Postmodernism

Postmodernism is the current era of film making, and as the name suggests, proceeds the modernist era, which ended after the two world wars. The two world wars made society start to question many grand narratives that had stood strong for so long; examples of these are religion, nationalism, governmental structures. The war and crisis that the world was thrown into after these two wars shook up art forms. The Wall St. Crash with the following depression throughout the 1930's, then the largest war the world had ever seen changed these. People questioned what they believed in - how could these narratives have brought about such chaos? Conveyed in art forms, postmodernism started as disjointed texts, signifying the now broken beliefs of the people.

Considering we're in the postmodern-era, it is almost impossible to make a non-postmodern music video, as anything created during this era can be interpreted that way. Music videos are a great example of postmodern ideals.

• Making the viewers aware of the filming and editorial process by attempting to break conventions of narrative filming. 
• Bricolage and pastiche are main features - known as the 'end of originality', postmodernism attempts to create new sub-genres by taking elements from contrasting genres and use them together.
• Being self-referential to make the viewer aware of the text, breaking conventions of the modern film making. This allows the director to play with various references and ideas, knowing that it won't matter if the narrative is broken, or the realism is removed.
• Allusions are used, referencing to another text. This connects the viewer with the piece in a different way, in that rather than being engaged in a narrative world, they realise the reference is being made, thus gives them a different view of the film from those who do not understand the reference. This is summed up by postmodern director Quentin Tarantino's quote, "I always hope that if one million people see my movie, they saw a million different movies". This point goes onto negotiated reading.
• Negotiated reading is where one text can have many different meanings, determined by the audience's backgrounds or various knowledge and viewpoints.

The most postmodern music artist to become famous recently is Lady Gaga. Her video for 'Telephone' uses most postmodern ideas, such as:

• Graphics onscreen, with the text allusions to Kill Bill
• Self-referential to her media life, "I told you she didn't have a d*ck'
• Her costume is bricolage of a pop-legend mixed with a prison yard uniform
• Product placement breaks realism, and is also an allusion to 80's film which were packed full of product placement
• Graphic cuts break realism and narrative
• The vehicle is an allusion to Kill Bill, which in itself is a postmodern film
• Reference to typical cookery shows
• Allusions to superheroes
• News genre included
• Graphic credits, not usually seen in a music video