Humans Postmodernism

Humans - Postmodernism

Commonly on social media we see a reconstruction of reality, people choose what ideal version they want others to see.

Hyperreality - something that is beyond reality. Substituting the signs of the real for the real, the representation is replaced with a representation which it substitutes (Jean Baudrillard).

Barthes - Semiotics  - Signs, signifiers and signified, anything that can have meaning, the thing that creates meaning and the meaning that is created. E.g, an illustration of a tree doesn't represent what trees really look like, nothing is real, everything is represented.

What is reality? A postmodern view is we don't know, hyperreal has replaced the real.

Simulacrum - a representation of something that has never existed in the first place.

• Paris syndrome.

In this postmodern age of simulacra, audiences are constantly bombarded with images which no longer refer to anything 'real'.

It is increasingly difficult to as certain what is real; we live in a fantasy, because the 'real' world is too depressing to consider. The fake is more real than the thing it is replacing.

In postmodern culture, the boundaries between the 'real' world and the world of the media have collapsed and is no longer possible to distinguish between wat is reality and what is simulation. Therefore, in this postmodern age of simulacra, audiences are constantly bombarded with images which no longer refer to anything 'real'. Media images have come to seem more 'real' than the reality they supposedly represent - hyperreality.

Baudrillard - Postmodernism.

• Odi as a hyperreal construct - he is a broken old machine/synth, and must be recycled, he is a broken character. George, the owner, loves Odi as a son, he is better than a human because he is flawed - a hyperreal representation of a human. Allegory- Odi's breakdown reflects alzheimer's as he also faces memory loss. Odi is like us.

Postmodernism

• Criticism of metanarratives - postmodern texts that usually try to distance themselves from traditional ways of making meaning, and will break the rules of existing metanarratives such as religion or science to make a point.
• Rejection of high culture - postmodern texts will often use a deliberately 'trashy' aesthetic.
• Directly addressing the audience - breaking the fourth wall.
• Breaking rules - postmodern texts often break fundamental rules of making media, for example, 'breaking the fourth wall', having a mixed narrative.
• Intertextuality - postmodern texts often routinely make refernce to other texts, cultures and times. This is 'cobbling together' of disparate themes is referred to as bricolage (bric-a-brac).
• Style over substance - surface meanings are seen as more important in a postmodern text than any deeper meaning.

        Examples in Humans

• Anita walks away with Sophie - style over substance.
• Hyperreality - synths doing jobs and chores which humans wouldn't want to do.
• The synths are fake humans.