Media studies:

Examples and theory task:

Hobo with a shotgun: Intertextuality: The Plague have coffins behind their motorbikes. Similar to the Biker gimmick adopted by WWFs The Undertaker.

Bricolage: The concept of the film is similar to the premise of the film Death wish.

Hyper real: The Drake is a comic boom villain brought to life evidenced by his personality, cheesy dialogue, white mob suit, and speeches made during the film.

Simulacrum: The shotgun itself, also the shop full of shotguns in the scene when the hobo picks up a shotgun for the 1st time.

Levi-Strauss: Substitution for the deaths of Jesus and Abe Lincoln as it is apparently the Plague who killed them. Inglorious Basterds: Intertextuality: The fight scene in the pub resembles a fight scene that occurred in the Odessa steps sequence.

Bricolage: The Nations pride video in the film takes the original meaning of the Ku Klux Klan heroic scene in Birth of a Nation and transforms it into a narrative device revolved around the pride of the Nazi army.

Hyper real: The scene at the end where the Nazi cinema is destroyed and Hitler was killed and decapitated by the Basterds.

Simulacrum: The various alcohol products that appear during scenes in the pub appearing to look greater than they really are in real life.

Levi-Strauss: Deletion of history as Hitler dies differently in this narrative. Substitution as his death is replaced with an alternate scenario.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the world: Intertextuality: The pee bar being a reference to health bar in fighting and beat-em-up genre games.

Bricolage: The fight scenes which defy physics and allow Scott and his enemies to perform high flying, incredibly powerful strikes against each other while jumping impossibly high in the air. This style of fighting bares reference to Tekken and Street fighter, and Power rangers to a lesser extent. The graphics of the scenes also bare resemblance to old Batman comics.

Hyper real: The scenes with the music battle where the lighting effects are so advanced that apparently giant creature graphics appear and so do score points. The vs. screen also appears before any battles commence.

Simulacrum: Scott Pilgrims electric guitar which even appears on the DVD cover.

Levi-Strauss: Addition to the genre of gaming and its significance in life, as pee bars, score points after winning battles and swords gained from the powers of love and self-respect become physically real elements of the metanarratives. Also the laws of physics are improved to allow the characters to

perform impressive feats.

Inception: Intertextuality: The marketing for the film appeared similar to Nolans other film, The Dark Knight.

Bricolage: Takes the impossible staircase and uses it to create a paradox which serves as the conclusion to an action scene.

Hyper real: Played with in the 4th layer of the dream with the self-created world. The scenery is intended to look impossibly stylish in the flashback sequences and then stereotypically dystopian when the protagonist re-enters this stage of the dream at the end of the film.

Simulacrum: In the dream world at the start in Paris, the protagonist explains lampposts and common environmental features are simulacrum of ones mind.

Levi-Strauss: Addition to reality as in this, dreams can be infiltrated using complex machinery.

Flight of the concords: Intertextuality: The Elton John and Barack Obama impersonation plot elements.

Bricolage: The New Zealand PM makes a reference to the Matrix movie and claims the movie is a part of their real life situation, implying a possibility that dj vu is a glitch in the existing matrix.

Hyper real: Played with when the woman likes the protagonist for wearing the Elton John wig, fantasising that he is really Elton John she is with. Simulacrum: people who appear to look like Elton John or the U.S President. Levi-Strauss: Subtraction of the authoritative status of a Prime Minister, as the New Zealand example in this episode is rude, a slob, low class and fairly unintelligent and deluded.

Explanation task:
Frederic Jameson: He believes postmodernism is a pointless reaction to capitalist dominance and that it is a lacking in purpose. He claims that PoMo is trapped in depthless, circular references that do not encourage originality or depth in meaning. "Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" was initially published in the journal New Left Review in 1984, during Jameson's tenure as Professor of Literature and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. This controversial article, which would later be expanded to a full-sized book in 1991, was part of a series of analyses of postmodernism from the dialectical point of view Jameson had developed in his earlier work on narrative. Jameson here viewed the postmodern "scepticism towards metanarratives" as a "mode of experience" stemming from the conditions of intellectual labour imposed by the late capitalist mode of production. Kirby Ferguson: This internet star/write/director/editor is a strong defender of postmodernism, claiming its significance with the metanarratives or reality by stating that everything is a remix. He claims the difference between modernism and postmodernism is that modernism media texts are where intertextuality and bricolage are used, but these references are not supposed to be known by the audience. Postmodernism wants people to understand these circular references. According to Kirby Ferguson everything is a remix, and that all original material builds off of and remixes previously existing material. If all intellectual property is influenced by other pieces of work, copyright laws would be unnecessary. Ultimately, Ferguson says those media texts which are not based off the premise of previous texts are known as genre texts. An example of a genre movie would include Kung Fu Panda. These movies are where basic ideas and conventions associated with a genre (such as Kung Fu Panda taking conventions from action and comedy) are used to create characters and narratives. This argument becomes interesting when movies like Kung Fu Panda are taking media conventions such as making jokes during fight scenes, a fat creature being able to using his weight in combat, and all the characters being warriors even though some of their personalities do not resemble this type of character, the movie takes all these conventions and develops it story around them. Even genre

movies sometimes includes intertextuality or shout-outs to other films throughout. TvTropes.org highlights a lot of media conventions associated with the arguments put forward by Ferguson. It seems reasonable to conclude that everything is a remix and references develop a growth in genre because even genre movies use some media conventions previously used or established in previous films of the same or a similar genre. No movie is completely original. Brian Eno: Eno suggests a theory called The death of uncool which has generated due to the increasing specific proliferation process associated with media, the genres of music for instance, becoming less general and more specific due to the subcategories that keep developing. For instance in his generation, there were about a dozen music genres, such as rock, jazz, etc Now categorical procedure continues to become more significant in the media industry. E.g. ambient music has split into many different categories, such as ambient dub, black ambient, ambient industrial, etc He goes as far as to say this categorisation is perhaps a good thing. As people becoming comfortable with specifically choosing their culture from a variety of sources, picking whatever makes sense to them, it comes natural to do the same with their political, social and cultural ideas. The sharing of art is a contribution to sharing human experiences, something most should find pleasurable. Modernism vs. postmodernism: See the modernism vs. the postmodernism post on this blog