Postmodernism - Jean Baudrillard and Humans/ Les Revenants

Postmodernism - Jean Baudrillard 

Post modern media products deliberately break rules, and deliberately challenge their audience.

Hyperreality - When the representation of something is 'better' than reality.

Post modernism is an impossible theory to define.

The character, 'Anita' in Humans is perfect,  because she doesn't exist.

'Perfect' traits like cooking, cleaning.

The binary opposition of the messy MES of the Hawkins family household, imperfect, and normal; To further highlight the hyperreal fixes that Anita performs upon it once she arrives.

Hawkins Family as a typical stereotypical nuclear family.

Confusing mode of address at the shift from warm tones of Hawkins family setting, to the coldness of the warehouse Anita is wheeled through in a bag. Reinforced by conventional sci-fi synth music.

The usage of the shopping centre as a setting is a stereotypically consumerist setting. 

Sophie questions Joe, 'What if she's not pretty?' as Joe goes through with a new phone/car purchase-like transaction --> Sophie views Anita as a doll to her, objectifying her explicitly. 

Anita is revealed to the audience via a montage of close-up shots --> Builds up audience expectation of a spectacle ahead. --> Hermeneutic code introduced, 'Is she pretty?'

Explicit example of the male gaze in Humans, within the context of the diegetic world, the creator of Anita constructed her to be hegemonically attractive,  sexually pleasing to people like Joe, doll to a young girl like Sophie.

Gemma Chan 

Symmetrical face (wow that's really hot.)

No flaws, spots, 

Anita has.. a nice figure. ;w;

East-Asian, lives up to the racial stereotype that East-Asian women are hegemonically attractive, obedient. 

Manuelle Averado - Pitied, exotic, funny, dangerous.

Anita is so perfect she is almost unpleasant. 

The character of Anita and her hyperreal  representation/ characterisation deliberately challenges the audience to question reality.

Humans is a deeply complex, confusing and controversial tv show that appeals towards a niche audience with it's difficult concepts. 

Les Revenants OP:

mes: death encoded via the usage of dead dear suspended in the lake. 

The couple kissing beside the pair of cross gravestones. Reinforces the shows thematic ties of death, and sex, Les Revenants is built upon the binary opposition between these two things.

Le petit mort - The little death, A.K.A.  Orgasm but in French.

The complicated relationship between sex and death in Les Revenants allows it to appeal to a niche audience.

Conventional and typical opening for the Horror genre. Little girl walking alone by herself in an abandoned area --> Contrapuntal music to this genre/ MES iconography, desaturated cold colours. --

Jump scare --> Killer pops up from beneath the camera --> Highly conventional framing.

Typical for horror films to use contrapuntal sound over juxtaposing visuals, though atypical all the same.

The soundtrack by Glaswegian band, Mogwai, is extremely atypical for a rock band to be performing for a show in the genre of Les Revenants. --> Fans of Mogwai add to Les Revenants audience.