The Impact of Postmodernism in the 21st Century Media - Essay Example

The Impact of Postmodernism in the 21st Century Media In his book, Understanding Media (1994), the famous Canadian sociologist Marshall Mcluhan imparted that, "The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium...result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves or by any new technology." The medium Mcluhan is concerned about is the mass media. Indeed, over the past two or three decades, many studies have demonstrated the intensity of mass media's influence over modern society. Numerous scholars recognized that media as the contemporary communication tool that defines or shapes an individual's set of values in this era. Thus, as it expands into various forms, media has transformed into a channel that takes us to the future. Postmodernism, on the other hand, is a complicated term. Some define it as a phenomenon or a cultural movement. As Stanley Gentz elaborated in his book, A Primer to Postmodernism (1996), "Postmodernism affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent on the community in which we participate. ... There is no absolute truth; rather, truth is relative to the community in which we participate." Jean-Franois Lyotard in his paper The Postmodern Condition (1984) defined modernity as Enlightenment or as the culmination of Enlightenment thought. Largely defined by incredulity toward the grand narratives, he noted that postmodernity have sought to explain the world. Lyotard also averred that postmodernism designates the state of our culture following the transformations which, since the end of the nineteenth century, have altered the game rules for science, literature, and the arts. Thus, he furthered that: In a society whose communication component is becoming more prominent day by day, both as a reality and as an issue, it is clear that language assumes a new importance. It would be superficial to reduce its significance to the traditional alternative between manipulatory speech and the unilateral transmission of messages on the one hand, and free expression and dialogue on the other. Moreover, because it is a concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines or areas of study, including art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology, postmodernism appears to be difficult to confine in a simple meaning. It's hard to locate it temporally or historically, since it's not clear exactly when postmodernism begins. In the character of our changing times, people have come to live not only in a situated culture, but in a culture of mediation since the 19th century. The press, film and cinema, television and radio and more recently, the Internet, have developed to supply larger scale means of public communication. Our situated culture exists within a much wider mediated world. The introduction of the term 'global village' in the 1960's illustrates how much our world has changed and the change is due almost entirely to the development of mass communications. With the recent spate of electronic media, like the Net, mass media is inarguably the most democratizing, empowering state that man has ever built. Agreeing to this is Black American activist Malcolm X, as he succinctly stated that, "The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses." Sociologists have long agreed that the media has a marked impact not only in opinion, but also on the way people dress, act and relate with one another. Our cultural experiences attests to the development of systems of mass communication, like the television. New York Post critic Clive Barnes reckoned that "Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want." Studies have substantiated Barnes' scary thoughts as Americans 'normally' spends 3 - 4 hours per day in the company of a TV set, relating to our subconscious large amounts of time spent in a range of media related activities. Currently, as media adapts to postmodern theories, what would be its impact on the viewers Does postmodernist thought improve the quality of media that most people currently receive What are the unseen implications of spreading postmodern thoughts through media The Postmodernist Symptoms via 'The Simpsons' From the very start, the media have posed as the most convenient avenue for postmodernist thoughts to be imparted to modern society. In fact, TV shows like "The Simpsons" has since summoned issues that challenged US educators to examine its effects on their students. To wit, Bybee and Overbeck (2001) mentioned that: The program, which ridiculed all forms of authority and turned Bart Simpson into a wildly popular anti-hero, initially provoked an intense reaction from the education community, in some schools leading to the banning of paraphernalia bearing Bart's images and regular denunciations of the series. As the series grew in popularity-and eventually was joined by other cartoon series that were seen to be even more educationally offensive, such as "Beavis and Butthead" and "South Park"-the furor died down to a ongoing but passive hostility toward the program, at least in the classroom. To make matters worse, Time magazine named the series the best television program of the 20th century, or to have the poet laureate of the United States, Robert Pinsky, praise the series, stating that it "penetrates to the nature of television itself" (Owen, 2000, p. 65). Bybee and Overbeck furthered that this situation didn't help as much that many teachers went home, turned the program on, and laughed themselves silly. Thus, this reveals an obvious divide in the inception of an emerging popular culture. This predicament could be well derived as a painful blow for media educators, many of whom follow Hobbs' (1998) argument that "the texts of everyday life, when constituted as objects of social knowledge, provide the possibility for combining textual, historical, and ideological analysis in ways that help students and teachers move beyond the limits of traditional disciplines and subject areas." In the careful examination of the issues tackled in "The Simpsons", we could eventually recognize contemporary modifications of a social satire while comparing the cartoon family to other usual television families we have come to watch. However, Bybee and Overbeck further noted that in almost every case, it was sensed that the unique qualities of the series eluded the efforts to dispense the values it taught to its viewers, especially children. The basic tools of media education and literacy as typically agreed upon by numerous media literacy communities - tools that direct our attention to basic precepts such as the idea that "the media are constructed"-appear not to be enough to turn "The Simpsons" from renegade popular culture into a teachable moment (Aufderheide, 1993). Thus, Bybee and Overbeck deemed that the central problem with "The Simpsons" is that it seems to drag the media literacy debate onto the unfamiliar and even foreboding terrain of postmodernism, where issues of image and representation begin to fall apart. Postmodernism Fears The entire world is not rosy for the postmodernist issues tackled in "The Simpsons" as critics have lambasted the values it imparts to its viewers. Bybee and Overbeck cited a US News and World Report by Leo (1999) that argued the postmodernism in Simpsons has created a language that no one can understand, a language that is used to intellectually bully readers into agreeing with outlandish propositions. The academic world, on the other hand, has offered more equivocal assessments. Another one, Hebdige (1988) commented that "we are in the presence of a buzzword," a word which, while confusing, does capture an important social or cultural transition. Kellner (1995) agreed with Hebdige as he observed that "... the term 'postmodern' is often a placeholder, or semiotic marker, that indicates that there are new phenomena that require mapping and theorizing" (p. 46). In their study, Buckingham and Sefton-Green (1997) also saw that in their effort to begin charting the challenges posed by multimedia education in an increasingly digitized media environment, believe that although postmodernism may be "glib and sweeping," it offers a useful way to characterize a number of broad social and cultural transformations. Bybee and Overbeck noted some of the changes that summoned the interest of Buckingham and Sefton-Green to include the nature of consumption, the blurring distinctions between production and consumption, the poaching of texts and symbols, and the rejection of the "elitist and sterile oppositions between high and popular culture" (pp. 289-292). Given the slipperiness of the concept, Bybee and Overbeck continued to disclose that postmodernism nevertheless marks a critical new moment in the study of media and representation. Building on the work of Buckingham and Sefton-Green (1997), they began asking "what is postmodernism" and "what can we do with it" Lastly, Bybee and Overbeck (2001) enlightened that: While any aspect of postmodernism discussed above can be found in and explored within "The Simpsons," two concepts in particular, irony overload and the questioning of identity. Of particular interest to us is that "The Simpsons" repeatedly focuses on this very issue: the problem of selfhood in an increasingly absurd culture pulverized with images, symbols, values, irony, and commercialization. This is especially useful in studying youth culture and isolation. It is widely known that the isolation of teenagers and questions that relate to their own identity are problems that are not being satisfactorily addressed by society. The growing levels of hopelessness, cynicism, despair, and suicide among teenagers are getting alarming by the hour and that's the main reason why Generation X and Y have sprouted. Postmodernist writers have assigned the letters X and Y to signify the isolation of youth. In shaping the contemporary cultural history, positive developments that have greatly accelerated by the advent of postmodernism, of which poststructuralist theory is merely one among many different aspects that will have to be harnessed in the future. Conclusion In this regard, it is important to ponder on what the youth could derive in a postmodernist TV show like "The Simpsons." What lessons can be learned as the characters on the show are thrust into various battles for self-discovery Like much postmodern culture, "The Simpsons," is saturated with irony and obsessed with issues of authentic identity, particularly in relation to media culture. The scenes and situations of "The Simpsons" are actually a bitter perspective at what our reality really offers. The advantages of the postmodern theory are its macro-level approach to the modern day societal necessities. However, its disadvantages can be placed into four categories: criticisms of postmodernity from the view of those who reject modernism and its offshoots, criticisms from supporters of modernism who believe that post modernity lacks crucial characteristics, criticisms from within post modernity who seek reform or change based on their understanding of postmodernism and those who believe that post modernity is a passing phase and not a growing phase or traditional theory in social organization. We all inhabit particular situations and things like our surroundings, family, friends; school, work, neighborhood and so on shape our individual identities. In media - speak we refer to this aspect of our cultural identity as our situated culture. In other words, the small-scale communications and interactions we have on a day-to-day basis with the place we live in and the people around us. The advent of postmodernism theories, in relation to the Information Age, is a time of choosing of what is right or wrong. Presently, postmodernism is not yet well-defined as a concept and thus no belief can be adopted without self-consciousness and irony because all types of traditions needs to be validated in order to be accepted without question. The impact of postmodernism in the media in the coming years is partly a consequence of what is called the information explosion and people need to be educated for them to adapt to these changes. Change is the character of our time and we therefore need to be equipped to battle the challenges of the future. Bibliography Aufderheide, P. 1993. National leadership conference on media literacy. Washington, DC: Aspen Institute. Buckingham, D., & Sefton-Green, J. 199). Multimedia education: Media literacy in the age of digital culture. In R. Kubey (Ed.), Media literacy in the information age: Current perspectives (pp. 285-306). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Bybee, C., & Overbeck, A. 2001. Homer Simpson explains our postmodern identity crisis, whether we like it or not: Media literacy after "The Simpsons." Studies in Media & Information Literacy Education, University of Toronto Press, vol. 1, no.1. Gentz, S.J. 1996. A primer to postmodernism. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 199 pp. Hebdige, D. 1988. Hiding in the light. London: Routledge. Hobbs, R. 1998. The seven great debates in the media literacy movement. Journal of Communication, vol. 48, p. 16-33. Kellner, D. 1995. Media Culture. New York: Routledge. Leo, J. 1999, March 15. Tower of Pomobabble. U.S. News and World Report, 27. Lyotard, J.F. 1984. The Postmodern Condition (including "What is Postmodernism"). Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Theory and History of Literature, Volume 10. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mcluhan, M. 1994. Understanding media: the extension of man. Boston: MIT Press. 365 pp. Owen, D. 2000, March 13. The Funniest Man in TV. The New Yorker, p. 64-75. Postmodernism. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia Website. Acquired online September 18, 2005 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism Read More