Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a theory which came about around 1970. It is a collection of Styles, ideals, Literature and media. A common way to describe is a mish mash of genres. E.g. Blade Runner is a mixture of Sci-fi/Film Noir. It is difficult to define but it covers several key terms.

Intertextual Reference- One media text references another

Parody- Mocking something in an original way

Pastiche- Taking reference in a respectable


Here is an example of Parody:

Here is an example of parody. To the left is a clip from the 1970s cop drama- Starsky and Hutch. It is the typical example of a cop show. It does have a certain comical aspect to it in that it is easy to replicate and parody.

And here is a music video for Sabotage by The Beastie Boys. It has parodied this style of cop drama in the use of costume, Mis-en-scene and location in this music video. This differs from pastiche because because it has been done in a satirical way and is made fore comedy as apposed to professional courtesy.


Pastiche:

Here is video for Marilyn Monroe's "Diamonds are a girls best friend". It is almost unique in its choice of colour, costume, location, and even actress. It would be hard to think of conventions to parody so it couldn't really be parodied effectively.

And here is a music video Madonna's "Material Girl". Because it is so alike to the original i would class it as a pastiche as opposed to a Parody because it is paying tribute to the original by basically copying the Costume, colour, location. Even madonna looks similar so it is a Pastiche.




Intertextual Reference:

This is a scene from the film "Back to the Future". The scene itself was a classic scene.

This video by Death set has literally hundreds of intertextual references from lots of different science fiction films and TV. The reason for the first video is to demonstrate just how big a Intertextual reference the start of the video is.


Non Linear Narrative: A non linear narrative is a story which does'nt follow a linear story. This is present in lots of films and TV shows such as Momento or Pulp Fiction which do not follow a chronological storyline, which is another way of saying it is a Non Linear Storyline. In music videos However it isnt as common i have found. This is because a story is sometimes difficult to follow and can confuse the audience. This is generally not what a Music video is desighned to do. However there are some exeptions to this rule. For Example the Coldplay video for "Scientist" has a reverse narrative (The story is moving backward) which can be seen as a Non linear Narrative. It is this because it is a narrative in the sense we want to know what is happening.