Exam Prep Questions.

2/POMO - What do you understand by the term Postmodern media?  - marked - B+

1A - Dig Technology + Creativity. - marked - A 

1A - RM Conventions + Creativity. - marked - A

1B - Med Lang.  

1B - Audience. 

Key Terms for Postmodernism and 'The World's End'

1) Self-reflexivity can be found everywhere in pop culture, for example the way the Scream series of movies has characters debating the generic rules behind the horror film.

2) irony and parody. Connected to the former point, is the tendency of postmodern artists, theorists, and culture to be playful or parodic. Shows or films will often parody themselves in mid-stride.

3) a breakdown between high and low cultural forms. Postmodernists often employ pop and mass-produced objects in more immediately understandable ways, even if their goals are still often complex (eg. Andy Warhol's commentary on mass production and on the commercial aspects of "high" art through the exact reproduction of a set of Cambell's Soup boxes).

4) retro. Postmodernists and postmodern culture tend to be especially fascinated with styles and fashions from the past, which they will often use completely out of their original context.

5) visuality and the simulacrum vs. temporality. Given the predominance of visual media (tv, film, media advertising, the computer), both postmodern art and postmodern culture gravitate towards visual (often even two-dimensional) forms. As a result, Baudrillard and others have argued (for example, through the notion of the simulacrum) that we have lost all connection to reality or history. Pop culture also keeps coming back to the idea that the line separating reality and representation has broken down.

6) late capitalism. There is also a general sense that the world has been so taken over by the values of capitalist acqusition that alternatives no longer exist. One symptom of this fear is the predominance of paranoia narratives in pop culture. This fear is, of course, aided by advancements in technology, especially surveillance technology, which creates the sense that we are always being watched.

7) disorientation. MTV culture is, again, sometimes cited as an example as is postmodern architecture, which attempts to disorient the subject entering its space. Another example may be the popularity of films that seek to disorient the viewer completely through the revelation of a truth that changes everything that came before (Inception)

GENRE THEORY

The identification of a text as part of a genre (such as in a television listings magazine or a video rental shop's section titles) enables potential readers to decide whether it is likely to appeal to them. People seem to derive a variety of pleasures from reading texts within genres which are orientated towards entertainment. 'Uses and gratifications' research has identified many of these in relation to the mass media. Such potential pleasures vary according to genre, but they include the following.

• One pleasure may simply be the recognition of the features of a particular genre because of our familiarity with it. Recognition of what is likely to be important (and what is not), derived from our knowledge of the genre, is necessary in order to follow a plot.
• Genres may offer various emotional pleasures such as empathy and escapism - a feature which some theoretical commentaries seem to lose sight of. Aristotle, of course, acknowledged the special emotional responses which were linked to different genres. Deborah Knight notes that 'satisfaction is guaranteed with genre; the deferral of the inevitable provides the additional pleasure of prolonged anticipation' (Knight 1994).
• 'Cognitive' satisfactions may be derived from problem-solving, testing hypotheses, making inferences (e.g. about the motivations and goals of characters) and making predictions about events. In relation to television, Nicholas Abercrombie suggests that 'part of the pleasure is knowing what the genre rules are, knowing that the programme has to solve problems in the genre framework, and wondering how it is going to do so' (Abercrombie 1996: 43). He adds that audiences derive pleasure from the way in which their expectations are finally realized (ibid.). There may be satisfactions both in finding our inferences and predictions to be correct and in being surprised when they are not (Knight 1994). The prediction of what will happen next is, of course, more central in some genres than others.
• Steve Neale argues that pleasure is derived from 'repetition and difference' (Neale 1980: 48); there would be no pleasure without difference. René Wellek and Austin Warren comment that 'the totally familiar and repetitive pattern is boring; the totally novel form will be unintelligible - is indeed unthinkable' (Wellek & Warren 1963: 235). We may derive pleasure from observing how the conventions of the genre are manipulated (Abercrombie 1996: 45). We may also enjoy the stretching of a genre in new directions and the consequent shifting of our expectations.
• Making moral and emotional judgements on the actions of characters may also offer a particular pleasure (though Knight (1994) argues that 'generic fictions' themselves embody such judgements).
• Other pleasures can be derived from sharing our experience of a genre with others within an 'interpretive community' which can be characterized by its familiarity with certain genres (see also Feuer 1992, 144).

Andrew Tudor - Genre Theory

 'a genre... defines a moral and social world' (Tudor 1974) 

Nicholas Abercrombie - Genre Theory

Nicholas Abercrombie 'the boundaries between genres are shifting and becoming more permeable' (Abercrombie 1996) 

David Buckingham - Genre Theory

'genre is not... simply "given" by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change' (Buckingham 1993) 

Steve Neale - Genre Theory

'genres are instances of repetition and difference' (Neale 1980)

 'difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre' (Neale 1980)

: mere repetition would not attract an audience.

(Robert Stam 2000) - Problems with Genre labels

 extension (the genre can be too broad or narrow to give an accurate idea of what a text is like)  normativism (upon hearing of a genre you make assumptions towards the text before you've even seen it);  monolithic definitions (not all texts can be neatly categorised into just one area);  biologism (some people view genres as living things which evolve over time)