Courses — BNDS A-Level Programme

Postmodern Media

This is one of the three A Level Media debates topics (Syllabus 2027 pp.9, 18), and one of the two studied at BNDS, alongside Power and the Media. The final choice of debate topics will be confirmed in class.

The core question: is the distinction between reality and representation collapsing, and does it matter?

The syllabus framing

“Postmodernism can be characterised by modes such as pastiche, parody, intertextuality, self-referentiality and a conscious engagement with other texts. We do not prioritise one theory or approach over another, and candidates are encouraged to explore a range of approaches and perspectives, across a range of media forms.”

What you must study

  • the different versions of postmodernism (historical period, style, theoretical approach)
  • the arguments for and against understanding some forms of media as postmodern
  • the ways postmodern media texts can challenge traditional relationships between texts and audiences
  • the relationship between postmodernism and popular culture
  • the ways media audiences and industries operate differently in a postmodern world
  • the relationship between postmodernism and narrative

The examinable position includes skepticism: you may argue that postmodernism is an unhelpful lens, provided you argue it with evidence.

The concept is unstable — and that is part of it

“Postmodernism is notoriously tricky to pin down… it can refer to a general condition of contemporary life in which representations, reality, surfaces and styles are chaotically intermingled, or it can refer to specific modes of communication which are arch, self-referential and knowing (irony is often referred to as exemplary of the postmodern mode).”

This two-way split — condition versus textual mode — is itself a good essay structure.

The two named thinkers

Guy Debord — The Society of the Spectacle (1967), “a critique of media-saturated capitalist culture… still relevant in diagnosing aspects of the postmodern condition.”

Fredric Jameson — “diagnoses the postmodern condition as characterised by”:

  • “An ahistorical mode (lacking a sense of the past – history becomes another set of signifiers which can be played with).”
  • “A lack of distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture.”
  • “Surfaces – increasingly there is no time for depth – politics becomes soundbites, protests become slogans, the world is a collection of images.”
  • “Affectlessness – the predominant mode of irony and ‘knowingness’ leaves little room for real emotion, but short, sharp intense emotional responses are elicited through surface representations of things of which people have no first-hand experience, e.g.: Brexit, the death of Diana, refugees.”
  • “Technologies of reproduction and recirculation, e.g.: all social media.”

Each of these five converts directly into an essay paragraph with a contemporary example.

Activities

  • Conceptual framework comparison — postmodernism as historical period vs stylistic mode vs theoretical approach, tabulated with media examples
  • Textual feature analysis — pastiche, parody, intertextuality, self-referentiality, genre hybridity identified in one chosen text
  • Structured critical debate — “Contemporary media is fundamentally postmodern” vs “Postmodernism is an overused or outdated concept”
  • Narrative deconstruction — linear vs postmodern structure: non-linearity, fragmentation, ambiguity, open endings
  • Text/audience relationships — participatory culture, fan remixing, meme circulation; “whether this increases or commodifies audience power”
  • Intertextuality mapping — network diagram of references, borrowings, parodies; whether intertextuality “supports commercial strategies”
  • Essay planning workshop — command word, analytical strands, counterarguments

Other useful exercises:

  • Foraging exercise — gather online definitions and discussions of postmodernism independently, then test and secure them together in class. There are plenty of definitions and discussions online, so independent research works well here.
  • Test pastiche, intertextuality and parody against real media texts.
  • Identify “what sorts of repertoires of knowledge and experience are necessary in order to make sense of certain media texts, and how they might function ‘dialogically’ – that is, say one thing, but invoke other meanings through referencing or quoting from something else.”
  • Identify “ways in which belief in certain kinds of reality can be less important than belief in media representations of that reality.”
  • Exercise: “Watch a TV news story. What features does it have of ‘The Society of the Spectacle’?”
  • Extension: read up on the difference between pastiche and parody, then find contemporary examples of each.

You already live in postmodern media — memes, remixes, franchise self-reference. Start from your own examples, then add the names.

Additional resources include the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and a Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Jean Baudrillard.

Technique note

“As always, anchoring the arguments in specific texts or phenomena is key to demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of the concept and how it might be useful in making sense of contemporary media.”