Sunday, August 9, 2009

Welcome to Postmodernism Baby, You're Gonna Die!



Postmodernism has been seen in many forms since after WWII. It has been a fixture in various texts ranging from literature to music videos. It is shown very clear in the video by raucous rock n roll band, Guns n Roses. In the first video filmed by this group there are characteristics of postmodernism running throughout the text. two of these are intertextuality and fragmentation.

The video opens with intertextuality, a word coined by French linguist Julia Kristeva, meaning the shaping of texts' meanings by using other texts. William Shakespeare did this repeatedly in plays such as Julius Caesar, The Life of Henry the V, among others. Kristeva explains, "The notion of intertextuality replaces that of intersubjectivity" a popular theory of Mikhail Bakhatin. Bakhtin believed the subject was enough to include. Kristeva however points to the postmodern binary that it needs to be the text, not just the subject of the text. This video shows the classic "farm boy gets off the bus in Hollywood to search for stardom" stereotype. It then fragments off into a concert scene with the "young man getting off the bus" as the lead singer and central figure of the rock band which is another cliche of music videos suggesting intetextuality. What becomes interesting about this is the next scene which places he and the rest of the band in what looks like a seedy hotel room. The rest of the band seem to enjoy the female attention directed at them but Axl Rose, the lead singer, is staring at four different television screens showing violence, commercialism, police brutality, and international war. This is another clear trait of intertextuality. Previous filmed scenes of disturbance used to illicit response in the viewer.

The next trait seen is Lyotard's fragmentation. It is all over this video. It moves from street story to concert scene to hotel scene to mind control scene to a scene where Rose becomes the seasoned Hollywood resident. These scenes are used for effect and affect. It is used in the earlier scene's to give you the storyline and as an influential vehicle to show the atrocities of the aforementioned clips of war, violence, commercialism, and police brutality. The fragmentation is also part of the under story of how this "nice young man" is mind controlled by these heinous activities to become one of the Hollywood regulars.

There is an argument that music videos are mind numbing drivel and a lot of them are. But, once and awhile you run across one that has all the elements of grit and grime becoming intellectual and sublime. This masterpiece of music video falls into that category. "Welcome to Jungle baby", you might just learn something.


Works Cited
Kristeva,Julia.Intertextuality.www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/kristevaabject.html

Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael.Literary Theory: An Anthology. Eds. 2nd Ed.
Blackwell Publishing: 1998.

"Welcome to the Jungle". Appetite for Destruction.Geffen Records. 1987

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