Colin Mochrie Vs. Jesus H. Christ
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Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2007 Colin Mochrie vs. Jesus H. Christ: Messages About Masculinities and Fame in Online Video Conversations Lori Kendall University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign [email protected] Abstract prolific producers of online multimedia content. In particular, video production, once a practice that With the availability of relatively easy-to-use tools required expensive equipment and relatively for online video creation and distribution, people are sophisticated technical skills, can now be accomplished increasingly producing videos not just for artistic entirely through software. People create and distribute expression, but also as a form of communication. This videos using original artwork, content available online, article examines two types of online video or footage from inexpensive web cameras. While conversations, one within a specific online subculture, many amateur video producers create their own images and one a series of responses to one particularly well- through scanned art, computer graphics programs, or known video. Videos lend themselves to the expression videography and photography, many online videos are of ambiguity, contradictory meanings, taboo topics, assembled multimedia collages made up of pop culture and emotions. Within these two video conversations, images, downloaded music, and “found” photographs topics include discussions of masculinity, identity, and of various kinds, all harvested from the Internet. fame. Some videos become immensely popular, and the practice of sharing online videos has garnered 1. Introduction enough attention to push it from a select Internet subculture to a relatively mainstream phenomenon, including appearances in other venues, such as Media literacy scholars have suggested that BravoTV’s “Viral Videos” program. Online video cultures in the developed world are shifting from an producers are creating new genres of artistic emphasis on text and writing to the increasing production, and many videos are primarily intended as dominance of images [4, 5, 6]. Most research in this stand-alone artworks created for the appreciation of area has focused on production and dissemination of various audiences. However, many videos are rich in images through mass media and/or individuals and intertextual references, and in some cases make groups as image viewers and consumers. In particular, explicit reference to other videos and other video scholars and activists have emphasized the need for producers, resulting in ongoing multimedia increasing media literacy and including instruction in conversations. visual literacy in school curricula[2]. This paper examines online amateur flash This perspective positions young people videos as a new multimedia form of persistent primarily as consumers of images. But with the conversation. I compare two different types of video increasing availability of relatively easy-to-use tools conversations. One is an ongoing exchange amongst for the production of still and moving images -- digital members of an online subculture, the group of people photography, Photoshop software, Macromedia (now producing a form of flash animation known as owned by Adobe) Flash software -- as well as “animutation”. The other consists of videos created by mechanisms for wide distribution of such images a wide range of people in response to a single, well- online (Flickr and other photo hosting sites; known video, “Numa Numa Dance.” These two cases somethingawful.com and similar hosts for, among illustrate the new and sometimes quite sophisticated other things, photoshopping contests; and video ways that people are using images to communicate. hosting sites such as albinoblacksheep and Newgrounds), many young people are becoming 1530-1605/07 $20.00 © 2007 IEEE 1 Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2007 This paper is part of a larger project on difficult, if not impossible to locate the specific amateur online videos, and the videos I discuss herein boundaries of a video “conversation,” both with regard are only a small subsection of videos I have viewed to its temporality and with regard to the participants. over the past year. To augment the two example sets Once a video is posted on the Internet, numerous for this article, I also conducted some supplemental people may respond to it in kind, without necessarily online searches. I located videos related to Numa referencing earlier “turns.” Further, since the existence Numa primarily through searches on video hosting of a video within a conversation relies at least to some sites such as Newgrounds.com, as well as through extent on the intent of the creator, it can be impossible more general web searches using Google. to identify the boundaries of the conversation without Animutations were also found on Newgrounds, as well being a participant in it (and it may not even be as on several sites devoted specifically to the possible then). animutation subculture, such as “Animutation Central” Thus, rather than suggest ways to identify (www.eviltrailmix.com/ animutation). I selected online video conversations, or put these forward for examples for this paper based on their ability to traditional conversational analysis, my aim here is to illustrate the ways in which videos can function as part suggest ways in which videos are conversational, and of a conversation, and to illuminate some of the to provide some suggestions for analyzing them with particular features of video conversations. that in mind. The examples I provide herein do not To be considered part of a “conversation,” a represent complete conversations, but rather illustrative video must do two things. First, it must explicitly excerpts. reference a previous video or video producer (or, if originating the conversation, be so referenced). 2. Animutation Second, it must communicate something relevant both to the audience of the video and to the previous content. In short, it says something to or about the Niel Cicierega, then 14, created the video previous video or video producer. However, despite genre he named animutation in 2001, with his first this temporal and content similarity to other types of video “Japanese Pokerap.” His second video, online text or audio conversations, video conversations “Hyakugojyuuichi!!,” inspired others to imitate his differ from non-image-based conversations. While style, producing videos first termed “fanimutations,” to video conversations can include multiple videos, these acknowledge their derivative nature. Over time, as the rarely align in strict turn-taking fashion. Video genre flourished and a vibrant subculture emerged conversations are much less likely than other types of around this style of flash animation, the term conversation to be linear and unidimensional. fanimutation was mostly dropped in favor of calling all The multiple channels of information videos created in this style animutation. available through video – text, images, movement, Animutations have several distinctive sound – allow for multiple and complex meanings. features. Most take the form of music videos, with Thus video conversations lend themselves to the music often selected from children’s television shows expression of (1) ambiguity, (2) self-contradictory in languages other than English. The lyrics of these meanings, (3) topics that are taboo, and (4) emotions or songs are textually mistranslated into English opinions that are difficult to express. These four soundalikes, resulting in silly lyrics (reproduced as text features can occur through text and other forms of onscreen) such as “give me my sweater back or I’ll communication as well, but work particular well in the play the guitar” (from “Hyakugojyuuichi”). (See [3] multi-media digital video format. The communication for an analysis of the practice of lyric mistranslations of ambiguity and contradictory messages through text in these and other videos.) Animutations always can be difficult, whereas people steeped in image- include images garnered from popular culture, heavy mass media since early childhood can often especially pictures of celebrities and images from manipulate images in sophisticated ways. Further, a children’s television programs. These images are single frame from a video, layered with various animated in a deliberately crude style, similar to the images, requires some interpretation from the viewer. cut-out animation style of the television show “South While this also can be true of text, videos again Park,” and are often altered (mutated) in ways to provide an easier medium in which to leave meanings enhance the humor of the video. In addition to this open, while still providing a satisfyingly entertaining broader form of intertextuality, animutations always experience. reference other animutations, using an extensive There is however a problem with referring to common palate of repeated images. Some of these are sets of videos as conversations. In addition to the almost required inclusions, such as images of Colin difficulty in identifying specific turns, it can be Mochrie (a Canadian comic best know for his work on 2 Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2007 the television improv show “Whose Line is it Anyway”), and of Jay Jay the Jet Plane, a character from a popular television show geared towards young children. Their intragenre intertextuality is part of what allows these videos to function as a form of persistent conversation.