1. Postmodernism Theory
Copley and Herbert (2013)

2. What You Are About To
Learn…
What
postmoder
nism looks
like
How postmodernism
fits into narrative
and genre

3. So what’s this postmodernism
business?
• It can be quite a general term, and
applied in a lot of areas – we’re
looking at film
• Modernism was the term to describe
rejection of traditional beliefs in
early 20th century – so
postmodernism is going one step
beyond
• Postmodernism is most easily
described as layering and combining
new ideas with old ones from
multiple sources to create something
new – but this can be extended to
lots of things

4. • Whilst a modernist may see man as a
creation, a postmodernist may see him as a
construct, in which all parts of him have
been created, and mixed together to form a
construct

5. A postmodernist film will subvert mainstream conventions
Of narrative, representation, character, genre.
For instance, a character may look/talk to the camera
There may be circular narratives or cliffhangers for endings

6. How to spot postmodernism
•
Postmodernism can be
a toughy to spot but
crikey when u do it’s a
beauty

7. Get writing these key terms you
media wizzards
• Hybridity: - mixing and sampling all kinds
of crazy fun stuff from old tv shows and
mixing it into one crazy postmodern media
flash flood

8. Parody
• A text taking an old idea or concept or even
whole storyline and making it a version of
it’s own, often in a funny way
• Like when Family Guy did Star Wars

9. Hyperreality
• A reality created in the text that is a bit like
real reality but in reality is not real at all.
(People often get drawn into this distant not
real reality because it’s more attractive than
the one they are living in)
• Like the only way isswag
essex

10. If you don’t want to think about
TOWIE
Then think Matrix
A technologically
Created hyper-reality
More desirable
Than the real world

11. More examples
• Time: time bending is used to affect reality
to create an off-beat story line – Donnie
Darko
• Artificial Intelligence: perhaps there is the
usage of cyberspace, intelligent robots
trying to take over reality – i Robot

12. Baudrillard - Simulacra
• Simulation and Simulacra
• Simulation – process of representations of
things becoming the reality of what’s
represented
• Simulacrum – a modern representation that
may deceive what is actually there in reality

13. Types of Simulation
• 1: Faithful Simulation – simulation reflects real
reality – like a portrait of someone
• 2: Perversion Simulation – the simulation masks
reality with a simplification of it’s depth – like an
icon on a computer screen
• 3: Pretence Simulation – masks the absence of
reality – Disneyland, forget you’re in a make
believe place
• 4: Pure Simulation – simulation has no relevance
to reality, it’s just a construct

14. Now over to my fellow
theorist HERBERT for his
take on how postmodernism
affects genre and narrative

15. The Effects of Postmodernism on
our Key Concepts
Hi folks, due to
postmodernism we
have the ability to
change narratives
and genre’s
because we are
going post the
traditional views of
them

16. Narrative
• Well often with postmodern narratives they DO
NOT CONFORM to the traditional narratives
• It’s like a rom com where a nervous Hugh Grant
meets an attractive Jennifer Anniston and they
date but then they both end up being abducted by
Cantonese pirates and held hostage but hey guess
what the government wont pay for their ransom so
they get slaughters

17. • Often these postmodernist narrative affect
the ending of films, perhaps there will be
multiple endings, perhaps there will be
ironic or parodying endings perhaps the
endings wont even be finished.
• Think: fight club, matrix, donnie darco,
waynes world

18. Summary
Postmodernism is taking the old and adapting
it to make it new and to continue to be
appealing. Most often it is done by changes
in narratives or character, but also it can
completely change how reality is viewed.