Christmas Came a Little Early

When asked to find a piece of fan art that was of interest to me, I was going to go immediately to youtube and find some True Blood vids. But something compelled me to type into google “Bollywood vidders.” Maybe it’s because I spoke to both my father and my mother today and missed home a wee bit? Maybe it’s because I wanted to throw something new into the mix? Or maybe… I wanted to see if there were people out there who remixed Bollywood movies. And guess what, there are. Lots.

I found that there is a large trend of Ranishek vids. For those of you who don’t know, Rani Mukerji is an actress who has done a few movies with Abhishek Bachchan. You probably know that last name (or should know since this is big) because his father is Amitabh Bachchan. Big B as they say. So the story goes that Little B and Rani were supposed to marry but things didn’t work out. Apparently, Rani and Little B didn’t work out because she wanted her future husband to live with her and her parents. But Little B is an only son and therefore has his own filial duties to fulfill. Bust. (NB: this reasoning may all be a figment of my mother’s imagination! Nonetheless, hether this narrative is true or not doesn’t matter, what matters is that they DID NOT marry)

Instead… take a stab at who he marries? The most beautiful woman in the world: Aishwarya Rai. So now at red carpets and award shows one can find the beautiful, talented, rich, royal pair sitting together, him dancing around her from time to time, her giggling and it all just hurts so much because they’re just so damn fabulous. It probably hurts more if you’re a Ranishek fan.

Team-Ranishek hasn’t taken it so lightly. There are TONS of vids that take movies of the two and mash them up to show a tumultuous would-be relationship or suggest a continued, passionate longing for one another. Either way, fans miss Ranishek and they’re both angry and sad about it. Take a look at a few and let me know what you think:

Ranishek-Savin Me

Ranishek-Pain

Tere Bina-Without You

Ripping a Scab Open

As per usual, during my procrastination-nation homework breaks I go on facebook.com and find someone I hadn’t seen or spoken to in awhile and stalk them. Yes, stalk them. And by stalk I mean look at their wall and their tagged pictures. Don’t judge. We all do it. How do I know? Because I’ve seen you and you at the library scoping out a random person’s page and then minimizing the screen when someone began to walk up behind you.

Nonetheless, Facebook stalking is not the issue at hand, instead it is what brought me to a realization.  As I was Facebook stalking my cousin who lives in the UK (see now it all makes sense), I found a link someone else posted on her wall that was of particular interest to me. The link was to a BBC documentary on the Sikh Diaspora. Naturally, as a member of the said Diaspora, I was interested. However, when I clicked on the link what I received was the dreaded black screen with white lettering: sorry, this clip is not available in your location. Don’t kill the messenger.

I didn’t think much of it beyond a few seconds of feeling sad that I couldn’t see the documentary. Then I moved on.  I was only able to let this insult slip because it was not all that frequent. I am in the privileged position of living in the US and as a result, (hate to say it, but it’s true) we get a lot more of the programming than those in other countries. Frankly, if I lived elsewhere, I would BitTorrent the hell out of my favorite shows. Imagine going to see TV show after TV show and getting that dreaded message? Now that’s insult to injury. Putting salt on wounds. Rubbing it in. Ripping a scab open.

Blogging for Dummies

If you come to think about it, blogs don’t really function that much differently than other media outlets. And was it really a surprise when blogs began to be employed as another venue for advertising? (Every change is a good change for a plug!) So now as viewers, subscribers, readers, followers, fans and humble devotees of a particular blog, how do we bypass getting out our brains extracted and sucked dry by advertising? Here are some helpful tips that yours truly uses in her daily blogging:

  1. Selective Vision blogging: if you frequent a blog enough, eventually you get used to where the ads are and your eyes tend to look over the fact that your being sold something.
  2. Click the button: just click on the ad. Once, at least once. Then you can see for yourself what the who-hah is about. When you see that it’s just a fridge, sofa or computer than I assure you, you will start using your eyes wisely.
  3. Take a bathroom break: This works really well for television, but I haven’t had much success with this method when it comes to blogging. See if it works better for you. Go on your blog of choice, every time you scroll down to an ad, get up and take a bathroom break. When you return, hopefully (cross your fingers) the ad will be gone and you return just in time to catch the rest of the blog. And if you took to long washing your hands don’t worry because there’s always reruns.……. HUH?
  4. Move on: Sad, but if you can’t knock it and if you don’t wanna try it, move on.

See which tips work for you, and happy blogging!

Teachin’ Em Right

You gotta get ‘em while their young. You know, because you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. So if you get them while they’re young, you got them forever. And how exactly do you hook them in? Well, Sawyer said “kids are like dogs—you knock them around enough they start to think they did something to deserve it.” I’m not talking about child abuse or anything else along those lines. It’s an analogy, so just relax. If you start them off young, and you do it repeatedly, infiltrate their lives with what you want them, soon they do these things on their own… for life. I’m talking about making consumers out of kids through television and other media.

This is not to say that today’s youth, or millennials, are pulled and then locked into a consumerism dungeon. Instead, millennials consider themselves to be knowing consumers that understand when and what they are being sold something. The way to appeal to this group of savvy young buyers is through cross-platforming, because just having a TV show with product placement and advertisement does not cut it anymore. They have grown up in an “environment of digitextuality” (Ross: 139) and therefore know, how to bypass these.

Here is where Gossip Girls comes in. Beyond Verizon cellphone services, this show sells a fast paced lifestyle of texting, fashion, city glamour and sin. Yes, we saw some of this with Sex and the City, but now it has taken the shape of a teen drama.. This is key: the shows characters are affluent millennials. So when this generation watches the show, they are seeing themselves in a world they can either relate or aspire to. So when every student in the graduating class of Constance Billard’s phone goes off with the lastest Gossip Girl text, millennials know the feeling all too well and reach for their own BlackBerry’s to see who has BBM’ed them. They have grown up with advertising and high-speed fiber optic cables, they have smartened up and want something that speaks to them on multiple levels.Speak to them with OMFG and WTF’s.

THIS J-TERM

I promise myself I too will make a vid. I must. I mean there I was sold after today’s screening–specifically of “Us” (I think that’s what it was called, please await the correct title on that one). I mean it went so far beyond just linking up clips and snippets that may or may not talk to each other in some way and adding a track that “says it all.” I’m talkin’ about making something that holds it’s own weight. And that’s what this was. There’s so much potential with vidding. Yes, I’m a flip-flopper that hated vids/remixes/autotuning the news about a day ago, but man… you wanted to see more. Whether that was because of confusion or interest, either way the vid had you in. Also, hello!! Vid can be traced from 1975. They can be traced back to women. Not men. Not youtube. That’s what I’m talking about.

A DRABBLE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS BY MC AND RK

It’s: HIGHper-Sexed Semi-Political allegory sweetened by Southern Hospitality and the just right amount of… “What the hell was that?”

It’s: Creatures of the night, Ghoulish Greek Mythology and the endangered Nymph-Dandelion-battle for the BRIGHT POWER SOURCE of the working class girl, who… pumps liquid life and Love through her beer-tapped short-short veins and whose… accent isn’t even mildly believable during those emotionally EXPLOSIVE self-righteous post-feminist monologues.

It’s: the love of a Drainer-Transformer, cold and pale, trend-inducing, hip cannibalistic Civil War Era sexual encounters that sell in bottles of O-Positive and A-Negative high definition.

Romeo DRINKS Juliet.

Crisis Management

There is no such thing as bad press, right? So if fans “celebrate, critique and de-or-reconstruct” (126) mass media texts of their choice, is that really a bad thing? Wait, wait, WAIT! Do they even have the right to do all these things? The post-network era and the accessibility of tools used for text creation have caused publicity to be a double-edged sword for the media industry. Why? Because the creator of the product is not in control of its publicity.

Yes, these fans are just everyday folk who are a just a little too savvy at Final Cut Pro and iMovie (negative language intentional for sarcastic effects), but we have seen too often how a homemade video of something as silly as a child saying “blood” over and over again can spread across the Web like a plague. In today’s world, these videos have the potential to be just as influential as Bono or Angelina Jolie. They too can adopt a celebrity, or almost cultish, status.

At the same time, if you are a producer and the viral video on your show has over a million hits on youtube, then that’s free advertising. But the people making these iterations of existing texts aren’t commissioned by the industry. In a sense, they are in competition with the industry’s hired writers and creative boards. They are unpaid labor. They are even taking someone else’s work to make their own? Where I’m from, that’s called stealing. On the other hand, the industry is also scoping out websites and adapting what you and me are making for their own commercial purposes. So the former is a sort of Robin Hood-esque thievery and the latter is what a socialist’s brief looks like.

So now who is the consumer and who is the producer? How can anyone maintain a distinction? I’m thinking of the olden days when the industry held screenwriting contests not only to control the mass scripts fans mailed in, but also to utilize the creativity that was sitting right in their mailboxes. Surely, this is being done with Batttle Star Galactica and other medias. Producers are posting clips and sound bits on their website and asking fans to create their own texts. This extends to other industries as well, Nine Inch Nails did the same on their website for their music. However, these efforts have not quelled fan ambition. Can this creativity even be put to rest? Do we buy off youtube, the largest and most recognized platform for remixes? That’s just wrong in all realms of internet morality. Youtube was made to be a exhibitionist website where users show and tell what they want to, as long as it’s in the confines of the website. Do we ban newspaper op-ed’s then too? How do we put a “tax” on intellectual property? (This is artistic socialism!)

Nouveau TV

I hate the phrase: “I’ll know it when I see it.” It’s just not practical. There’s a reason why there are dictionaries, why we have categories, why we use headings, labels, names, subjects, topics, references—this that and the third—so that we can call it when we see it.

If I don’t watch TV on the actual TV anymore (which I don’t) does that mean that it is not TV? Historically, the apparatus—the TV set—has defined television. Now, in the “post-network” era, televised programming can exist outside the box. In fact, many people prefer it that way. So if you watch a show on your computer, iPod, cell phone, is it not TV then? I guess we will have to call it how we see it. TV on hulu or iTunes does in fact feel like TV. Television has just gotten a Windows upgrade.

TV has entered the realm of cyber space. This is a space where we don’t have to sit and wait for our favorite shows to come on or use TV guide to navigate our evening. Television is now at our fingertips. Empowering isn’t it? And yes, I still call it TV when I watch Glee on hulu because the terminology has crossed over. It is impractical to call nouveau-TV by the apparatus. If that were the case, is it The Hulu then? Is it youtubing? Or should be call it iTunes-vision? I guess it’s just TV then until we find a more fitting term that looks and feels like the post-network era.

Something old, Something New

We know these dance moves all too well. I mean…who hasn’t grown up watching The Breakfast Club? Therefore, when we see the remix videos of a group of friends performing the Brat Pack dance moves to Phoenix’s Lisztomania our mind automatically takes us back to the film. There’s a huge sense of familiarity and imitation. But isn’t there innovation here? After all, the locations are new, the clothing worn are different, the people performing the moves look and feel contemporary with their American Apparel leggings, Ray Ban covered eyes and matching shaggy beards that are all the rage in Brooklyn now.  There is no question that this is a hybrid of the classical with the modern.

At the same time, is there a sense of creative legitimacy to hybridity? One commenter wrote, “Do you know what ‘decadence’ means? No? I suggest you look it up,” in response to this video. Decadence is of course cultural decline. What user jqp364 means is that this video is an indication of our generation’s lack of creativity. Meanwhile, others have found this video to be quite innovative or they see it as a tribute. There is no definitive answer; the debate can go on and on and on.

Nevertheless, this video is clearly indicative of our culture in another sense. It does show an appreciation for past works, the continuity of youth throughout the ages and our ability to add our perspective on this continuity. I would not say that this remix is decadence but rather a personalized hybridity. It is a way of making something old speak to a new generation.. Instead of creating something wholly novel, the creators of this remix have found relativity despite years of change and applied it to our world. This personalization is creativity.

Me, My Blog and I

I try not to get into blogs. Or TV shows. Or Videogames. Or anything else that can be potentially addicting and will remove me further from my everyday reality than I already am. Now, with that said, I will list off the blogs I do follow. It’s a long, exhaustive list (wink). I swear by jezebel.com and the way it represents the world through a feminist lens to counter all the crap women are given in mass media. Nitrolicious.com is a fashion blog that combines urban street wear with Chanel. What more could a girl want? Lately, I’ve been falling off the nitro bandwagon because it’s beginning to focus more on the chic than on the dope, as well as the blogger’s own fabulous life. Essentially, it’s starting to address me less and less but I still scope it out from time to time. The last blog… drum roll please… is 2dopeboyz.com, which keeps me up to date with the latest hip-hop and RnB. This is very crucial when a New Yorker goes to school in Vermont.

So, as you can probably guess, my experience with blogging is not extensive. Now take a wild guess as to what my face looked like when I was told I had to keep a blog for class. I’ll just tell you—I was horrified. When I reluctantly began this blog, a lot of the posts were just summaries/lame reflection of the readings. Obviously I’ve opened up a bit.

Viewing blogs as a secondary orality can even convert a non-believer like me. Orality is the use of speaking, talking, reciting as communication rather than writing and printed texts—the way they did it in the old days. Blogs, although written, take on many of the features of orality because it is a conversation, it is social and it is less formal than print writing (Rettberg: 33). Let’s hang on the last feature for a bit. I think that my issue with blogs was bridging the informal nature of blogs into a liberal arts college classroom.  But who am I to say there’s no space for blogs in Middlebury? After all, jezebel.com touches on tons of issues that can tie over to my classes and has often been my source for a good conversation or two even in an academic setting. Let’s just say, I’m warming up to the idea of my own blog more and more.