Time and space essay

Postmodernism – time and space.

Postmodern media has the ability to manipulate time and space through a variety of mediums. However it does not solely go out to do this, poster modernism aims to make the audience question there reality using time and space. It also aim to do many other things to modern society such as create a world with no specifics. For example we can all listen to a variety of music genres and when making something ourselves have the freedom to mix up any genre and/or media we like. Over time a postmodern society has started to become more apparent as original ideas are almost impossible to come across, musicians and directors have to take inspiration from the work of their peers and mix up time periods to make for a more interesting text.

An example of this comes in today’s film world, in things such as Inglorious Basterds where a world war two based film changes the course of history and look very ‘unrealistic’. Jameson talks about this as he says postmodern media has historical deafness and no one really cares what happened anymore. This also a use of pastiche by Quentin Tarentino as it takes the mick out of supposedly more historically accurate war films. He realises that these are not historically correct at all and they use as much out of place props and music etc. as he does. In The Inglorious Basterds time is manipulated by the use of homage to David Bowie who has no connection to the war or time period. In between chapters different fonts are used to match the genre of film that is going to be shown in that chapter, this is typical of post-modern media and a manipulation in time and space because a war film shouldn’t have aspects of Art house film or westerns although it does. This may be classed as depthlessness by some but I think that it is more about entertainment that historical accuracy etc. The depth is given through smaller stories within the film. The way that Tarentino makes us question reality by changing up history in his film again is something that will make us question reality in a similar way to inception that leaves us believing we could be dreaming. Fiske’s theory is that as time goes on people’s perception of the world is from media instead of us basing our media on the real world. This is a manipulation of space given to us by Jacques Derrida who says that everything is of a genre.

The film Inception manipulates both time and space in a very different way; it is far more obvious but has some discreet aspects. The idea of a dream within a dream as happens in the film is itself manipulating both, in each level they can travel to anywhere of their choice, very unrealistic again, and the more they dream the slower time goes. This film goes out to make the audience come out of the cinema thinking about the possibility that they themselves are currently dreaming, so space as they know it is non-existent. The director has done this by using a piece of calming music, by one of Hitler’s favourite composers so not so calming, from the mid 90’s throughout the film. This music is heard by the dreamers when they are about to feel a kick and wake up. The audience also hearing this can give us a similar feeling, especially at the end of the film. Space is not affected as much through Inception but can be shown to change in ways we can’t imagine. For example at one point the ‘Architect’ bends the world over itself defying gravity.

In other media texts such as music time is very often manipulated by samples from every genre and era being mixed. This is common in Hip Hop culture but is also allowed more than in other genres, I think this is because of the way artists pay homage to each other as opposed to using a pastiche. Space is also manipulated in music as it inspires other things that have no relation to it. One example is when The Beastie Boys had an album name used by a brand. Pauls Boutique clothing isn’t really boutique but is based on an album which the buyers probably have no knowledge of. Space is being manipulated here as the music is creating objects in another genre almost. Time mixes in music shown by albums such as the grey album are often un-noticed by the audience. This album uses a mix of ‘the white album’ by The Beatles and ‘the black album’ by Jay Z who are from different eras and genres of music but work very well when mixed correctly.

Postmodernism has many possible future paths. As simulacrum may become overly common and everything will be a copy. However these copies will not be seen as stolen and could be recognised as original pieces of work as the old one is forgotten. Another path it could take is that copyright laws etc. will block anything from being produced without a lawsuit as there is no such thing as a new idea anymore. This would lead to an anti-postmodern society.