Notes for seminar

As Time Just Sits There- M. Keith Booker Postmodern Nostalgia. Its like a wax museum with a pulse. Pulp Fiction - Evokes 1950s, references film noir, little genuine nostalgia. (Does not want to be 1950s, instead uses 50s as commercial/capitalist- simulates nostalgia) - Uses historical images in ahistorical way (no sense of pastness) -1970s nostalgia through John Travolta himself. -Flaunts lack of historical moorings. - Idea of defying passing of time. (Can still be like that no matter the era) -Hipness through combining periods, genres, styles. -Postmodern plurality through soundtrack. -Nonspecific postmodern nostalgia. -Postmodern commodity. Flynn & Dyer -Music = utopian desire for wholeness. So nostalgic tendency to locate wholeness to idealized past. -Wide scale yearning for yesterday. -Believe that nostalgia is not new and there is no difference between utopian and postmodern nostalgia. Fredric Jameson -Nostalgia film= phenomenon of postmodern culture. -Postmodernism= Cumulative effect of a number of continuous historical processes associated with the gradual globalization of capital and the increasing penetration of consumerist practices into every aspect of daily life. (Films, TV, games, fashion, music etc.) -Nostalgia- ingrained in Western culture.

-Postmodern Nostalgia= no historical truth (unlike normal nostalgia). More on culture of the decade. Mediated representations of representations. (No clear reality) Shows something that never was. -Used as marketing strategy (memories float in different periods) -Like Baudrillards simulacrum of non-existent original. Moulin Rouge -Marketing through music video (editing style borrowed from music videos- Bricolage) -Paris 1800s but music 20th century. -Mixture of Romanticism and Postmodernism. -Longs for a time when romance like the plot was possible (not like Jamesons idea of postmodern films being flat and superficial) Nostalgia craze as parody -Phantom of the Paradise was introduced evoking 1950s nostalgia. -But when profits for 50s music craze in film decrease Beach Bums are introduced. (Parody of 1960s Beach Boys) -Jameson believed 1950s to be the time of the first nave innocence of countercultural impulses of rock and roll and youth gangs. -Time travel is popular in postmodern film (more example of loss of historical sense). More generational, taking people from later periods back to 1950s for this utopian sense. -Peggy Sue Got Married again not about historical 50s. Utopian sense of main characters life being perfect back then but isnt now. BUT counteracts this by dismissing the 1950s (not nostalgic) saying that she needs to go back to present as that is where things can be sorted. -Austin Powers uses 1960s nostalgia to poke fun at 1960s media (intertextuality & pastiche of 1960s culture). -Postmodern nostalgia does not deal with historical elements of the decade but instead on any element other than this such as culture. Because the history is never brought up we never question the texts reality even if it is wrong. -Utopian potential in music makes it an attractive commodity. So nostalgia of past times becomes a commodity fetish because the music of these times makes it seem utopian.

The Art of Immersion- Frank Rose Mad Men -Mad Men explains who we are by showing how far weve come. -Mad Men is all about command and control. -Twitter- Mad Men on twitter allows viewers to take story and tell it themselves. (Also free publicity) -Character is expressed in ways never allowed on show through twitter. (What audience wants- clear uncensored knowledge of character) -World of Mad Men was a re-created world of incredible detail. People could escape into this world once a week (Audience response theories) But not enough for them.

-Digital media= authorship crisis (communication is no longer one way) -Goodbye to command and control world hello sense and respond. -Media wants to control viewers. Feel that only way to attract consumers is input-output engineering model (input story, output sales) -But not true because consumers do not want to passively inject. Want to emotionally respond depending on their own experiences and beliefs. -Internet has allowed viewers to watch/do things on their own schedule and take it further. More freedom to express themselves in relation to what they like. -Idea of perceptions being co-created now. By marketers & consumers. Authorial control is less. E.g. Mad Men is produced, viewers interpret through empathising with characters and then putting themselves in that situation. -Audiences want to inhabit the stories that move them. -Example of this is Dickens who believed in immediate audience participation. (He changed his writing to agree with what his audiences liked) -The medias want to command and control has led to Fan Fiction. -Audiences can recreate what has already been created to make themselves feel more involved.