Characteristics of postmodern film

• Bricolage: the process of assembling artefacts from bits and pieces of other things

1. Genre Cross-Over
2. recycling old forms
3. mixing high and low culture (kitsch)

• Intertextuality: the multiple ways in which a text is entangled with or contains references to other texts
• Pastiche (copying in tribute) and Parody (copying in jest)
• Style over content; the image and visual excitement over narrative coherence
• Confusions over time and space; the subversion of classical cinematic conventions; fragmented narratives; time-bending.
• Self-reflexiveness / self-referentiality: texts that openly reflect upon their own processes of artful composition.
• Metafiction: fiction that deals, often playfully and self-referentially, with fiction and its conventions
• Flattening of Affect: Technology, violence, drugs and the media lead to detached, emotionless lives
• Hyperreality: Technologically created realities are often more authentic or desirable than the real world
• Altered States: Drugs and technology provide a darker, sometimes psychedelic, gateway to new internal realities
• More Human than Human: Artificial intelligence, robotics and cybernetics seek to enhance or replace humanity

Features of postmodern films

• Pastiche
• Self-referential, tongue-in-cheek, rehashes of classic pop culture
• Flattening of Affect
• Technology, violence, drugs, and the media lead to detached, emotionless, unauthentic lives
• Hyperreality
• Technologically created realities are often more authentic or desirable than the real world
• Time Bending
• Time travel provides another way to shape reality and play "what if" games with society
• Altered States
• Drugs and technology provide a darker, sometimes psychedelic, gateway to new internal realities
• More Human than Human
• Artificial intelligence, robotics, and cybernetics seek to enhance, or replace, humanity

Postmodern ideas

1. We no longer have any sense of the difference between real things and images of them, or real experiences and simulations of them.
2. The distinction between media and reality has collapsed, and we now live in a ‘reality’ defined by images and representations – a state of simulacrum.
3. Postmodernism rejects the idea that any media product or text is of any greater value than another. All judgments of value are merely taste.
4. Culture ‘eats itself’ and there is no longer anything new to produce or distribute.
5. All ideas of ‘the truth’ are just competing claims – or discourses – and what we believe to be the truth at any point is merely the ‘winning’ discourse.
6. Postmodern texts are said to be intertextual and self-referential – they break the rules of realism to explore the nature of their own status as constructed texts.

In the postmodern world, media texts make visible and challenge ideas of truth and reality, removing the illusion that stories, texts or images can ever accurately or neutrally reproduce reality or truth

Postmodern mixtape

Insert name here ___

1a - Creativity and Digital Technology

Creativity and digital technology 1a from Neill Ford

Digital Technology and Creativity - Potential Question 1a

Example Question from OCR

"Digital technology turns media consumers into media producers.” In your own experience, how has your creativity developed through using digital technology to complete your coursework productions? (25 Marks - 30 minutes)

Ideas and theories to help you:

"A process needed for problem solving...not a special gift enjoyed by a few but a common ability possessed by most people" (Jones 1993)

"The making of the new and the re arranging of the old" (Bentley 1997)

"Creativity results from the interaction of a system composed of three elements: a culture that contains symbolic rules, a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain, and a field of experts who recognise and validate the innovation." (Csikszentmihalyi 1996)

"There is no absolute judgement [on creativity] All judgements are comparisons of one thing with another." (Donald Larning)

Themes and Questions:

1. Is creativity an internal cognitive function, or is it an external social or cultural phenomenon?

2. Is creativity a pervasive, ubiquitous feature of human activity, or a special faculty, either reserved for particular groups, individuals, or particular domains of activity, in particularly artistic activity?

3. Is creativity an inevitable social good, invariably progressive, harmonious and collaborative; or is it capable of disruption, political critique and dissent, and even anti-social outcomes?

4. What does the notion of creative teaching and learning imply?

Benaji, Burn and Buckingham (2006)

Questions 1a and 1b (2010-2013)

In question 1a you need to write about your work for the Foundation Portfolio andAdvanced Portfolio units and you may refer to other media production work you have undertaken.

In question 1b you must write about one of your media productions.

January 2010:
1a. Describe how you developed research and planning skills for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to the creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how your skills developed over time.

1b. Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions.

June 2010:
1a. Describe the ways in which your production work was informed by research into real media texts and how your ability to use such research for production developed over time.

1b. Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre.

January 2011:
1a. Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills have contributed to your creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how your skills developed over time.

1b. Apply theories of narrative to one of your coursework productions.

June 2011:
1a. Explain how far your understanding of the conventions of existing media influenced the way you created your own media products. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how your skills developed over time.

1b. Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of audience.

January 2012:
1a. Describe how your analysis of the conventions of real media texts informed your own creative media practice. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how your skills developed over time.

1b. Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions.

June 2012:
1a. Descibe a range of creative decisions that you made in post-production and how these decisions made a difference to the final outcomes. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how your skills developed over time.

1b. Explain how meaning is constructed by the use of media language in one of your coursework productions.

January 2013:
1a. Explain how your research and planning skills developed over time and contributed to your media production outcomes. Refer to a range of examples in your answer.

1b. Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of narrative.

June 2013:
1a. explain how your skills in the creative use of digital technology developed over time. Refer to a range of examples in your answer.

1b. Apply the concept of representation to one of your coursework productions.

1a Topics

The 1a topics are:

1. Creativity
2. Digital technology
3. Research and planning
4. Post Production
5. Real Media Conventions

JUSTICE postmodern music

Postmodern music: JUSTICE from Millie Drew

Justice Pomo music: homage and bricolage

Homage: does your chosen artist use other people's music in a respectful way? Are they bringing a potentially overlooked or forgotten style to a new audience?

Justice frequently sample Boney M, a disco/R&B/reggae group founded in the 70s. In their album 'Cross' they also use a direct sample from a Britney Spears song in multiple tracks, which when bricolaged with their own music and other external samples creates a whole new text: electronica house/alternative dance/nu disco music. Other seemingly bizarre samples are included in their tracks, such as an Apple sound effect and a soundtrack from the 70s dance film 'Saturday Night Fever'.

In total, the genres used in this small selection of their tracks are:
- pop
- electronic
- hip hop/rap
- soul/funk
- disco
- classical
- film music
- other (tech sound effects)
- R&B
- rock

D.A.N.C.E.:
- direct sample of riff/hook from Boney M's 'Sunny' 
- interpolation of lyrics from Britney Spears' 'Me Against The Music' (pop):
All my people in the crowd, let me see you dance
C'mon Britney take it down, make the music dance
All my people round and round, party all night long
C'mon Britney lose control, watch you take it down
- direct sample from Simon Harris' 'Fx & Scratches (Vol. 1) - Radio tuning' (electronic, dance)

Genesis:
- direct sample from 50 Cent's 'In Da Club' (hip hop, rap, R&B)
- direct sample of hook/riff from Prince's 'I Wanna Be Your Lover' (soul, funk, disco)

Stress:
- direct sample of hook/riff from David Shire's track 'Night on Disco Mountain' from the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever (film music, disco, classical)
- direct sample of hook/riff from Devo's Jocko Homo (electronic, dance)

Newjack:
- direct sample from 'You Make Me Wanna Wiggle' by The Brothers Johnson (soul, funk, disco)
- direct sample of Apple Inc. Computer Data 03.aif (other/technology)

Tthhee Ppaarrttyy:
- direct sample of vocals/lyrics from 'Stay Fly' by Three 6 Mafia (hip hop, rap, R&B)
- direct sample from 'Me Against The Music' by Britney Spears (pop)

Civilisation:
- direct sample of riff/hook from 'Baba O'Riley' by The Who (rock, pop)
- direct sample of riff/hook from 'Ice In The Sun' by Status Quo (rock, pop)

Uncool Playlist

1. Addicted - Amy Winehouse (soul, jazz)
2. Sexy Boy - Air (synth pop, psychedelic pop)
3. Breathe - The Prodigy (electronic rock, punk)
4. Pretty Hurts - Beyonce (pop, contemporary R&B)
5. All Alone - Gorillaz (alternative hip hop, trip hop)
6. Gone Daddy Gone - Gnarls Barkley (soul)
7. The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala - Arctic Monkeys (indie rock)
8. A Taste of Honey - The Beatles (rock, pop)
9. Little L - Jamiroquai (funk, R&B, pop)
10. What If - Bombay Bicycle Club (indie rock, indie folk)
11. Below My Feet - Mumford & Sons (folk rock)
12. A Forest - The Cure (alternative rock, post-punk)
13. I Wish I Was A Girl - The Vaccines (indie rock)
14. Horchata - Vampire Weekend (baroque pop, indie pop, indie rock)
15. Champion - Kanye West (hip hop)
16. Ken Caryl - Mesita (indie rock)
17. I Might Be Wrong - Radiohead (alternative rock, electronic)
18. Phantom Pt. II - Justice (electronic, alternative dance)
19. Endors Toi - Tame Impala (psychedelic rock, psychedelic pop)
20. Taper Jean Girl - Kings Of Leon (indie rock, alternative rock)

The Death of Uncool

Brian Eno 'The Death of Uncool' - Prospect Magazine, Nov 2009

It’s odd to think back on the time—not so long ago—when there were distinct stylistic trends, such as “this season’s colour” or “abstract expressionism” or “psychedelic music.” It seems we don’t think like that any more. There are just too many styles around, and they keep mutating too fast to assume that kind of dominance.

We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.

How can Django Unchained be viewed as a postmodern text?

Postmodernism is a movement concerning art forms; film, music, architecture, literature etc, whereby genre distinctions are blurred through the saturation of intertextual references. Due to this, the 'essence' of postmodernism is infamously difficult to define - and often postmodernists themselves do not know what it is.

Django Unchained is Quentin Tarantino's postmodern mashup film which depicts the story of an ex-slave in southern America during the late 50's whom, alongside a German bounty hunter, partakes in the securing of criminals 'wanted' by the US government and then later in rescuing his slave-wife. It is a hybrid of genres: a spaghetti western (a low budget Italian made western), a western (set in late 19th century in the American Old West), and a blaxploitation (where black characters represent stereotypes of black culture). However, the film is also a bricolage of other texts of which Tarantino is influenced from. The title of the film and lead protagonist, Django, is an obvious allusion to Sergio Carbucci's 1966 spaghetti western, Django.

Tarantino's film is postmodern due to the inclusion of intertextuality and combination of genres. In order for a postmodern text to be effective it must be interacted with by the audience - and their understanding of references is key. Django Unchained contains allusions to both popular and obscure artwork from many eras. The first and most obvious is the use of Carbucci's title soundtrack, alongside the styling of his opening credits. As a homage to the original Django film, Tarantino even had Franco Nero star as a cameo in his 2014 version. During the 

Critics jumped upon Django Unchained, and many made complaints of its racial insensitivity. An example of a criticism was the controversial over-use of word ‘nigger’. Prior to this film, Tarantino has also been criticised for the inclusion of 'nigger' in Jackie Brown (1997) and Pulp Fiction (1994). In texts referring to 1850s America, nigger is often used as a historical representation of the verbal names given to black people, often by white people.

However, this word is still used in contemporary society as a derogatory term. It could be argued that slavery is somewhat sidelined in the film, and a notable example of this is when Django, Schultz and Candie et al watch a slave being torn apart by dogs as part of punishment for attempted escape. Although Schultz offers to purchase the slave's freedom, Django denies him this request and instead watches the slave die. No regret or guilt is apparent, until later in the film when Schultz has 'flashbacks' to this scene. The neglect of a slave's freedom and life by Django, only recently a free man himself, shows a degree of lack of respect to slave culture and African American history.

Historical deafness is a secondary criticism of Django Unchained. Linking to my previous point, the inclusion of the term 'nigger' is often speculated due to the uncertainty of its historical accurateness. The film is set in the late 1850s and it is unclear as to whether language such as 'nigger' and 'motherfucker' would have been used. The use of such terms taints the historical accurateness and undermines the topic of slavery - some could go as far to say that it parodies such events in history.

Django Unchained Intertextual References

The Wild Bunch (1969) Final Shootout

Wild Bunch shoot out ending from ellie on Vimeo

Miami Vice (Crockett's Theme)

Jan Hammer - Crockett's Theme (Miami Vice) from dawg on Vimeo.

Bonanza full episode - The Stronghold

Django Unchained Intertextual References

The White Buffalo (1977)

The Blue Boy - Thomas Gainsborough (1770)

Rhett Butler - Gone With The Wind (1939)

Don Johnson - Miami Vice (1984-1989)

Little Joe - Bonanza (1959-1973)

Django Unchained Intertextual References