UPSC CSAT : Reading comprehension Home Exercise- 19 PASSAGE B

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Wednesday, 1 April 2015

Reading comprehension Home Exercise- 19 PASSAGE B

Is postmodernism a period a style or set of styles an ethos, a set of sensibilities or a politics of cultural experience and production in which style and image predominate? Postmodernism. Unlike modernism, has been such a mass cultural phenomenon that we probably all know something about it. In 1988 MTV launched Postmodern TV, a program whose title and context clues us in to the fact that postmodernism is at home with the very popular culture so criticized and disdained by many modernist cultural critics and producers. Postmodernism may not be about style alone, but style is one of the chief characteristics of a postmodern ethos. The term” postmodern” has been used to describe fashions, and was even used to describe those politicians in the 1990s that used the media quite heavily in their campaigns. It can be argued, along the lines suggested by Baudrillard’s concept of simulacra, that they used the media to produce something other than simply representations of themselves. 

They actually produced themselves through myriad media images and texts, Generating identities as simularcrahyperreal  identities with no recourse back to a real person, their composite media image being more real than real. Whereas modernist art and theory were distinguished by their elitism toward media and the popular postmodernism has been at one with the popular form its origins. Although postmodernism is not only style and image, it relies heavily on style and image to produce its words. In the period associated with late (post- World War II) modernist thinking and movements, critics spoke from positions they imagined to be outside –specifically, politically of aesthetically above – popular culture in order to criticize that culture, or to reveal the ideological investments hidden beneath the glitzy surface of representations and images.

Postmodernism dispels the idea that surface does not contain meaning in itself, or that structures lie beneath the mask of surface appearances. The modernist way of thinking about structure did not stop with the emergence of postmodernism; this approach to art, criticism and theory continues throughout the 1980s and 1990s overlapping with tendencies associated with the postmodern critical sensibility is the acknowledgement within the latter that we cannot occupy a position outside of the milieu we analyze; we cannot get beneath the surface t find something more real or more true. As postmodern theorist Santiago Colas puts it, “we may attempt to forget or ignore mass culture, but it will neither forget nor ignore us.” Postmodernism complicates the divisions between high and low culture, elite and mass consciousness, and in doing so makes it impossible to occupy a critical viewpoint on culture from outside or above it.

This attitude is not limited to criticism. It can be found even within advertising. We can identify a postmodern sensibility, for example, in those advertisements that give us a fragmented cryptic set of images or story line followed by a brief and discrete logo on the screen, or tucked into the corner of the print ad image. No product no mention of company name s needed for the viewer who is so thoroughly steeped in the world of media and consumption. Indeed, it would be an insult for manufacturers to think they needed the prompting of goods or direct signifiers of the company in an address to the consumer who lives its products as a part of his or her identity. Moreover these advertisements need not sell their viewers on function or quality. They promote their goods as embodiments of style –style we can live by wearing or using these products. One of the aspects of postmodernism we are getting at here, then, is that it entails a reflexive recognition of our lived relation within the world of the simulacra. This is a world lived at the level of consumption, images, media and the popular.

4.       Which of the following is /are true of post- modernism?
A.      It goes beyond the surface to find deeper meanings inside.
B.      In post- modernism, one can become are outside spectator yet not participate in it, so as to analyze it.
A.       A  only
B.      A  and   B
C.      B  only
D.      Neither A   nor B

5.       The post –modern politicians using media in their campaigns
A.      Exploited it heavily to project a distorted public image of themselves.
B.      Exploited it massively to create an image different from their real one
C.      To launch attacks on their political rivals.
D.      None of these.

6.       The author is mainly concerned with
A.      Discussing different aspects of post- modernism and popular culture.
B.      Outlining the facets of post-modernism and modernism.
C.      Talking about the impact of post- modernism on media, especially TV.
D.      Contrasting modernism and post-modernism.

7.       A post – modernist sensibility in the realm of advertising is exemplified by
A.      A sketchy ad without any images.
B.      A brief ad without any storyline
C.      An ad, followed by a logo, but no product or company name.
D.      Ads appealing to intangible attributes of the products advertised.
8.       Which of the following best describes the structure of the above article?
A.      The passage discusses a new idea, followed by several views and examples to support it.
B.      It discusses the salient points of a theory and then gives examples to support it.
C.      It is put more in the nature of questions,  which are left unanswered
D.      The passage is presented in the form of a compromise between competing theories on a topic.

Answer:


4.       C   please refers to the first line of the third paragraph along with the second sentence.

5.       B    “…. They used the media to produce something other than simply representations of themselves”.

6.       D  The author works towards highlighting the difference between modernism and post- modernism. Hence D.

7.       A  The beginning lines of the third paragraph amply support the idea.

8.       A  The author tries to show the differences between modernism and post- modernism and illustrate them through examples. Hence A.

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