2. Post modernism
Post modern media rejects the idea that any media product or text is of
any greater value than another. All judgements of value are merely
taste.
Anything can be art, anything can deserve to reach an audience, and
culture ‘eats itself’ as there is no longer anything new to produce or
distribute.
The distinction between media and reality has collapsed, and we now
live in a reality defined by images and representations. Images refer to
each other and represent each other as reality rather than some pure
reality that exists before the image represents it, this is the state of
hyper reality.
3. Modernism
Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along with
cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-
reaching transformations in Western society in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries.
Faith in, and myths of, social and cultural unity, hierarchies of
social-class and ethnic/national values, seemingly clear bases
for unity.
Faith in Grand Theory (totalizing explanations in history,
science and culture) to represent all knowledge and explain
everything.
4. The term Modernism refers to an approach to art making defined by
certain common characteristics. These commonalities are:
• Masculinity- most modernist masters were male.
• Utopian- most modernist masters sincerely believed in a better world
through better art (their own)
• Media before subject matter- most modernist masters thought the
best, most honest art was to use the technique of art as the subject
matter. They believed this would get them closer to what art was
really about.
5. Post Modernist art shares some commonalities, these include:
• Irony: the use of low brow imagery in a high brow context. Questioning
what Art is.
• Appropriation: the use of another's imagery in a new context to create a
new meaning (also referencing)
• Juxtaposition: using incongruent styles together, abstract and figurative.
• Pluralism: multiple viewpoints (political), openness to difference in sex,
race etc.
• Deconstruction: looking at the multiple meanings in imagery/text to find
bias.
6. This has implications for realist forms of media, since our
sense of reality is now said to be utterly dominated by popular
media images cultural forms can no longer hold up the mirror
to reality, since reality itself is saturated by advertising, film,
video games, and television images. Moreover the capacity of
digital imaging makes 'truth claims' or the reliability of images
for example the use of Photoshop in magazine and advertising
images. Advertising no longer tries seriously to convince us of
its products' real quality but, just shows us a fake about the
product
