PostmodernismA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWhistory, dating from the 1870s when the perfec-
tion of techniques in colour lithography fi rst
made mass production possible. Posters have
been described as the art gallery of the street,
and indeed the form has appealed to many
artists, such as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–
1901), members of the Art Nouveau movement
and the graphic designers of the Bauhaus and
the De Stijl group. Posters have served every
mode of propaganda, social, political, reli-
gious, commercial. Th e arresting clarity of their
images, combined with words used dramatically,
emotively, humorously have often continued to
impress long after the ideas, events or products
they relate to have faded from attention.
So immediate and memorable are posters, and
so widely recognized, that they have formed a
regular inspiration for image-makers: they have
been imitated, reproduced, turned into cult
objects, transmuted into other meanings. For
example, many diff erent uses have been made
of Alfred Leete’s famous poster of 1914, ‘Your
Country Needs You’, in which Lord Kitchener
points out towards the audience, offering a
formidable challenge to all those who have not
yet volunteered for the First World War.
In peacetime, between elections, advertis-
ing dominates the poster contents of the
billboards, sometimes with bold, witty and
memorable images such as the Guinness adverts
or Benetton’s striking socio-political images.
Posters come into their own in times of protest
or revolution; some of the fi nest posters were
designed and printed during and after the
Russian Revolution of 1917, while the Spanish
Civil War (1936–39) stimulated the production
of hundreds of hard-hitting, passionate and
often tragic images. See topic guide under
media history.
Postmodernism Term referring to cultural,
social and political attitudes and expression
characteristic of the 1980s and 1990s, following
the modernist period of psychoanalysis, func-
tional, clean-line, machine-inspired architecture,
abstract art and stream-of-consciousness fi ction.
Wendy Griswold in Cultures and Societies in a
Changing World (Pine Forge Press, 1994) writes,
‘Many people believe that society has entered
this new stage beyond modernity, a postindus-
trial stage of social development dominated by
media images, in which people are connected
with other places and times through proliferat-
ing channels of information.’
If hope and anxiety were features of modern-
ism, says Griswold, ‘the postmodern person
is characterized by a cool absence of illusion.women’s pleasure ‘is derived not from being a
desiring subject’ but a ‘desired object’.
A particular concern of Gail Dines is the aff ect
porn has on young lives; the way it is in danger
of becoming the main form of sexual education
for boys who are at risk of being desensitized by
degrading images. Indeed porn is seen as being
damaging to the point where it has become a
public health issue.
In a UK Guardian article ‘All authentic desire
is rendered plastic by this multi-billion dollar
industry’ (5 January 2011), Dines says that ‘the
porn business is embedded in a complex value
chain, linking not just film producers and
distributors, but also bankers, software produc-
ers, credit card companies, internet providers,
cable companies, and hotel chains’, and that it is
‘no accident’ that the International Consumer
Electronics Show takes place in Las Vegas ‘at
exactly the same time’ as the Adult Entertain-
ment Expo, the world’s biggest porn conven-
tion: ‘Porn has helped drive the technologies
that expand its own market.’ See censorship;
desensitization; lookism; mobilization;
regulation of investigatory powers act
(ripa)(uk), 2000; stereotype; synergy.
Postcards See picture postcards.
Post-Colonial theory Focuses on an examina-
tion and exploration of the cultural production,
activities and experiences of those societies that
were, until recently, colonies – that is, subject
to European colonisation. Th e term can be used
broadly, but in Th e Post-Colonial Studies Reader
(Routledge, 2005) Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffi ths
and Helen Tiffi n, eds, argue ‘that post-colonial
studies are based in the “historical fact” of
European colonialism, and the diverse material
eff ects to which the phenomenon gave rise’. Th ey
note that this varied fi eld of study encompasses
‘discussion about experience of various kinds:
migration, slavery, suppression, resistance,
representation, difference, race, gender,
place, and responses to the infl uential master
discourses of imperial Europe’. Th ey also remind
us that the impact of colonialism is not just to
be found in the past: ‘All post-colonial societies
are still subject in one way or another to overt
or subtle forms of neo-colonial domination,
and independence has not solved this problem.’
See globalization; glocalization; media
imperialism; orientalism.
▶Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (Vintage
Books, 1994); Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and
Helen Tiffi n, Post-Colonial Studies: Th e Key Concepts
(Routledge, 2007).
Posters Printed posters have had a short but vivid