Case Studies - TELEVISION: Postmodern Features

Family Guy is a show rich and dense with references from popular culture. Even the main idea of the show is a reference to the very popular television genre; family sitcom. In a typical family sitcom, the story revolves around a nuclear family comprised of a husband, wife, and a couple of children. The story for each episode is stand-alone, and is most commonly about the family's mishappenings with each other, their friends, or neighbors. In the end, the problem is solved and the family live on happily to suffer the next episode.

Family Guy is all of these things but with a dysfunctional twist. The main character and man of the house, Peter Griffin, is lazy, overweight, and unintelligent. Lois is the typical stay at home wife and mother who unknowingly dodges assassination attempts made by her infant son Stewie. Meg is the eldest daughter and although she seems the most normal, the rest of the family seem to have accepted her as the black sheep and have no trouble pointing out that she is the least favorite child. Because of her strange family, Meg has become very self conscious about her weight and looks. Chris is the middle child and oldest son, who has taken his father's attributes of being lazy, fat, and unintelligent. Brian is the family dog who also so happen to stand on his hind legs and talks.

In the Family Guy one hour special, they did a whole episode parodying Star Wars IV: A New Hope. It is entitled "Blue Harvest." The show was made to celebrate the premier of it's sixth season and also the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. They even had promotional art done in the style of the old Star Wars posters with the cast replaced by Family Guy characters. At the end of the episode, it turns out Peter is just retelling the tale to his family to pass time from a black out. This is where Family Guy breaks the fourth wall again when Chris mentions that Robot Chicken, which is a show on Cartoon Network, had just also previously done a special episode on Star Wars and that it doubled their ratings. Peter denies knowing this fact and assures Chris that he did not steal the idea.

People may not know it, but Family Guy is a show that thrives on postmodernist ideas. It's always pulling references from other popular medias and makes fun of itself whenever possible. Even their theme song is a satire on modern television. In the beginning lyrics Lois sings "it seems today that all you see is violence in movies and sex on TV." Then Peter jumps in and sings together "but where are those good old fashion values on which we used to rely? Lucky theres a Family Guy." Although they are saying that we should reply on Family Guy for family values, we know that it should be the complete opposite just because we know what the show is like. That already gives viewers their own inside joke. For Family Guy, the whole world is a source for comedy and lucky for them, the rest of the audience is in tuned to their televisions and computers enough to get all the smallest happenings in the world and media so they can get all the random jokes. There are new avenues for fame everywhere, especially in Youtube and soon Family Guy wont be pulling from just television and movies anymore. What they do already is play on the fact that in real life, dialogue does not flow as smoothly as it does in a written script. Communication is often messy or hidden with small nuances. Family Guy mimics these speech patterns for a familiar yet funny scene even if the characters are just talking to each other.

 

Case Studies - VIDEO GAME: Postmodern Features

The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It was created by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity. It is a simulation of the daily activities of one or more virtual persons ("Sims") in a suburban household near SimCity.

‘The Sims’ is a role-playing game which means you can create a character of yourself, or go create someone entirely different from yourself, e.g. James being a plump old lady.  This is postmodern as you can play a different version of yourself.  This is also hyper-reality as Baudrillard argued that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right.  

‘The Sims’ has instantaneity in it as you can cheat.  For example ‘The Sims’ has money called Simoleons and you can cheat for gain §50,000 or §1000.  Rather than working hard to get rich with your Sim you cam instantly be wealth in a matter of minutes.

‘The Sims’ is intertextual in its aim to become real simulated life.  By incorporating things like TV

programmes and Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet) it tries to create its own world. There has also been a number of spin offs including a Katy Perry expansion pack and numerous clothing and shopping expansion packs which allow the user to bring real life objects into the game.

Your Sims can play ‘The Sims’ on there computer.  This is self-reflexive.  Furthermore the Sims address the camera and stare at you if they need something e.g. They need food cause they are hungry.  This is self-reflexive because they know they are being controlled.  Also it is self-reflexive of yourself as its meant to be a projection of yourself into the game.

Case Studies - MUSIC VIDEO: Postmodern Features

A choice of: šCamera, Editing, Mise En Scene, Sound, Semiotics, Signifier:

MUSIC VIDEO: LADY GAGA - G.U.Y.
- No fixed narrative structure

Interetexual References:
- A series of poses as Greek and Biblical goddesses - Links to the lyrics "Greetings Himerous, God of Sexual Desire, Son Of Aphrodity"
- The appearance of Jesus, Gandhi, and Michael Jackson - signifying the perfect 'G.U.Y.' to which Gaga takes their blood to create the perfect model man.
- Gaga as Lego art -
- The Hearst Castle - known for eloborate parties, rumoured to be where Fitzgerald gained the idea of The Great Gatsby.
- The cast of The Real Houswives of Beverly Hills
- Andy Cohen as god

The video is broken in a number of sections:

The Fallen Angel

It begins with a bunch of men in suits fighting in a field, grabbing at dollar bills. Then we see Lady Gaga on the ground with wings on her back and an arrow piercing through her back. The men may represent the music industry. Gaga was an angel flying in the sky, minding her own business, then was shot down, becoming a fallen angel. And who is the most important fallen angel in History? Lucifer, of course.

Back in the video, a wounded Gaga gets up and walks towards civilization, ending up in front of the Hearst Castle. The location of the video is significant for several reasons. The castle was built by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, one of the most powerful and richest men in American history and the inspiration behind the film Citizen Kane. The mansion used to be a popular meeting point for Hollywood stars and the political elite. Like Gaga’s work, the Hearst Castle combined entertainment and the occult elite.

VENUS

When Gaga enters the castle, the song Venus begins. Gaga’s entire album is centered around multiple representations of Venus (in the video for Applause, she is dressed as Venus as depicted in Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus). In G.U.Y, the theme of Venus is still central in numerous symbolic ways.

Since ancient times, the planet Venus has been known as the Morning Star and the Evening Star. The Romans designated the morning aspect of Venus as Lucifer, meaning “light bringer”. In the Bible, Lucifer, the angel cast out of the heavens, is also referred to as the morning star. In this symbolically-charged setting, Gaga is taken to the castle’s Neptune pool where a death ritual takes place.

Re-Birth

After the death ritual, Gaga is reborn and greets Himeros, the god of sexual desire. Her hair is now platinum blonde and, from being an angel, Gaga is now all about sexuality.

Does this represent the creation of the persona of Lady Gaga by the occult elite music business?

While Gaga’s rebirth is happening the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills make an appearance playing the role of the muses, daughters of Zeus. The fact that they clearly do not know how to play these instruments and that there’s obviously no harp or cello in the actual song add to the fact that this is all about being fake, phony and plastic. The music industry will put an artist in a position whether they like it or not.

Is Gaga artificially built?

Also further along in the video, Gaga holds a Lego apple with a bite taken out of it, intertextually referencing Adam and Eve and the story of creation from the bible.

Revenge

While Gaga’s rebirth seems to be all about love, she is also brewing a revenge master plan and has captured parts of the perfect 'GUY', Jesus, Michael Jackson and Ghandi.

All of these figures were killed by the “powers that be” in their time, after which their message and “aura” was used for all kinds of foul agendas. Also, you might have noticed that there are four tombs, but only three men are shown.

Gaga and her clone army storm the office building and Gaga force-feeds some execs the blood of Jesus, Ghandi and Michael Jackson.

The video ends with thousands of cloned “G.U.Y.s” mindlessly leaving the Hearst Castle to control the world.

SUMMARY

Gaga begins as a fallen angel who got shot down from the heavens by greedy business men. She is then “initiated” inside a Hollywood-occult-elite castle where she is reborn as a lustful blonde goddess. She then quickly uses her powers to create an army of clones using blood from Jesus Christ, Gandhi and Michael Jackson.

Shot at the Hearst Castle, a mansion built by a high-level Illuminatus, G.U.Y. tells viewers where the messages communicated in popular culture emerge from. The same way William Randolph Hearst manipulated public opinion with his brand of “yellow journalism”, today’s culture affects public opinion through pop stars. The video starts with symbolism that is strongly Luciferian – and Luciferianism is all about becoming gods. Then Gaga actually becomes a god and starts giving life to a new race of clones. Of course, all of those messages are coated with a large amount of “love” and sexiness to make them easy to digest for today’s average viewer.

In short, G.U.Y. is a typical Lady Gaga video. And like all typical Lady Gaga videos, while the story appears to be uplifting and “empowering”, its factory-created, mindless clones and occult Illuminati symbolism actually glorify elite repression and mass mind control.

Postmodernism

Dominic Strinati - "Fetishised Hyperreality" where the simulation has lost all connection or objective with reality. 

"Postmodernism tries to come to terms with and understand a media-saturated society. The mass media, for example, were once thought of as holding up a mirror to, and thereby reflecting, a wider social reality. Now that reality is only definable in terms of surface reflection of the mirror." - meaning society has become subsumed within the mass media, the term implies that there is a reality outside the surface simulation of the media which can be distored. This is the issue that postmodernist point out - how can we tell what is right if we no longer know what is real?

"Postmodernism is sceptical of any absolute, universal and all-embracing claim to knowledge and argues that theories or doctrines which make such claims are increasingly open to criticism, contestation and doubt." (Strinati) This links to Jean-Francois Lyotard's theory of Micro-Narratives where narratives are unpredictable which can often leave the audience open to interpret the reasoning or purpose of the text.

"Media images encourage superficiality rather than substance, cynicism rather than belief, the thirst for constant change rather than security of stable traditions, the desires of the moment rather than the truths of history." - meaning postmodern TV & film have become dominated by surface style and imagery rather than deeper underlying themes, which might relate to the "realities" of society.

Carla Kaplan (1987) identifies that music videos abandon narrative structure, they make no attempt to tell a story instead the power of a music video lies in the collage of images mixed with music - there is no deeper meaning or purpose it.

Frederic Jameson agrees with this calling it "Depthlessness" of contemporary cultural production - sees it as superficial cutting & pasting of ready-made images and styles which are abstracted from their true origins and reused in meaningless new combinations in the trivial commercialized space created by mass culture which will wear out with time. "The writers and artists of the present day will no longer be able to invent new styles and worlds... only a limited number of combinations are possible, the most unique ones have been thought of already."

Criticisms Of Postmodernism

1. Postmodernism undercuts the entire enterprise of education and truth.
2. To the extend that postmodernism indicts truth and value, postmodernism undercuts itself and whatever purposes and values it attempts to secure (i.e. less oppression, less violence, etc..)
3. Postmodernism is a poor analytic tool.  Whatever one gains with post-modernism, you take away from modernity.  For instance, turning all governments including democracies into equal parts tyranny doesn't exactly help fight for freedom or less oppression.  In addition, the norm to respect human dignity is different than the norm to take off your coat if you are going in doors--there are fundamentally different.  While I think geneaology might be able to handle this difference--the other tools fight against this.
4. Postmodernism undercuts rights protections (ie it would roll back the clock on the 60s reforms).  Progressive reforms & anything involving government protection of individual and groups would likewise die.
5. Postmodern focus on language trades-off with real world focus on actual oppression (not just the violence of language, but real violence).  You can spend too much time on issues of language or the essentialism of labels and forget to make the world a better place.
6. Postmodernism is too idealistic.  We as humans need structure (ie laws and guiding mission statements).  The idea that magically getting rid of those structures would be beneficial to everyone isn't true.
7. Postmodernism is grounded on hyperbole and overgeneralization--which is what it critiques modernism for.  It can ultimately become the fundamentalism it tries to critique.
8. Post-modernism results in hyper-individualism, without much in common.  The problems with this are described in Bowling Alone.
9. Most of postmoderns advantages can be captured by modern values and modern analytic tools.  You can examine power, ideology, and history without turning truth claims into mush.
10. Postmodernism results in ultimate relativism.  I've pointed to the problems of ethical relativism and relativism more broadly a number of times.  Here is one of those articles: A critique of relativistic theories of ethics
11. Assumptions & Caveats: To be fair, post-modernism is a rather broad field.  You would have to attack those folks around Heidegger, Nietzsche, Baudrillard, those postmoderns who talk about the nature of language, as well as a field-by-field analysis of the use of specific post-modern theories.

Using conventions from real world texts

- Music Videos
- Research via YouTube
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Post Production

As part of the post production process of my music video, I need to research where my music video will be shown or watched by members of my target audience and other audiences too.

Youtube

YouTube is a video sharing website which was created in February 2005.  Individuals upload videos onto the website which can be watched by other people. As the video sharing website became popular, larger companies started offering material on the site. Youtube has also become a advertising centre. Adverts can be seen before videos are viewed. In November 2006, YouTube was brought by google for the price of $1.65 billion.
Many artists now use YouTube as the main viewing platform for members of their target audience to view their music videos. Official music videos are uploaded by  the bands official page on YouTube which is partly run by the record company they belong too. On YouTube, many unknown bands have made their way to the top by uploading their music and music videos. The song I am using for my artist: "Glue by Nina Nesbitt" has a total of 100,513 views. She is still a relatively new artist with only 1 EP album released. The large amount of views ammounted for this one song suggests that YouTube and easy access to her music has boosted her credibility and popularity as a artist.

I am planning to place my video on Youtube. If I was going to release my track officially into the music market then I would be placing the video on YouTube to gain followers. Instead, I am going to place the video on YouTube to gain valuable feedback from members of my potential target audience.

iTunes is one of the biggest online music download sites available. it is run by apple who launched the store to link up with their music playing products such as the ipod nano and the ipod classic. iTunes has recently started offering a new feature; the ability to buy music videos. If I were to release my music video I would consider getting it available to buy on the Apple iTunes store so my target audience do have the opportunity to buy the music video along with the song if they so wish.

I know it is vital that I place my video up on YouTube for free. This is due to my audience feedback saying this is the way they use most to view music videos. It would be up there for free meaning my artist and any record company she would be signed too would not make any money. However, it would encourage audiences to listen to the music by Tempany and encourage them to purchase the music. I would also put the video up on iTunes for sale.

As for music channels, I believe that approaching both 4Music and MTV would be the best way to advance. By approaching both companies there is a possibility that my music video could be shown on both channels increasing the amount of people who could view the video. This also allows all members of the audience to view the video on 4Music as that channel is now available to everybody since the digital switchover. But it also my artist to make conections with the larger company of MTV which could prove helpful in the future.