A2 media book notes.

Media book notes.
The media is the in between us and reality.

Distinction between the media and reality becomes blurred so no longer have any sense of the difference between real things and images of them or real experiences and simulations.

Postmodernism idea of representation gets 'remixed', played around with, through pastiche, parody and intertextual references. Made to look like constructed texts and not realist.
Others say that postmodernism is just another way of thinking about media.

Strinati (1995: 224)
"The mass media... were once thought og as holding up a mirror, to and thereby reflecting a wider social reality. Now that reality is only definable in terms of the surface reflections of that mirror. It's no longer a questions of distortion since the term implies that there is a reality, outside the surface simulations of the media, which can be distorted, and this is precisely what is at issue."
• Postmodern media rejects the idea that that any media product or text is of any greater value than another. All judgements of value are merely personal taste. Anything can be art, deserve to reach an audience. There is no longer anything new to create.

• The distinction between media and reality had collapsed. And we now live in a 'reality' defined by images and representations - a state of simulacrum. Images refer to each other and represent each other as reality rather than some 'pure' reality that exists before the image represents it- this is the state of hyperreality.

• All ideas of 'the truth' are just competing claims - or discourses - and what we believe to be the truth at any point is merely the 'winning' discourse.

Products deliberately set out to explore and play with this state of hyperreality. These texts are said to be intertextual and self-referential - they break the rules of realism to explore the nature of their own status as constructed texts. Seek to present a media reality, rather than reality.
Jean-francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard.
Idea of truth needs to be 'deconstructed' so that we can challenge dominant ideas that people claim as the truth - Grand Narratives.
Media texts make visible and challenge ideas of truth and reality, removing the illusion that stories, texts or images can ever accurately or neutrally reproduce reality or truth. There are always competing versions of the truth and realit.
Baudrillard (1988)
Truth is what we should rid ourselves of as fast as possible and pass it on to somebody else. As with illnesses, it's the only way to be cured of it. He who hangs on to truth has lost.
Hyperreality
Disneyland - a place which is at the same time a real physical space, but also a clearly a fictional, representational world.
No longer any 'original' thing for a sign to represent - the sign is the meaning.
Society made up wholly of simulacra - simulations of reality of which replace any 'pure' reality . Pure reality is replaced by hyperreal where nay boundary between the real and the imaginary is eroded.
Bricolage
the remixing of existing formulas, explaining how the show demands a more active audience response.- decoding a 'media puzzle' and sees the programme as hyperreal in as much as it exposes and plays around with the conditions of its own possibilitys - meaning it delibrately messes about with its own status as a television programme, rather than striving to create the illusion that what we are seeing is 'real'

Ricky Gervais - The office and extras.
Knowing, self-reflective approach and how it parodies the conventions of the genre.
The office is a situational comedy using and subverting docusoap conventions. Without our knowledge of this genre, in how people normally behave in the office, the humour would not work.
Extras can be seen as postmodern in the way that it deconstructs itself - a situation comedy writer deliberately confuses, for comic and satirical effects, the line between Ricky Gervais as a sitcom writer, a standup comedian and his on screen character.
Gervais persuaded real celebrities to appear as themselves within the show was radical. The audience is forced to respond to deliberate decontextualisation - are they acting or are they being themselves.. The celebs themselves are media texts, we see herea really direct, visable and unusual example of intertextuality; is their character real, or are they just playing a role.
The Cadbury Gorilla.
No real connection to chocolate. Just a gorilla playing on some drums to a song by Phil Collins.
Strips back the unspoken pleasure of chocolate, so actually offers a direct connection to the appeal of the chocolate as a secret guilty pleasure
Videogames.

Subvert our original ideas about the distinction between reality and the simualtion or image. Second life offers the participant the opportunity to purchase virtual land with real money.
Slavoj Zizek
"Virtual reality simply generalises the procedure of offering a product deprived of its substance, of the hard resistant kernel of the real - Just as decaffeinated coffee smells and tastes like coffee, Virtual reality is experienced as reality without being so. What happens at the end of this process of virtualisation, however is that we being to experience the 'real reality' as a virtual reality."
Immersion - Describes how the gamer invests imagination into the gameworld
Flow -a state whereby an activity demands incrementally harder, but increasingly pleasurable and achievable challenges, while providing regular feedback
Grand Theft Auto IV
Opinions: The game is a masterpiece against the game should be banned.

It immerses the player in a convincing, intricate and believable world, but the reality it represents is the stuff of films and other media. Taking on the character of the individual and live in a real city, is a profoundly hyperreal experience.
Not the content in the game which is considered postmodern, but the playing experience what is postmodern whether the player/reader of the text/game is immersed in a set of practices.
The player in GTA has soo many option, within single player, multiplayer, within mini-games (bowling, cop missions.)
Play magazine 2007

"It was in the gameplay itself where Grand Theft Auto managed to break the mould in many ways,. Grand Theft Auto contained free- from 'go anywhere you please' gameplay that saw you tied to a over-arching plot that contained various missions to complete but also left you free to explore the huge world in your own time, finding hidden packages and rampage icons, exploring the world and doing what you wanted"
Decisions moral or not to wander around enacting acts of violence on pedestrians for no strategic purpose is made on the basis of prior experience (being a gta game) learning and practising the skills you will need to progress in the game. But also this demonstrates a metalanguage about ways of being in the game.