Post Modern Texts

'Explain how certain types of media can be described as postmodern.'

A number of texts that i have been looking at could be described as postmodern for a number of reasons which i am going to discuss in this essay, with the links of post modern theorists and their theories.

The first text that i am going to talk about arguably being postmodern is the film ‘The Expendables’, i feel that the three main post modern theories that i have studied could be associated with this film. I feel that baudrillard’s theory could be included, i believe this as there are events that could arguably include hyper reality, the film builds up a hyper real image of battle and war that have previously been created through time. The film carries on the whole hyperreal image of action packed war zones that people believe war is like in reality. Another text that could arguably use this theorists view is twitter, however this is in a different way. Twitter builds up an image of what the particular person who is tweeting is like and distorts the reality of what the human in control of the page may really be like. This is much like instagram which arguably uses bricolage and builds a range of materials (the images) to create one page representing the user. However once again instagram is possibly distorting reality with the filters that can be put in place and is putting a twist by the click of a button to create a whole different meaning, for example how a dark filter could give a sad emotional feeling.

The Expendables also could be post modern due to the way there is a large use of spectacle there is no real deep storyline to the film. The film is largely built up of spectacle with no deep meaning such as the large explosions and over the top fighting techniques. This is an example of lyotard's theory where he believes postmodernism could possibly replace meta narratives and deep storylines with spectacle and lighter storylines. Also the way in which we don't gather any emotional feeling for the characters like the conventional films draw us into doing. Another media text that also uses similar ideas such as these from the same theorist could be the film i Robot which arguably is post modern as it breaks the metanarrative of either ‘male or female’ due to the way there is a cyborg, a half male and half robot character this breaks a metanarrative which theorists such as lyotard believe in as they feel a metanarrative can always be questioned and scrutinized in more detail, which then creates an argument against the metanarrative.

Once again The expendables could also be linked to the theorist jameson, for the intertextual references that the large amount of big name actors who have been brought into the film. The actors bring intertextual references to different genres of films like the way in which chuck norris brings the karate genre into the film and then bruce willis brings the action theme like the film is based on with twists of other genres within. This could arguably be the use of pastiche, jameson believes this is because we are running out of original ideas, this once again could be classed as bricolage however. Another text that could be linked to jameson's theory could be celebrity juice in the way that parody is involved how keith lemon mocks many people and copies the way they act etc.

A link again to the expendables which i have based my essay on could be the way in which how all these conventions go along with post modern theorists and against modern conventions there is still one clear convention that goes against the postmodern ideas, this is the way in which the film still includes ‘the heroes journey’ where there is clear good and evil and the good is victorious overall. This is a standard convention in films and does not follow the other post modern features i earlier spoke about.

In conclusion in this essay i have linked many media examples of postmodern texts to theories and argued about how i believe that they are postmodern.