Along with Summer Camp, the artist that I have chosen to evaluate in terms of postmodernism is David Bowie, who is widely regarded as a postmodern artist and the founder of the mixture of genres within popular music. For various reasons, both of these artists are postmodern, using many postmodern aspects such as hyperreality, irony and the lack of consistency within the music, all of which will be elaborated on. For example though, each of David Bowie's albums has an entirely different genre and style, with many themes being intertwined. Likewise, within Summer Camp's individual songs alone there is this aspect of postmodernism evident, as you can pick out various different genres in a single song.
Postmodernism is a movement that confronts what modernism does not, rejecting the idea of it. It deals with 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 excluding the past, which is what modernism does. Postmodernism is aware that if the past did not exist, then neither would the future, so everything that has happened inflicts what is to happen, whether it is realised or not and to whatever extent. This explains how creators of music videos, for example, are not consciously aware that they have taken something from another music video, but have still used it as inspiration. Not only does postmodernism reject the boundaries of genres, but it does so generally. There are therefore no clear limit of purpose or meaning, due to people different things that they like and mixing it up, rather than sticking to a certain type of something, for example the genre of rock, or abstract art. Dan Black signifies this in his song ‘Symphonies’, by intertwining many existing ideas and styles from other things, reinforcing the idea that inspiration can be taken from everything and so things are gradually watered down and mixed up. This relates to Kirby Ferguson’s idea of everything being a remix, which is particularly relevant in music; you may often find that there are many artists of a genre that you can’t define due to it being many. Dan Black doing this was an example of Pastiche, as it uses existing styles in a mocking tone, pointing out the folly of how things have become to be created. The flip-side of pastiche is homage, which is a kinder and respectful way of using existing styles. Lastly, another main aspect of postmodernism is the idea of the audience being educated enough to understand things such as the intertextual references, whereas in modernism the audience is passive and potentially unaware of any messages, though that is not to say that there are none.
Summer Camp are a duo, consisting of Elizabeth Sankey and Jeremy Warnsley, who use many aspects of postmodernism in application to their music. For example, they use found footage, which is already existing footage which has been reused to create something new, and add it to their music videos. For example, their videos for both ‘Round the Moon’ and ‘Ghost Train’ are taken entirely from videos already existing. The videos would have only been edited for the song, potentially changing the meaning of what they were originally. The relationship between the couple in the ‘Round the Moon’ video, for example could have been portrayed in an entirely different way to that of how it could have with a different song. This video is also a remix of the 1970 Swedish film ‘En kärlekshistoria’. The fact that Summer Camp also take styles from the 70s/80s is relevant to postmodernism due to the aforementioned aspect which confronts the past as well as the future. Summer Camp clearly does this as they directly use things from a different time. The fact that the video originates from a rather obscure place supports the idea of the audience needing to be aware of the reference and have a high knowledge of it. A large part of Summer Camp being postmodern is also their use of hyperreality as they create a hyperreal representation of themselves; in the ‘Round the Moon’ music video it leaves the audiences under the implication that both Elizabeth Sankey and Jeremy Warnsley are to star in it, yet the couple are clearly not the duo themselves. However, after this seemingly false representation and upon seeing who they actually are, this leaves the audience to believe that they do not look like themselves. This again is blurring the boundaries, not conforming to typical traits of an artist or their music videos. Through their website they further develop the hyperreal world, appearing again as two high-school students in America, even creating diary entries and background stories of the personas, as well as others. The way in which the website is constructed also allows the audience to interact, which postmodern music artists often do, which is easily accessible to them in this time, through the use of social networking sites such as Twitter, as well as interactive media, such as their own website. Along with the music itself, Summer Camp’s music videos do not stick to the conventional structure, which would be expected; they don’t always star in them, one video consisted entirely of gifs, use of footage from another time etc. Lastly, the postmodern ‘uncool’ aspect to the duo is ironic, as it is taking things that used to be cool that would now be uncool in order to make it cool again-though the attempt at being cool ultimately makes it ‘uncool.’ Lastly, Claude Levi-Strauss spoke of addition, deletion, subtraction and transposition, which Summer Camp uses. An addition used by them is the style from different generations that they use in their music and how they present themselves. They delete the typically modern aspect of the music industry and what is expected from an artist. They substitute their own footage by using found footage and replacing themselves by other characters in the video ‘Round the Moon.’ The way in which they transpose is how they shift things that don’t appear to ‘naturally’ be paired and interlink them, such as the different styles; 80s, retro etc.
David Bowie is an English musician, record producer and actor who is highly regarded as one of the most influential artists in music, as well as being an innovator. Firstly, the most dominant aspect of David Bowie being postmodern is the fact that he has dabbled in various different styles of music, with each album having an entirely different concept and genre. Bowie’s use of this is rejecting modernism, as postmodernism does, by not conforming to the general expected structure of an album and an artist having fluidity and consistency in their music. Though there is not always a mixture of genre within every song on an album, each album is clearly different to the last. For example, Space Oddity is psychedelic folk/progressive rock, whereas Black Tie White Noise is in the genre of soul/electronic. Due to this, Bowie is not only an important and influential artist of a specific genre, such as rock, but is influential upon all genres, making his music almost indefinable, linking to postmodernism as there is no clear boundary. Supposedly rather than with modernism, audiences must be able to identify the references made in Bowie’s lyrics; he was influenced by a wide range of things such as politics, love, drugs and literature and used these things in his music. This links to the idea of the audience needing to be of high intelligence in order to understand, such as when Bowie unexpectedly speaks about the decay of society in his songs, “Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats.” David Bowie’s period of 1970-80 is regularly referred to as a breakthrough of postmodern ideas into popular music- such as the way in which he goes through various musical genres and subject matters. As with Summer Camp, there is an aspect of irony; he once said that he does not innovate personally, rather recombines other people’s new ideas in an innovative manner. Lastly, David Bowie is largely known for his persona of Ziggy Stardust, after the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. This is highly postmodern as it is an example of him also using hyperreality, creating a hyperreal iconic persona of himself.
In conclusion, both Summer Camp and the artist I chose to analyse in terms of postmodernism-David Bowie- are highly considered to be postmodern artists. The reasons for this are that they uphold various specific postmodern aspects, such as hyperreality, pastiche, mixture of genres, blurring of musical boundaries and irony. All of these are ways in which they reject modernism, a main reason for an artist being termed postmodern.
Word count: 1, 470
Word count: 1, 470
