Call of Duty and the prompt questions

A2 Media Studies
Postmodern Media

Postmodern Media

 The different versions of postmodernism
 Historical period
 Style
 Theoretical approach

Historical period

 From the 1960s until now
 From the age of the jet engine to the age of the fibre optic cable
 Technological developments have made the world a smaller place
 The arrival of Marshall McLuhan’s ‘global village’
 The utopia of the global village has become the utopia / dystopia of the media-saturated society – like broadband, it’s ‘always on’
Style

 Identifying features in cultural artefacts
 Intertextuality – referencing to other texts
 Bricolage – combination or fusion of different generic elements
 Homage – copying other texts ‘out of respect’ (Henry Hill, GoodFellas)
 Parody – copying for laughs e.g. Scream, Date Movie
 Pastiche – copying because of a lack of originality e.g. Pulp Fiction

Theoretical approach

 Decline of grand narratives
 Collapse of communism & the fall of the Berlin Wall
 The end of history
 The end of Marxism
 Collapse of time and space
 Partially evidenced by Pulp Fiction, GTA 4, Big Brother, Britain’s Got Talent – not one story but many

Video games

 In what ways can it be said that video gaming is a post-modern medium?
 In what ways can the COD games be identified as postmodern?


Call of Duty: Finest Hour & Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Conventional text-reader relations

• Once upon a time in a land far, far away…there was no such things as video games, the internet, MSN, mobile phones, Facebook, Youtube, email – no web 2.0. no web 1.0.

• In this pre-historic land before the dawn of the Age of New Media, we simply had media – TV, film, newspapers, magazines, radio.

• It was / is theoreised that essentially these media were consumed passively – we sat and watched / read or listened – audiences were merely receivers of information – they were not producers or distributors

• With the arrival of the new media listed above, all of this changed forever. Audiences are not just consumers but also producers too – web 2.0

• In a medium such as video games, the aydience / the player is completely central to the progress of the narrative – film, TV, radio , magazines, newspapers are not so obviously dependent on the consumer to determine where and how the story ends.

• This bringing to the centre of the action of the role of the consumer / user / player marks the end of conventional text-reader relations and the beginning of something new.


COD: FH & COD: MW2

Some notable video game academics (Anderson, Grossman) view violent video games as dangerous murder simulators. They see the audience as a helpless body ripe for exploitation – underpinning this approach is the conventional approach to text-reader relations.

Discussion points
• When playing video games are audiences active or passive?
• Do these games offer us realistic representations of war or not?
• After reading the reading materials, decide whether COD games can offer us the truth about war or is this not possible?
• Considering the rise in online gaming with serices like X-Box Live and PlayStation Network, how are industries and audiences behaving differently in this post-modern world?

Essay question
Do the COD games reflect reality and therefore help us to learn about the world or do they construct reality and in doing so shape players’ opinions that the world is a dangerous place and the use of violence is the best means to solve problems?

Consider how games do / don’t affect people
Consider how well or not COD reflect real world events suchas WW2 and the current war in Afgahnistan