Please note this vid deals with issues of rape and consent. More specifically, it’s a playful yet critical look at the troubling presentation of these issues in the Fox television show “Dollhouse”. Because these topics are intense, we feel viewers should  be aware of the content before viewing.

The vid is fittingly titled “It Depends on What You Pay” by vidder Gianduja Kiss who expertly combines clips from the first season of Joss Whedon’s new television show “Dollhouse” with music from the 1960’s off-Broadway musical “The Fantasticks”.

For those unfamiliar with the premise of the show, it’s set inside a secretive corporation called the Dollhouse. People are coerced into handing over their bodies to the Dollhouse which then rents out those bodies for profit. The “actives” or “dolls” have their minds wiped and are then re-programed with the personalities and skills desired by each new “client”.

Gianduja Kiss’s vid brilliantly exposes the fact that these “dolls” have no way to consent to any of their “engagements” – sexual or otherwise – an issue the show ignores. The vid names this disturbing lack of consent for what it is – rape. This calling out of the show’s narrative is an important step in countering the current rape culture and its place in our culture of violence.

Here is the original vid post on dreamwidth where you can get a hi-res version.

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For more on these issues and “Dollhouse” check out this post on The Angry Black Woman “The problem with Dollhouse is not that I don’t understand subtlety” and this one on Feminist SF “Working in the Dollhouse” as well as Gianduja Kiss’s insightful posts on the topic.

In closing we would like to echo a recent tweet on the  Feminist Frequency blog about “Dollhouse” that links to Joss Whedon’s inspiring 2006 Equality Now speech and reads:

Dear Joss, you should rewatch this video because I think you may have forgotten your principles, you might learn something from yourself. Love, Anita http://bit.ly/lBvP3

Category: vidding
Topic Tags: gender, sexism, television, vidding, violence

Sloane’s first vid is a visual critique of the “re-booted” Star Trek movie selectively edited to the sexist, misogynistic song, “Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor” by Flight of the Concords. While “Too Many Dicks…” was originally about having too many men on the dance floor and not enough women to court, Sloane reclaims it by editing together multiple images of the largely male Star Trek cast to critique it’s male dominated storyline.

“When I saw the Star Trek movie, I was disappointed that J.J. Abrams had dramatically rewritten so many elements of Star Trek canon – and had largely ignored women. I was surprised how many people didn’t seem to think that was a problem, or even that the issue existed.” — Sloane

Her vid eloquently proves her point: it is hard to ignore the male to female ratio in the new updated Star Trek movie. Uhura has the heavy burden of being the only female character with any significant dialog and, to further the disappointment, is written into “the girlfriend” role. The vid is extremely popular in the fan/vidding community, emphasizing the huge demand to see more women in prominent roles on television and in the movies.

This vid also serves as a strong argument for the importance of cam recordings used for visual criticism and critique. It is essential that these types of critiques be made in a timely fashion while films are still fresh in the mind collective consciousness of the public. If vidders and political remixers have to wait to make their visual arguments until a film’s DVD release, than the window for sparking public debate and discussion will often have past.

Because a song’s lyrics are often the critical lens through which the viewer can read the commentary in a vid, we have pasted them below the fold.
Read more…

Category: vidding
Topic Tags: bootleg, fandom, gender, hollywood, music, sexism, vidding

This multifandom vid by British vidder Lim is self-referential to the vidding process and community. The metavid integrates iconic fandoms such as “Star Trek” and “V for Vendetta”, along with fans, including Henry Jenkins, to the song “Us” by Regina Spektor. With tight editing and a depth of references, the vid comments on how vidders interact with texts, fandoms, and media, comparing the compulsory “under-the-radar” work of fans and vidders to the insider and exclusive works of academics. The collective power of the vid’s imagery seems to be a metaphor for the history and dynamics of vidding whereby groups of fans collaborate to share technology and access to source materials, taking back ownership of and commenting on popular culture.

Get a Hi-Res version and see Lim's blip channel.
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Lim’s not only articulate through her videos but through her comments on the media as well.

“The media seems to think they own the things they’ve pumped into my brain in 27 years. It seems to me ludicrous that television spends so much time and so much money carefully colonizing my mind. But it is my mind.” 

Category: vidding
Topic Tags: hollywood, television, vidding

In this vid, Luminosity & Sisabet use footage from the TV horror show “Supernatural” and Hole’s song “Violet” to construct a powerful critique of the victimization and eroticization of violence towards female television characters. It was awarded “Best Video of 2007″ by NY Magazine. It’s no surprise, since their collaboration has yielded a meticulously edited vid critical of one of their most beloved shows.

The show’s original storyline follows two heroic brothers as they rid the world of paranormal events. Week after week, a “chick of the week” is slain by the brothers or supernatural forces. Luminosity & Sisabet ingeniously remove the two main male characters and focus their storyline on these killed-off and often nameless female characters in an effort to show how women are violated and eroticized to further the plot, but are rarely part of it. We think this is an important distinction; women’s mere presence in a story does not equate or signify a meaningful existence for them beyond the roles of monster and victim.

Luminosity and Sisabet decided to construct their vid using content solely from the show “Supernatural”, but they could have easily used footage from other series like “CSI”, “Law and Order”, or “Heroes” because the story lines are often similar: the death or suffering of a female character within the first 3 minutes drives the male main characters to set out on their hunt.

In remix, it’s the visual arrangement of clips and the artist’s intent that makes the video’s message either liberating or oppressive. In addition, a basic understanding of the original show being used is often important for the viewer to understand the context. In “Women’s Work”, understanding “Supernatural”, while not being a weekly fan, allowed us to interpret the vid as critical of the depiction of women as eroticized victims, rather than assembled to glorify the violence against women. Knowing Luminosity and Sisabet’s intention and the basic concept behind their source footage helped us make this distinction. Because the remix, and in this case, vidding, forms can be used to glorify oppressive ideas, it’s important to understand these aspects.

Luminosity’s other meticulously crafted vids can be found on blip.tv.

For a more in-depth analysis of this vid, scroll to the second half of this post on the blog Ambling Along the Aqueduct.

Category: vidding
Topic Tags: gender, hollywood, sexism, vidding, violence

This classic vid was created in 1997 by the Media Cannibals collective who combined the song Detachable Penis by the band King Missile with clips from a late 70s British crime drama called The Professionals. Incredibly, the vid was created with tape to tape VCR technology making the precise edits to the lyrics all the more impressive.

We wanted to post the vid because we think it offers an insightful look at the media portal of masculinity using guns and other weapons as a hilarious metaphor for the penis. We read it to be critical of the violent and phallocentric concepts of masculinity that are driven by the media.

However, we want to note that this was not exactly the creator’s intention. The Media Cannibals did intend to make fun of phallocentric media culture but insist they were not trying to be critical of the violence and guns on TV per se.

While we may project our own points of view, critical or not, onto remixes and vids, it’s often important to understand the original intent for the piece. Because remix and vids are not an necessarily inherently critical form, we viewers can only rely on the visual display of content and the intent of the creators to decide whether or not they are political in nature.

The vid is also available in better quality for DL.

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Category: vidding
Topic Tags: gender, sexuality, television, vidding, violence

This vid, by 16 year old ImaginarySanity, casts James T. Kirk from the original 1960s Star Trek series as the subject of Britany Spears’ hit song ‘Womanizer’. It layers appropriated clips of the Starship captain’s romances-of-the-week combined with a series of colored filters and motion effects to match the video to the beat of the audio. It is no secret that sexism plagued the first Star Trek series and considering Kirk’s notorious skirt-chasing, we think the vid exposes his inner womanizer perfectly.

ImaginarySanity also playfully hints at a mass media double standard: while it’s acceptable (and often expected) for men to be sexually available and have multiple partners without “settling down”, women who engage in similar sexual activity are criticized and often portrayed as “sluts”. As the ending credits indicate this vid characterizes Kirk as the “male slut” and portrays his Casanova ways in a more critical light.

ImaginarySanity also makes kirk/spock slash vids which you can see them on her Youtube channel or blog.

Category: vidding
Topic Tags: gender, masculinity, sexism, television, vidding

There are literally hundreds of Brokeback Mountain trailer parodies online but we think this Harry/Ron slash remix, by 19 year old vidder MissSheenie, is one of the best. The fusion seamlessly re-casts the stars of the Harry Potter films as characters from Brokeback Mountain.

This process of slash fusion, particularly using the Brokeback Mountain trailer as a foundation, allows artists to queer virtually any on screen relationship and is especially important for LGBTQ fans who have so few options of characters to identify with in mass media.

MissSheenie’s trailer is one of our favorites because it offers us a convincing queer-positive re-interpretation of the heteronormative Harry Potter universe using careful editing and audio manipulation as visual evidence.

Although we would not normally classify remixed trailers as “vids” MissSheenie is an avid vidder so we think its appropriate. She also makes Kirk/Spock slash which you can see on her other YouTube Channel at spirksmistress.

Category: vidding
Topic Tags: hollywood, queer positive, queering culture, slash, vidding