1. Genres of Postmodern
    1. Pastiche: Self referential, tongue-in-cheek, rehashes of classic pop culture.
    2. Flattening of Affect: Technology, violence, drugs, and the media lead to detached, emotionless, unauthentic lives.
    3. Hyper reality: Technologically created realities are often more authentic or desirable than the real world.
    4. Time Bending: Time travel provides another way to shape reality and play “what if” games with society.
    5. Altered states: Drugs, mental illness and technology provide a dark, often psychedelic, gateways to new internal realities.
    6. More Human than Human: Artificial intelligence, robotics and cybernetics seek to enhance, or replace, humanity.
  2. What is Post Modern?
    1. Postmodernist films upsets the mainstream conventions of narrative structure and characterisation and destroys the audience’s suspension of belief.
    2. a critical reflection on the society in which it was created; a creation of something new from one or more things that already exist; and an abstract or concrete presentation of what could be, which usually presents itself as the future.
    3. Postmodernism is characterised by irony, appropriation and self-reference. In particular, the movement has uncovered the presence of source ideas, information and influences. It has therefore challenged the idea of ‘originality’. It has also made artworks resistant to straightforward assumptions about the place of the author and the interpreter.
  3. Identifying the Characteristics of Postmodern Films
    1. Playfulness and self reference:
      1. Thomas Tykwer's film, Run Lola Run plays with its narrative structure, delivering a similar scenario three times with different conclusions.
    2. Popular and commercial media meets High Culture:
      1. An example of this is Pan's Labyrinth which contains cultural styles and times which are combined with each other, as it challenges the chronological history as it includes scenes of Captain Vidal involved in fascism and while at the same time addressing Ofelia's innocence when completing Pans tasks. These could be considered as high culture elements and the text can be perceived as postmodern as it involves this and can be considered modern because its enjoyed by the masses.
    3. Fragmentation and the death of representation:
      1. The lovely Bones
    4. Uncertainty and the loss of context:
      1. This can result in a sense of uncertainty and the shaking up of previously understood beliefs and roles. Example: Inception
    5. Subtopic 5
  4. Types of Postmodern Films
    1. Pulp Fiction (1994)
    2. Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 (1963)
    3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) A 1968 British-American science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick.
    4. Blade Runner is a 1982 American dystopian science fiction thriller film directed by Ridley Scott
  5. People
    1. Charlie Chaplin
      1. Charles Pathé was one of the most powerful film moguls of the early silent era, and there is little doubt that any aspiring film maker in 1910 would have had to undertake a similar approach to getting his/her film made. The acute self-referential nature of this scene bears the hallmarks of a seminal postmodern work, yet it pre-dates this school of thought by around half a century! Examples of artists pre-empting major critical movements in such a manner deserve as much attention as mistaken time-travellers.
    2. Directed by Quentin Tarantino
      1. Inglorious Basterds
      2. Kill Bill
    3. Jim Carrey
      1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
        1. the film portrays the coexistance of the original and the subconscious copy, I will dare claim that this movie translated a postmodernist technique of form into content. One of the characteristics of postmodernism in advertising is reflection: “[where] an ad acknowledges to the viewer the ad’s placement within a magazine”
    4. Christopher Nolan
      1. Almost any movie by Christopher Nolan covers post-modernism in some way.
    5. Christopher Walken
  6. Examples of :
    1. flattening affect Film (Fight Club)
      1. The main protagonist’s journey from a depressed insomniac to, to an unhinged violent physcopath, Is according to the postmodernism theory, the characterization of a protagonist who is disconnected from wider society, this is a key feature of a postmodern film. In Fight Club the movie uses a narrator through out the film who is one of the main protagonist this is another postmodern concept. This type of cinematography disrupts the linear sequence of the narrative and instead creates a circular narrative in which parts of the film are cliff hangers where the audience does not know what’s happening next mirroring the actions of the main protagonist. Broadcast media bulletins are used to create suspense and tension. A dark color scheme connotes to the audience that this film is going to be violent and scary. This film is a classic example of the postmodernist theory.
    2. Hyper-reality Film & Time Bending (Inception)
      1. The film ‘Inception’ has many aspects of hyper-reality. During this film, the mind is opened into another reality which could be seen as more desirable than real life reality.This aspect of the film means a sense of anew, better and more sought-after world and so the audience are convinced that it is an authentic world.
        1. The film ‘Inception’ has a ‘what if’ style nature. It make the audience question what the world would be like if we could alter peoples mental states. It also asks the audience whether is itr ight to invade a persons thoughts. The film portrays a different shape of reality which allows the viewer to personally decided whether they prefer the ‘hyper-real’ situation,or their own current situation.
          1. Main Topic 6