Thursday, October 16, 2014

Living in a Postmodern World

Living in a postmodern world is something that is quite an interesting experience. One can go their whole life without explicitly realizing that they have been living in a postmodern world for their whole life. However, once you start to look for signs of postmodernism, it is damn near impossible not to notice surrounding our daily life.

We are fed postmodernist ideas by the media we consume. For example, while watching the news, one never gets the full story from all angles. The media only chooses to portray the more compelling/entertaining/provoking side. This distorts our perception of reality when it comes to the events that happen around us. Postmodern ideas are also conveyed to us through some of the music we listen to. Postmodern music is often infused with the stylings of punk and rock music. Some well known examples include the The Beatles, Cage the Elephant, and Pink Floyd. The often abstract way of storytelling through song influences the way we consume the music. Movies, novels and television programs are often postmodern as well. They can often show only one perspective, and can tell stories through distorted passages of time. Postmodern media surrounds and shapes our daily lives.

While the media is often contributed as the lone perpetrator of these postmodernism ideas, it most also be recognized that a postmodern world is driven by the common people. We use postmodern tools everyday, yet a lot of times we fail to recognize it. Every time we use social media, it is a form of postmodernism. We only paint a picture of the positive part of our lives, or even try to create a persona. Living in a postmodern world is quite interesting, as we get to take in and put out postmodern ideas.

2 comments:

  1. This is really true, and something that we should take into account more often. It's so simple to not realize when our reality is being distorted. The media has a huge impact on our lives, it's almost if not impossible to get away from, so we have to take the things we hear and see online with a grain of salt.

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  2. I would agree with your statements about the estranged postmodernism that we experience in our day to day lives. Expanding on your statement about postmodernism in media, I would like to talk about reality TV shows, which in fact, are not very realistic. Aside from being obviously scripted in some areas, I believe that you can also find postmodern aspects within some reality TV shows.

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