Postmodernism Built with Breeze blocks

In reading Anderson's Welcome to the Postmodern World and Jean Baudrillard's  The Precession of  Simulacra, it is easy to compare the concepts discussed to music in today's society. The song that popped into my head while reading these articles is a song by an up and coming group called Alt-J and their song "Breezeblocks". 

In the article written by Anderson, he expresses views on postmodernism in our society. He describes a lot of examples about the postmodern world and how it is coming to, and includes his "signs of a postmodern world". He starts off with the first sign, saying that it "is the breakdown of old ways of belief".

In the song, "Breezeblocks", the style of the music video is far from the ordinary music video. When watched all the way through, the video shows a fight between a man and a women and another woman to whom the man kidnapped. The catch in the video, is that the fight is displayed from end to beginning. This form of video display keeps the viewer hooked throughout the entire video, as they feel a growing sense to know what happened, and with each second more about the story is revealed. This style of music video is very different from ordinary music videos, and adds to the point that Anderson discusses.

The second process described by Anderson is what he describes as the "emergence of a new polarization". He goes on to explain this concept by describing it as "a conflict about the nature of social truth itself". Comparing this to the video is rather tricky, but if you dig deep into the symbols and people represented in the video, you can make some sense of things.

Anderson mentions "class, race, and nationality" as examples of the social truth. Looking at "Breezeblocks" the video shows the characters as a stereotypical white male, and his two victims as two average looking white females. At first, theres not much to think of this, it's just three average looking characters, but when deeper thought is added there is more to the thought behind it. In my opinion, this reflects the society in the US, because it shows how there can be evil in even the most generic looking people. It reflects how there is still evil behind things that look normal to us, and how our society allows people to mask themselves as nice people, when their intentions say otherwise.

In the third process explained by Anderson, is the birth of a global culture. In this process, Anderson talks about how "people everywhere struggle in unprecedented ways to find out who they are and what they are". The deeper meaning behind the song "Breezeblocks" relates to this concept very well. In the video, it shows the physical battle of a woman and a man who is her significant other. The other character in the video is another young woman who has been kidnapped by the man.

The song gives reference to how both women are "held down" by the man. The girlfriend is held down by no confidence to leave and because she is scared of the man because of physical abuse. The woman who was kidnapped, is held down physically by both wet clothes and a breezeblock (cinder block). The song talks about this in the opening lyrics, "She may contain the urge to run away, but hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks". This music video shows the struggle people have in relationships, and especially the struggle to get out of relationships that revolve around abuse. It shows how hard it is for one to "find out who they are" which Anderson refers to in his third process.