Post-Modernism and the Popular Music of the 90s. Pastiche, Parody and False Nostalgia, Mirroring the Ghosts of the Past

Essay from the year 2019 in the subject Sociology - Culture, Technology, Peoples / Nations, grade: N/A. professional essay, University of Rome 'La Sapienza' (CORIS), course: Journalism, Media and English, language: English, abstract: There is much in the culture that seems mystifying especially if we look at what had happened in the sphere of popular music in the 1990s with regard to music, fashions and hairstyles. In fact, the period saw the strong and more tangible introduction of the post-modern age and thinking into popular culture, which saw mainstream and alternative music styles become somewhat joined together in the minds of many. The 1990s began an age when everyone said that everything should be accepted resulting in a pick n' mix culture appearing, which had seemed to come out of nowhere in a sense, yet was all around us. Based on my lectures for a Media and Journalism course I held at the University of Rome, this essay attempts to identify some of the characteristics of the 1990s in popular music in relation to Anglo Saxon countries/cultures and tries to offer an explanation of why they may have appeared and existed.

Cyrus Manasseh is a guitarist, philosopher and musicologist. He teaches in universities and privately as a higher education consultant. Prof. Cyrus Manasseh PhD is also a Freelance Researcher and author of the books 'The Lead Guitarist'; 'The Island Library'; and 'The Problematic of Video Art in the Museum 1968-90'. He is an international scholar and has presented his ideas in a number of countries. He is author of numerous essays and scientific articles in the field of art history, film, music. architecture, video, museums, evolving media and theatre-drama. His published essays and articles include: 'The Words of Gandhi and How the Libertarian Collectivist Anti-individualistic Post-Modern Turn has Shaped our World,' 'Against Roland Barthes. Why Ibsen's "A Doll's House" is Not a Feminist Text, but a Humanist one,' 'Revising Animation Genres: Jan Svankmajer, Tim Burton and James Cameron and the Study of Myth,' 'Cinema and Mass Media in Modernity. Walter Benjamin and the Reproducible Image,' 'The Problem with the Influence of the Moving Image in Society Today, the Alter-Modern and the Disappearance of a Focus on the Internal', The Art Museum in the 19th Century J. J. Winckelmann's Influence on the Establishing of the Classical Paradigm of the Art Museum; Art without the Aesthetic? Defining Conceptual & Post-Conceptual Practices'; 'Art, Language & Machines: Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia & Raymond Roussel' and many others. He has presented his research at international academic forums in London, Sydney, Perth, Venice, Prague and Harvard where he was session chair and has lectured and has taught extensively in Italian, Irish and Australian Universities and Colleges. He was a finalist for the International Award for Excellence in the Constructed Environment Journal Writers Award Annual Prize for the academic essay 'An Inquiry into the Design and the Aesthetics of the Venice Biennale Pavilions and Film'. He is particularly focused on the problematic of post-modernism for culture and society. His novels 'The Lead Guitarist' and 'The Island Library' are currently available.