Between the ominous acapella version of the classic Mary Poppins song performed by Suzanne Vega and the skin crawling subject matter in this vid, Laura Shapiro has expertly remixed and brought to light a reoccurring problem in women’s science fiction representations. All to often female characters in science fiction and fantasy television narratives are forcibly impregnated with some supernatural being that will bring destruction/salvation to the world. The demonic/alien pregnancy plot device is so pervasive that the remix artist almost had too much source material to work with.

Laura uses scenes of women who have been forcibly knocked up, had their ovaries harvested or otherwise reduced to their basic biological functions, ultimately becoming nothing but baby making machines.  And it’s not only forced pregnancies that Laura is critiquing but also women carrying natural, wanted fetuses whose wombs are being used as sites of torture.  She used clips from science fiction and fantasy television shows to explore what she sees as reproductive terrorism, “the way women’s reproductive capacity is used to colonize them and made to seem unnatural, spooky, disgusting, and horrifying.” Laura has created a stunning visual critique that exposes this sexist TV trope that can only be described as “creepy”.

To see her original post visit her Dreamwidth blog and watch her other vids at laurasha.com.  We have previously featured Laura’s “Wouldn’t it be Nice” vid.

Anita Sarkeesian is a feminist media literacy advocate, pop culture critic and fair use proponent.  She maintains an ongoing web series of video commentaries from a fangirl/feminist/anti-oppression perspective at her website www.FeministFrequency.com.

Category: vidding
Topic Tags: gender, pregnancy, reproductive rights, sexism, vidding, women

Back in 2008 Sirmixalott116 combined footage from Saved by the Bell with scenes from the film There Will Be Blood to create this re-cut trailer. The remix eerily forecasts the current ‘dirty energy’ vs. environmental ecology debate that is now raging in the United States (made more urgent by the BP Gulf catastrophe). When the students at Bayside High find out that the wealth of oil found under their campus has spilled out into their pond, they begin to challenge the power dynamic of their school and stage a protest to stop the oil development.

There Will Be Blood, a 2007 American film by Paul Thomas Anderson, was loosely based on the Upton Sinclair novel Oil! and follows a man on a ruthless quest for wealth during the oil boom. Saved by the Bell, on the other hand, was a 90′s high school sitcom that paved the way for teen shows dealing with social issues by introducing young target audiences to critical topics like drug use, drinking and driving, homelessness and environmental issues. But when remixed, the two delve into the institutional greed and environmental destruction no TV show or has yet dared to explore, despite the timeliness of the topic.

Category: movie trailer
Topic Tags: activism, environment, hollywood, oil, television

What’s the most popular piece of footage to remix on the planet? Well it’s hard to say exactly. In the United States, the German film “Der Untergang” (the source for the infamous Hitler Downfall Parody videos) is a major contender but in Asia, there’s no doubt that the Chinese Red Army Choir wins. Take a look at the original footage of the choir playing the Long March Song Cycle (长征组歌) filmed in 1976.

The Red Army sync version of Michael Jackson’s hit “Beat It” is definitely the most popular with well over 10 million views on ToDou.com alone. (If videos don’t load re-fresh the page).

Beat It – The Red Army Version

Although a handful of ripped copies of the Red Army’s Beat It have made their way onto western sites like YouTube in recent weeks, the vast majority live on the Chinese site Tudou (土豆网) (which translated literally means “Potato Net”). It’s without a doubt one of the largest video sharing sites in the world – claiming to be about five time bigger than YouTube.

A quick search on ToDou.com for “Red Army Edition” (红军版) returns hundreds of remixes including this extensive playlist. Beyond Michael Jackson hits you can also see the Red Army Choir doing their rendition of Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Usher as well as classic songs like American Idiot, We Will Rock You and Never Gonna Give You Up – all in varying remix quality. A few of our favorite “Red Army Versions” are posted below. (They may take some time to load but are worth it).

As for the deeper cultural meaning – perhaps these remixes serve as a commentary on Chinese government authoritarianism or on the virus-like nature of American corporate pop culture. Maybe they are just making fun of old Communist Party propaganda or perhaps it’s all of the above. Not being versed in Simplified Chinese, it’s hard to tell what the true intentions are, but the Red Army might very well be the most remixed video on the planet. Mao Zedong is undoubtedly spinning in his grave (perhaps even in sync to the music).

Poker Face (Lady Gaga)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Theme song)

Wavin’ Flag (Coca-Cola World Cup celebration mix)

Prague Square (布拉格廣場) by Taiwan stars Jay Chou & Jolin Tsai

Category: music video
Topic Tags: china, copyright, corporations, fair use, pop culture, pop music

Rich Juzwiak is a blogger for VH1 and his own pop-culture blog which means he spends an enormous amount of (well compensated) time watching and dissecting television. A couple years ago Juzwiak noticed an odd trend in competition-based reality shows, so he collected and edited the clips together. Once repeated and placed back to back, the absurdity and anti-social nature of game reveals itself.  Almost Never in any real-life social situation outside the hyper-constructed world of reality tv would someone say the words “I’m not here to make friends”. The remix is great commentary on modern forms of mass media entertainment and it also manages to quickly illustrate how competition can cultivate and encourages deeply anti-social individualist behavior.

Juzwiak’s work and the “frenemy” debate was also explored on an episode of This American Life. These remixes are examples of what have become known as video Supercuts, obsessive video montages constructed from popular tv shows or movies that repeat a certain theme. A classic example would be this montage compiled from every time anyone says the word “dude” in the film The Big Lebowski.

And also check out the 2009 edition that continues to track disturbing “I’m Not Here To Make Friends” trend.

Category: montage
Topic Tags: capitalism, competition, hollywood, individualism, massmedia, reality_tv, supercut, television

Jezebel makes a remix! The popular feminist-leaning blog took over 25 movies to the chopping block to create a bloody montage of the female curse: menstruation. Because women are supposed to be pure and clean, periods have been portrayed as a horrific, embarrassing and disgusting 7 day experience used to publicly humiliate female characters, confuse male characters and instill fear in every prepubescent tween. See the remix below the fold…

Read more…

Category: montage
Topic Tags: feminism, gender, hollywood

We at PRV like to think of “political remix” in the widest possible terms to encompass social, economic and cultural issues along side more traditional big “P” political issues like government and war. So what could be more culturally subversive in our current American socio-political climate than a beloved Muppet singing and dancing to a Lollywood song? (Lollywood is Pakistan’s answer to Bollywood.) The western mass media launches into almost daily triads against Pakistan and continuously demonizes the peoples, religious and cultures of that country. Through clever re-editing, Grover now gives us a glimpse into Pakistan’s diverse cultural ecosystem, presenting a message of tolerance and understanding which is strikingly similar to the lessons and values taught on Sesame Street in the United States.

The song is “The Sound of Wonder” (Dama Dam Mast Qalandar) sung by Ashraf, M. featuring Ahmed Rushdi. Here is the original song from the movie “Dekha Jaye Ga” circa 1970s Lollywood.

Category: music video
Topic Tags: culture, Lollywood, massmedia, middle east, muppets, pakistan, peace, television

The internets have been busy over the past couple months creatively re-branding and correcting the corporate identity of the company formally known at British Petroleum. We have seen some hilarious logo re-design, mock print ads and of course the ever entertaining BPGlobalPR spoof Twitter feed. Not to be outdone online video remix has also played a part in the raging Internet vs. BP brand battle. So we here at PRV have collected a handful of our favorites.

The first of several more honest re-cut versions of the now infamous “Message From Tony Hayward” PR propaganda commercial that BP is trying to infect the internet with by buying up all the search terms relating to the disaster. Listen carefully to the audio editing in the remix below which transforms Tony’s words into something perhaps a little closer to the truth.

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Last week, BP CEO Tony Hayward went before Congress in round one of the oil company’s Congressional hearings. As if the 60 day oil geyser hemorrhaging into the Gulf and the lack of solutions for stopping it weren’t enough, Hayward adds insult to injury by simply re-using his own words that “A Message from Tony Hayward” ad as his opening statement to the House.

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One more remix of “A Message from Tony Hayward” ad – this time with a new overdub of Hayward’s “last words” includes a call to action to revoke BP’s Corporate Charter which you can do here.

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BP’s massive $200 million rebranding campaign handled by Ogilvy & Mather in July 2000 won the PRWeek’s 2001 “Campaign of the Year” award for re-imaging the brand’s identity  to communicate that “BP can be a friend — listening to consumers, speaking in a human voice“. Here, the BP campaign is accurately adjusted to illustrate a more fitting identity correction.

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An emotion-filled anecdote created by editing Hayward quotes with the song, “End of the World” by Skeeter Davis for the organization NRDC.

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News footage and photographs are combined with Disney’s animated feature The Little Mermaid to provide a new meaning to the hit song Under the Sea.

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In “A Whole Day Of Tony Hayward’s Obfuscating In Four Minute”, Ben Craw of the Huffington Post, illustrates how Hayward refuses to answer question and gives intentionally ambiguous responses to House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Because it seems that’s the real role of a leader at BP.

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Have you seen other BP remix videos online? If so please post links in the comments!

Category: news segment
Topic Tags: advertising, BP, corporations, energy, environment, identity correction, oil