Pca - Veni, Vidi, Vids!

“Veni, Vidi, Vids!” Fan video editors and the strategic remix of popular culture Katharina Freund University of Wollongong Australia

What are vids? • Fan-made remix videos • They appropriate pre-existing film and television texts and edit them to music • Vids often convey meanings not intended in the source material

My research... • What vids and their (most female) communities can tell us about how audiences interpret the media they are presented with • How new media forms are being utilized to critique mainstream values in the media • An exploration of the gendered reading and creative practices of the vidders to discern the implications for current concepts of audiences and online community

Who are the vidders? • Over 90% female • Over 82% aged 18-35 • Most probably white, English-speaking, and from the United States, United Kingdom, or another Western/European country

Struggle Over Meaning • Media-savvy female audience consuming media products mostly created by men • How the text does or does not provide pleasure / conform to audience desires • “Ongoing struggle for discursive dominance” between fans and producers over control and desires for the text (Johnson 2007; also Jenkins 1992) • Fans adapt the text to suit their unique interpretations and interests

Asserting Control • “Open-source text” (Hellekson & Busse 2006) • Taken up and reworked in a postmodern, multivocal and intertextual fashion (Stasi 2006) • Vidders use their tech savvy and extensive pop culture literacy to: ▫ ▫ ▫ ▫ ▫

Highlight specific elements Shift the focus of the text Invent subtext Restructure the narrative Engage in critical commentary

How is this done? • “The true art lies in the mix” – Manovich 2004 • • • •

Extraction of paradigmatic / thematic elements Re-arranged into a syntax / narrative Following genre and television conventions Music focuses the emotional impact and adds narrative structure through suture theory (Gorbman 1987)

Supernatural (2005 – present)

Highlighting Specific Elements We Will Rock You by Melissa • 70s rock ballad used • Congruent with CW’s vision of the show • Focus on machismo, violence, fighting, investigating murders, saving lives • Manly camaraderie

Shifting the Focus Forgiven and Forsaken by loki • Slower, dramatic ballad • Focused on relationship between characters • Visuals muted/black & white • Action elements are removed • Emphasis on facial expressions to allow intimacy

Inventing Subtext Here in Your Car by dayln03 • “Slash” video • Romantic pop song • Uses familiar television conventions to suggest relationship • Advanced video manipulation

Restructuring the Narrative Impulse by NYCalls0909 • “Alternate Universe” • Creating a new story using existing footage • Clips used out of context • “Art is in the mix” • Pleasure for audience in seeing how clips are misinterpreted in the narrative of the vid

Criticizing the Text Women’s Work by Sisabet & Luminosity • Frustrated response to text • Critically examines representations of women: victims, sexual objects, martyrs, monstrous • “Hopeless feministic impotence” • “I love the show, but I’m not blind to its faults”

Intertextual Commentary Channel Hopping by Ash • Draws parallels between SPN and TV as a medium • Vidders extremely media literate and genre-aware • “Flow”: TV flows from series to series rather than being discrete, unique programs • Engaging with the “mediascape”

Thriving Interpretive Community • Vidders consume media, make thoughtful commentary on it, and share their insights with a specific audience • Specific interpretive community with unique reading practices and aesthetics • Playful, well-informed, and creative / critical with industry standards and traditions

Thank you very much! Are there any questions?

References • • • •

Appadurai, Arjun (1990). Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy. Public Culture 2(2): 1-24 Allen, Robert C. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Ang, Ien. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London: Routledge, 1982. Bleich, David. “Gender Interests in Reading and Language.” in Flynn, Elizabeth A., and Patrocinio P. Schweickart, eds. Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.

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Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. 7th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004.

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Bury, Rhiannon. Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online. Digital Formations. Ed. Steve Jones. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2005. Gorbman, Claudia. Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987. Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse, eds. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities on the Internet: New Essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006. Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992. Johnson, Derek. “Fan-tagonism: Factions, Institutions, and Constitutive Hegemonies of Fandom.” in Gray, Jonathan, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington. Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. New York: New York University Press, 2007. Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004. Stasi, Mafalda. “The Toy Solider from Leeds: The Slash Palimpsest.” in Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse, eds. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities on the Internet: New Essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006. Williams, Raymond. Television, Technology, and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books, 1975.

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