NM&PD, second paper, about the media

Previously, I discussed how the multiplication of voices afforded by digital technologies has expanded contemporary political discourse beyond its traditional hegemonic power structure by including to a greater degree a number of backstage dialogs that are inherently subversive to the existing power structure. The dialogs utilize a number of rhetorical tools, such as appropriation, adaptation, and inference, in order to fly under the radar of the dominant forces within the discourse while remaining especially potent and rich to their intended participants. Bridging the chasm between political and popular discourses and using these tools to make the meaning of each enriched by the other establishes a new idiom of critique that serves to deepen the involvement of heretofore poorly represented groups within the national political discourse.

Suggesting that digital technologies and online environments are “democratizing” political discourse within the United States, or that the participants in these new dialogs upend the power structure so far as to redefine the political process might be overstating the state of affairs. But, that the new levels of discourse that are taking place in these spaces are fundamentally questioning a number of established aspects of the political process and the way it reaches the population at large. In particular, certain types of video collages exist as intertextual discursive objects, substantively questioning power structures, imparting and appropriating meaning, and establishing a novel kind of political voice within the discourse as a whole. The three primary modes of this action are: the technology and techniques used to create the collages, in essence, their form; the potency of appropriation, especially as it pertains to voice, identity, and meaning; and the the subsequent question of authorship. Combined, these three modes of action act subversively within the discourse and serve to challenge the dominant power structures.

The media collages discussed here, while rife with variety, follow a number of conventions that classify each as participating within a specific dialog. The form, the mode of transmission, and the construction are all similar and establish the objects as part of a larger conversation within the discourse. My earlier exploration of these objects as sites of dissent briefly described the creation process—how existing video material, most often from dominant voices within the discourse, is cut into small pieces and reordered and mashed up with other material to create a new meaning. While this is the single most important characteristic of these collages, there are other identifying characteristics, such as the use of a musical track, very often like a music video in which the people in the frame “sing” to the lyrics; the use of quick cuts between political content and content from popular culture, and the extremely rapid cuts of talking heads to sync the visual image to the spoken or sung lyrics. Most often, much of the political content comes from speeches made by prominent political figures originally broadcast on television or as online video, and many instances will life this kind of content from numerous sources.

Once these collages are created, they are shared on popular video sharing sites, such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and others. This mode of transmission affords the creater and viewers of the video to make the medium interactive—the video sharing sites allow for comments to be written about the video, other videos to be posted in response to the original posting, sharing of the video through email or instant messages, reposting of the video to blogs, aggregating sites like digg.com, and the opportunity for adaptation and appropriation of the video by future collage artists. In a sense, the video becomes a dynamic object imparted with interaction and change by the mediascape that surrounds it. This fundamentally important aspect creates the potential for the video to be participatory, and to be reinterpreted depending on the context it is shared in, the manner in which it is viewed, and the changing circumstances which surround the lifecycle of the object.

The construction and sharing process, however, fundamentally challenges modernist conceptions of ownership and authorship. The process of creating these objects involves no original content creation, no original audio, video, or images. The collage artists that created these videos are, in the quintessentially postmodern understanding of the term, bricoleurs, masters of appropriation, adaptation, and the assembly of existing material for reinterpretation. The lack of original content subjects the creators to a number of questions about their role as artists, and as voices within the political discourse: is the created object original, authentic, or novel, or is it simply derivative? As a collage, does the object challenge the meanings of the constituent parts, and are these meanings those intended by the bricoleur? Does the finished object constitute a novel voice within the discourse, or do its constituent parts reinforce the work as an assembly of unique and cohesive voices? Furthermore, the wholesale inclusion of musical works in many of these collages raises questions about the relationship between the collages and copyright law and fair use.

I submit that the single most subversive element to these videos directly involves some of the elements touched on previously within this exploration: the cutting up of existing material such that the new assembled video states, in words or images, a new concept, idea, or meaning; and the question regarding the originality of the collage’s political voice. These two aspects both touch on the concept of appropriation as the primary rhetorical device through which these collages subvert and construct meaning. In particular, the use of other voices from the existing, hegemonic corners of political discourse to articulate dissident sentiments represents a central aspect of the new critical idiom that is challenging contemporary political discourse.

“Sunday Bloody Sunday,” by rx2008 and found on YouTube,¹ demonstrates how the process of bricolage, sharing, and appropriation subverts established political voices and meanings. What follows is a brief description of how this collage demonstrates the above concepts and ideas. The video is an set of minuscule clips primarily taken from from President George W. Bush’s State of the Union addresses, reassembled to repeat, almost verbatim, the lyrics of U2’s song, “Blood Sunday.” Accompanying the visual images and spoken words of the song is an instrumental music track that resembles the music of the original U2 song. In additional to President Bush’s speech, the clip shows many notable political figures applauding, stuttering, and blinking in response to the dialog.

The original speeches that constitute President Bush’s singing of the song come from a State of the Union address, traditionally an opportunity for the President to laud the accomplishments of his or her administration of the course of the previous year, establish the challenges of the upcoming year, and the propose certain goals for the administration to meet in the future. While not entirely, the speech is a celebration of the administration’s work. In contrast, the original U2 song is a first hand account of The Troubles, a period of conflict in Irish history, and in particular the January, 1972 slaughter of civil rights protesters in Derry, Northern Ireland, and event that became known as Bloody Sunday. In the collage, President Bush is made to sing about the tragedy of war and the devastation felt by ordinary, innocent people. “Broken bottles under children’s feet / Bodies strewn across the dead end street / But I wont heed the battle call / It puts my back up / Puts my back up against the wall,” sings President Bush. This is a statement in marked contrast to the actions of the Bush administration which, rather than refusing the “heed the battle call,” responded to the September, 2001 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in New York with escalated violence in Afghanistan and again later in Iraq. In a sense, then, President Bush is forced by the bricolaging process to articulate sentiments than are distinctly out of character for him, and for the political voice he represents—the White House, and subsequently the foremost political figure in the country.

President Bush’s voice, then, is subverted and appropriated to articulate a new, anti-war sentiment. The irony of this statement is thick, and the creator of the collage is representing it with a very serious intent to criticize the actions of the American government. The manner in which this criticism occurs takes advantage of the constructive process typical of these video collages, the audience that will view, share, and interact with the object on-line, and and the appropriation of not only President Bush’s words, but also the symbolism of the President of the United States, the State of the Union address, and the identities of all the applauding political figures who appear in the video.

1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXnO_FxmHes

~ by Gabriel on June 27, 2008.