Thursday, 7 January 2010

Consider the way in which Postmodern films challenge conventional relations between audience and text

Post-modernism is the artistic and creative movement of the present day. It started to evolve in the second half of the 20th century and continues to do so today. Post modernism literally means after modernism, I am examining different films and the way they involve their audience through being of the post modern genre
Bubba Ho-tep is a good example of a postmodern film and the way the uses its audience to interact with the film. It uses a basic mix of lots of genres, so immediately the audience is questioning what kind of genres and if its got any relation to the film, such as it uses spaghetti westerns, mummy films, a sort of auto biography type feel to famous ‘dead’ celebrities and a comedy and even though it only has fragments of each of these genres it manages to fulfil every target convention due to the help of semiotics or aural elements
This film and other post-modern films differs greatly from other genres; this is greatly due to the audience participation. Many media products are consumed purely for entertainment purposes, whereas this one uses the audience to decipher what they like from the movie. When the viewers sit back and accept the independent message without thinking for themselves this is called ‘The Hypodermic needle model;’ this is in contrast to ‘Obstinate audience theory’ this theory assumes that there is a transactional communication between the audience and the media. The audience actively select what messages to pay attention to, an example of this is in ‘Time Code’ where there are four narratives play at once and although in the main film one sound track plays louder so your more inclined to watch that particular screen, you are able of some distribution products to select certain videos your want to watch or play louder.
Postmodern films keeps the audience more interactive with the story plot because of the mixing of genres keep the audience thinking about their significance, non-linear sequenced films with only small hints as to where in the film you are have to keep the audience alert and thinking to make sure they understand it. Other films make the audience thinking of the world around them are they passively submitting to the media world and should they be fighting back and parodies seem to just provide entertainment but really the viewer is aware and is trying to achieve audience satisfaction from guessing the film there satirising and what is going to happen next.

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