Pixies - Where Is My Mind?

Pixies
The song by the Pixies, 'Where Is My Mind?' is featured on their album 'Surfer Rosa', an album which has often been listed as one of the best rock albums of all time, as well as being an inspiration for Nirvana's 'Nevermind' and no doubt many others. The album mixes styles musically, such as pop guitar style and melodic, slower material as well as heavier stuff. As with many things considered postmodern, this would be an example of why the song and the album are said to be it. The lyrics to the song, along with the rest of the album, are surrealistic. The song was apparently written after Francis was chased by a fish in the Caribbean, which inspired the writing of it, a reference to which in the song could be, 'I was swimmin' in the Caribbean, animals were hiding behind the rocks, except the little fish...' The inclusion of Spanish lyrics in the Pixies songs is also an example of postmodernism, as it not only brings in aspects from other styles musically, but from culture, too. As well as being featured on Fight Club, the song was also used in films such as Mr Nobody and various television programmes.

Fight Club
The song is used at the end of Fight Club where the narrator and Marla are watching the buildings fall after being blown up, with the music and surreal lyrics fitting perfectly in the apparent beauty and destruction we see from the point of view of the two characters as they watch. The drum beat of the song fits hand in hand with the destruction, however the surreal, almost eerie in this usage, feel of it is fitting with the bizarre beauty of it.

TV advert
One of the versions of the Thomsons Holidays adverts uses part of the instrumental alone, changing the tone of the song almost drastically, especially in comparison to its use in Fight Club, and instead using it for a calm and warm tone. (Although whilst watching the buildings fall, it is true that the narrator and Marla were calm, but in a different way.) The second version of the advert has on the lyrics basically being spoken, only from the lines 'I was swimming...', as with the content of the advert being holidays it fitted in, though it wouldn't have if they didn't edit the song to change the tone of it. Again fitting in with postmodernism, the song has therefore changed meaning through the use of it in the advert as it is so different to the original and its use in things such as Fight Club- all of which actually have very little, if not then nothing, in common.

DJ Danger Mouse - 99 Problems

The most obvious aspect of the song '99 Problems' by Danger Mouse from 'The Grey Album' being postmodern is its reuse of things that already exist and mixing them together- music from The Beatles and Jay Z. The song is one of the 'mash ups' on the album, which essentially combines hip-hop music (Jay Z's The Black Album) and rock music (The Beatles The White Album) and being no coincidence, comes to be The Grey Album. Due to postmodern being linked largely to the mixture of various different things and genres within one product, the song and album as a whole basically conforms to it. Danger Mouse clearly does not try to hide the fact that he has copied the music from other artists, as this was precisely his point, as he freely mixed two songs from two popular genres in music.

Dan Black - Symphonies

Addition

Throughout the whole music video, addition as used as Dan Black brings things in from other texts and mixes them together, such as the drum beat from 'Umbrella'. He also uses things from many different genres, as with shot of a man (presumably himself) with a bunny head; this shot is almost exactly the same to in Donnie Darko, as well as the shot of the moon as in E.T.

Deletion
The linear structure could be said to have been taken away; the clips that he has copied have almost simply been thrown together with no clear reason as to why they have been at the specific points, as a narrative would usually have. However, there is a montage of shots at the end- all the fonts from various different films- saying 'The End', clarifying that the video is over.

Substitution
Basically everything but the outline of all that Dan Black has used in the video is a substitution; as he cannot simply take the clips from all of the films that he uses, he instead copies them, using himself and other random actors/actresses in replacement.

Transpotition
As I have previously said, there is no real connectinion between each of the clips used, therefore no conventional structure, so he has brought together various disconnected things from different genres. For example, Donnie Darko does not have a single thing in relation to Catch Me If You Can, however they are both included, connected in that way.

The intertextual references in 'Symphonies' include Donnie Darko, E.T, Catch Me If You Can, Starman, Lost Highway and King Kong. Dan Black has included these references, along with all of the others, to represent the fact that nothing is purely 'original' as everything is taken from something else and modified to how the creators want it to be.

As the clips that Dan Black copies in 'Symphonies' are all from various different styles and genres, this is an 'eclectic mixture' as ideas for the video have been derived from a large variety of things and thrown together, therefore conforming to Charles Jencks' view on postmoderism. ('Postmodernism is fundamentallly the eclectic mixture of any tradition with that of its immediate past.')

Addition, Deletion, Substitution, Transposition

Addition
Taking something and adding to it from something else.

Deletion
Taking something and then taking something away from it.

Substitution
Taking something and changing it into something else instead.

Transposition
Putting things together that are completely different and making a new thing.

Pastiche
An imitation of an existing style, done in a 'light hearted' way, though it mocks things, taking the form of satire.

Homage
A kinder and more respectful way of using an existing style, honouring it rather than mocking it.

“The center is not the center. The concept of a centered structure…is contradictorily coherent. And, as always, coherence in contradiction expresses the force of desire.'             
- Jaques Derrida

Basically in translation to the above:
'The center doesn’t exist naturally, but rather because we need it to in order to make sense of the world around us – however, according to Derrida, this need for and perception of a center doesn’t necessarily mean that center exists.'                                                                             
- Film School Rejects

Computer Games

Types of computer games include:

• Music
• Sci-fi
• Role play
• Sport
• FPS (First person shooter)
• Racing
• Strategy
• Puzzle
• Virtual reality
• Platform
• Third person
• Management

Typical conventions of computer games include:

• Awards
• Bonuses
• Llives
• Levels/stages
• Coins/rewards
• Progressive difficulty
• Tutorials
• Binary opposites
• More realistic/hyperreality
• Personified animals often being the character that you play

Desert Bus

The 'point' of the tedious game that is Desert Bus is basically to get from one location to another- generally what a bus is for. It is said to be 'realistic' mostly due to the fact  that everything is in actual time. Many may not find it appealing as people usually enjoy games that at the end makes them feel good and as though they have achieved something, or because they get a reward for it, however, in Desert Bus this does not apply. The game follows some typical conventions of a computer game, such as:

• Missions/levels - the mission is to get from Arizona to Las Vegas, in real time (despite the fact that there is literally no traffic at all, and when does that happen in reality?) Despite this, the mission would take 8 hours to complete.
• Coins/rewards - you are rewarded one coin for arriving at the location, and another for returning to the start without stopping or suddenly driving off the side of the road.
• Puzzles/problems - as I experienced several times, it is incredibly easy to veer off the side of the road- you therefore need to avoid this and stick to the middle of the road as if you break down you get dragged back to where you started, however long ago that was.
• Linear structure
• Progressive difficulty

William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet

In Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation of William Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet', the classic story is taken and modified; to it Luhrmann added many modern elements which of course would not have been around at the time, such as cars and guns. Many aspects of the story are highlighted and exaggerated, for example the Montague and Capulet families, the power they hold, and their feud (we see a shot of the two buildings with the logos of the family names on, in contrast to each other and far apart). Rather than bringing in music for the soundtrack which would have only existed then, Luhrmann got artists such as Radiohead to write the songs, thus bringing in aspects of different cultures and mixing up the style. This may be applied to postmodern as it goes against the conventional aspects of an adaptation of a story such as this.
There are intertextual references in that certain things are reused in the film, such as the use of the 'L'amour' billboard advertisement in the same font with the same colours as the Coca Cola logo. Luhrmann doesn't claim the style as his own, therefore being another way in which it is postmodern. Also, on the advertisement it says 'Wherefore' which mixes the language and setting of the classic story and the modern elements.

In relation to something only being postmodern if the audience is literate enough to understand it, literally everyone will be able to notice the more obvious things in the film such as the inclusion of modern objects, the fact that they speak as though from the Elizabethan era- in an American accent, the use of the dance-like music such as in the scene when they are partying and the wardrobe being quite unlike how it would have been if it was set long ago.