Drive - Revision

Drive Revision

The IT Crowd

The IT Crowd is a British sitcom by Channel 4, written by Graham Linehan, produced by Ash Atalla and starring Chris O'Dowd, Richard Ayoade, Katherine Parkinson, and Matt Berry. The 'IT' in the show's title can be pronounced as either the word it, as in the 'it' crowd, or as the letters I-tee, as in the abbreviation for information technology (IT).
Set in the London offices of the fictional corporation Reynholm Industries, the show revolves around the three staff members of its IT department, compromising two geeky technicians, a genius named Maurice Moss (Ayoade) and the workshy Roy Trenneman (O'Dowd), headed by Jen Barber (Parkinson), the department's 'Relationship Manager' who knows nothing about IT. The show also focuses on the boss of Reynholm Industries, Douglas (Berry).

Her: The Digital Muse & Postmodern Culture (Amy Edelstein)

Illuminating critical perspective of the Spike Jonze film 'Her' by Amy Edelstein.

What in the World is Holy Motors About?

Critical appraisal and explanation of Holy Motors. 

Postmodern Audiences

How do postmodern media texts challenge traditional text-reader relations and the concept of representation? In what ways do media audiences and industries operate differently in a postmodern world?

• Have audiences become accustomed to the stimulation and excitement of spectacular films/games and a sense of spectacle has become something that (young?) audiences increasingly demand from cultural experiences?
• has narrative coherence become less important for audiences?
• In terms of ideas, has cultural material become more simplistic and superficial, and audiences are no longer so concerned with the process of understanding a text. 
• Has the attention span of audiences reduced as they become increasingly accustomed to the spectacle-driven and episodic nature of postmodern texts. 
• In its 'waning of affect', has postmodernism contributed to audiences become emotionally detached from what they see. They are desensitised and unable to respond 'properly' to suffering and joy. 
• Has postmodernism contributed to a feeling among audiences that arts and culture does not really have anything to tell us about our own lives and instead simply provides us with somewhere we can escape or retreat to. 

Postmodernism and Audience Theory

Alain J.-J. Cohen has identified a new phenomenon in the history of film, the 'hyper-spectator'. "Such spectator, who may have a deep knowledge of cinema, can recognise both the films themselves and filmic fragments into new and novel forms of both cinema and spectatorship, making use of the vastly expanded access to films arrived at through modern communications equipment and media. The hyper-spectator is, at least potentially, the material (which here means virtual) creator of his or her hyper-cinematic experience" (157)

"VCRs and laserdisc-players or newer DVDs have produced, and are still producing, a Gutenberg-type of revolution in relation to the moving image."

Anne Friedberg has argued that because we now have much control of how we watch a film (through video/DVD), and we increasingly watch film in personal spaces (the home) rather than exclusively in public places, "cinema and television become readable as symptoms of a 'postmodern condition', but as contributing causes." In other words, we don't just have films that are about postmodernism or reflect postmodern thinking. Films have helped contribute to the postmodern quality of life by manipulating and playing around with our conventional understanding of time and space. "One can literally rent another space and time when one borrows a videotape to watch on a VCR... the VCR allows man to organise a time which is not his own... a time which is somewhere else - and to capture it."

Anne Friedberg: "The cinema spectator and the armchair equivalent - the-video viewer, who commands fast forward, fast reverse, and many speeds of slow motion, who can easily switch between channels and tape; who is always to repeat, replay, and return, is a spectator lost in but also in control of time. The cultural apparatuses of television and the cinema have gradually become causes for what is not... described as the postmodern condition."

Postmodern and Media Industries

Whereas modernism was generally associated with the early phase of the industrial revolution, postmodernism is more commonly associated with many of the changes that have taken place after the industrial revolution. A post-industrial (sometimes known as a post-Fordist) economy is one in which an economic transition has taken place from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy. This society is typified by the rise of new information technologies, the globalisation of financial markets, the growth of the service and the white-collar worker and the decline of heavy industry. 

Postmodernism and the Film Industry

It has been argued that Hollywood has undergone a transition from 'Fordist' mass production (the studio system) to the more 'flexible' forms of independent production characteristic of postmodern economy. 

The incorporation of Hollywood into media conglomerates with multiple entertainment interests has been seen to exemplify a 'postmodern' blurring of boundaries between industrial practices, technologies, and cultural forms. 

What is meant by postmodern media?

What is meant by ‘postmodern media’

Drive - The Ending Explained

If you're reading this, then you've already had the chance to watch Nicolas Winding Refn's pulpy crime-drama Drive, and hopefully enjoyed it as much as we did (be sure to read out Drive review). 

Though Drive seems like a standard action/thriller (albeit with some art house style and flare), a lot of movie goers have walked away with questions about the movie's final moments, which leave a fair amount of ambiguity over the fate of the 'driver', the character played by Ryan Gosling. 

In the past with out Shutter Island and Inception Ending Explanations, we here at Screen Rant have had to rely on out prowess as movie aficionados in order to form some logical deductions about what transpired in some of our favourite mind-bending movies, and what filmmakers intended with their ambiguous endings. In the case of Drive, however, we were fortunate enough to snag an explanation right from the primary source: director Nicolas Winding Refn.

When we last see Driver - bleeding out while behind the wheel of his car, before pulling himself together and speeding off into the night - there is a certain amount of lingering doubt about the literalness vs. figurativeness of what we are seeing. When I ask Refn first-hand what the ending of Drive was all about, I expected the typically coy filmmaker to hand me an equally coy answer. However, he was surprisingly straight forward in his response:

"Well all my films always have open endings. All of them. Because I believe art is always best when... You talk about it and think about it, so forth. Maybe once in awhile I've gone too far, but I always believe in finding the righ balance. And in 'Drive' he lives on for more and new adventures."

So there you have it - if you were wondering or not the ending of the film was to be taken literally, or was some metaphoric death scene, you at least now know how the director sees it. 

Refn has continuously referred to the film as a modern Grimm fairytale (unlikely hero rises to battle evil king, saves princess) and I for one always saw the ending as the hero saving the girl, while also being denied the "happily ever after" cliche he may want. Indeed the implications of the film are such that Driver will likely speed off into new adventures, as Refn claims, albeit still stuck in the lonely and isolated existence in which we found him. The only difference is: he now knows what kind of hero  he can be. 

Written by Kofi Outlaw

'Drive, or the Hero in Eclipse' by Christopher Sharrett

Click on the above image to find the article posted by Film International on 'Drive' directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. 

Postmodern Music Research - Childish Gambino

Childish Gambino POMO

Postmodern Music Theory

According to Kramer, postmodern music:

1. is not simply a repudiation of modernism or its continuation, but has aspects of both a break and an extension
2. is, on some level and in some way, ironic
3. does not respect boundaries between sonorities and procedures of the past and of the present
4. challenged barriers between 'high' and 'low' styles
5. shows disdain for the often unquestioned value of structural unity
6. questions the mutual exclusivity of elitist and populist values
7. avoids totalizing forms (e.g. does not want entire pieces to be tonal or serial or cast in a prescribed formal mold)
8. considers music not as autonomous but as relevant to cultural, social, and political contexts
9. includes quotations of or references to music of many traditions and cultures
10. considers technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music
11. embraces contradictions
12. distrusts binary oppositions
13. includes fragmentations and discontinuities 
14. encompasses pluralism and eclecticism
15. presents multiple meaning and multiple temporalities
16. locates meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers

Postmodern Advertising

This 'Marmite Neglect' advert parodies animal welfare adverts and documentaries. The company took advantage of the omnipresence of the distinctive jar and have come up with an advert that likens the abandonment of Marmite to the neglect of an animal. With the slogan, 'Marmite Neglect', the brand's advert is shot in the style of one of those ubiquitous day-in-the-life animal rescue programmes that appear in daytime TV. On the brand's YouTube channel where the video was posted, the description reads, "Unloved and forgotten, thousands of Marmite jars across the UK are being neglected. This year alone, over 1 in 10 Brits admit they haven't opened their jar in over three months. Through this latest Marmite advert, we've launched an urgent appeal to prevent cruelty, alleviate suffering an promote kindness to all Marmite jars."

 The British cast, starring Rosie Huntington-Whitely and others, make their way through a series of fairytales including Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. This advert is a stylish pastiche of Alice in Wonderland, Aladdin, and The Wizard of Oz - crossing the line of a stagy English pantomime and a catwalk.


This Specsavers advert is a parody of the Lynx commercial. The new TV ad, 'Specs effect', merges the two straplines from both brands - 'Should've gone to Specsavers' and 'The Lynx effect' - to form the strapline 'The should've gone to Specsavers effect', which appears at the end of the ad. Mimicking the original Lynx ad, the parody shows girls running with handbags and shopping bags to get to the man spraying himself with deodrant. However, when they reach him, he puts on a pair of 'ugly' glasses and the women disperse.

Postmodern Theories and Texts

Postmodernism theories and texts from raybloggs

Inception as a Postmodern Text

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