Postmodernism in Advertising, Pop Music, Consumerism & Media-Saturation, overview. - Dominic Strinati

Advertising

• Adverts used to tell us how valuable and useful a product was.
• Nowadays, they are more concerned by using references from pop-culture and making their status clear, as advertisements.
• Advertising is always involved in selling things to people, but now there are elements of postmodernism found in contemporary television advertising.
• The intention is still to sell, but now, advertising is more involved with the surface and style of the product, rather than the simple selling of the product on the basis of it's value.
• Adverts are now more concerned with the cultural representations that the product bring.
• Style, quotations from pop-culture and art, jokey quips, self-conscious revelation of the nature of advertisements as media constructions, and their blatant recycling of the past, are all said to be indicative of the emergence of postmodernism in television advertising.

Pop Music

• The recent history of Pop Music can be seen to be marked by a trend of explicit mixing of genres of music in very self-conscious ways.
• This has ranged from remixing already recorded songs, to the quoting and 'tasting' of distinct music, sounds and instruments to create new sub- and pan-cultural identities. 
• Whatever the respective musical and political merits of these new departures, they can be argued to be postmodern, as they are concerned with collage, pastiche and quotation. 
• With the random pasting together of different music and styles, with the rejection of divisions between serious and fun or pop music and with the attack on the notion of rock as a serious artistic music can be understood as an attempt to fashion new and distinct forms out of previous styles. 
• Rock 'n' Roll is commonly thought to have arose out of the cross-cutting influences exerted by country and western and rhythm 'n' blues.
• Postmodernism in pop music can be seen to associated with the movement from rock 'n' roll in the late 1950s, and The Beatles and Tamla Motown in the 1960s, to Jive Bunny, Music Mixing and 'art rock' and 'straight' pop in the 1980s.

Consumerism and Media-Saturation 

• Postmodernism has links with long-standing ideas about the scale and effects of consumerism and media-saturation as central aspects of the modern development of capitalist societies.
• During the 20th century, the economic needs of capitalism have shifted from production to consumption.
• Once, the major need of capitalist societies was to establish their conditions of production.
• Machines and factories for the manufacturing of goods have to be continually built and updated.
• Heavy industries concerned with basic materials, like iron and steel, and energy had to be fostered; the infrastructure of a capitalist economy - roads, rail, communications, education, a welfare state, etc. - had to be laid down.
• Once a fully functioning system of capitalist production has been established, the need for consumption to grow begins to emerge, and then people need to acquire a leisure or consumer ethic in addition to a work ethic.
• In an advanced capitalist society, like Britain, the need for people to consume has become as important, if not more strategically important, than the need for people to produce. 
• Increased affluence and leisure-time have served to accentuate the process of consumption, hence the growth in agencies like advertising, marketing, design and public relations encouraging people to consume, and the emergence of a postmodern popular culture which celebrates consumerism, hedonism and style.
• It is argued that the world will increasingly consist of media screens and popular cultural images - TVs, VDUs, videos, computers, computer games, personal stereos, adverts, theme parks, shopping malls, 'fictitious capital' or credit - which are part and parcel of the trends towards postmodern popular culture.