essay

Explain how and why post-modern media plays with the verisimilitude of a text.

Post modern media is often self referential and playful, meaning that the reality of a text becomes less genuine or more realistic depending on the style of text. The verisimilitude, (reality) can therefore be altered by postmodernism and sometimes become destroyed completely to make a hyper-reality.
There are several ways in which post-modern media can play with verisimilitude. One way is through the text being self referential. As the text is referring to itself, or to the unreality of the film world, this can affect the realism of the text, as it becomes aware that it is a piece of media, not a representation of reality. An example is in “24 hour party people” where the protagonist talks to the camera about what is going to happen, referring to the fact that it is a film, and breaking the 4th wall. This awareness of the audience breaks the illusion of the film being its own “world” and draws attention to the camera, meaning the construction of a film is more obvious-this is done also by the play with time in “24 Hour Party People,” where everyone but one person is going slow-speed- a clear play with camera effects. This makes a text less real. However, some methods of being self referential, such as shaky camera movements to allude to the fact that someone is holding the camera can make the text more real, such as in Blair Witch Project, which uses this type of camera to make itself more believable and scary. Therefore, the verisimilitude can be affected both ways.
This links to pastiche and parody, which are also forms of post modern media which can play with reality. These conventions of postmodernism use conventions, characteristics and ideas from well known genres and other media texts and satirize them- often for comic effect. The reference to other texts through parody can often make the world being created very unreal-such as in Scary Movie where a women falls over and a line appears around her to make her look as she if had fallen in the same spot as someone who’d died. The unreality of this could be said to make the verisimilitude diminish, as it’s using well known conventions from horror and converting them for comic effect in a very open way. Therefore, the construction of a text, and the converting of other media texts is very self-aware, and therefore less real-it wouldn’t happen in real life.
It could also be seen in another way. Hyper reality and the reference to conventions could be seen to increase the realism, as the referent, according to Chandler’s model, is the film world and not the real world- it refers to media texts not reality. This creates a hyper reality. This links to an idea of Baudrilliard, who says that our world is media saturated, and that this means that there is no reality anymore- it is just a simulacrum for reality, and that the world is a hyper reality made up of semiotics and media events. In postmodernism, the hyper-reality is presented in films through many things including intertexuality and the reference to media instead of reality- for example, the use of famous one-liners or memes. These recognizable references to other texts link to our own lives, as something we would see/recognize everyday and often post-modern comedy is dependent on our knowledge of our culture. An example is in some of the Cohen Brother films, which use huge amounts of intertexuality to represent the film world. This representation uses conventions the audience recognize and connect with, and link to their own experiences in the media. This links to the hyper-real world the audience is in, and therefore could seem like reality as it is presenting hyper-reality and media reality. Another example could be internet memes, such as the word “OMG” a shortening of oh my God. This originated from internet chat-rooms, and travelled through social networking sites and then to film and TV (the genre of “chic flicks” use OMG quite seriously, in “Mean Girls” for example.) OMG is now considered normal language to speak in. This recognizable media expression therefore can make a text more real, as it is alike to our normal life, even though it creates hyper reality through blurring the edges of reality and the internet.
The playfulness of postmodernism can also alter the verisimilitude of a text. Often the play is comic through pastiche and parody, which has the effect of making the text less real- such as “The Life of Brain” which plays with ideologies about God and politics to ridicule them. Play can often have different results too -an example is in “The Big Lebowski” where the main character is very liberal and lazy, preferring to live off benefits than anything else. This plays with the normal values of society, which are to be independent and to work hard- and creates a nihilistic world with no values. “24 hour party people” takes this further, and plays with narrative structure, making the story confusing and random- a nihilistic way of story telling with no traditional narrative. This can create both a more real and less real text- the nihilism of the world can been seen as unreal, and the way of story telling seen to be just comic or confusing-hindering the telling of the story for comic effect. But it could also be seen as a true representation of life, which has no structure and often is said to have few values. For example, “In the Thick of It” which is a hugely cynical and nihilistic representation of a political party. This could be considered unreal as the play and loss of values is exaggerated comically. However, it could also be argued that the portrayal, shot in hand-held camera to reinforce its realism, is structured and acted out like real life, and seems a realistic verisimilitude.
A last example of the way that post modernism plays with a text links back to the Chandler’s theory- it is aware of it’s construction, aware of it’s audience and uses audience’s knowledge of the referent to create the media. This takes into account intertexuality and hyper reality, relying on the culture knowledge of a nation to construct a media, and yet using the construction of media as a way of making media too. An example could be the TV series “Extras.” This is very post modern through its self referential style, with reality being marred by actors playing themselves and the audience not being sure of what is reality and which isn’t. This shows the awareness to the construction of reality for the audience- it constructs a hyper-reality that the audience both know is there but also believe. This can be seen as both real and unreal in the verisimilitude of a text. Another example on another platform is “Private Eye.” This is also very post-modern, and aware of the reader’s knowledge of recent events in the news. It then plays with these stories, adding in parodies and intertexuality, while being self referential. (For example, they say: “That’s enough now Ed” in the middle of sentences to end the story.) This is self referential in the construction of the news story -creating the illusion that the editor has read this and stopped the news story there. The use of “Ed” is also informal and has connotations of someone uneducated writing the article. This takes realism from the text, but adds comedy through the play and audience awareness of referent and construction. The comedy in it also creates by the nihilistic and comic representation of the world by Private Eye.
Therefore, postmodernism largely makes texts less real as it presents a world quite distanced or playful compared to our own. However, as postmodernism uses hyper reality and some techniques which use construction to make text more real, it could also make the verisimilitude of a text more real.