Postmodernism in music video

Media Magazine Theory Drop - Postmodernism

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?

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'?

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. It points to the process of its own creation.

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

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

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

This is a frequent preoccupation in the content of postmodern narratives. As stated earlier, postmodernism tends to reject most aspects of authority, meaning, as Jean Francois Lyotard put it in The Postmodern Condition, ‘the grand narrative has lost its credibility’. It is easy to see how some institutions are being questioned. Religion, specifically ‘the church’, as an institution has lost followers over the last few centuries.

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?

Ghost Town incorporates elements of postmodernism through bricolage, pastiche and hybridity, combining the visual elements of a road trip narrative with musical performance and a core concept of social realism. It is intertextual in nature, borrowing from the style of German expressionism, notably Fritz Lang whose influence is seen through the strong shadows cast on the brick walls and the chiaroscuro effect of the lighting throughout the video. Ghost Town is also postmodern due to it being a combination of an arthouse film style with popular music (ska), creating a blurring of art and popular culture that Strinati stated as one of the five ways to define postmodernism. 

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

The music video features scenes of the band driving endlessly across streets, referencing the road trip genre, while the low-key lighting and harsh shadows evoke hammer horror and German expressionist imagery. Ghost Town also has elements of social realism, both visually through the empty streets and shots of isolated buildings and with its lyrics.

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

Old Town Road incorporates elements of postmodernism through its use of intertextuality and bricolage. The video begins as a homage to the Western genre and is made to mimic a Western film, drawing upon a historical genre. The video combines old and new media both through its hybridity of lyrics that are conventional to the country genre on top of an instrumental produced for rap and its setting and costume changes, representing the fusion of past historical cowboys and their modern interpretation. 

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

Old Town Road's prominence came about through its viral status on TikTok, through Lil Nas X's marketing for the track featuring memes on Twitter and TikTok referencing the popular Western video game Red Dead Redemption, where fans online were remixing and using the song for their own content. This reflects the modern digital culture as it shows how audiences and producers are able to interact with one another mutually. 

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?

Through Old Town Road, Lil Nas X communicates how the Black community has been just as formative to the historical and modern formation of American culture as their white counterparts, shown through his partnership with Billy Ray Cyrus and the hybrid genre of country rap.