Chapter 8

Postmodernism, Indie Media, and Popular Culture

We have lost sight of the real. In disneyland and Disney World, there are replicas from around the world, cities and small towns, and this can satisfy people longing for the world.

We live in a world where most modernism, modernism and the ideas of pre modernism are all combined.  Many ideas from modernism technology, science and progress remained dominant in post modern culture.

This chapter shows how the underlying meanings of post modernism translates to postmodern styles in art, media, and advertising.

Postmodernism and its Visual Culture

Postmodernity is referring to changes in the social and economic conditions that help to produce these styles and ways of being a subject.

Appropriation, parody, pastiche, and self conscience nostalgic play are just some of the approaches associated with postmodernism.  This and the rise of remix of culture is a result of shifting postmodern sensibilities coupled with the emergence of a set of technological practices enabled by the Web and digital technology.

Addressing the Postmodern Subject

Through these films, viewers engage with simulated environments with jaded sense that we know what is to come and that our bodies may be physically malleable and changeable through technology and medicine.

Reflexivity and Postmodern Identity 

Reflectivity, in text refers to its own means of production, undermines the illusion or fantasy aspects of the narrative, encouraging the viewer to be critical thinker about the ideology conveyed by the narrative.

the surface is understood to be a crucially meaningful element of social life and not simply the illusion put over the real, like make up almost hiding a blemish underneath.

The body image in postmodernism is something that can be easily changed, through surgery, or buying of makeup and feature alterations.  Sex, eye color, skin tone and facial features are some things that are now a quick fix if someone feels the need to change themselves. This is a sharp contrast to modernity because the body was seen a stable, boundaried and fixed.

Postmodern Space, Geography, and the Built Environment

Marc Auge refers to these as non places, sites in which we are solitary, disconnected and distracted, sites that are defined in a certain sense by the lack of presence they demand from those within them.

Appropriation, pastiche, and bricolage were everywhere apparent in the design of the Vegas strip, not as international expression of a culture of critique but as means through which the postmodern subject communicated and interacted with and through its built environment.

We live in a world were there is a tension between postmodernity and modernity are always conflicting but creating an interesting dynamic in our lives.