Postmodern Media is...

My statement: Postmodernism refers to media products that challenge and/or conform to modern conventions, often referencing products that have already been made, in a stylised way/approach. (Weird for the sake of being weird).

Postmodernism has no absolutes, nothing is original and therefore copies others.

Art constructed from/inspired by other work, therefore being influenced by others.

Paradox* with no absolutes.

Mr Ford's statement: A reaction to and a rejection of modernism.

Modernism: Grand narratives (War, religion, science etc...) and a utopian** view of the world. Modernism strove to be modern, rooted in the now.

Theories of Genre

Claude Levi-Strauss

French Structuralist***, 1970s

Levi-Strauss saw any text as constructed out of socially recognisable 'debris' from other texts. (Bricolage)

He saw that writers/film makers construct texts from other texts by a process of:

-Addition

-Deletion

-Substitution 

-Transposition****

One of the 'problems' is that you have to be culturally literate to understand if something is postmodern or not.

Postmodern media plays with our perception of what is possible/allowed. 

Everything is allowed, no aspect of culture is off limits. Everything is source material.

*Paradox: A seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded true. 

**Utopian: modelled on or aiming for a state in which everything is perfect; idealistic.

***Structuralism: structuralism is the methodology that elements of human culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure.

****Transposition: The cause of two or more things to exchange places.