An internet meme has been building around the blockbuster movie Avatar, starting with the countless reviews and critics pointing out the striking plot similarities to Disney’s 1998 animated feature Pocahontas. By now there are literally dozens of re-cut trailers online making the comparison but beyond just pointing out the parallels, these mashups also demonstrate how prevalent the racist “Mighty Whitey” trope really is in Hollywood.

First up is Randy Szuch’s version which takes the audio from the official Avatar trailer and replaces the visuals with footage from Disney’s Pocahontas, amazing it works perfectly.

Next we have Dan Oles’s take which does the opposite and uses the audio from the Pocahontas trailer juxtaposed with footage from Avatar.

Those are two of our favorites but you can also check out many similar trailer mashup on youtube (and another one) as well as a Disney song version and a side by side comparison. There is even a Dances with Wolves mashup. And let’s not forget the inspired revised summery of Pocahontas with the names and locations crossed out and replaced with those from Avatar by Matt Batemen posted shortly after James Cameron’s film was released.

UPDATE: Josh commented and brought to our attention a remix that combines the Avatar trailer and footage from the animated film Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. There are dozens more on youtube mashing these two films together.

If you know of other Avatar mashups please post them in the comments.

Category: movie trailer
Topic Tags: disney, environment, hollywood, race, violence

Remix artist Diran Lyons, who’s work we have featured on this site before, has just completed an ambitious remix project critical of President Obama’s foreign policy entitled “Jake Gyllenhaal Challenges the Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize”.

The piece is a remixed narrative that combines two Jake Gyllenhall films (Donnie Darko & Jarhead) with news footage of President Barack Obama. As the President wins the Nobel Peace Prize, Gyllenhaal’s character becomes disillusioned with Obama’s increasingly pro-war rhetoric, escalation of the war in Afghanistan and the failure to withdraw troops from Iraq.

After Diran uploaded this video to YouTube is was instantly removed with the following message:

We think this is a particularly hilarious use of the word “decided” considering YouTube runs a fully automated content ID matching system which does automatic takedowns seconds after a video is uploaded AND the remix is a fair use of any NBC content making it totally legal.

Diran went through YouTube’s online “dispute” process and after a few hours got his video back online. However NBC Universal may still decide to have it removed again via a DMCA takedown notice. We hope this remix stays put, as it is clearly a fair use of any NBC material, but as we all know, just because a video is a fair use does not mean it will stay on the internet. Take a look at Takedown Hall of Shame.

If something similar has happened to your remix video the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) has put together a fantastic Guide to YouTube Removals which will tell you everything you need to know about getting your video back online.

Category: short film
Topic Tags: hollywood, obama, peace, presidency, violence, war

This remixed trailer re-envisions the 1990 romantic comedy film “Pretty Woman”. The original movie stars Richard Gere as a wealthy businessman and Julia Roberts as women who prostitutes herself on the streets of New York City. The original film was supposed to be a dark drama dealing with the difficult lives of sex workers but was rewritten into a Cinderella-type romantic comedy prior to production.

“Pretty Woman” reinforced and glamorized a myth that prostitution is a way to find a wealthy husband, a myth that conveniently conceals the harsh realities of sex work on the street. It also hinds the fact that woman often enter the sex trade as a way to economically support themselves when few other options are available.

Here, FunkyBeccaBecca re-edits the movie trailer re-imagining it in a more appropriate genre, horror. She adds a new soundtrack and with it re-frames Richard Gere’s character transforming him from “wealthy savor” to violent controlling predator.

Category: movie trailer
Topic Tags: gender, hollywood, sexism, sexuality

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

The Queer Housewives of New York City (Real Housewives Remix) series follows Bethenny, the only single housewife, through her conflicts with coming out.

Why Queer the Housewives? Those familiar with the Real Housewives of NYC know that there is very little male presence throughout the show. The women vocal about their successful  partnerships (ie Simon + Alex) are shunned and mocked  by the other housewives. What’s ironic is that the other women don’t even pretend to endorse the idea that their hetero relationships are all that fulfilling. Real Housewives of NYC had the unintentional effect of making compulsory heterosexuality actually appear compulsory, rendering the “Housewives” distinction  inaccurate.

Thinking about the significance of this I wondered what Real Housewives of NYC would look like if it related to a totally different audience. Instead of following white, owning class housewives in a feminism-lite, low-calorie liberation, what if the story line  stayed true to it’s lack of male presence and inaccuracy of the “housewife” distinction? I think this is a much more interesting storyline.

more of my remixes can be found here.

*thanks to Dr. Suzanne Leonard for her theory, “Do Men Matter: Real Housewives as a Post-Romance”

Category: televison show
Topic Tags: gender, hollywood, queer positive, queering culture, sexuality

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