nonplace" a physical space that demands less presence of people within it
3. Space in postmodernism are sites of distraction and waiting, being en route to somewhere else, spaces in which people are connected virtually
4. Postmodernism critical of architecture 
1. clean and stripped down design - minimalism and functionalism (modernism)
2. Appropriation from past - postmodernism 
3. Contextualization of borrowing older styles - playful orientation 
1. Ex the Sony building by Philip Johnson
4. Architecture as functional; plays within modern design