Youth culture and Collective identity:

• Fresh, instant gratification, appeal of mess, intensity of experience, DIY identity and the desire to be treated like an adult.
• The representation of hoodies (symbols)
• Stanley Cohen – folk devils and moral panics
• The British cinema industry is too small for the British film industry to successfully produce Hollywood-style blockbusters over a sustained period
• Cemetery junction as the non-contemporary
• A candidate studying British Cinema for ‘The Media and Collective Identity’ should discuss theories of film representation and realism in relation to the history of British cinema, a range of British films from recent years, funding, Government and industry practices, and offer a critically informed point of view on how Britain is represented to itself and to the wider audience at the present time.
• Talcott Parsons argued that as we move from the family and corresponding values to another sphere with differing values, (e.g. the workplace) we would experience an "anomie situation”. (lack of usual social and ethical standards)
• Dick Hebdige describes subcultures as a reaction of subordinated groups that challenge the hegemony of the dominant culture.

Conventions of sitcoms

Location: Home, work, rarely outside
Themes: Love, work, friends, family
Characters: mother, father, clever, dumb, innocent
Storylines: problems occur, problems resolved
Why are they funny? suitable for everyone, light hearted, simplistic
Target audience: families, everyone, mainstream

How is Echo Beach/Moving Wallpaper postmodern?

-what channel was it shown on?
-what were the viewing figures?
-how does it challenfe the way we view sitcoms?
-why wasn't it popular?

How do postmodern texts challenge the conventional relationships between audience and text?

-how do you usually view music videos?
-does the digitalisation of access and production have any affect on context?
-how has the viewing of music videos changed over time?
-are there videos that challenge our way of viewing?

Criticisms of Postmodernism

-never deals with political issues
-doesn't question gender representations
-doesn't question equality
-controversal
-style over substance
-doesn't question any representational issues

Postmodernism in music videos

Lyotard: a rejection of meta-narrative, postmodernism doesn't rely on stories.
High art and pop culture become blurred.
Style over substance (criticism of postmodernism) no meaning.
The real and the represented become blurred.
Playfulness- fat boy slim, Chris Cunningham, Spike Jonze.

Modernism and Postmodernism

Modernism: cultural movement responding to changes in society which can vary in literature, architecture, art or music. Modernists identified a crisis in economics, politics, society and culture which was caused by industrialisation, modernisation and their effects. Industrialisation (Ford-ism) forced humans to abode by clock time. The further we get from our essential nature, the more alienated we are from ourselves and each other (according to Marx). Some modernists rebelled against tradition.
Before modernism was 19th centurt romanticism: nature as supreme subject of art. Realism was dominant over subjecctive impressions. Moral crisis- end of 19th century under the influence of Darwinsim, Marxism and Fordism. Postmodernism can sometimes be seen as a rejection of modernism, Some of us stopped believing in anything very much. French critic Baudrillard refers to a process we calls briolage- which is sometimes translated as tinkering. Bricolage is assembling artefacts from bits and pieces. Simulcra means we can't tell what the original is. The simulcrus is the ultramte capitalist artefact. If we've stopped believing in grand narratives how do we critique anyway?