Questions We Can Help You To Answer

Paper instructions:

I am sure most of you have already seen the video below called the Evolution of Dance posted to YouTube back in 2006 (if you haven't, view it now). It became one of the most watched videos on the internet generating 70 million views in the first eight months. Today, over ten years later, it has nearly 300 million views. If you have seen this video I want you to go back and watch it again, but this time watching it through a different lens -- as a phenomenon of the Postmodern condition.

As you watch the video think back to the ideas we have discussed in regard to Postmodernism: hard truth vs. soft truth, pluralism, references to the past, varied stylistic approaches, varied artistic media, the conflation of high/low culture, and Postmodern's paradoxical nature. Think about the differences we discussed in regard to Modernism and Postmodernism -- how modernists attempted to operate outside of culture while postmodernists were happy to work within it. Also, think about the Postmodern dilemma we discussed where forms of mass media have the potential to engage diverse modes of thought while simultaneously having the potential of standardizing thought among diverse groups of people.

After viewing the video I want you to discuss possible ways in which this video represents the Postmodern condition. To help get you started you may want to approach the question from one of two ways.

For the first option, you can focus your analysis on the content of the video and how it relates to aspects of Postmodernism like references to the past.
For the second option, you can focus your analysis on the nature of YouTube in general discussing how the fact that anyone can post and disseminate content. How does the viral nature of YouTube and the internet in general relate to the concepts we discussed in regard to Postmodernism and mass media.

Your response should be specifically describing how the video relates to key aspects of Postmodernism.