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

Here it is, plain and simple: every violent moment from the 2010 Super Bowl commercial bonanza mashed together by Whirled. During the recent Super Bowl, amid the anti-choice controversy, CBS ran hundreds of ads, many of which we see after watching this remix, rely on physical violence to communication their message.

Now, compared to the guns, blood and guts we’ve become accustomed to in Hollywood movies, this may seem like light-hearted slapstick but this remix highlights the fact that violence has been so normalized in mass media to the point where we often don’t even notice it. After experiencing all the clips of hitting, punching and tackling put back-to-back it becomes clear that violence on TV is the preferred form of humor, communication, entertainment, plot device and conflict resolution.

UPDATE Feb/18/10: Today the Media Education Foundation (MEF) posted clips from their documentary entitled “The Mean World Syndrome” about media violence & the cultivation of fear. In this clip from the film Dr. George Gerbner explains how Hollywood writers are pressured into creating violent stories.

They have global marketing formulas that are imposed on the creative people in Hollywood and I’m in touch with them and they hate it, they say ‘don’t talk to me about censorship from Washington, I never heard about that, I get censorship everyday. I am told put in more action, cut out complicated solutions, apply this formula because it travels well in the global market.’ These are formulas that need no translation and essentially image driven and speak action in any language and of course the leading element of that formula is violence.

Category: montage
Topic Tags: advertising, commercial, gender, identity correction, television, violence