Dan Black's Symphonies.

Is a text only Postmodern if the audience are aware of the "socially recognisable debris"?

Postmodern texts use addition, deletion, substition and transposition.

• Addition: adding sources of inspiration together 
• Deletion: removing elements that make it identiical to original
• Substition: substiting one thing in place of another
• Transposition: taking two unconnecting things and then adding them together

Task 1: With Dan Black's Symphonies he uses addition by adding the theme City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra's version of Starman for the 1984 film Starman to the drum beat of Rihanna's Umbrella. This is also an example of transposition because there is no obvious connection between a theme tune to a 80's sci-fi film and present day R'n'B artist like Rihanna. The drum loop is slowed down and the lyrics are substituted for original lyrics written by Dan Black.



In terms of visuals for the music video he has used transposition by mixing together iconic imagery from a wide range of film genres that have no connection to create a montage of different films. He has used substitution here as well by using himself as the main character in story rather than use the original characters. 

Task 2: Identify all the intertextual references and explain their significance.

Universal Studio Logo

Lost Highway

Film Noir

Tron

Sin City

King Soloman's Mines

Goldfinger

Bonanza

Japanese cinema

E.T.

Thunderbirds

King Kong/ Godzilla

These clips are used to show that no ideas are original because they can be inspired and adapted by anyone to create the same effect. This video uses intertextual references from films & TV that have no obvious relation to each other which makes it postmodern. Everything he used in the music and the video was taken from somewhere else, only the lyrics were original, he did this to make the point that he did this to show that anyone recreate these things.

Task 3: To what extent does the combination of video and song in Symphonies conform to Charles Jencks' view that: 'Post-Modernism is fundamentally the eclectic mixture of any tradition with that of its immediate past...' 
The combination of sources in the video and the song in Dan Black's Symphonies conforms to Charles Jenck's view because the various film and TV clips used in the video are taken from completely different genres