The Impact of Postmodernism in the 21st Century Media Essay

The Impact of Postmodernism in the 21st Century Media - Essay Example Postmodernism, on the other hand, is a complicated term. Some define it as a phenomenon or a cultural movement. As Stanley Gentz elaborated in his book, A Primer to Postmodernism (1996), â€Å"Postmodernism affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent on the community in which we participate. ... There is no absolute truth; rather, truth is relative to the community in which we participate." Jean-Franà §ois Lyotard in his paper The Postmodern Condition (1984) defined modernity as Enlightenment or as the culmination of Enlightenment thought. Largely defined by incredulity toward the grand narratives, he noted that postmodernity have sought to explain the world. Lyotard also averred that postmodernism designates the state of our culture following the transformations which, since the end of the nineteenth century, have altered the game rules for science, literature, and the arts. Thus, he furthered that: In a society whose communication component is becoming more prominent day by day, both as a reality and as an issue, it is clear that language assumes a new importance. It would be superficial to reduce its significance to the traditional alternative between manipulatory speech and the unilateral transmission of messages on the one hand, and free expression and dialogue on the other. Moreover, because it is a concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines or areas of study, including art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology, postmodernism appears to be difficult to confine in a simple meaning. It's hard to locate it temporally or historically, since it's not clear exactly when postmodernism begins. In the character of our changing times, people have come to live not only in a situated culture, but in a culture of mediation since the 19th century. The press, film and cinema, television and radio and more recently, the Internet, have developed to supply larger scale means of public communication. Our situated culture exists within a much wider mediated world. The introduction of the term 'global village' in the 1960's illustrates how much our world has changed and the change is due almost entirely to the development of mass communications. With the recent spate of electronic media, like the Net, mass media is inarguably the most democratizing, empowering state that man has ever built. Agreeing to this is Black American activist Malcolm X, as he succinctly stated that, "The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses." Sociologists have long agreed that the media has a marked impact not only in opinion, but also on the way people dress, act and relate with one another. Our cultural experiences attests to the development of systems of mass communication, like the television. New York Post critic Clive Barnes reckoned that "Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want." Studies have substantiated Barnes' scary