Interdisciplinary Studies in Media and Culture

Analysis of Critical Dimensions of the Postmodern City in Cinema

Document Type : .

Authors

Siamak Ghazipour 1
Abolfazl Toghraei 1
Mohammad Javad Mahdavi nejad 2

1 M.A. in Urban Design, Tabriz Islamic Art University

2 Ph.D. in Architecture, Tarbiat Modarres University

Abstract
Postmodernism is a result of the convergence between the philosophical turn in approaches to the nature of aesthetics and the increasing flow of media in today’s world. It can be suggested that media is both a cause and an effect of postmodernism. On the other hand, media depict, both directly and indirectly, association and transformation of phenomena. As such, media is a powerful critical tool which can scrutiny everything (even itself) with critical eyes. Media is able to create surreal and imaginary visual settings, an ability which enables it to fulfil aesthetic needs of the postmodern philosophy for creating illusions of reality and producing meta-realities. The present paper aimed to study how cinema, as a visual medium, is used to depict failures of postmodernism in the area of urbanism. Several two-dimensional matrixes were therefore designed, whose dimensions included critical formal aspects of the postmodern city and formal elements of cinema. The final matrix presents a visual conception of postmodern urban themes and systematically illustrates different critical aspects of the postmodern city as depicted in cinema. The paper also suggests that imagination and business, as two aspects of postmodern urbanism, have been depicted more than other aspects and that function, similarity and repetition, and difference and variation were used more than other formal elements.

Keywords

City
Postmodernism
neo-formalist film theory
critical approach
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Interdisciplinary Studies in Media and Culture
Volume 3, Issue 2 - Serial Number 6
February 2014
Pages 130-157

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