Post modernism

Post modernism is a shortcut to mass audiences and a phrase used to describe anything that looks culturally avant-garde in an retro way.

If the experimental stage of genre attempts to establish trends and the cannon stage works within those trends to fix them into our cultural understanding. Then post-modernism looks at those trends, mocks them and adds a new element in. It could be agreed that the music video is a post-modern stage of the evolution of cinema. So post-modernism becomes the new by referring to the old and invents by copying. Artists like Madonna, Michael Jackson and David Bowie are all cited as examples of post modernism in the way in which they have created, or re-created, different identities for themselves.

This has implications for realist forms of media, since our sense of reality is now said to
be utterly dominated by popular media images; cultural forms can no longer 'hold up the mirror to reality', since reality itself is saturated by advertising, film, video games and television images. 

We consume images and spectacles as opposed to forms of communication such as the written word that encourage us to ponder and reflect. When books are turned to into films, the consumers enjoy the action more than the idea behind the whole film. The authors idea may have been to critique society, but the film clouds this idea or the message is lost in the action of the film.