AFF's Doublethink

John Tabin — March 12, 2010 at 12:15 am

Julian Sanchez had an interesting vlog last month on the topic of remix culture. Not sure whether or not it will answer your questions, but worth a look-see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BZ06Kwbi5s

cam — March 12, 2010 at 12:29 am

For the average consumer, most entertainment is, in fact, “just ‘there’ for (them) to have a chuckle with and move on.” That’s why they call it entertainment.

Sonny Bunch — March 12, 2010 at 8:49 am

John: I did see that post, hence my reference to dancing hipsters. Like I said, these remixes are all well and good, but I’m not sure what they really add to the culture. I think an awful lot of creative firepower is being wasted, and I find it kind of sad, honestly.

Joe Tetreault — March 12, 2010 at 10:38 am

Sonny,
Mashups are inherently endothermic (endoculturic?) They combine two or more items of entertainment and merge them to provide less entertainment then the originals provided initially. Much like the point when a star no longer produces more energy by fusing two atoms.

I don’t remember the forgettable moment of creativity that spawned the thought, but I am certain I saw it shortly after watching a Science Channel Doc where Neil deGrasse Tyson explained the concept of endothermic fusion. The heavier the elements that are fused, the more energy is used, to produce less, eventually causing the star’s collapse.

I admit a nihilistic curiosity if the theory of endothermic culture will reach its logical conclusion. I certainly hope it doesn’t, but to borrow the old newsroom saw, it’d be a helluva story.

Will — March 12, 2010 at 11:20 am

Isn’t pure entertainment a worthy cultural product? Replace “remix culture” with any popular entertainment from the past 30 years and you’ve basically restated the age-old critique of mainstream culture as flighty and shallow. But so what? It’s enjoyable, and that’s enough for me. I also think you’re wildly overstating the originality of pre-remix (premix?) culture.

Julian Sanchez — March 12, 2010 at 11:34 am

So, two responses. First, the argument I’m making in that video is precisely that exclusive focus on the originality of the contribution misses the value in the activity itself. The vast majority of individual and collective cultural creation practiced by ordinary people is minimally “original” and unlikely to yield any final product of wide appeal or enduring value. I’m thinking of, e.g., people singing karaoke, playing in a garage band, drawing, building models, making silly YouTube videos, improvising freestyle poetry, whatever. What I’m positing is that there’s an intrinsic value to having a culture where people don’t simply get together to consume professionally produced songs and movies, but also routinely participate in cultural creation. And the value of that kind of cultural practice doesn’t depend on the stuff they create being particularly awe-inspiring.

The second response is that if you allow that lots of cultural production works on a collective, evolutionary model—not just the romantic model of creativity as a property of individual genius—then it’s not really an objection that any particular move in the game is only a relatively minor mutation of a predecessor work:
http://www.juliansanchez.com/2010/02/16/the-irreducible-complexity-of-copyright/

All that said, have you ever tried to make a video? Because if you have, and if you can bracket your contempt for Brooklyn hipsters for five minutes, you’ll realize that those videos actually do display a substantial level of production skill. And they’re a prelude to later efforts like this:
http://vimeo.com/7243598

Joe Tetreault — March 12, 2010 at 12:04 pm

Will, I’ll stipulate that with Hollywood churning out incessant reboots and sequels, much of our entertainments are derivative in one way or another. However, once that’s accepted as a ground rule, is there much doubt (Sonny’s quote from Harry Alan Potamkin aside) that things have gotten particularly watered down now.

Sonny Bunch — March 12, 2010 at 12:08 pm

Julian: I’m actually entirely with you on the skill that it takes to produce a video like the Brooklyn hipsters did — I have no talent for lighting, camera movements, etc. I know how hard it is to edit together something like that, let alone shoot it in an aesthetically pleasing manner. That’s one of the reasons I find the final product so depressing, however: An impressive amount of skill and talent has gone into creating something that is not just unoriginal but, in a way, anti-original. These are people who are so devoid of originality that they define themselves not only by copying a video that they’ve seen before but by copying the very personalities of characters that they’ve seen before. The sadness I feel goes double for the makers of the SF version: Not only are they doing the same thing — subsuming their personalities into constructs that have been around for decades — but they’re copying a copy of a remix. It’s unoriginality on top of unoriginality.

So yes, I do appreciate the effort that goes into making those videos. I just can’t help but feel a sadness at the empty, wholly unoriginal product that talent went into producing.

Sonny Bunch — March 12, 2010 at 12:09 pm

Will/Joe: There’s no doubt that there’s a deficit of originality in Hollywood at the moment. That doesn’t mean we should reject Hollywood by embracing something even more unoriginal.

Julian Sanchez — March 13, 2010 at 2:03 am

I think if you look at some of their other videos—like the Will Smith medley I linked—you’ll revise your conclusion that the particular group of people is devoid of originality. They are, of course, “copying” Will Smith’s songs even in that one, but if an interpretation & arrangement can be original, certainly that is.

Anyway, this is eye-of-the-beholder stuff, but I think the idea of acting out someone’s rearrangement of these iconic characters is sort of clever. Again, that’s what most culture is—a recapitulation of a form with a twist. Every company puts their own spin on Hamlet, but if it’s *Hamlet* you basically know how it’s going to end. Or if it’s not original along a dimension you care about, maybe it’s just fun and amusing for five minutes. We’re not lost as a culture if we produce a bunch of stuff like that.

Sam M — March 14, 2010 at 2:52 pm

Sonny,

Does this kind of depression extend to other kinds of pursuits? The above mentioned garage band? What of the upscale family that puts junior in the parlor to play Mozart on the piano? Should we moan about the fact that this kid is “merely” putting his technical skill to use instead of composing his own music? And let’s forget about kids. Let’s say we have a group of 40-something guys together and one of them can bang out Margaritaville on a guitar. Is the singing and merriment that ensues a waste of time? Or worse, something “depressing”?

Sonny Bunch — March 14, 2010 at 4:24 pm

Sam: If people started acting as if the garage band or the 40-something wanking around to Jimmy Buffet was a great advance in our culture or the next great phase of social understanding then yes, I’d be incredibly depressed.

Sam M — March 14, 2010 at 5:50 pm

“If people started acting as if the garage band or the 40-something wanking around to Jimmy Buffet was a great advance in our culture”

Seriously? I think that the “garage band” has been a pretty widely appreciated form at least since the days of punk, through the Hold Steady, etc. It is consistently heralded as a “return to authenticity” in one form or another. I would say that it is taken far more seriously than mash-ups.

I think we also need to be willing to make important distinctions. Perhaps putting BSG to Sabotage is pure “entertainment,” but I think it’s pretty obvious that certain hip-hop acts have taken sampling to a different level than that.

So no, the pimply-faced kid in the garage really isn’t Iggy Pop. And whoever made this mash-up is not Wu Tang Clan. Neither of these seems like an indictment of the form.

Finally, I think that the Victorian era of parlor music, all of it covers of classical stuff, in fact HAS been put on a cultural pedestal.

Freddie — March 14, 2010 at 6:14 pm

The analogy isn’t the garage band, it’s the terrible bar bands that play “Pour Some Sugar On Me,” “Livin on a Prayer,” “You Shook Me,” etc., and nothing but, all over this country, endlessly.

Freddie — March 14, 2010 at 6:36 pm

I have no dog in the fight of this larger argument. It’s interesting; I don’t have much to add.

But with all respect to Liz and the Cobras, I could just not be more bored by “taking songs and putting them in dramatically different instrumentation/styles/contexts for its own sake” thing. It’s so tired to me. Like the endless acapella groups on Youtube that are like “Metallica… ACAPELLA?!?!” The point isn’t how the song is sung, but rather merely the novelty of taking music and putting it into some very different form. I love lots of different cover songs, and many that dramatically change the song in question. But it’s gotta come from the actual merits of the music and not from the novelty of the production. This is exacerbated, in the Cobras video, by the selection of Will Smith and the Fresh Prince theme in particular. Because Will Smith, I think you would agree, is sort of seen as a ridiculous figure, and the Fresh Prince as a beloved by sort of ridiculous show. And, from my perspective, a lot of the “work” in the video is being done by the fact that this modern day flapper is singing a faintly ridiculous cultural touchstone or three, and I just find that kind of novelty tiresome. (I remember when “Lazy Sunday” came out, and everybody was calling it genius, and I was just baffled. Nerds rapping would have been relevant in, what, 1989?)

Now, aesthetic taste is subjective, and what I bet those Goddamn Cobras would say is that they like the rendition of the songs on the aesthetic or artistic merits, whatever that means. And more power to them. To me, on that level, it’s a failure, which is only to say that I am me and people who like it are them and there’s no problem there. If I’m right about the power of the juxtaposition, the question, I guess, is whether the appeal of that sort of thing is necessarily going to have a shorter lifespan than other kinds of appreciation.

The video portion, though– it looks gorgeous, and obviously there was a skilled hand involved there. And it reminds me what a revolution there has been and continues to be in the availability of really impressive camera and editing technology.

Freddie — March 14, 2010 at 6:46 pm

Sorry for three comments in a row– I’m totally amenable to arguments that I’m inventing a fake distinction between liking something “on the merits of the music” and liking novelty or inventiveness. That would be a very fair criticism.

Sam M — March 14, 2010 at 8:52 pm

“The analogy isn’t the garage band, it’s the terrible bar bands that play “Pour Some Sugar On Me,””

I am not sure that’s the analogy at all. But even “cover bands” can be good, if that’s what you mean. Johnny Cash’s late career covers were really great stuff.

What we have here, it seems, is someone taking a pretty entertaining but not particularly stunning entry in the “remix culture” genre and using it to make some pretty broad claims about artistic value.

But I simply don’t see lots of people pointing to this video and talking about it as some kind of great artistic achievement. In fact, I don’t see anybody pointing to all kinds of remixes as “genius.” Which seems right. Most rock music is crap. Most rap is crap. Most country music is crap. But that doesn’t mean someone can’t do something really good and creative in those genres. In fact, people HAVE done stunning artistic work with remixes. I am not sure why the fact that this example is kind of light-weight should be seen as an indictment of the form.

Sonny Bunch — March 15, 2010 at 9:32 am

A couple of things: I was conflating the “garage band” with the “40-something playing Jimmy Buffett,” i.e., a group of kids playing covers. If we’re talking about people putting together original compositions in their garage, that’s different; punk isn’t my cup of tea, but it was important because it was strikingly original, a rejection of the past and an injection of fresh air into a stagnating media. In other words, it’s essentially the exact opposite of remix culture which is an appropriation and use of the past designed to win plaudits by playing off of something that was already popular.

For example, let’s consider that Will Smith medley that Julian posted. Freddie points out that the inherent silliness of the costumes does some of the heavy lifting, and that’s fair enough. But let’s just look at the music for a minute. Are people connecting with it because of the “remix” aspects, i.e., the composition/juxtaposition of the remixed lines? Or are they connecting with it because of their identification with lyrics from past popular songs? Or are they connecting with it because of their identification with musical hooks from past popular songs, a number of which were samples of other past, popular songs?

Because here’s what I see in that Will Smith medley: I see a video that people are enjoying in large part because they have a sense of nostalgia for Will Smith and find pretty catchy because it’s all based on music that other people have created before the Goddamn Cobras even knew how to play a snare drum. Is it entertaining? I suppose. But, just like the Brooklyn/SF hipster rat pack videos, it’s a copy of a copy of a copy. The few elements of originality obscure the massive amount of unoriginality hiding behind the surface.

Sam M — March 15, 2010 at 1:06 pm

“The few elements of originality obscure the massive amount of unoriginality hiding behind the surface.”

This is true of almost all “cultural production,” including paintings and novels and films. Are most remixes junk? Sure. Can remixes, even covers, be used in an original and creative way? It seems to me that the obvious answer is “yes.” That is, it seems to me that you are picking out specific examples, and you are correct about those specific examples. But it’s a huge leap to go from that to a discussion of the genre.

You say punk was stunningly original. Someone else says, “Green Day. Sigh.” When they do that, they are clearly not tackling the best that the form has to offer.

So I guess I will close out by posing a simple question: Even if we agree that most remixes fail to do much in the way of creativity, do you think it’s POSSIBLE for a remix to be original and creative?

Sonny Bunch — March 15, 2010 at 1:30 pm

I’m running out the door, so I don’t have the time to give this the proper amount of thought. I guess I’d answer: Maybe it’s possible? Girl Talk would probably be the closest I could think of to an “original” work born of the remix culture, but even then I think it’s just uber-unoriginality dressed up as something new and exciting. I seriously doubt his work will have any lasting impact.

What would you suggest as an example of a remix that is “original and creative,” something that will last for years to come as a monument to this thing we call remix culture?

Sam M — March 15, 2010 at 5:42 pm

“What would you suggest as an example of a remix that is “original and creative,”

Almost the entire world of hip-hop, from Herbie Hancock and Grandmaster Flash, through Ghostface Killaz.

Even if you don’t listen to hip-hop, and I don’t, to be honest, I think it’s fair to say that it has been one of the few legitimately creative and innovative artistic forces of the past three decades. I think it is equally true to say that it owes a fundamental debt of gratitude to remixing.