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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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

“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.

Too many dicks on the dance floor
Too many dicks on the dance floor
Too many dicks
Too many dicks on the dance floor
Too many dicks
Too many dicks on the dance floor
Too many dicks

Going to the party
Sippin’ on Bacardi
Wanna meet a hottie
But there’s Adam, Steve and Marty
There’s Billy, Todd and Tommy
They’re on leave from the army
The only boobs I’ll see tonight will be made of origami

Tell the players, make it understood
It ain’t no good if there’s too much wood
Make sure you know before you go
The dance floor bro-hoe ratio
Five to one is a brodeo
Tell Steve and Mike it’s time to go
Wait outside all night to find
Twenty dudes in a conga line

Too many dicks on the dance floor
Easy to fix
Too many dicks on the dance floor
Spread out the dicks

Too many dudes
With too many dicks
Too close to my shit
Too hard to meet chicks
I need better odds
More broads, less rods
I came to do battle
Scadaddle with the cattle prods

Too many men
Too many boys
Too many misters
Not enough sisters
Too much time on, too many hands
Not enough ladies, too many mans

Too many dicks
Too many dongs
Too many schlongs
Now sing this song

Get a Hi-Res version and see Lim's blip channel.
Click here to view the embedded video.

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.” 

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.

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

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.

Using 48 different visual sources, this remix gives the viewer a full range of gendered media clichés meticulously organized and edited to successfully mock the notion of true gender identity. Using footage from TV’s stereotypical gestures of masculinity and femininity, Charmax parodies our concept of gender through the repetitive images of drag, cross-dressing and stylizations of butch/femme identities. Charmax packs an additional parody punch by using the song “I’m Your Man”, sung by a female performer, Patricia O’Callaghan.

It’s is a critical look at gender representations in mass media through a celebration of the rare moments when marginalized or alternative gender and sexuality make it into the pop-culture.

Be sure to check out Charmax’s blip.tv account and website for more vids.

The above George Orwell quote accompanies this vid by Lila Futuransky which deals with cinematic depictions of oppression and resistance. She weaves together appropriated footage from three sci-fi films set in a near future London; 28 Days Later, Children of Men and V for Vendetta. These are remixes over the song Rabbit in Your Headlights by the band Unkle. The result is a re-constructed vision of a fear-driven future and also a vision of the resistance.  She particularly challenges the ways in which gender, race and sexuality play out in those futures.

Lila has carefully re-contextualized many of the characters in these films including erasing the male V character (along with his torturing of Evey “for her own good”)  and removes the character of Theo as the white male savor of Kee in shots from Children of Men. The vid also pieces together an inspiring montage of resistance which inserts images of queer relationships in between the shots of street protests and sabotage. For much more detail on the concepts behind the creating of this vid check out lila’s web page for it.

Click here to view the embedded video.


[As of June 30th 2009 Imeem has unilaterally removed all user generated videos including this one. Their reason for decimating 1000s of people’s creative work and the communities around it? “There is no ROI for UGV”. That unbelievable answer makes us nauseous. When this video is available again on another sharing site we will re-post it.]

Continuing our posts highlighting vidding. Arefadedaway has created this multi-fan vid as a contradiction to TV shows and movies that exploit and victimize female characters within their storylines. The source material is an impressive list of 89 different sci-fi, action, drama and comedy fandoms edited to “One Girl Revolution” by Superchick. Featuring 155 female characters, the vid celebrates women as agents, actively using their bodies as subjects rather than objects. Shots of women walking are continuously repeated to illustrate that women are never passively standing still.

Since the entertainment industry has had a large influence in defining and devaluing feminine characters, it is not surprising that depictions of strong women in mass media narratives have been hyper sexualized and fetishized. The character is tough and independent by day and a seductress by night. She is a strong female character but she is merely re-producing a male defined concept of what a strong women should look like. Although some of the heroines (like Tomb Raider) collected in this vid seem to have been created as male fantasies in their original movie roles, Arefadedaway has carefully taken them out of that context and placed them next to other strong female characters in one inspiring vid that celebrates the physical strength of women.