Postmodern%20 questions[1]

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lady gaga

• Pastiche. The video has it in spades. It references other forms of media (Tarantino, exploitation films, Thelma & Louise) left and right, while parodying none of them. This is because parody relies on an underlying normative standard, which postmodernism categorically rejects. Instead it merely shows the audience a barrage of media, almost a celebration of how clever the director is for cramming so many references into a single video.
• Consumerism. The product placement is obvious, but it is not portrayed as humorous. The camera lingers too long on each product, and the video knows it, but it still manages to avoid parody. Rather, the video uses these consumer images as an integral part of its aesthetic without any comment on their social context.
• Self-reference. The blatant product placement shows a self-awareness in the video, but this particular brand of ironic detachment harms the video’s ability to make any sort of overall message on its own. Instead it implies that celebrating consumer culture is fine as long as we’re appropriately ironic about it, but this is a largely unintended consequence of the video’s aesthetic.
• Appropriation of identity-based struggle. Lady Gaga is interesting for turning the male gaze back on men, and for portraying women as subjects rather than objects in her videos (albeit still scantily-clad subjects). However, the resistance to power on Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s part is purely individual and brief (it’s very telling that Lady Gaga is bailed out of prison rather than escaping) Behind this initial layer of feminism there is still an individuated desire to become rich, given that Lady Gaga was saved from prison by money. She maintains her glamorous image inside and outside the prison’s walls, an implicit message that “excessive materialism is empowering to women, somehow,” as Alyx Vesey observed. Therefore her kind of feminism is integrated neatly into the agenda of neoliberals, who love to talk about glass ceilings being shattered while heaping disdain on poor women. 
• Incredulity towards metanarratives. Lyotard’s famous description of the postmodern condition applies even here, as it’s difficult to find an overall message or narrative in the video. There is a sequence of events interspersed with pop culture references and product placement, but little else.

 This shot is the beginning of the music video with Lady Gaga wearing cigarette glasses which shows her rebellious side and that shes not afraid to do 'unusal' things, also representing the society we live in today.

This is a close up of Beyonce, the first time we see her.

This is after they have both poisoned the people at the cafe, Beyonce in black is typical as its the colour associated with death, and Lady Gaga is dressed in opposite to this.  

This is a close up of Lady Gaga in prison, here she looks like Madonna used to, meaning she could be trying to convey the 'pop star' image and resemble Madonna. 

This shows the poison being made.

These glasses are what lady gaga wore in a previous video after killing someone, as they are mickey mouse glasses they could be trying to twist Disney in some way, as its again associated with death and murder in this scene too.

Postmodernism

'How do postmodern texts challenge the traditional relationship between producer and audience?

have audiences become accustomed to the stimulation and excitement of spectacular films/games and a sense of spectacle has become something that (young?) audiences increasingly demand from cultural experiences?

- has narrative coherence become less important for audiences?

- in terms of ideas, has cultural material become more simplistic and superficial, and audiences are no longer so concerned with the process of understanding a text. Think here about a film like Moulin Rouge where the plot is in some sense irrelevant to the overall impact of the film.

- has the attention span of audiences reduced as they become increasingly accustomed to the spectacle-driven and episodic nature of postmodern texts

- in its ‘waning of affect’, has postmodernism contributed to audiences become emotionally detached from what they see. They are desensitised and unable to respond ‘properly’ to suffering and joy.

-      has postmodernism contributed to a feeling among audiences that arts and culture does not really have anything to tell us about our own lives and instead simply provides us with somewhere we can escape or retreat to

Postmodernism and Audience Theory

Two commentators have developed some interesting ideas about postmodernism and audiences.

Alain J.-J. Cohen has identified a new phenomenon in the history of film, the ‘hyper-spectator’. ‘Such spectator, who may have a deep knowledge of cinema, can reconfigure both the films themselves and filmic fragments into new and novel forms of both cinema and spectatorship, making use of the vastly expanded access to films arrived at through modern communications equipment and media.  The hyper-spectator is, at least potentially, the material (which here means virtual) creator of his or her hyper-cinematic experience’ (157)

‘VCRs and laserdisc-players or newer DVDs have produced, and are still producing, a Gutenberg-type of revolution in relation to the moving image.’

Anne Friedberg has argued that because we now have much control of how we watch a film (through video/dvd), and we increasingly watch film in personal spaces (the home) rather than exclusively in public places, ‘cinema and televison become readable as symptoms of a “postmodern condition”, but as contributing causes.’ In other words, we don’t just have films that are about postmodernism or reflect postmodern thinking. Films have helped contribute to the postmodern quality of life by manipulating and playing around with our conventional understanding of time and space. ‘One can literally rent another space and time when one borrows a videotape to watch on a VCR….the VCR allows man to organize a time which is not his own…a time which is somewhere else – and to capture it.’

Anne Friedberg: ‘The cinema spectator and the armchair equivalent – the home-video viewer, who commands fast forward, fast reverse, and many speeds of slow motion, who can easily switch between channels and tape; who is always to repeat, replay, and return – is a spectator lost in but also in control of time. The cultural apparatuses of television and the cinema have gradually become causes for what is now…described as the postmodern condition.’

The video opens with men marching to a militaristic rhythm, some of them having their heads covered, maybe hinting that those men are prisoners of some sort. One of men is inside a pyramidal shape while another holds a hexagram as the prisoners march
The video then cuts with a funeral procession. Gaga wears a black veil and holds the Sacred Heart, the bleeding heart of God for humanity. Something is dead inside of Gaga and it seems to be her love for Alejandro.
  In a later scene, Gaga is shown laying down, wearing a red latex nun suit and holding a rosary.
The halo around the finger is a wedding ring and Alejandro has a halo around him, which signifies he is considered “holy.” The wedding ring represents Gaga’s union with God through religion, but she is now ashamed of this marriage. She hides the ring in her bolsillo, the Spanish word for pocket.
  The concept of rejection is thus applied to God as he does not seem to satisfy Gaga’s spiritual needs. She then decides to seek godhood herself by embracing a new type of spirituality. It seems to me the nun becomes a Luciferian priestess.
  The rosary is a set of beads used in Catholic tradition for prayer and meditation. By swallowing the rosary, Gaga incorporates within her a symbol of religious devotion because 1) it is shocking and would get media attention 2) represents Gaga seeking to obtain godhood by her own means.
   Later in the video, Gaga is violently pushed around and abused by the dancers surrounding her. She surrenders and removes her robe for sexual, ritual initiation.
  Gaga wears a “gun bra,” in accordance with the agenda of the sexualization of oppressive imagery. Her back-up dancers are dressed in uniforms reminiscent of dictatorships of the era of Hitler, Stalin, Franco and Mussolini.
  

In the video, the “telephone” is a metaphor for Gaga’s brain and the fact that she is not answering that phone (her brain) means that she has “dissociated” from reality. Dissociation is the ultimate goal of Monarch mind control. It is induced by traumatizing events, such as electroshock therapy or torture, to force the victim to dissociate from reality.

  Lady Gaga is dressed similarly as Madonna, she is ‘playing’ with the idea of being a pop icon.

 She has aluminium cans for curlers, an ironic reference.

  She wears glasses made out of cigarettes, currency amongst prisoners, highlight the consumer driven culture we live in today.

 She wears barely any clothing which could reinforce our obsession with objectifying women’s bodies.  She is marking her body as a crime scene.  Crime scene tape is a very literal representation of how the greater culture is scared of the criminal female.

   The prison scenes were a metaphor for imprisoned identity

 The poisoning of the food was a way of turning something that normally provides life into something deadly.

 The murder is a metaphor for the many different ways in which people rebel against the darlings and the great symbols of American culture.

    Beyoncé and Gaga’s poisonous honey is actually their music and videos, which are served to the general public through mass media.

     Beyonce puts on the mickey mouse glasses- Mickey Mouse ears or designs often occultly refer to mind control , probably because Disney films were known to be used on MK slaves during their programming.

  Beyoncé’s black dress and the veils hint to the ritualistic nature of the murders.

Lady Gaga

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (born March 28, 1986), better known by her stage name Lady Gaga, is an American pop singer-songwriter. After enrolling at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2003 and later performing in the rock music scene of New York City's Lower East Side, she signed with Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records. During her early time at Interscope, she worked as a songwriter for fellow label artists and captured the attention of recording artist Akon who, recognizing her vocal abilities, signed her to his own label, Kon Live Distribution.

Gaga came to prominence following the release of her debut studio album The Fame (2008), which was a critical and commercial success and achieved international popularity with the singles "Just Dance" and "Poker Face". The album reached number one on the record charts of six countries, topped the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums chart while simultaneously peaking at number two on the Billboard 200 chart in the United States and accomplished positions within the top ten worldwide. Achieving similar worldwide success, The Fame Monster (2009), its follow-up, produced a further three global chart-topping singles "Bad Romance", "Telephone" and "Alejandro" and allowed her to embark on her second global concert tour, The Monster Ball Tour, just months after having finished her first, The Fame Ball Tour. Her second studio album Born This Way (2011) topped the charts in all major musical markets after the arrival of its singles "Born This Way", "Judas" and "The Edge of Glory" – the first-mentioned achieved the number-one spot in countries worldwide and was the fastest-selling single in the history of iTunes, selling one million copies in five days.

Inspired by glam rock artists like David Bowie, Elton John and Queen, as well as pop singers such as Madonna and Michael Jackson, Gaga is well-recognized for her outré and ever-changing sense of style in music, in fashion, in performance and in her music videos. Her contributions to the music industry have accrued her numerous achievements including five Grammy Awards, among twelve nominations; two Guinness World Records and the estimated sale of 13–15 million albums and 40–51 million singles worldwide. Billboard named her the Artist of the Year in 2010, ranking her as the 73rd Artist of the 2000s decade Gaga has been included in Time magazine's annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world as well as being listed in a number of Forbes' annual lists.

Analysis of Rihanna's music video- only girl in the world.

This video is very surreal, it uses bright imagery which almost looks fakes and starts off with Rihanna spinning around in the wind with a colour theme of pink and red, making us as audiences feel like we are watching another world, it has positive imagery.
The video supports the lyrics of the song as she literally is in a deserted place which makes it seem she is the ' only girl in the world' and with the imagery used of the unreal places it makes it very effective- it could be said that she is like a drug and the place she is in makes it seem like she is under the influence of drugs, the camera shots used are often very sudden so the video speeds up as the song does, this again reinforces the song title, and give soft a postive effect as she looks happy and the colours are all light and feminine, alhtough the outfits Rihanna wears show her off as an artist and again her red hair stands out.
The video also seems to be ' out of control' for us audience, yet Rihanna seems to have full control in the video- when she lays down the flowers go her way and she always looks directly at the camera as it moves, as if she is directing it, showing her power and status.
The colours of the video represent lust and passion as they are mostly reds and pinks, they also make the location seem out of this world and the video has a very 'girl power' feel to it, although it contrasts the lyrics to the song as she is asking a man to make her feel like she does.
I think this video shows off Rihanna as a artist well, and gives off positive imagery as its a upbeat and fast paced song