ng the transformations which, since the end if nineteenth century, have altered the rules for science, literature, and the arts” (Lyotard, 1991, pg xxiii)
Lyotard refers to postmodernism as a loss of faith in meta-narratives, the big stories that have justified the rational, scientific, artistic and political world of the modern world. Rejection of all overarching and totalising thought; Marxism, liberalism, etc. that tell universal stories which organize and justify the everyday practices of a plurality of different stories (narratives); Science, which has developed importance since the Enlightenment, has assumed the status of a meta-narrative, organizing and validating other narratives on the road to liberation. Lyotard says “since Enlightenment status as a meta-narrative has waned.” Science is no longer seen to be making progress on behalf of mankind.
It’s a breakdown in distinction between art and popular culture: there are no longer any agreed and definite criteria which serve to differentiate art from popular culture. For example, take Warhol – Velvet Underground art becomes increasingly integrated into the economy both because it is used to encourage people to consume through the expanded role it plays in advertising, and because it becomes a commercial good in its own right.
Popular cultural signs and media images increasingly dominate our sense of reality, and the way we define ourselves and the world around us. The world which tries to come to terms with a media-saturated society.
Mass media was once thought of as holding up a mirror to, and reflecting society. Now, reality can only be defined as the surface reflections of this mirror. Society has become subsumed within mass media – it is no longer a question of distortion of reality, since the term implies that there is a reality outside the surface simulations of the media, which can be distorted, and this is precisely what is at issue according to post-modern theory. Is the media creating reality?
Linked to this is the notion that it is more difficult to distinguish the economy from popular culture. The realm of consumption is increasingly influenced by popular culture. For example, we watch more films because we have a VCR, then they reference and advertise products that we go and buy. Surface and style have become more important and evoke a kind of designer ideology. The obsession with being super-model thin, fad-diets, use of sexuality, football, designer clothing, and many more simulations that work as a network in exchange order with each other to create reality narrative for post-modern consumer. The argument is we increasingly consume images and signs for their own sake rather than for their usefulness or for the deeper values they may symbolise. The very values that ‘modernists’ used to talk about.
In the production-era machines had to be built and updated, basic materials like iron and steel made, infrastructures such as roads, rail, communication had to be laid down, the work force had to be taught the work ethic: Taylorisation and Fordism. Once this was established, the need for consumption emerges. And people need to acquire a consumer ethic. The need to consume becomes equal to the need to produce. Increased affluence combined with consumer credit, advertising, marketing and design. Culture celebrates consumerism and style, therefore the media becomes more important. New occupations or changed role of older ones involved in need to make people consume: advertisers, marketing, design, journalism, television, finance, etc.
In his essays, Stuart Hall has conceptualized the production and consumption of the television message as a complex social construction of meaning within the semiotic framework. His theory of encoding/decoding is very important in the discourse of consumption of advertising in TV. The polysemic images have been encoded in a particular way and the process of decoding is not symmetrical. Looking back at the work of Barthes we understand that advertising texts are polysemic and at the connotative level of signification signs posses