Postmodernism & Deutschland 83: blog task

Go to our Media Factsheet archive on the Media Shared drive and open Factsheet #54: Introduction to Postmodernism. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets - you'll need to save the factsheet to USB or email it to yourself in order to complete this at home. Read the factsheet and answer the following questions:

1) Read the section on Strinati's five ways to define postmodernity. What examples are provided of the breakdown of the distinction between culture and society (media-isation)?

Postmodern reality now incorporates art in the form of media texts and today we make sense of reality with reference to media texts. The media reality of an event or an object can be more ‘real’ for audiences than the object itself.

2) What is Fredric Jameson's idea of 'historical deafness'? How can the idea of 'historical deafness' be applied to Deutschland 83?

According to Jameson, this is the idea of historical deafness: Baudrillard argued that this culture perceives the ‘copy’ (media representation) as more real that the ‘original’ and stated that we live in a culture where the ‘fake’ is more readily accepted than the ‘real’ and the media creates hyper-reality.

3) What examples and theories are provided for the idea of 'style over substance'?

An example of 'style over substance' is when people are strongly influenced by branding when buying products. The label sometimes becomes more important than the product itself and packaging more important than the contents. People will pay high prices for products which bear the logo of a fashionable label regardless of the actual quality of the product.

4) What examples from music are provided for the breakdown of the distinction between art and popular culture? Can this be applied to Deutschland 83?

5) What is bricolage? What examples of bricolage can be found in Deutschland 83?

Bricolage is the juxtaposing of a old and new text, image, ideas and narratives to create new meaning.

6) How can the audience pleasures of Deutschland 83 be linked to postmodernism? Read 'The decline of meta-narratives' and 'Media texts and the postmodern' to help answer this.

Meta-narratives (or grand narratives (Lyotard) literally meaning ‘big stories’) are the ideas and concepts that have been used to attempt to explain the way the world is and the way it should be. Human history is full of these grand narratives from religion to political/economic theories. Communism, Fascism, Liberalism and
Socialism are some examples of grand narratives that have been applied in various contexts in the last 100 years.

7) Read the analysis of media concepts and postmodern approaches on page 3 of the factsheet. Choose three of the concepts and write an example from Deutschland 83. Clue: genre, representation, ideology and audience would all be good options for this task.

Postmodern texts play with genre codes and subvert them. Sometimes this is as simple as constructing a text that is a hybrid – a mix of more than one genre. In more complex texts the genre can be difficult to identify and may not be totally stable.

In Deutschland 83, there is a numerous amount of genres used. One of the genres that was being used in the series is the spy genre. Martin was told to spy in West Germany and because he disagreed, he was drugged and taken. 

Postmodern narratives experiment with conventional structures. Some postmodern narratives present events in a fragmented way that does not follow a chronology, some postmodern narratives fail to resolve and others ‘lie’ to the audience so they cannot be sure of what has actually happened within the story. Sympathetic villains and unsympathetic heroes are common place.

8) Now look at page 4 of the factsheet. How does Deutschland 83 demonstrate aspects of the postmodern in its construction and ideological positioning?

Whilst some contemporary media texts can be seen to be postmodern in their construction, many modern texts rely on traditional methods of construction. Some texts appear to ‘know’ they are postmodern whilst others can be seen to be part of the postmodern culture. In Deutschland 83, there is a clear rivalry between East And West Germany.

9) Which key scenes from Deutschland 83 best provide examples of postmodernism? Why?

The scene where Martin was in the office accessing the briefcase, that created suspense and gave a real feel. He took pictures of the classified information and put it back together as if nothing had happened. As he was putting everything where is was he could hear people coming back to the room which created more suspense and a thrill for the audience.

10) Why might audiences enjoy the postmodern aspects of Deutschland 83? What audience pleasures might elements of bricolage or pastiche provide viewers?

Bricolage is the juxtaposing of old and new texts, images, ideas and narratives to create new meanings.

Pastiche refers to the media products that imitate the style of another text, artist or time period. Pastche is an example of intertextuality and takes positive view of original sources.