Vocabulary of Postmodernism

1. Vocabulary of Postmodernism Theories of Postmodernism Postmodernism Conscious use of pre-existing textual or genre structures to make ironic or new comment on familiar material.

2. Vocabulary of Postmodernism Theories of Postmodernism Intertextuality Imitating or borrowing directly from a pre-existing media text – a familiar media text appearing within a new one

3. Vocabulary of Postmodernism Theories of Postmodernism Author/Scriptor Barthes’ view that ‘the author is dead’ because there will never be an original story again. The scriptor re-arranges or re-presents old material in new ways

4. Vocabulary of Postmodernism Theories of Postmodernism Active reader From Roland Barthes – the view that the reader is fully aware of how to decode new representations and inter-textuality and actively searches for the previous texts within postmodern works.

5. Vocabulary of Postmodernism Theories of Postmodernism Ironic Self-awareness Where a postmodern text clearly shares its awareness that what we are watching is false – or constructed by the scriptor and director

6. Vocabulary of Postmodernism Theories of Postmodernism Ironic Self-awareness or self-referential work Where a postmodern text clearly shares its awareness that what we are watching is false – or constructed by the scriptor and director

7. Vladimir PROPP (1895-1970) Theories of Postmodernism The Morphology of the Fairy Tale, 1928 Propp examined hundreds of fairy tales in the generic form ‘the folk wondertale’. • He identified: • 8 character roles (or ‘spheres of action’) • 31 functions which move the story along - examples include the punishment of the villain (usually at the end of the story); the ban of an action (eg. If Sleeping Beauty touches a spinning wheel, she will die)

8. Vladimir PROPP (1895-1970) Theories of Postmodernism The Morphology of the Fairy Tale, 1928 Propp’s theory is a form of structuralism, which is a view that all media is inevitably in the form of certain fixed structures. These structures are often culturally derived and form expectations in the mind of an audience from within that same culture eg fairy tales always have happy endings or the princess always marries the handsome prince.

9. Vladimir PROPP (1895-1970) Theories of Postmodernism The Morphology of the Fairy Tale, 1928 Propp’s theory can be applied to generic structures in Western culture, such as popular film genres. Thus genre structures form expectations in the mind of an audience that certain rules apply to the narrative. However, cultural change can force structures to change eg a hero can now be a woman

10. Vladimir PROPP (1895-1970) Theories of Postmodernism The Morphology of the Fairy Tale, 1928 Attempt to identify as many of Propp’s 8 ‘spheres of action’ from the films we have studied as you can - • The villain • The hero - a seeker character motivated by an initial lack • The donor, who provides an object with some magic • property • The helper, who aids the hero • The princess, a reward for the hero and object of the • villain’s schemes • Her father, who validates the hero • The dispatcher, who sends the hero on • his way • The false hero

11. Roland BARTHES Theories of Postmodernism French theorist Barthes believes the there are 5 action codes that enable an audience to make sense of a narrative. • hermeneutic (narrative turning-points) • we know where the story will go next • proairetic (basic narrative actions) • eg detective interviews suspect or femme fatale seduces hero (see Propp’s 31 functions) • cultural (prior social knowledge) • eg our attitudes to gender or racial stereotypes • semic (medium-related codes) • intertextuality • symbolic (themes) • iconography or a theme such as ‘image versus reality’ (Curtis Hanson)

12. Theories of Postmodernism Advanced intertextuality Intertextuality is a key component in understanding how genre texts succeed by being at once both Similar and Different

13. John FISKE Theories of Postmodernism American Professor of Communication Arts, 2000s Fiske develops Barthes’ semic code: A representation of a car chase only makes sense in relation to all the others we have seen - after all, we are unlikely to have experienced one in reality, and if we did, we would, according to this model, make sense of it by turning it into another text, which we would also understand intertextually, in terms of what we have seen so often on our screens. There is then a cultural knowledge of the concept 'car chase' that any one text is a prospectus for, and that is used by the viewer to decode it, and by the producer to encode it. (Fiske 1987, 115)

14. Roland BARTHES Theories of Postmodernism French semiotic theorist A scene from the Hollywood film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’

15. Roland BARTHES Theories of Postmodernism French semiotic theorist A ‘real’ image of people fleeing the dust cloud in the aftermath of ‘9/11’

16. Jacques DERRIDA Theories of Postmodernism French philosopher Jacques Derrida proposed that 'a text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without... a genre. Every text participates in one or several genres, there is no genreless text' (Derrida 1981, 61).

17. Jacques DERRIDA Theories of Postmodernism French philosopher Derrida’s point helps to explain why commentators on September 11th could only understand what they were seeing as ‘like a movie’. This is perhaps what Fiske means by saying ‘we make sense of it by turning it into another text.’ Compare this to what Fiske says about never having experienced a car chase. If we encounter a real-life genre experience the decoding system in our brains becomes confused.

18. Claude LEVI-STRAUSS Theories of Postmodernism French structuralist, 1970s Levi-Strauss developed the concept of bricolage Levi-Strauss saw any text as constructed out of socially recognisable ‘debris’ from other texts. He saw that writers construct texts from other texts by a process of: Addition Deletion Substitution Transposition

19. Gerard GENETTE Theories of Postmodernism French structuralist, 1990s Genette developed the term transtextuality and developed five sub-groups, but only 4 apply to film: • intertextualityquotation, plagiarism, allusion • architextualitydesignation of the text as part of a genre by the writer or by the audience • metatextualityexplicit or implicit critical commentary of one text on another text • hypotextualitythe relation between a text and a preceeding hypotext - a text or genre on which • it is based but which it transforms, modifies, • elaborates or extends (including parody, • spoof, sequel, translation) Which of our viewed films give examples of each type?

20. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre1.htmlhttp://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre1.html