Postmodernism Is A Shortcut To Mass Audiences. Discuss.

Although different genre’s of bands have different markets (i.e. Indie Pop bands target students) creating a video with postmodernism allows them to extend their market and maximise their sales. When audiences see a particular topic in a new light, many people become intrigued. By creating a video with postmodernism, the band get more freedom, and a chance to design their own look. Instead of having various shots of the band positioned to make them look good, they are able to create a video relating to their fans.

 Postmodernism is mostly known as occurring during the 1980’s/1990’s era, however a clear demonstration of post modernism is shown within Bob Dylan’s video “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. Produced in 1960, people sometimes over look its meaning. Before this time, short films were produced. These include a non diegetic musical piece being added to a silent shot. No diegetic sound could be included but narrative would be followed through the actors gestures. Throughout the video, the song track is also non diegetic sound. No diegetic sound is included within the video, but the cards with the lyrics on are held up the camera and then dropped onto the floor. No lip synching is included within the video, unlike other music promo’s and although colour filming had been around for some years in the 1960’s, Bob Dylan chose to film in black and white. The idea of putting simple words of the lyrics on card and swapping them every few seconds, was a convention of older theatre. Instead of keeping up with the modern to make a promo, Dylan chose to make his video postmodern by showing he was backtracking in his promo, rather than moving forward. This demanded audience’s attention by the constant movement in the video. When watching, the audience try to discover a pattern between the selected words on card and this simplistic idea became a very popular video by Dylan due to post modernism.

 

 Another popular postmodernism video is Queen “I Want To Break Free”. Using the idea of a stereotypical housewife wanting to break free from their domestic lifestyle became easily relatable to women within the world.  By putting in a postmodern idea which has such a mass audience, quickly made the video extremely popular. By having this housewife with a big thick moustache, shocked the audience. During the 1980’s, America didn’t approve of transvestites, and so the video was banned from MTV and other US music shows. This element of shock and rebellion through postmodernism not only made audiences think, but by making North America disgusted in it, word of mouth made the video a “must see” by the public in many European countries.

 Postmodernism is shown to be a shortcut to mass audiences. Both Bob Dylan and Queen benefitted from using it within their video. Postmodernism is the new by referring to the old, this enables music promo’s to enrapture the middle age/older generation into their music, as well as their original market by using old topics with a new twist.