What Does Marcellus Wallace Look Like? is a kind of found poetry. In some ways it works like The Machine is Us/ing Us, with the wow in the words and the way they appear and move around the screen.
Influences: an artist paints thirty portraits on his tummy. (via Grow-a-Brain)
The Jeanie Tate Show is a made-for-web talk show hosted from the front seat of a soccer mom's minivan. This ep has Bill Hader of SNL.
Something Blue: David Lynch does rom-com.
Winds of Change: Kodak's in-house digital pep talk video is building buzz. Seems like hype to me but like many of these online vids, you don't have enough context to really make sense of it. Who actually made this and for what purpose? (Compare the UNC breakup vid discussed at Chutry.) Also, I know this was made before the 30 Rock ep where Alec Baldwin says "Booyah!" but I saw Alec Baldwin say it earlier and better than the actor (?) in the Kodak video.
2/28/2007
2/27/2007
Wired takes the videosnacks meme and busts it wide open, proclaiming on its cover: Snack Culture! I first read the metaphor describing online videos as snacks (in contrast to the full meals that are TV shows and movies) in this November interview with the CEO of Brightcove. Now Wired is applying it to everything that has gotten shorter or smaller, from music and web apps to TV shows (mobisodes, say) and celeb gossip. Even t-shirts are snacks now. Bon appetit.
NPRgasm: Terri Gross interviews Ira Glass about adapting This American Life from radio to TV. And Glass is interviewed and photographed in Good. There are trailers for the new show at the This American Life website.
Jonathan Dayton + Valerie Faris
My In Media Res post today is called "Indie Volkswagens on Screens Big and Small" and is commentary on Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris's VW ad from 1999 called "Milky Way," which you might remember as the one with the great Nick Drake song. Dayton and Faris directed Little Miss Sunshine, hence the "indie Volkswagens" angle. This discussion is a spin-off of from a longer project on indie culture, which is also the source of the paper I am giving next week at SCMS (which I intend to post to the web when it's ready). I hope to say more about my SCMS paper as the conference approaches. In the meantime, more Dayton and Faris.
Before directing their debut film, D+F were prolific producers and directors of commercials and music videos. As I mention at In Media Res, their demo reel can be viewed at the website of their company, Bob Industries. (Unfortch, it's full of that annoying Flash-based design which makes it impossible to link directly to a page within the site.) Their aesthetic is marked by humor and often whimsy. They are boldly imaginative. Although the look of any piece is dictated by the product being sold (whether a song or consumer good), they tend to like bright colors and outlandish situations. It's not hard to see links from their music videos to Little Miss Sunshine on the level of the visuals.
Indie films are often criticized for being visually boring, just a lot of scenes of people talking in closeups and two shots with drab mise en scène and rudimentary cinematography and editing. Fair enough, but Little Miss Sunshine has lots of clever compositions, as in the scene where the son Dwayne learns he is colorblind and runs from the van to scream "fuck" framed kneeled over in the foreground with his family and their broken VW bus in the far-off background talking about him.
(It's around the 2:00 mark of this clip, which is the source of that low-res grab.) At once, the directors show us Dwayne's rage--he has been mute until now--and the sympathy and confusion his family feels, and underlines the fact that he cannot escape their dysfunction, that even as he runs away they are there watching him. And the VW being a bright yellow gives it a vividness we associate with advertising imagery.
Many of the music videos of the D+F oeuvre that I tracked down online are well worth a look and they would make a strong DVD compilation. The Smashing Pumpkins's "Tonight, Tonight," an homage to Méliès's A Trip to the Moon, won six MTV music video awards. It is retro sci-fi retro meets Victorian costume drama, and the mashup of styles seems to work with the 90s alternative love song. (Updated 3/20/08, for more see this illustrated analysis of "Tonight, Tonight" by Kimberly.) Oasis's "All Around the World" uses trippy, collage-like animation with psychedelic colors, asserting a wild and vivid imagination. (I was going to link to Jane's Addiction and Porno for Pyros videos here to make some similar points, but someone sent YouTube a nastygram and they are no longer available.)
Many videos, like "All Around the World," integrate animation and live action. "She's Got Issues" by The Offspring is pretty amusing, mixing grotesque cartoons and grungy cinematography. Red Hot Chili Peppers's "Californication" uses videogame imagery. Most impressive is the cover of Tom Waits's "I Don't Want to Grow Up," in which The Ramones find themselves in a comic book, complete with frame lines.
Extreme's "More Than Words" -- the most infectious earworm ever recorded -- is given a tasteful black and white treatment with passionate closeups and an elegantly gliding camera. It has a nice bit of humor thrown in to lighten the seriousness of a hair-rock band doing an acoustic ballad: the drummer and bass player sit around looking really bored and gently mocking them with a waving cigarette lighter. You're welcome for getting that song stuck in your head.
More:
-Wikipedia: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris.
-Interview with Dayton and Faris in Metromix in which they talk about the creative process of making commercials and videos, balancing artistic expression with the need to satisfy the client.
-Interview with Dayton and Faris on Fresh Air (also appearing is Little Miss Sunshine's Oscar-winning screenwriter, Michael Arndt, who revels that his very own brother is indeed a Proust scholar).
Before directing their debut film, D+F were prolific producers and directors of commercials and music videos. As I mention at In Media Res, their demo reel can be viewed at the website of their company, Bob Industries. (Unfortch, it's full of that annoying Flash-based design which makes it impossible to link directly to a page within the site.) Their aesthetic is marked by humor and often whimsy. They are boldly imaginative. Although the look of any piece is dictated by the product being sold (whether a song or consumer good), they tend to like bright colors and outlandish situations. It's not hard to see links from their music videos to Little Miss Sunshine on the level of the visuals.
Indie films are often criticized for being visually boring, just a lot of scenes of people talking in closeups and two shots with drab mise en scène and rudimentary cinematography and editing. Fair enough, but Little Miss Sunshine has lots of clever compositions, as in the scene where the son Dwayne learns he is colorblind and runs from the van to scream "fuck" framed kneeled over in the foreground with his family and their broken VW bus in the far-off background talking about him.
(It's around the 2:00 mark of this clip, which is the source of that low-res grab.) At once, the directors show us Dwayne's rage--he has been mute until now--and the sympathy and confusion his family feels, and underlines the fact that he cannot escape their dysfunction, that even as he runs away they are there watching him. And the VW being a bright yellow gives it a vividness we associate with advertising imagery.
Many of the music videos of the D+F oeuvre that I tracked down online are well worth a look and they would make a strong DVD compilation. The Smashing Pumpkins's "Tonight, Tonight," an homage to Méliès's A Trip to the Moon, won six MTV music video awards. It is retro sci-fi retro meets Victorian costume drama, and the mashup of styles seems to work with the 90s alternative love song. (Updated 3/20/08, for more see this illustrated analysis of "Tonight, Tonight" by Kimberly.) Oasis's "All Around the World" uses trippy, collage-like animation with psychedelic colors, asserting a wild and vivid imagination. (I was going to link to Jane's Addiction and Porno for Pyros videos here to make some similar points, but someone sent YouTube a nastygram and they are no longer available.)
Many videos, like "All Around the World," integrate animation and live action. "She's Got Issues" by The Offspring is pretty amusing, mixing grotesque cartoons and grungy cinematography. Red Hot Chili Peppers's "Californication" uses videogame imagery. Most impressive is the cover of Tom Waits's "I Don't Want to Grow Up," in which The Ramones find themselves in a comic book, complete with frame lines.
Extreme's "More Than Words" -- the most infectious earworm ever recorded -- is given a tasteful black and white treatment with passionate closeups and an elegantly gliding camera. It has a nice bit of humor thrown in to lighten the seriousness of a hair-rock band doing an acoustic ballad: the drummer and bass player sit around looking really bored and gently mocking them with a waving cigarette lighter. You're welcome for getting that song stuck in your head.
More:
-Wikipedia: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris.
-Interview with Dayton and Faris in Metromix in which they talk about the creative process of making commercials and videos, balancing artistic expression with the need to satisfy the client.
-Interview with Dayton and Faris on Fresh Air (also appearing is Little Miss Sunshine's Oscar-winning screenwriter, Michael Arndt, who revels that his very own brother is indeed a Proust scholar).
2/22/2007
Slate: Why all the hating on indie-quirk? Of Little Miss Sunshine: "why should anyone be so annoyed by a genial comedy that clearly satisfies the genre-requirement that it be funny?" (The article also defends The Royal Tennenbaums, You and Me and Everyone We Know, and Garden State sorta).
TV themes galore! is a finetune playlist by Whitney Matheson. Would be excellent for playing "name that show" among people who love pop culture as much as you do.
2/21/2007
Music + video:
1983 MTV, in two parts, recorded to videotape and uploaded to Google Video with commercials intact. Prince, The Tubes, Night Rider, Huey Lewis and the News, The Police...
"You Tube" is a love song.
OK Go's new video, with the band decked out in paisley to match the studio backdrop, is their effort at matching "Here it Goes Again." Not quite.
Blake Lewis might be the next American Idol. He would be a nice change from the red state Idols who have been dominant until now. He's from Seattle and has an indie sensibility (compared with the other Idols, anyway). Lots of tattoos, seems comfortable on camera, and cleans up real nice. He's the one who wowed in the auditions with his beat-box. We learned last night that he can really sing, too.
1983 MTV, in two parts, recorded to videotape and uploaded to Google Video with commercials intact. Prince, The Tubes, Night Rider, Huey Lewis and the News, The Police...
"You Tube" is a love song.
OK Go's new video, with the band decked out in paisley to match the studio backdrop, is their effort at matching "Here it Goes Again." Not quite.
Blake Lewis might be the next American Idol. He would be a nice change from the red state Idols who have been dominant until now. He's from Seattle and has an indie sensibility (compared with the other Idols, anyway). Lots of tattoos, seems comfortable on camera, and cleans up real nice. He's the one who wowed in the auditions with his beat-box. We learned last night that he can really sing, too.
2/20/2007
At Category D, Chris Cagle's film studies blog, there is a discussion going on about post-classicism. It began with Chris's post in response to an item on the Bordwell-Thompson blog. I left a comment at Chris's blog. Chris has responded to me in another post, to which Brad Schauer has left a comment. In a nutshell: is it appropriate to refer to post-studio era Hollywood cinema, and especially to contemporary Hollywood cinema, as post-classical? Many film scholars including Chris think it is. David and Kristin, two main authorities on classicism in cinema, disagree. Brad and I, Wisconsinites both, are not surprisingly with David and Kristin. If this is too inside baseball for you, I have another item.
Jeremy Butler has posted an In Media Res entry on the new sit-com (with a clip of My Name is Earl). He asks some provocative questions, e.g., "Is the sitcom truly dead, or is it just evolving into something more interesting?" I have left a comment there with some thoughts on that question (dead no, evolving yes) and a link to my previous discussion of this topic.
Finally, I have created a sidebar feed for links to comments I have made on other blogs. I did this by first creating a del.icio.us tag to use in collecting these links and then using that tag's feed (didja know that all del.icio.us tags have feeds?) in a blogger RSS sidebar widget.
Jeremy Butler has posted an In Media Res entry on the new sit-com (with a clip of My Name is Earl). He asks some provocative questions, e.g., "Is the sitcom truly dead, or is it just evolving into something more interesting?" I have left a comment there with some thoughts on that question (dead no, evolving yes) and a link to my previous discussion of this topic.
Finally, I have created a sidebar feed for links to comments I have made on other blogs. I did this by first creating a del.icio.us tag to use in collecting these links and then using that tag's feed (didja know that all del.icio.us tags have feeds?) in a blogger RSS sidebar widget.
2/18/2007
An animated playing-cards-themed credit sequence is the best part of Casino Royale, which was last evening's entertainment. We went to a budget theater in a part of town we almost never visit. It was like taking a time machine to the 1980s, before the megaplexes supplanted the multiplexes. The grade of the seats is a shallow slope rather than a stadium cliff, the décor is neon, and not an elevator in sight. At Greenfield, Wisconsin's Silver Cinemas Budget South, it costs only $2.00 to get in on a Saturday night. $2.00! It's twice that to order a movie on PPV, and then you get pan-and-scan and the small screen. There was a big crowd out last night and they laughed and even cheered at the right parts. I remember budget theaters with sticky floors and screaming children from my days in Madison, but this one was clean and the projection was even acceptable. So second run still exists. It hasn't been swallowed up by the ancillaries. As for the post-credits part of the movie: more beefcake than I remember in Bond films of old, and a bit too earnest and sincere for my taste. I would prefer a ridiculous, high camp Bond. I am flabbergasted that Glieberman put it first on his top ten (no link, as EW doesn't want you to read this online). But it's a decent, workmanlike thriller, with about thirty minutes too much running time (I would have started to trim with the romantic scenes in the final act). The best action set piece comes early, with Bond chasing a baddie across a crane perched hundreds of feet in the air. It's so gripping it makes it hard for the rest of the film to measure up. And my favorite line: when the barkeep asks, shaken or stirred, Bond retorts, "Do I look like I give a damn?"
2/16/2007
Netvibes (Wikipedia) is a personalized homepage like Google's, to which you can add RSS feeds and various other useful things (weather, e-mail, eBay auction-tracking, etc.). One thing netvibes can do that other similar apps can't is apply the social dimension of web experience: it lets you share your personalized pages with other like-minded people. The screenshots here are from a netvibes tab I made of feeds of blogs by people who study film/media or that might be of interest to them (it's also available in a new button on my sidebar).
If you set up a netvibes account, you can add this tab and then reconfigure it as you like. This kind of remixing, personalizing, and sharing of modular content is one of the most exciting things about the contemporary web. And yet, many websites are keeping their full RSS feeds from us, making us click over to them to get the full story. Increasingly, I am interpreting this lack of full feed as a kind of arrogance or passive aggression, as though people are saying, "you come to me, I don't feel like coming to you." Increasingly I am avoiding partial-feed websites in favor of full feed ones. I would rather be able to read it the way I want. According to some authorities, blogs that switch to full feeds often get more readers. (I am too lazy to track down where I read that this afternoon, sorry.)
Here are some more newfangled web tools I have recently been playing around with (or contemplating playing around with) and a little bit of scholarly prose to put it all in context:
-Peel, an MP3 blog reader for the Mac.
-Pipes, the new masher-upper from Yahoo!
-OttoBib, an online automated bibliography generator in the citation style of your choice.
-FeedYes, to create an RSS feed for a site that doesn't have an RSS feed.
-"Remix and Remixability" by Lev Manovich.
If you set up a netvibes account, you can add this tab and then reconfigure it as you like. This kind of remixing, personalizing, and sharing of modular content is one of the most exciting things about the contemporary web. And yet, many websites are keeping their full RSS feeds from us, making us click over to them to get the full story. Increasingly, I am interpreting this lack of full feed as a kind of arrogance or passive aggression, as though people are saying, "you come to me, I don't feel like coming to you." Increasingly I am avoiding partial-feed websites in favor of full feed ones. I would rather be able to read it the way I want. According to some authorities, blogs that switch to full feeds often get more readers. (I am too lazy to track down where I read that this afternoon, sorry.)
Here are some more newfangled web tools I have recently been playing around with (or contemplating playing around with) and a little bit of scholarly prose to put it all in context:
-Peel, an MP3 blog reader for the Mac.
-Pipes, the new masher-upper from Yahoo!
-OttoBib, an online automated bibliography generator in the citation style of your choice.
-FeedYes, to create an RSS feed for a site that doesn't have an RSS feed.
-"Remix and Remixability" by Lev Manovich.
2/15/2007
On the New Yorker's website, Jane Mayer talks over scenes from 24, offering up some of the ideas from her article in the current issue (previously). She sounds more polemical speaking on the clip than she does in writing. At the end of the video, she lowers her guard a little and lets on that she actually does like the show, or at least that she finds it riveting. (This kind of audio commentary over video clips might be a good idea for In Media Res or other forms of online media criticism.)
One more thing... Lots of 24/torture links at the blog CineFile Video, well worth checking out.
One more thing... Lots of 24/torture links at the blog CineFile Video, well worth checking out.
Jeff Jarvis has debuted Idol Critic, a videoblog to rehash AI starring Liza Persky of 39 Second Single (previously). The first episode is online and it's clever and witty. The creators hope you'll make response videos to Idol Critic and post them to the web. Responses to responses to responses...the new web way.
2/13/2007
Henry Jenkins admits that 90% of user-generated content is crud. And he is the world's leading champion of user-generated content!
So this falls in the 90. It might even be the worst. video. ever. It's called Goodbye Anna Nicole - Candle in the Wind 2007 - JME and its creator, Mike, offers this caveat: "I would be the first to admit I am not a singer so to any comments about the vocals I would quote Catherine Tate 'am I bothered'". Huh? It begins:
Have you been watching Anna on the cable nets? I'm with Jarvis, who writes, "Watching the coverage certainly makes me want to wash it off me."
(Pardon my opportunistic use of Jenkins...his post is of course very thoughtful and makes an excellent point about the value of participatory culture being as much about process as it is about product.)
So this falls in the 90. It might even be the worst. video. ever. It's called Goodbye Anna Nicole - Candle in the Wind 2007 - JME and its creator, Mike, offers this caveat: "I would be the first to admit I am not a singer so to any comments about the vocals I would quote Catherine Tate 'am I bothered'". Huh? It begins:
Goodbye Anna NicoleOh boy.
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled
They crawled out of the woodwork
And they whispered into your brain
They set you on the treadmill
That gave you so much heartache
Have you been watching Anna on the cable nets? I'm with Jarvis, who writes, "Watching the coverage certainly makes me want to wash it off me."
(Pardon my opportunistic use of Jenkins...his post is of course very thoughtful and makes an excellent point about the value of participatory culture being as much about process as it is about product.)
Jane Mayer on 24 in the New Yorker (via zp, chuck) is a Fast Food Nation for liberal TV junkies. Those Chicken McNuggets might be delectable, but the conditions of their creation would make any sensible person think twice before dunking them in honey, and their consumption exacts an unreasonable cost. Mayer's piece subtly makes the case that the brain behind 24, Joel Surnow, is a wingnut, and that U.S. military personnel who watch the show model themselves on Jack Bauer, the heroic torturer. Every sentence of Mayer's piece seems designed to make any leftish 24 viewer blush a little redder. Nice Jewish boy...raising his three kids Catholic. Calls his show "the Hollywood television annex to the White House." Buddies with Limbaugh and Coulter...wants to rehabilitate the good name of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Thanks to Surnow, everyone in the U.S. military wants to be like Jack Bauer and extract vital info from terrorists by injecting mysterious pain-inducing drugs that get carted around in a silver suitcase. I made up the last bit but you get the idea. It's a right-wing show having a right-wing effect. No surprises there, just occasion for a gut check. But what makes 24 so popular among liberals? Everyone I know seems to watch and like it, and my peeps are hardly the magnetic yellow ribbon crowd. Here are some thoughts on why, as Mayer notes, the show is popular with folks like Barbara Streisand and Bill Clinton.
-We like it for the narrative conceit and the suspense, and in spite of the politics (or without much reflection on the show's message). This is me, sometimes. Other times I find the narrative conceit tiresome, the situations excessively contrived, and the suspense cheap and repetitive. I always have the sense that they're making it up as they go along (which is the problem with Lost for me too) and I hate having that sense--I like to feel I can trust my TV storytellers. When I'm bored by the narrative conceit (or find it excessively familiar now in season 6), not gripped by the suspense, and attentive to the right-wingness of it all, why do I continue to watch?
-We like it as a wish fulfillment: if only the war on terror were being fought by people like Jack, a courageous hunk with a preternatural pain threshhold and a perfect moral compass. In other words, we oppose the "war on terror" as framed by the Bushies but wouldn't mind a war on terror carried out by the likes of Jack and Chloe and President Palmer. This is a suspended-disbelief stance that allows for enjoyment without endorsement. This stance describes me too, sometimes. More often I feel that it may be wish fulfillment for others, but it's worst-fear fulfillment for me. Maybe there is a masochistic pleasure in realizing your worst fears, a kind of thrill you get from entertaining a paranoid fantasy.
-We use it as cultural slumming. Many leftish sorts (like my brother) apparently like to listen to conservative talk radio, too, not to hear their opinions voiced but for that "can you believe he said that?!?" feeling. For a sense of moral superiority. And to know what they other side says so that we can beat them in arguments. I don't like right-wing talk radio, but I do sometimes find the politics of 24 fascinating in a freakshow sort of way. Other times, it just leaves me aghast and I say, no more! Then, this season, I keep watching.
And...
Heather Havrilesky, funny as ever, compares Jack's torture methods with childbirth and praises the show for jumping the shark. It's not a bug, it's a feature! I love.
Nikki Finke wants to organize a boycott. Do these things ever work?
Jennifer Holt's In Media Res entry offers a vid clip and commentary. She says she would argue that the notion that the show is right-wing is too simplistic but doesn't make the argument. Jennifer: I want to know!
LAT.
Yahoo News.
24 Bingo.
"The Orwellian Ideology of 24", a slightly overheated essay by Matt McCaffrey, who says that the show's politics "almost makes [him] want to root for the bad guys."
-We like it for the narrative conceit and the suspense, and in spite of the politics (or without much reflection on the show's message). This is me, sometimes. Other times I find the narrative conceit tiresome, the situations excessively contrived, and the suspense cheap and repetitive. I always have the sense that they're making it up as they go along (which is the problem with Lost for me too) and I hate having that sense--I like to feel I can trust my TV storytellers. When I'm bored by the narrative conceit (or find it excessively familiar now in season 6), not gripped by the suspense, and attentive to the right-wingness of it all, why do I continue to watch?
-We like it as a wish fulfillment: if only the war on terror were being fought by people like Jack, a courageous hunk with a preternatural pain threshhold and a perfect moral compass. In other words, we oppose the "war on terror" as framed by the Bushies but wouldn't mind a war on terror carried out by the likes of Jack and Chloe and President Palmer. This is a suspended-disbelief stance that allows for enjoyment without endorsement. This stance describes me too, sometimes. More often I feel that it may be wish fulfillment for others, but it's worst-fear fulfillment for me. Maybe there is a masochistic pleasure in realizing your worst fears, a kind of thrill you get from entertaining a paranoid fantasy.
-We use it as cultural slumming. Many leftish sorts (like my brother) apparently like to listen to conservative talk radio, too, not to hear their opinions voiced but for that "can you believe he said that?!?" feeling. For a sense of moral superiority. And to know what they other side says so that we can beat them in arguments. I don't like right-wing talk radio, but I do sometimes find the politics of 24 fascinating in a freakshow sort of way. Other times, it just leaves me aghast and I say, no more! Then, this season, I keep watching.
And...
Heather Havrilesky, funny as ever, compares Jack's torture methods with childbirth and praises the show for jumping the shark. It's not a bug, it's a feature! I love.
Nikki Finke wants to organize a boycott. Do these things ever work?
Jennifer Holt's In Media Res entry offers a vid clip and commentary. She says she would argue that the notion that the show is right-wing is too simplistic but doesn't make the argument. Jennifer: I want to know!
LAT.
Yahoo News.
24 Bingo.
"The Orwellian Ideology of 24", a slightly overheated essay by Matt McCaffrey, who says that the show's politics "almost makes [him] want to root for the bad guys."
2/11/2007
Happy Darwin Day! Charles Darwin was born on this day in 1809, and now many people observe February 12 as "an international recognition of science and humanity." This is supposed to be an antidote to our excess of bogus, commercialized holidays. Speaking of which, "There's nothing more deadly to romance than Valentine's Day," according to the host of This American Life, Ira Glass.
(Wikipedia)
For my Principles of Media Studies class, I have created a glossary of terms on copyright. Feel free to use it, remix it, adapt it to suit your needs. Leave a comment here if you have thoughts about how it might be improved.
2/08/2007
39 Second Single, about a woman's experiences going on dates, is a nice change from the typical videoblog. Its star is neither young nor male, and she wins your sympathy.
Things you CAN'T do when you're NOT in a pool is excellent physical comedy from the online troupe Don't Be That Guy.
The daily podshow GeekBrief.TV with Cali Lewis has become an unexpected pleasure during my video iPod-enhanced workouts. I have tried watching TV shows on the iPod (no movies yet, though I do want to give it a shot) but I'm happiest watching content made for the very small screen on the very small screen (like The Show, above). GeekBrief.TV is about gadgets and I'm not that into gadgets, but I like Lewis's casual charm and, I guess, I'm kind of getting into gadgets. Thanks to GeekBrief, I really want a Nokia N800.
The Machine is Us/ing Us is a video that puts the ideas behind web 2.0 into a compelling visual form. I might show it in my Principles of Media Studies class when we get around to talking about the web and participatory culture.
In Media Res, at the Media Commons site, has been around for a few months; as of this week the curated video series is offering new entries daily. See for instance the press conference with the Aqua Teen clowns and accompanying discussion by Jeffrey Sconce.
Jonathan Lethem has an inspired essay on plagiarism and artistic creation in Harper's called "The Ecstasy of Influence." He writes:
link
appropriation, mimicry, quotation, allusion, and sublimated collaboration consist of a kind of sine qua non of the creative act, cutting across all forms and genres in the realm of cultural production.and
industries of cultural capital, who profit not from creating but from distributing, see the sale of culture as a zero-sum game. The piano-roll publishers fear the record companies, who fear the cassette-tape manufacturers, who fear the online vendors, who fear whoever else is next in line to profit most quickly from the intangible and infinitely reproducible fruits of an artist's labor. It has been the same in every industry and with every technological innovation. Jack Valenti, speaking for the MPAA: “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.”and
Artists and their surrogates who fall into the trap of seeking recompense for every possible second use end up attacking their own best audience members for the crime of exalting and enshrining their work.and
Kenneth Koch once said, “I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.” It was a charming confession, and a rare one. For so many artists, the act of creativity is intended as a Napoleonic imposition of one's uniqueness upon the universe—après moi le déluge of copycats! And for every James Joyce or Woody Guthrie or Martin Luther King Jr., or Walt Disney, who gathered a constellation of voices in his work, there may seem to be some corporation or literary estate eager to stopper the bottle: cultural debts flow in, but they don't flow out. We might call this tendency “source hypocrisy.” Or we could name it after the most pernicious source hypocrites of all time: Disnial.and
Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The citations that go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read; they are quotations without inverted commas. The kernel, the soul—let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism.The essay is itself a tour de force of literary sampling. Don't skip the ending.
link
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