Monday 21 May 2012
'The Lynx Effect'/'The Specs Effect' - Parody
Parody of 'The Lynx Effect' advert, makes the audience remember it and is hypotextuality (Genette's theory) because it extends the meaning of the advert and turns it into humour.
Thursday 17 May 2012
Call of Duty (Video Game) - Simulacrum and Audience Response
Call of Duty has a postmodern element in the sense that 'death' is used but it is only a copy of death without the actual dying (simulacrum). There is no meaning behind the death because the player simply just 'respawns' back into the game - making 'death' flustrating but having little emotional effect on the audience:
"In its ‘waning of affect’, has postmodernism contributed to audiences become emotionally detached from what they see. They are desensitised and unable to respond ‘properly’ to suffering and joy."
The audience are detached because they are not experiencing death 'properly'. This could be a negative effect of video games and 'respawning' because the audience cannot distingish between reality and fantasy (hyperreality). This means that a younger audience playing the game may not be able to realise that death is death and that you simply cannot 'respawn' back in to reality.
Friday 4 May 2012
Eminem - Postmodern Artist Presentation (With a few extra points):
We Made You (2009) - The music video is a parody of the television series Rock of Love and Star Trek (with the Starfleet insignia replaced with an inverted 2nd Infantry Division (United States)), as well as Eminem singing in a background of an imitation version of the notes of Guitar Hero while the casino-based sequence in the video is an homage to the film Rain Man, a film Eminem has previously referenced in his lyrics.[9] The casino scene was shot in The Palms hotel and casino. References to Nanook of the North are also made, especially seen in the scenes with Sarah Palin, those scenes parodying Larry Flynt's Who's Nailin' Paylin?. There is also an homage to Alfred Hitchcock's film Psycho. On April 3, 2009, Eminem talked about the music video in an MTV News interview, stating that there is some "Celebrity bashing in it," which is often a feature of his album's lead singles.[10] In addition to Sarah Palin, notable celebrities mocked using look-alike actresses and actors include Jessica Simpson, Bret Michaels, Britney Spears, Kevin Federline, Lindsay Lohan, Samantha Ronson, Amy Winehouse and her then-husband Blake Fielder-Civil, Ellen DeGeneres, Portia de Rossi, Jessica Alba, Elvis Presley, Tony Romo, John Mayer, Jennifer Aniston, and Kim Kardashian.[11] Eminem even spoofed himself, wearing an ALF t-shirt and holding a cake, referencing a commonly circulated pre-fame photo of him of when he was a youth. This Music Video also marks the return of Eminem's alter ego "Slim Shady".
From 'Concept' section of Music Video on Wikipedia Page; What this shows is a scramble of many intertextual references and metatextual references when he is critizing others' work.
Just Lose It (2004) - The video contains a parody of a rap battle scene from 8 Mile in which it is Eminem, as B-Rabbit, versus Eminem, as Slim Shady. It also contains several scenes where Eminem is walking down the streets naked. As he is doing this, Dr. Dre is seen driving next to him, looking disgusted. For the music video, the lyrics were edited slightly, notably the phrase "shake that ass", becoming the less provocative "shake that thing". Other changes include the muting of some parts of the second verse, and the phrase "butt naked" becoming "buck naked". Such examples of parodies that are included in this video are Michael Jackson, MC Hammer and his hit single "U Can't Touch This", Pee Wee Herman, Madonna and the movie Bad Santa, by displaying Eminem as a "mall santa" and even going so far to include Tony Cox, the actor who played the elf from the actual movie, as Eminem's helper. Some of the celebrities who appeared in this music video were Paris Hilton, Katie Cassidy, Monica Parales, Erik Estrada, Alyson Stoner, BooBoo Stewart, Mekhi Phifer and Dr. Dre. The video was later nominated at the MTV Video Music Awards for Best Rap Video, but lost to Ludacris' "Number One Spot". Much Music's 50 Most Controversial Videos ranked it #50 for its jokes on famous people.
CONCLUSION:
There are loads more songs that I could have used to show that Eminem is a postmodern artist - what I have picked are only a select few. The majority of his songs have intertextual/samples/interpolations included within and this creates meaning from the use of older debris of texts (bricolage). His music is relevant to culture, political and social events and his work as a whole shows that his own personality is difficult to define because of the different directions that each album tends to go in (with all of the alter-egos). This is hyper-real in itself and so how does the audience know which one is the real him? They don't. They see a more 'gentle' side to him in 'Mockingbird' but then is contrasted at the end with the violent lyrics. This distrusts binary oppositions because we can't tell whether his is a violent or peaceful character. To summarise, I think that he is therefore A POSTMODERN ARTIST!
Friday 20 April 2012
Monday 26 March 2012
"Drive" (2011) - Reviews and Postmodern Aspects
"Winner of the Best Director prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, “Drive” is a stylish film that doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it a thriller? A romance? A heist film? All of the above? To be honest, I really don’t know. Though based on the novel of the same name by James Sallis, “Drive” has very little dialogue. The majority of the story is told through camera angles and a musical score that seems to have been composed in 1985." - (Section of the review by Mike Smith - LINK).
^ This review shows that the film could be considered as ‘genreless’ text (goes against Derrida’s theory) because it includes so many different conventions from different genres of films that it is no longer a hybrid of genres but has no genre because of the great number of influences/conventions included.
Monday 19 March 2012
Hot Fuzz - Postmodern Film?
I found this while trying to find different postmodern films that I might have already seen. I have seen Hot Fuzz before (many times!) but never thought of it in a postmodern way. This PowerPoint points out some of the postmodern elements (I didn’t make this PowerPoint):
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