new essay

Time and space essay. Second attempt.

“Your introduction lacks focus on the question, you try to answer a question you wish you had been asked rather than the one you had been asked. Your introduction simply needs to establish WHAT postmodern media is AND HOW it can be used to manipulate time and space. POMO ALWAYS seeks to challenge truths, in respect of this question you are examining how the 'truth' of TIME and SPACE are challenged.

Because you fail to establish your opinion in the introduction the rest of your essay has no argument to support it. Every media text you use MUST be briefly BUT clearly explained in terms of its plot/narrative. You have to give incredibly specific examples in your response (look at the help sheet hand-out I gave on Monday). Formality is also important, you CANNOT write 'takes the mick', and the correct term is parody or pastiche. IB manipulates TIME by including intertextual references to texts which post-date the Second World War. It manipulates SPACE by placing the film in 'incorrect' genre frames (fairy tale, Blaxploitation etc.) as well as exposing that the film is a film.

Inception manipulates TIME AND SPACE in order to make the viewer question the very nature of reality! You should be able to write lots about the layers of dreams and the different time within them. You should also be able to comment on SPACE as Inception causes us to question reality (i.e. is life real) through the doubt it raises over what is a dream and what isn't.

Like everyone else you have 2 weeks to re write this. You will continue re writing this until you achieve a C.

Argument 5/25
Examples 4/25

9/50” – Mr Smith’s comment on first draft.

Postmodern texts always aim to challenge the truths including that of time and space, it does this by manipulating them through the use of film etc. I have looked at films such as ‘Inception’ and ‘Inglorious Basterds’ which both challenge the reality of time and space in very different ways. As well as this I have spent some time looking at other postmodern media such as music artists like The Beastie Boys. Ways these truths are challenged include mixing up a variety of genres and changing the way we see time as a constant etc.

Inception is a film that is very clever in the way it manipulates time and space. It uses very obvious techniques such as dreaming and dream worlds but also has more hidden ideas that the audience won’t be able to recognise immediately. The main manipulation of time is when we see that in deeper dream levels throughout the film time moves slower so that they can get more done in a shorter space of time. This is the main plot of the film as DiCaprio’s character needs to steel from another dream in order to be allowed back into America. The viewer begins to question their own reality when the film introduces the idea of an architect for the dream which allows them to make anything they like into reality, for example she folds the city over itself which we know as impossible. The film makes the audience question their own reality throughout by using a piece of discreet background music. This is played when the characters are about to be woken and move back a level in the dream, it is also played at the end of the film when the spinning top is left spinning which makes us feel as though we about to wake up. This manipulates space as we question if anything around us is real.

Inglorious Basterds is another big film which manipulates both time and space but in a very different way to inception. The film, about a team of US soldiers in WWII out to kill German people of power, changes the course of history by ending the war in a cinema. By doing this Tarentino has been able to again make us question reality. Space is manipulated much less in this film but can be seen through the range of genres shown throughout the chapters. Also we often see misplaced objects in this film either to modern for the time period or from other parts of the globe. This film shows Jameson’s theory of historical deafness where people don’t worry about what is true anymore. Another manipulation of space is when pastiche is used to mimic other war films as they are represented as accurate although they are not. This is done when another film is shown within ‘Inglorious Basterds’ which is more typical of a war film. Time is also manipulated by homage to David Bowie who would not be around in the war. There is also a sense of depthlessness throughout as the film is there to look cool and isn’t a ‘real’ war film. This is because of the range of genres used that have no apparent connection to war. This film changes the audience perception of time as more of what they know about the war is learnt from fictional media instead of factual teachings. This is Fiske’s theory

There are many other media texts that manipulate time and space in order to make the audience question reality. For example music such as Hip-Hop tends to use a lot of samples from other peoples music, Hip-Hop allows this stealing of beats etc. as it normally pays homage to other artists from a wide range of genres rather than pastiching music. Music can also manipulate space even though it is not usually a visual type of media. For example the Beastie Boys created an album called ‘Pauls Boutique’ which has inspired the name of a totally unrelated clothing brand for girls who would not be part of the boys original target market. Time is manipulated in music by thing like the grey album which uses samples from ‘the white album’ by the Beatles and Jay-Z’s ‘the black album’. These two sounds come from opposing genres but have been sold together quite successfully. This makes genres far less recognisable to someone who isn’t a music expert.

To conclude I find that postmodernism has many possible future paths as simulacrum can may become overly common so everything will be a copy. This will ruin peoples perception of time and space  as they know because nothing will be new and/or old. 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.