What is: Postmodernism

The term Postmodernism is used to describe the changes that took place in Western society and culture from the 1960's onwards that arose from challenges made to established structures and belief systems.
Postmodernism in society today is about breaking the mould of what would be traditional and creating something.

According to Wikipedia:

"The term postmodernism has been applied both to the era following modernity, and to a host of movements within that era (mainly in art, music, and literature) that reacted against tendencies in modernism. Postmodernism includes sceptical critical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, history, linguistics, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism. Postmodernism is often associated with schools of thought such as deconstruction and post-structuralism, as well as philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and Frederic Jameson."

There are many examples of postmodern art and media in the world today. For my coursework I will be looking at postmodern music videos and then creating my own.

Examples of postmodern music videos:

Lady Gaga ft. Beyoncé

In this video, postmodern features are very clear throughout. The use of the bright wacky clothing and the over exaggerated almost cartoon like feel of the video are extremely postmodern and not real. There is an emphasis on the cartoon style of the video and also how ridiculous the entire video is, due to the situation they are both in.

In terms of what the music video means, Lady Gaga has always been know to have an extremely deeper meaning embed in the video. Saying she is "always trying to convolute the idea of what a pop music video should be," Gaga told E! that she wanted to take "the idea that America is full of young people that are inundated with information and technology and turn it into something that was more of a commentary on the kind of country that we are.".

The music video for both Beyonce and Gaga, presents a sense of iconography and it applies to a fairly Niche market despite their mass amount of fame between the pair. The quirky, strange and fairly satire comedic take on poisoning people who betray you appeals to a smaller demographic but because of this it makes it extremely postmodern because of its eclectic and randomness.