Music Video: Postmodernism in music video

 Create a new blog post called 'Postmodernism in music video: blog tasks'. Read ‘The Theory Drop: Postmodernism’ in MM66  (p26). You'll find our Media Magazine archive here - remember you'll need your Greenford Google login to access. Answer the following questions:

1) How does the article define postmodernism in the first page of the article?

If modernism is beginning to question authority, then postmodernism is making fun of authority to its face. Postmodernism takes this concept of questioning traditional structures, representations and expectations and pushes things a step further.

2) What did media theorist and Semiotician Roland Barthes suggest in his essay 'The Death of the Author'?

The Death of the Author. In it, he challenged tradition when he said that a writer’s opinions, intentions or interpretation of their own work are no more valid than anyone else’s. 

3) What is metatextuality?

Metatextuality is where a text draws attention to the fact that it is a text. 

4) What is the repeated phrase on the cartoon on postmodernism on page 28?

'Postmodernism is a movement that distrusts all established philosophies and frequently experiments with the medium that it is presented within'.

5) How does postmodernism link to media representations and reality?

The Nature of Reality This is a frequent preoccupation in the content of postmodern narratives. As stated earlier, postmodernism tends to reject most aspects of authority,‘ the grand narrative has lost its credibility’.

Music video CSPs and postmodernism

Now apply postmodern ideas to our music video CSPs by answering the following questions:

1) How does the music video for Ghost Town incorporate elements of postmodernism?

The elements of pastiche that replicate the feel and atmosphere of 70s British hammer horror.

2) What film genres are alluded to in the music video for Ghost Town? Which scenes in particular created these links?

Hammer horror, Road movie, Social realism.

3) How does Old Town Road use postmodern elements in its music video?

Intertextuality can be spotted throughout many of Lil Nas Xs music videos. There are elements of pastiche in the opening scene.

4) How does the Old Town Road music video reflect technological convergence and modern digital culture?  

It reflects technological convergence as the video is an official movie that can be split up in order to be consumed separately on platforms such as tiktok with short span videos and shows that the current modern digital culture is that of short span and highly editable pieces of a text are consumed to a much higher degree than that of the traditional format of watching the entire video for yourself and so now people rely on others to release these clips to consume rather than searching it out for themselves.

5) What do YOU think Lil Nas X was trying to say about reality and American culture in the music video for Old Town Road?

That everything should be together and mix without any issues.