Postmodernism

Postmodernism has two general areas of definition. The first basically states that, due to the mass media forming such a central part of people's everyday lives in the current time, the images of life that we are daily flooded with influence our view of "real" life, making it impossible to discern truth from representations in the media. Males are constantly assaulted with the idea that they must be seen as strong and powerful, that they must never show weakness. Females can be mothers - apparently without any other job - or shallow, gossipy people talking about trivial subjects. Life, according to mass media, should be full of drama, with something new happening nearly every day or every week. Images such as these become as "real" as everyday life and worlds portrayed on cell phones or television screens become the basis for actions in life.

The other part of this definition, although similar, is slightly different. Coherency, in life or in story telling, becomes irrelevant as events rarely, if ever, occur in a linear fashion. Instead, stories are told in pieces as they occur in life. Everything about life and about ourselves cannot be distinctly defined, and - relating to the first definition - we have significant difficulty developing who we are separate from the media's suggestions.

The influence of media on our everyday lives has a twofold effect. On one hand, it causes difficulties when trying to find a sense of identity; on the other hand, these same difficulties enable people to investigate and ask questions, to be a critic and filter the media's images as a method of creating an identity instead of waiting for it to suddenly exist. Instead of blindly accepting the representations of everything from the media, we can choose what to believe and what to accept as truth - though the definition of truth will never be exact or clear in a postmodern world.