Mock Exam - June 2010

Media Mock Exam

Question 1a)

Research into real media products is vital in order to create a professional final product that is of a similar standard. Also, real media products clearly appeal to real audiences, therefore it is important to see how they appeal to their target audience.

When creating a music magazine for my Foundation Portfolio, I did similar product research to identify what made a music magazine successful. I looked at three of the most successful music magazines, NME, Q and Rolling Stones. These were all closely related to the genre of magazine I intended to create. Through deconstructing multiple front covers, I discovered that magazines of this genre tended to feature bands on the front cover, and this informed my final product, which featured a four piece band. As music magazines are generally targeted at audiences that have a particular interest in music itself, as opposed to the celebrities, this caused me to consider how I was going to write the article. This meant that the article’s questions focused specifically on their career and music making process and did not mention their personal lives.

My research into the target demographic of real music magazines found that their audience was largely male. This was mirrored in the number of males that featured on the cover. It is likely that this is due to Uses and Gratifications theory, as a male audience is more likely to identify with a male cover star. This meant that I chose to create a band that was predominantly males to use as my cover stars. The resulting four piece band had three male members and one female.

My Advanced Portfolio also required research into real media products. This time, I needed to research three products, digipaks, posters and music videos. I approached researching digipaks and posters in very similar ways. Considering my genre (R&B), I gathered multiple digipaks and posters and deconstructed them. I discovered that the conventional place for institutional information was either the top or bottom right of the back cover, with the barcode beside it. This ensured that my ancillary products looked as professional as possible.

However, the music video required much more detailed research, and having previously researched magazines and other products, I was aware of the need to deconstruct videos in order to understand their conventions.

Once I had selected an artist, I did extensive research into his other media products, including old music videos, album covers and promotional images to understand what image I had to portray in order to represent the artist, Justin Timberlake. This lead to the classic ‘suit and tie’ look that I dressed my performer in, as this is conventional of Timberlake. Not only is this an identifiable Timberlake look, this also was in keeping with the song itself, as ‘Mirrors’ was featured on the album ‘The 20/20 Experience’. The promotional images for this featured Timberlake in a classic black suit and tie. Therefore, my research into real media products ensured I was representing the artist correctly.

Therefore, in my development from Foundation to Advanced Portfolio, my research had extended to encompass more detail in my final products. Initially, I began researching just the product I was creating, but by the time I began my Advanced Portfolio, the knowledge I had of how useful product research was, meant I extended the research to cover not only the product, but the content that my product featured. This ensured I was not only producing a realistic product, but I was also representing the content correctly therefore increasing the final product’s likeness to a real media product.

Question 1b)

For my Advanced Portfolio, I created a music video for the song 'Mirrors' by Justin Timberlake. In many ways, my music video challenged the conventions of music videos in the R&B genre, as I created a narrative driven video and it was without sexualisation or objectification of the female characters.

Stereotypically, videos of the R&B genre are largely performance based. My music video for the song 'Mirrors' challenges these conventions through the inclusion of a narrative element. My video features four characters, each with a separate but similar narrative, focusing on how we see our insecurities in our reflection.

Another convention of the genre is that most women are sexualised or objectified. Female artists who are incredibly successful within the R&B genre such as Beyonce and Rihanna sexualise themselves in order to promote their music. Therefore, it was extremely unconventional for my video to feature two women who were not sexualised and to feature a higher number of males. However, this decision was made when considering Timberlake's target audience, the majority of which are females. Mulvey suggests that the sexualisation of women in video is the 'Male Gaze'. The camera is acting as a male's eye. In terms of Timberlake's song, a music video that sexualises women would not appeal to the largely female target audience. Also, as Timberlake's star image portrays him as someone who respects women. A music video that sexualised women would imply that he was a womanizer and therefore he would lose some of his appeal to females, and in turn, would cause him to lose fans. For this reason, straying from genre conventions in this way was effective for this particular artist.

However, my music video did follow certain conventions of the medium itself, as outlined by Andrew Goodwin. Goodwin claimed that a music video will either illustrate, amplify or oppose the meaning of the song. In the case of my music video, I chose to 'illustrate' the song's meaning, therefore 'bring it to life'. As the song's lyrics could be interpreted in a variety of ways, it was important to use the video to 'anchor meaning' so that the audience better understand the meaning of the song. My connection to the lyrics was seen most clearly in my use of mirrors, as the song itself is called 'Mirrors'. Lyrics such as "if you ever feel alone" connect to the narrative of the video. The four characters used in the video are involved in four separate narrative threads that are similar, but never cross. Each character is the only one involved in his or her narrative and this aims to indicate their loneliness. Moreover, a MS portrays 'The Outsider' writing the word 'lonely' on his mirror and 'The Heartbroken Guy' writes the word 'alone' on his.

Question 11)

Blurring the boundary between reality and representation is a key element of postmodern media and is seen consistently in postmodern media texts. Baudrillard's postmodern theory describes this blurring as a 'hyperreality'. This means that there is no longer a distinction between what is reality and representation, as the representation has become the reality. The theory is most literally depicted in The Matrix (1999, Dir. The Wachowskis), and this has led to it becoming a landmark text for postmodernists. The movie is set in a future world run by machines. These machines have enslaved humans, placing them in 'The Matrix', a neural-interactive simulation of the past so that they are unaware of this. This neural-interactive simulation is quite a literal example of hyperreality. This was clearly an intentional decision, as there are several references to Baudrillard's work. For example, Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation is the book which Neo uses as a secret stash. Also, Morpheus quotes Baudrillard's book 'America' with the phrase "welcome to the desert of the real".

More recently, the postmodern 'hyperreality' is presented quite differently to how it is presented in earlier postmodern texts. For example, This Is The End (2012, Dir. Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen) tells the story of the apocalypse in which the actors starring in the movie play themselves. The self aware comedy features six well known actors including Seth Rogen, James Franco and Jonah Hill, with a wide range of easily recognizable celebrity guest stars, all of which also play themselves. Essentially, the film is portraying a fictional version of reality. However, the 'reality' they are basing this 'fictional reality' on is in fact a representation of reality. This is an example of simulacra. 

The celebrity personas of the actors within the movie are often believed to be reality, and this is another way in which the boundary between representation and reality has been blurred. For example, Seth Rogen noted in an interview that audiences say he "plays himself in every movie", yet the audience don't know Seth Rogen, and base this opinion off of the representations they see him portray on screen. In This Is The End, the audience's expectations of Rogen are portrayed in his character, as the character is very similar to those he has been cast as in the past. Franco's sexuality has been questioned in the media, therefore they hinted at this in the movie through his infatuation with Rogen. This gave the movie a large amount of self-awareness, an incredibly postmodern characteristic.

This concept of fictional reality has become increasingly popular, causing the rise in success of TV Show Real Husbands of Hollywood. The show is a parody of the 'constructed reality' TV genre, most specifically Bravo's 'The Real Housewives' franchise. The parodic nature of the show is characteristic typical of postmodern media, as pointed out by Jameson. In order to parody 'The Real Housewives', Real Husbands of Hollywood is set in a fictional reality, in which the actors all play themselves, similarly to This Is The End. Kevin Hart is the show's protagonist, and many real life events are intertextally referenced in order to create the appearance of simulating reality. For example, in episode 1 'Easy Bake Kevin', a voiceover of Kevin Hart lists his achievements from the past year including starring in the film 'Think Like A Man' and hosting the 'MTV VMAs'. Both of which are real events that he was involved in. Therefore, Real Husbands of Hollywood is another example of how reality and representation are blurred in postmodern media.

Postmodern media can also blur the boundary between reality and representation by commenting on how much our reality has been shaped by representation. For example, in the TV show Community by Dan Harmon, the character Abed relates events that happen in the show back to media clichès For example, in Season 1, Episode 3, Abed claims he likes the school announcements as "they make every 10 minutes feel like the beginning of a TV show. The effect only lasts until someone says something they wouldn't say on TV, like how much their life is like TV. Then it's gone." This looks at the blurring of representation and reality in a different way to my previous examples, as it aims to comment on how postmodern media has caused audiences to confuse reality with representation.

Another example of how reality and representation have blurred is in the medium of video games. MMORPGs, also known as Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, blur the lines between reality and representation, as the games take place in a virtual world. One example of this type of game is World of Warcraft. Many players use the virtual world of Azeroth (where the game World of Warcraft takes place) as a substitute for real life, as they are able to gain human interaction and explore a world of continents and countries much like they could in real life. Therefore, the game world is a hyperreality, blurring the lines between reality and representation.

Another way in which representation and reality are blurred in World of Warcraft is through the idea of identity. Postmdoern theory suggests that identity is a performance, not inherent within ourselves. World of Warcraft conforms to such ideas because players take on the identities of their characters. Therefore, reality and representation are blurred as the characters people play as (the representation) are interpreted to be the person's identity (reality) by other players. Characters are regarded to be identity so strongly that certain races that players are free to play as are stereotyped and avoided in a way similar to real life racial discrimination.

Players respond in character to events within the game, as if the character is actually real. For example, the Corrupted Blood Plague was a landmark event within in the game, in which a debuff was carried out of a controlled gaming environment for higher level players and into the game world. This debuff was highly contagious and spread rapidly between players. People responded to the plague as if they were in a real world epidemic that would have real danger to their lives. In fact, though dying in the game is inconvenient, the player can restore the character back to life. The character is a representation of the real player. Therefore, World of Warcraft is yet another example of how postmodern texts blur the line between reality and representation, as players of the game treat representation as if it were reality. 

Real Husbands of Hollywood

Mind Map - Question 1B

Community Analysis

PoMo

Question 1A Points

Define and explain postmodern theory and how your case studies are postmodern.

Postmodernism, literally meaning ‘after modernism’, describes a more recent movement that opposes the views of modernists. Postmodernism begins with scepticism of ‘big claims’ such as science and religion. When applied to media texts, this manifests itself in a variety of ways.

One of the most identifiable postmodern characteristics of a media text is the recycling of other media in a bricolage style. This is evident in the will.i.am and Cody Wise song It’s My Birthday, as the song samples a 1990’s Tamil song called ‘Urvasi Urvasi’. This bricolage theme is continued in the music video, which is made up of a series of vines. This supports the belief that there are no new or original ideas. As the video uses vine, the logo is presented at the beginning of the video. This is product placement, another typical characteristic of postmodern texts. Beats audio is also featured multiple times throughout the video. This enhances the intertextuality of the video, another postmodern quality.

Intertextual references are seen frequently in the film This Is The End (2013, Dir. Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen).The film incorporates multiple pop culture references into its script, including references to Harry Potter characters and James Franco’s previous movies such as 127 Hours. References are also made to other media texts by parodying or pastiching them. For example, the characters conduct “The Exorcism of Jonah Hill” using the iconic line “The power of Christ compels you” from The Exorcist (1973).  Pastiche is a similar technique to parody. However, the aim of pastiche is not to mock, but to pay homage to the original work. Not only are parody and pastiche key postmodern conventions, but this particular parody contributed to the film’s overall mockery of religion.

This film’s narrative follows six celebrity actors in their experience of the apocalypse. The film serves to mock the notion of the apocalypse, using extremely stereotypical images of both heaven and hell. In this way, This Is The End (2013) links to postmodern theorist Lyotard’s most basic definition of postmodernism “an incredulity towards meta-narrative”. Lyotard believed that the ‘postmodern condition’ involved meta-narratives, such as religion and science, being replaced by micronarratives. Film is a particularly powerful medium through which micronarratives can be expressed. Postmodern movies look at reality in a variety of different ways. For example, landmark postmodern texts such as The Matrix (1999, Dir. The Wachowskis) and more recently, Inception (2010, Dir. Christopher Nolan), attempt to get us to question what reality is and how we can tell. This highlights the subjectivity of postmodern beliefs and theories.

Questioning reality is a strong factor in postmodern theory. One of postmodernism’s most influential theorists, Baudrillard, described today’s society as a ‘hyperreality’. The term stems from his work on simulacra and simulation. Baudrillard explained that a representation of a person or thing is not reality. Yet, we live in a world where representations are often formed through copying a representation. Eventually, there is no reality. This is a hyperreality. Baudrillard’s theories were very much incorporated into The Matrix (1999), in which reality was a computer simulation. This provides a very literal portrayal of the term hyperreality. The Matrix is so closely linked to Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation that his book, of the same name, is featured in the movie, used to conceal Neo’s secret stash.

The idea of hyperreality can be applied to a more current phenomenon, more specifically the rise in reality TV. Reality TV is a hugely successful postmodern form of television. Shows such as The Only Way Is Essex, Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Made In Chelsea advertise a window into the real lives of people or celebrities. Though the authenticity of such reality shows is largely debated, audiences are still fascinated by the idea that they are witnessing the people’s real lives. However, it is impossible to know if the events on screen are real or not, as audiences have only ever experienced the representation.

Baudrillard believed that representations would replace reality, and in some cases, this is already very clear. The X Factor and other reality talent shows of a similar format, replicate the process of getting into the music industry, beginning with auditions in front of media moguls and culminating in live shows and a record contract. Talent shows have now become the most well-known way of breaking into the music industry, when there are many artists who gain recording contracts through the real life process on which The X Factor is based.

The world’s obsession with reality TV has led to the simulation of reality TV. This Is The End (2013), centres around six celebrities who play themselves in the movie. Using this trend also makes the film very self-referential, another key characteristic of postmodern texts. The actors exaggerate the media’s perception of them or contradict it completely, creating ironic humour, which is commonly a source of comedy in postmodern media. For example, James Franco’s sexuality has been questioned in the media. Therefore, in the movie, Franco has an obsession with Seth Rogen that involves him painting large canvases with their names on and hanging them side by side in his house.

Postmodern media contains a wide range of devices. Earlier postmodern texts such as Bladerunner (1982) and The Matrix (1999) tended to focus on the future and were sceptical of meta-narrative. More recently, the appearance of reality and media texts being based in the present, is becoming more and more popular, and is something that audiences are responding to.