Dictators and authoritarian leaders including Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Pinochet and Jean-Marie Le Pen lip sync to the 1966 hit song Born Free sung by Matt Monro. Remixed by Swedish filmmaker and musician Johan Söderberg as part of the Read My Lips video series created for ATMO Films between 2001 and 2004.
Category: music video
In this remix posted by Matthew Belinkie on overthinkingit.com, we see what the Joker thinks of the US government’s economic bailout plan. The gangsters in the blockbuster Batman film The Dark Knight are re-casts as taxpayers watching President Bush’s September 2008 speech urging Americans to support the first $700 billion bailout for major financial corporations on Wall Street. The Joker than explain that the plan will not work and to call him if we want to get serious about the crisis. The video hints at the widespread public anger at the massive transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street.
Category: short film
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
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
Another in our series of vidding cross genre posts, this vid was made by Charmax in honor of International Day of Femslash. We have talked a bit about slash vidding in previous posts, and the term femslash specifically refers to female/female same-sex pairing of TV and movie characters that are placed into sexual or romantic relationships by vidders.
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.
Category: vidding
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face. Forever.”
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.
Category: vidding
UPDATE DEC 5th 2009: You can now view this vid again on Arefadedaway’s LiveJournal page here.
[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.
Category: vidding
