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.
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.
