Youtube Comedians: Performance in the Digital Era Bachelor’S Diploma Thesis
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Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Vojtěch Vokurka YouTube Comedians: Performance in the Digital Era Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Tomáš Kačer, Ph. D. 2015 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Vojtěch Vokurka Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor, Mgr. Tomáš Kačer, Ph.D., for agreeing to work on this thesis, for finding new and fresh approaches to the topic, and for his time. Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 6 1. YouTube ...................................................................................................................... 8 1.1 The Foundation of YouTube ................................................................................... 8 1.2 Technical Issues .................................................................................................... 10 1.3 The Rise of Vlogging ............................................................................................ 12 1.4 YouTubers Gone Mainstream ............................................................................... 15 2. Performance on a Computer Screen ....................................................................... 20 2.1 Process of Performance ......................................................................................... 20 2.2 Influencing Factors ................................................................................................ 23 2.3 Between Performance Art, Happening, and Stand-Up ......................................... 27 3. YouTube Comedians ................................................................................................ 30 3.1 Grace Helbig – The Awkward One ....................................................................... 31 3.2 Mamrie Hart – The Inappropriate One .................................................................. 36 3.3. Rhett and Link – The Curious Two ...................................................................... 41 3.4 Current Trends ...................................................................................................... 45 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 48 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 50 Primary Sources .......................................................................................................... 50 Secondary Sources ...................................................................................................... 53 Appendices ........................................................................................................................ i Appendix 1 – YouTube .................................................................................................. i Appendix 2 – Grace Helbig .......................................................................................... iii Appendix 3 – Mamrie Hart .......................................................................................... iv Appendix 4 – Rhett and Link ....................................................................................... vi Introduction Over the last few years, the Internet has become an everyday part of people‘s lives in the Western society. One of the most highly visited websites is YouTube, a video-sharing platform. Not only does YouTube serve as a place where people can upload their home video and share it with their relatives, but also many individuals decide to make videos in which they express their opinion, or share their ideas on a daily basis, and upload them on the website. Vlogging, what is this trend called, begins to serve as an alternative to mainstream media and entertains the viewers all around the world. Recently, a community of vloggers has been developing in Los Angeles, California, and their significance in the American culture rises every day as YouTube becomes a trend among the youth. The aim of this thesis is to explore cultural relevance and place of YouTube in the world where people live their lives on the Internet. By examining the medium and its creators, it would be possible to see whether YouTube creators are able to offer an alternative source of information and entertainment, and create a content that would be able to compete with the mainstream media. This thesis focuses on the genre of comedy, especially. In the first chapter, the phenomenon of YouTube is examined. Its foundation and main purpose are described, together with the technical issues and basic vocabulary, useful to orient oneself in the topic. Then, the vlogging as a new form of expressing oneself and its rising importance on the Internet are discussed, followed up by the YouTubers‘ attempts to gain recognition in the traditional mainstream media. Vlogging is compared and contrasted with distinctive art forms in the second chapter. Ideas presented in Richard Schechner‘s Performance Theory are applied to the 6 work of the vloggers, and the vlogging and the comedic content especially are defined as a stand-alone genre. The last chapter consists of an analysis of the work of three prominent YouTube comedians and their channels with regards to their humor, comedic forms, style of their videos, their place in the community, relationship with the audience, and topics and themes covered in their videos. Moreover, the chapter focuses on current trends that are visible on YouTube today Since YouTube is a relatively new platform, there are screenshots of YouTubers‘ videos at the end of this bachelor‘s diploma thesis in the section ―Appendices‖ in order to make visualizing the medium easier. 7 1. YouTube 1.1 The Foundation of YouTube ―If anything is proved to traditional media, it is that new media is taking over, providing content that really changes the world and makes a difference,‖ says YouTube comedian Grace Helbig at the end of one of her videos (Helbig, ―Say Anything Challenge‖). Looking directly to the camera with her head covered in duct tape. Despite being ironic at that moment, she is not so far from the truth, because Helbig and thousands of others with her took the tagline of YouTube, which reads ―Broadcast Yourself‖, to their hearts and let the world continually watch their faces, ideas and lives. YouTube, an internet server for uploading videos, is now in the middle of 2010‘s something that its creators, Chad Hurley, Steve Chan, and Jawed Karim, did not imagine when they founded the company in 2005. In that year, they got an idea for a website where they would be able to upload and share their homemade videos with one another. Thus, they took the advantage of knowing their way around the Internet, because they were working for PayPal, a company which allows online money transfer, and bought the domain www.youtube.com (Hopkins). With the era of online sharing of almost everything right around the corner, their website met with success. Over 72 million individuals were said to visit YouTube each month (BBC News). People were signing up and posting minutes of their lives in a video form every day. In the first few years of YouTube‘s existence, the platform served its primary purpose, which was sharing of home video. However, the number of people who edited what they had shot, and started to contribute with their videos on a regular basis was growing. It was in 2006, when the owners of Google Inc. took the opportunity and bought the website for $1.65 billion (La Monica). 8 As the new owners slowly started making changes on the website, the users whose content showed higher production value were being more and more supported. In order to see ―whether YouTube … can evolve from a popular hub for home videos into an influential player in the entertainment‖, Google launched YouTube Original Channel Initiative in 2012 (Oreskovic). The main aim of the project was to create original YouTube channels covering almost every genre possible. In order to create a youthful alternative to mainstream media, ―[Google] began to push professional content and to adopt conventional broadcast strategies‖ (Morreale 117). Over 100 content producers were offered $100 million to embark on their dream projects. The diversity of the projects was immense, covering everything from situational comedy MyMusic and CrashCourse, a series of lectures on topics taught at high schools, to channels oriented on fitness and bodybuilding and Phillip DeFranco‘s news channel (Hustvedt). DeFranco especially serves as a great example of someone who took the money Google invested in him and created a successful franchise according to his vision. Before the Google Initiative, he run a channel where he expressed his opinion on issues which were talked about on television or in the newspaper. Nevertheless, not so long after receiving the investment, he hired a few employees, bought more cameras and rent new offices with a small studio (Oreskovic). After all, his effort paid off. His channel called SourceFed has now at the beginning of 2015 over 1.5 million subscribers. Moreover, there are SourceFedNERD, the second channel DeFranco managed to launch, and ForHumanPeoples, a company for selling merchandise connected to DeFranco‘s corporation (Manarino).