Back in 2008 Sirmixalott116 combined footage from Saved by the Bell with scenes from the film There Will Be Blood to create this re-cut trailer. The remix eerily forecasts the current ‘dirty energy’ vs. environmental ecology debate that is now raging in the United States (made more urgent by the BP Gulf catastrophe). When the students at Bayside High find out that the wealth of oil found under their campus has spilled out into their pond, they begin to challenge the power dynamic of their school and stage a protest to stop the oil development.
There Will Be Blood, a 2007 American film by Paul Thomas Anderson, was loosely based on the Upton Sinclair novel Oil! and follows a man on a ruthless quest for wealth during the oil boom. Saved by the Bell, on the other hand, was a 90′s high school sitcom that paved the way for teen shows dealing with social issues by introducing young target audiences to critical topics like drug use, drinking and driving, homelessness and environmental issues. But when remixed, the two delve into the institutional greed and environmental destruction no TV show or has yet dared to explore, despite the timeliness of the topic.
The internets have been busy over the past couple months creatively re-branding and correcting the corporate identity of the company formally known at British Petroleum. We have seen some hilarious logo re-design, mock print ads and of course the ever entertaining BPGlobalPR spoof Twitter feed. Not to be outdone online video remix has also played a part in the raging Internet vs. BP brand battle. So we here at PRV have collected a handful of our favorites.
The first of several more honest re-cut versions of the now infamous “Message From Tony Hayward” PR propaganda commercial that BP is trying to infect the internet with by buying up all the search terms relating to the disaster. Listen carefully to the audio editing in the remix below which transforms Tony’s words into something perhaps a little closer to the truth.
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Last week, BP CEO Tony Hayward went before Congress in round one of the oil company’s Congressional hearings. As if the 60 day oil geyser hemorrhaging into the Gulf and the lack of solutions for stopping it weren’t enough, Hayward adds insult to injury by simply re-using his own words that “A Message from Tony Hayward” ad as his opening statement to the House.
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One more remix of “A Message from Tony Hayward” ad – this time with a new overdub of Hayward’s “last words” includes a call to action to revoke BP’s Corporate Charter which you can do here.
An emotion-filled anecdote created by editing Hayward quotes with the song, “End of the World” by Skeeter Davis for the organization NRDC.
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News footage and photographs are combined with Disney’s animated feature The Little Mermaid to provide a new meaning to the hit song Under the Sea.
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In “A Whole Day Of Tony Hayward’s Obfuscating In Four Minute”, Ben Craw of the Huffington Post, illustrates how Hayward refuses to answer question and gives intentionally ambiguous responses to House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Because it seems that’s the real role of a leader at BP.
I recently helped the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) re-dub Royal Bank of Canada’s new Olympic Flame Trail commercial. The new and improved voiceover better represents the bank’s dirty investments: since 2007, RBC has given about $17 billion dollars in loans to companies operating in the Alberta tar sands – more than any other bank. Not only is it one of the most environmentally destructive energy projects on the planet but expansion of the tar sands is trampling the rights of Indigenous peoples, destroying North American water systems and significantly increasing Canada’s carbon emissions.
A political mash-up video combing McCain, Bush and Obama speeches on energy policy created by the stimulator over at submedia. The video shows all three politicians saying exactly the same positive things about polluting, dangerous and unworkable energy alternatives. Basically all the US presidential candidates have been “drinking the Kool-ad” on nuclear, ethanol and the ridiculous lie of “clean-coal”.
You can also see and remix this video on RemixAmerica.org, a project which invites you to make your own remixes right on their website.
My latest Identity Correction remix, this time taking aim at the Chevron corporation and their new rather Orwellian slogan “Human Energy”. Created by combining and re-cutting movie footage, TV commercials and the audio from Chevron’s latest PR blitz. The video focuses on the corporate search for profits through control of global oil supplies and the connection with aggressive American foreign policy.
