Postmodernism is a movement that rejects modernism, blurring the boundaries within genres, cultures and conventions within media, art, fashion, etc. In doing this, postmodernism creates something new, wanting to use both past, present and future and mix things together, rather than simply ignoring the past, as modernism does. If the past didn't exist, then neither would the future, so every single tiny thing from the past inflicts the future, whether it is realised or not and to whatever degree. This may explain how creators of things such as music videos may have included something from another music video without consciously being aware, but it has been inspirational and relevant nevertheless. There are no specific, clear boundaries of purpose or meaning within postmodernism, as it is an example of people taking different parts of what they like from things and rejecting the rest of the ideas presented by that particular thing; such as liking a certain aspect, or some aspects, of a certain religion, but not fully believing in the rest of it. This links to Lytard's theory of this, and that it applies to history, politics, science and religion. Dan Black's Symphonies is an example of this mixture of everything- different genres and styles from existing films, reinforcing the idea that inspiration can be taken from anything and all of these things can so easily be mixed together, so if one thing is just a watered down version of the last, is anything original? Apparently, postmodernism thinks not. Postmodernism also says that in order for the messages within postmodernism to apply, the audience must be 'educated' enough to understand the meaning that it is trying to portray, as well as the intertextual references; to those who don't see what Dan Black did and him using various different things from different genres, all they would see is the average music video and probably assume that all of this was Dan Black's ideas alone.
As a class we have looked at and discussed various different aspects of postmodernism, such as a homage and pastiche. An example of a pastiche- a generally light-hearted and mocking imitation of an existing style- that we have looked at is Dan Black's Symphonies, in which he shows that he can make something good which is the essentially the same as everything else, with him reinventing shots from various different films, such as Donnie Darko, Catch Me If You Can and E.T. An example of a homage, which is a kinder and more respectful way of using an existing product, is Kill Bill, which acknowledges the fact that it uses ideas from other, older films, therefore being respectful to the ones used, rather than mocking them. Another thing that we looked at was the game Desert Bus, which was exaggeratedly boring and repetitive, though this was its aim as it was attempting to be realistic- the game is an eight hour drive from Arizona to Los Angeles. The person playing the game would therefore not be able to pause the game to do something else- you can't pause real life, can you? This is shows a difference to other (better) games such as Bully, as you are taking the role of the character and the time you have is limitless and you get rewards. The only reward that you get from Desert Bus is one point at the end of the long drive, its point being to amplify the fact that you have just wasted eight hours of your life for nothing, therefore almost being a pastiche to other games in which you get many rewards, to simply make you feel as if you have achieved something. Both of these games from a postmodern view would be realistic, as they are both role-play games which realistic graphics.
Jacques Derrida said, 'The centre is not the centre.' From this he was explaining that naturally the centre doesn't exist, but the concept of it is created by us in order to 'make sense of the world around us', so something that is the focus and needs to be the focus at the time is, but when this changes, something else shifts into its place and consequently the centre is literally not the centre anymore, it is not fixed and could be anything. This has particular relevance to postmodernism, as it explains how there is a constant change and mixture of things such as genre within media.
Due to its many contradictions, I think that the idea of postmodernism may not be entirely convincing; something is 'cool', but then when everyone starts to believe so it loses its coolness and becomes more uncool than it ever was cool, but if a postmodernist believer was to admit this then they wouldn't be postmodern at all, would they? This is the 'death of uncool', so the concept of cool is forever changing, along with the centre, along with everything else. Similarly, the idea of originality is intertwined with this, if you say that you are original then you automatically are not, though in avoiding the subject of originality that, to some, may in fact make you original, as it may not seem as if you are trying to be. But you are, most likely.
