Explain how certain types of media can be defined as postmodern.

Postmodern media rejects the Idea that one text is better than the other, and everything is merely based on taste or opinion. The distinction between the media and reality has collapsed and is no longer there, there is now this world that we live in where everything is defined by images and representation which is a state of simulacrum. Images represent each other and refer to each other as reality rather than a 'pure' reality that exists before the image represents it, and this is called the state of hyper reality.

Drive is a 2011 american film which stars Ryan Gosling as the main character. One way that this film can be defined as postmodern is due to the location that it is set in, it is set in the city of Los Angeles, in this self contained world we forget about the outside world and everything that is going on apart from the characters and the scenes that we are being shown on the film, its a hyperreal version of Los Angeles that we are not used to seeing, the total population of los angeles is nearly 20 million, however during this film it feels extremely de-populated as there is not many people or crowds and throughout the film there is a calm feeling during the city. Something that  I questioned while watching the film was when is it set? The mobile phones used in the film are dated and again going back to the setting it feels like a dated version of LA, maybe this is the way that the director wanted the film to be viewed, the audience questioning everything and goes back to the hyperreality point that I made earlier.  Another Postmodern element to this film is that it the genre is not specific, there are many genres that this film could come under, for example it could be viewed as a crime film, however for crime films there is usually police involved, and there is no police in this film which links back to the hyperreality version of Los angeles as it only focuses on the criminal underworld, also a lot of the characters end up dead, in fact most of them end up dead, this is typical of a crime film as there tends to be a lot of violence, only a few of the actual characters in the film are significant, a lot of the deaths are irrelevant. However the film could also be viewed as a romance story between the driver and the girl, its a typical romance story, there is the boy who wants the girl but he knows he will never have her as they are worlds apart and she is already taken by another man, similar to Titanic in this respect. It can be viewed also as a phycological thriller as there are typical aspects of this genre in the film, for example, tense conversations, there are also a lot of awkward scenes where nobody talks and facial expressions are important for this film, particularly with Ryan Goslings character who is very shy and keeps himself to himself, which is why it is such a shock and juxtaposition when we see the other side to him. And finally Neo-Noir is the other genre it could fit into, in these types of films there is set characters, for example the bad guys, the boss, fall guys, villains, and Drive ticks all these boxes. Another thing that is worth mentioning is that all the characters in this film are Bad people, well everyone apart from the girl and her son, everyone else is pretty much either a murdering criminal or an accessory to awful crimes, yet we are still on their side,  the driver is the supposed 'hero' of the film, yet he violently kills many people, and he is a psychopath, he is originally portrayed as a mysterious good looking working class male, however as the film progresses we see this other side to him that is ruthless Psychopath, yet he is still considered to be a good guy. Some people may argue that there is no point to the film, however others argue that there is a point to it, this makes the film postmodern in the sense that films are not usually made in this way and there is typically a point to the story, the average audience to a film wants something tangible and wants someone to win and come out on top at the end (everyone loves a happy ending), however in drive he doesn't achieve anything, his boss and friend is dead, he doesn't get the girl that he has been after, he doesn't even get to keep the money, and he has stab wounds, so what is the point in him doing any of it?

Django combines various characteristics of various film genres, one of them being a ‘western’ which is a film set in the wild west of america, a ‘spaghetti western’ which is a low budget western made in Italy, and ‘blaxploitation’ which is a film where black people are cast as stereotypical characters of the black community, this can be seen as some sort of postmodern ‘mash up’ which coincides with the Frederick Jameson's idea of circular referencing. This is not the only feature that makes the film a ‘mash up’, the actual name of the film and the the origins of it come from two other films that have been previously made, they are Django (1966) and Hercules unchained (1959), this has created what is known as a meta, which is a piece of creative work which refers to itself or to the conventions of its genre ‘self referential’, this was something done deliberately by the films director Quentin Tarantino who is famous for his postmodern style. 

Postmodernism is particularly hard to get your head around as it is a concept that you either believe in or don't believe in, you have to form your own opinion on it which is why it is difficult to define something as postmodern or not, the actual name of the concept ‘post modern’ does not make sense, post meaning after, and modern being the present tense, something can not be after modern, it just doesn't work. 

Compared to other ‘western’ films the film is very unconventional, one particularly unconventional part of it is the music and soundtrack, the music does not fit well at all with the type of film it is, however in a way it does work as well, the one that stood out for me was hip hop artist Rick ross, this song did not suit the type of film at all and would clearly not have been in any original ‘western’ films, they also have Italian opera style ballads, so the range of music is very wide. This again is done deliberately by Tarantino, to add a comical element to his work, it adds to his ‘historical deafness’, historical deafness is our society’s lack of understanding of many historical events, due to us not actually being there so we rely on information from other people, who get it from others, etc etc, and in reality many of these things may have been exaggerated or not happened at all, the wild west is a great example of this, as many people are thought to get shot all the time, as shown in many films, and particularly Django, however obviously this is not true, as western films are made for our entertainment so clearly things must be exaggerated to create dramatic effect.

Genre theory

Daniel Chandler
Conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particular conventions of content (such as themes or settings) and/or form (including structure and style) which are shared by the texts which are regarded as belonging to them.

It is easy to underplay the differences within a genre. Steve Neale declares that 'genres are instances of repetition and difference'. He adds that 'difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre': mere repetition would not attract an audience.

Texts often exhibit the conventions of more than one genre. John Hartley notes that 'the same text can belong to different genres in different countries or times'

Traditionally, genres (particularly literacy genres) tended to be regarded as fixed forms, but contemporary theory emphasises that both there forms and functions are dynamic. David Buckingham argues that 'genre is not simply "given" by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change'

Daniel chandler: every genre positions those who participate in a text of that kind: as interviews or interviewee, as listener or storyteller, as a reader or a writer, as a person interested in political matters, as someone to be instructed or as someone who interacts, each of these positionings implies different possibilities for response and for action. Each written text provides a 'reading position' for readers, a position constructed by the writer for the 'ideal reader' of the text'

Thus embedded within texts are assumptions about the 'ideal reader', including their attitudes towards the subject matter and often their class, age, gender and ethnicity.

Genre and audience

'Uses and gratifications' research has identified many potential pleasures of genre, including the following:..

- one pleasure may simply be the recognition of the features of a particular genre because of our familiarity with it. Recognition of what is likely to be important (and what is not) derived from our knowledge of the genre, is necessary in order to follow a plot.
- genres offer various emotional pleasures such as empathy and escapism - a feature which some theoretical commentaries seem to lose sight of. Aristotle, of course acknowledged the special emotional responses which were linked to different genres. Deborah Knight notes that 'satisfaction is guaranteed with genre; the deferral of the inevitable provides the additional pleasures of prolonged anticipation'

Steve Neale argues that pleasure is derived from 'repetition and difference'; there would be no pleasure without difference. We may derive pleasure from observing how the conventions of the genre are manipulated. We may also enjoy the stretching of a genre in new directions and the consequent shifting of our expectations.

Other pleasures can be derived from sharing our experience of a genre with others within an 'interpretive community' which can be characterised by its familiarity with certain genres (daniel chandler)

Tom Ryall - genre provides framework of structuring rules, in the shape of patterns/forms/styles/structures, which act as a form of 'supervision' over the work of production filmmakers and the work of reading by the audience.

John Fiske defines genre as 'attempts to structure some order into the wide range of texts and meanings that circulate in our culture for the convenience of both producers and audiences'

Steve Neale argues that hollywoods generic regime performs two inter-related functions:
1. to guarantee meanings and pleasures for audiences
2. to offset the considerable economic risks of industrial film production by providing cognitive collateral against innovation and difference.

Neale - much of the pleasure of popular cinema lies in the process of 'difference in repetition' i.e recognition of familiar elects and in the way those elements might be orchestrated in an unfamiliar fashion or in the way that unfamiliar elements might be introduced.

Rick altman argues that genres are usually defined in terms of media language (semantic elements) and codes (in the western for example: guns, horses, landscape)

Can genre be defined by audience? is it a question of film comprehension?
Neale - genre is constituted by "specific systems of expectations and hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema and which interact with the films themselves during the course of viewing process"

Jonathan culler - generic conventions exist to establish a contract between creator and reader so as to make certain expectations operative, allowing compliance and deviation from the accepted models of intelligibility. Acts of communication are rendered intelligible only within the context of a shared conventional framework of expression.

Ryan - sees this framework provided by the generic system: therefore, genre becomes a cognitive repository of images, sounds, stories, characters and expectations.

- to the producers of films, genre is a template for what they make
- to the distributer / promoter, genre provides assumptions about who the audience is and how to market the films for that specific audience.
- to the audience, it is a label that identifies a liked or disliked formula and provides certain rules of engagement for the spectator in terms of anticipation of pleasure, e.g. the anticipation of what will happen in the attack scene of the exorcist.
- when genres become classic, they can exert tremendous influence: production can become quicker and more confident because film makers are following rested formulae and have a read shorthand to work with, and actors can be filtered into genres and can be seen to have assumed 'star quality' when their mannerisms, physical attributes, way of speaking and acting fit a certain style of genre.

- in turn, viewers become 'generic spectators' and can be said to develop generic memory which helps the in the anticipation of events, even though the films themselves might play on certain styles rather than follow closely a cliched formula, E.g. the attic scene from the exorcist - we expect something to jump out on the women because of the generic conventions in place, but in the end the director deflates the tension. we do not consume films as individual unites, but in an intertextual way. Film is a post modern medium in this way, because movies make sense in relation to other films, not to reality.

- It is the way the genre films deviate from the cliched formulae that leads to a more interesting experience for the viewer, but for this to work properly, the audience must be familiar with generic conventions and style.

David Bordwell notes 'any theme may appear in any genre', 'one could.. argue that no set of necessary and sufficient conditions can mark off genres from other sorts of groupings in ways that all experts or ordinary film-goers would find acceptable'.

Problems with genre classification
theorist and critic rick altmann came up with a list of points he found problematic with genre classification.
1. genre is a useful category, because it bridges multiple concerns.
2. genres are defined by the film industry and recognised by the mass audience.
3. Genres have clear, stable identities and borders.
4. individual films belong wholly and permanently to a single genre.
5. Genres are transhistorical
6. genres undergo predictable development.
7. genres are located in a particular topic, structure and corpus.
8. genres have either a tirual or ideological function.
9. genre critics are distanced from the practice of genre.