Political Remix Videos in Teacher Education

Political Remix Videos in Teacher Education 1. Objectives and Purposes. In my paper, I will discuss a critical pedagogical project that entailed engaging preservice teachers in analyzing what are called “Political Remix Videos” for the purpose of discovering ways to incorporate these potentially powerful cultural texts into a critical teaching practice during their student teaching. The project contributed to my overall goal of preparing the preservice teachers to introduce and explore issues of race, ethnicity, gender, consumerism, power and critical literacy in their teaching. 2. Theoretical Framework. Knobel and Lankshear (2008) observe that remix generally “means to take cultural artifacts and combine and manipulate them into new kinds of creative blends” (p. 22). This broad definition encompasses a variety of practices that entail “using the capacities of computers to remix music, digital images, texts, sounds, and animation.” They explain that most remixes are the result of “fan practices,” and they give examples that include making such “new blends” as “faux trailers for hypothetical movies, setting remixed movie clips to remixed music of choice synchronized to the visual action, recording anime cartoons and video editing them in synchrony with a favorite music track, mixing found images with original music to express a theme or idea (with text or without text added), and mixing images, animations, and texts to create cartoons or satirical posters” (p. 23). Though Knobel and Lankshear don’t say so, the fact is that most fan-generated remixes can be fairly described as having no discernible intended political content. One exception is a subset of remix videos named “Political Remix Videos,” or PRVs. Horwatt (2009) explains that PRVs deal critically with political discourses (i.e., videos featuring political figures giving speeches), as well as “with issues of identity, poverty, violence, and consumerism in contemporary culture” (p. 78). These are the remixes that have interested me most. In my reading of the remix literature, and particularly the literature about PRVs, I have found the theoretical framing of this critical practice to be quite thin, and often non-existent. So when I introduce my students to remix culture and PRVs, I also assign theoretical readings about “detournement,” which is a theory and practice associated with the Situationist International, aka the “situationists” and “the SI.” The SI began in 1957 as a European avant-garde organization (Wollen, 1989), evolved into a Paris-based, radical Marxist-influenced political group in the 1960s (Plant, 1992), and played a key role in the famous mass strikes involving over ten million people in France during May of 1968 (Vienet, 1992). In 1972, Guy Debord, who was the singular leader of the SI throughout its history, dissolved the group (Debord, 2003 [1972]).[1] Today, it is a basic banality to observe that we live in a media-saturated society, a society of “the Spectacle” within which we are subject to an endless bombardment of spectacles—advertising, television, politics, cinema, music, sports, 24-hour mainstream news cycles of coverage about crime, weather disasters, etc., etc. It was not so banal to observe this spectacular condition in the 1950s and 1960s, which Debord (1995 [1967]) did in his book The Society of the Spectacle. Central to Debord’s analysis is that the Spectacle is masterful (like The Matrix) in conditioning people to become, over time, spectators of their own lives who are so contemplative that they aren’t aware of how inactive and depoliticized they have become. However, Debord (2003 [1972]) also explained that despite “the alienation of everyday life, the opportunities for passion and playfulness to find expression are still very real” (p. 138). And the “critical art” that Debord (1989 [1963]) and the situationists developed to critique and challenge the alienating, separating, pacifying, spectator-inducing, socially controlling forces of the spectacle was called detournement—i.e., the act of creating critical media texts (media of all kinds, including film, books, maps, comic strips, graffiti, and more). According to Elisabeth Sussman (1989): Detournement (‘diversion’) was [a] key means of restructuring culture and experience . . . . Detournement proposes a violent excision of elements—painting, architecture, literature, film, urban sites, sounds, gestures, words, signs—from their original contexts, and a consequent restabilization and recontextualization through rupture and realignment. (p. 8). This definition of detournement, along with selected passages from Debord’s book on the Spectacle and other SI readings, provided my students with a theoretical foundation for thinking generally about media culture and more specifically about the political remix videos that were central to my critical project. 3. Method of Inquiry (or, Phases of the Pedagogical Project). The project involved a group of secondary English students in an MAT program and took place over one academic year. In the fall semester English methods course, I introduced students to “remix culture” (Lessing, 2008; Lamb, 2007; Mackenzie, 2007; Song, 2009), and then narrowed our focus to PRVs, (Dubisar and Palmeri, 2010). I next showed students examples of PRVs; required students to create YouTube pages so they could save PRVs that they found on their own; assigned students to make lessons around PRVs that they would teach during student teaching; had students write explanatory papers about their lesson plans; and assigned students to develop units that incorporated PRVs in various lessons. During the spring semester student teaching practicum, students taught their PRV-based lessons, collected student work, and eventually produced a teaching portfolio that included several essays and artifacts from their teaching, and these portfolios became valuable for me to learn about how their teaching with PRVs went. 4. Data Sources, Evidence, Objects, Materials. One batch of materials I have been analyzing to discover how the project went for students is described in the previous section. So what I will focus on here are two examples of the central texts in the project, i.e., the PRVs. These are important “materials.” Horwatt observes that practitioners of political remixing typically harbor deep suspicions about the manipulative role of mainstream media, and they are profoundly distrustful of the persuasive practices of television advertising, such as that undertaken by transnational corporations that have histories of gross irresponsibility and criminality. Among the examples that Horwatt gives of political remix videos is one aimed at a commercial that was part of Dow Chemical’s “Human Element” campaign in 2008.[2] Horwatt quotes Dow’s CEO as stating that the campaign’s purpose was to “‘connect with the faces and values of the people Dow touches in a positive way.’” The political remix video was made by a YouTube user named Christian Nilsen.[3] Nislen appropriated a 30-second stretch of narration from one of Dow’s (several) “Human Element” commercials and recontexutalized it to become the narration of the infamous footage from the Vietnam War that showed “a naked young Vietnamese girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, whose clothes and skin have been burnt off after a napalm attack” (Horwatt, p. 79). As we see the girl running, we hear the Dow narrator’s philosophical message: For each of us, there is a moment of discovery. We understand that all of life is elemental. And as we marvel at element bonding with element, we soon realize that when you add the human element to the equation, everything changes. And suddenly, all of chemistry illuminates humanity, and all of humanity illuminates chemistry. The human element. Nothing is more fundamental. Nothing more elemental. Of course, Dow Chemical manufactured Agent Orange (napalm) during Vietnam, which gives new meaning to Dow’s CEO’s description of the “Human Element” campaign: to “‘connect with the faces and values of the people Dow touches in a positive way.’” Oil corporations are also a favorite target of political remix videos. For example, in 2010 the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) made a commercial called “RBC Olympic Torch Relay Sponsorship: Flame Trail” in support of that year’s Winter Olympic Games, which were held in Vancouver, BC. The commercial showed a “flame trail” (see image below) burning its harmless, purposeful way day and night along a route that traverses Canada’s small towns, rural landscapes, and big cities to its final destination in Vancouver, all accompanied by pleasant piano and violin music. There are no people in the commercial (just a few dogs and some flying birds), there is no narration, and near the end a message appears on the screen: The final frame is of the RBC logo accompanied by a message that states: “Enthusiastic Sponsor of the 2010 Torch Relay.”[4] In response to RBC’s picturesque commercial ode to its benevolent role in shaping national unity for the greater good of all, an activist group called the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) made a political remix titled “RBC Olympics Tar Sands.”[5] The description accompanying the video states RBC is a leading financier “of the dirtiest oil project on Earth—the Alberta tar sands,” adding that since 2007, RBC has backed more than $16.9 billion (USD) in loans to companies operating in the Alberta tar sands—more than any other bank. Expansion of tar sand is trampling the rights of indigenous peoples, destroying globally significant ecosystems and exponentially increasing Canada’s carbon emissions. To challenge RBC’s self-serving commercial, RAN added a voiceover to the original commercial. Here is the transcript of the voiceover: There’s a burning question spreading across Canada: “How will we power the future?” At RBC, we’ve chosen oil. And not just any oil—tar sands oil, the dirtiest kind on earth. They say that burning the tar sands will devastate the climate for future generations. At RBC, we understand that the future is later. They say that we’re poisoning indigenous communities. We say, “We’re poisoning everyone—equally.” In fact, the environmental cost of the tar sands will be borne by all Canadians, but we at RBC believe that doesn’t have to be our problem because we know we’re going to do just fine.” The final image of this remixed commercial shows the RBC logo with the message: “Enthusiastic Sponsor of the Alberta Tar Sands.” Along with these two PVRs, I also showed a few others, including one titled “Homophobic Friends,” which is a 55-minute mega-supercut video that juxtaposes dozens of gay-joke clips from the ten-year run of the entire series of Friends.[6] Another is titled “Lego Violence,”[7] which juxtaposes thirty one-second clips from several Lego commercials featuring children (mostly boys) loading or shooting Lego toys, and many animated clips depicting the toys themselves (soldiers, aircraft, missiles, rockets, cannonballs, and so on) in action (flying, blasting, crashing, exploding). These are just a sampling of all the PVR videos I showed. 5. Provisional “Results” and Conclusions. I am now still analyzing all the artifacts (lesson plans, YouTube pages of students’, overall units, the teaching portfolios,), but most of the students designed sophisticated lesson plans and units around PRVs. They discussed their work in terms of detournement, “political remix,” critical media literacy, the role of popular culture for teaching and learning, and the overall positive impact of incorporating media texts, particularly critical media texts into their teaching. That said, several students also discussed the difficulties in engaging in this pedagogy because of their mentors’ hesitancy about allowing potentially controversial texts into the classroom. And some students also articulated that they did not feel comfortable as student teachers in engaging their own students in issues about race, sexuality, gender and so on. But overall, the project went well, based on what I have analyzed so far. 6. Scholarly Significance. Though a plethora of “remix” videos of all kinds can be found on many websites (especially YouTube and Vimeo), and though literature about “remix” can be found in a wide range of academic fields, the field of education has yet to produce much literature on this subject. So, my project and the article that will come from it will be a contribution to a discourse that has yet to take off. References Debord, G. (1995 [1967]). Society of the spectacle. New York: Zone Books. Debord, G. Debord, G. (1989 [1963]). The situationists and the new forms of action in politics and art, 148-153. In E. Sussman (Ed.), On the passage of a few people through a rather brief moment in time: The situationist international, 1957-1972. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Debord, G. (2003 [1972]). The real split in the international. London: Pluto Press. Dubisar, A., and Palmeri, J. (2010). Palin/Pathos/Peter Griffin: Political video remix and composition pedagogy. Computers and Composition, vol. 77, 77-93. Horwatt, E. (2009). A taxonomy of digital video remixing: Contemporary found footage practice on the Internet, pp. 76-91. In Smith, I. A. (Ed.), Cultural borrowings: Appropriation, reworking, transformation. A Scope d-Book. http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/cultborr/ Knobel, M., and Lankshear, C. (2008). Remix: The art and craft of endless hybridization. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 52(1), 22-33. Lamb, B. (2007). Dr. Mashup or, why educators should learn to stop worrying and love the remix. Educause, July & August, 13-23. Lessing, L. (2008). Remix: Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy. New York: Penguin. Mackenzie, S. (2007). The horror, Piglet, the horror: Found footage, mash-ups, AMVs, the avant-garde, and the strange case of Apocalypse Pooh. Cineaction, vol. 72, 8-15. Plant, S. (1992). Plant, S. (1992). The most radical gesture: The situationist international in a postmodern age. New York: Routledge. Song, Y. (2009). Media art remix: A tool for social action. International Journal of Education through Art, 5 (2 & 3), 229-240. Sussman, E. (1989) Sussman, E. (Ed.). (1989). On the passage of a few people through a rather brief moment in time: The situationist international1957-1972. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vienet, R. (1992). Vienet, R. (1967). The situationists and the new forms of action against politics and art. In K. Knabb (Ed.), Situationist International Anthology (pp. 213-216). Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets. Wollen, P. (1989). Wollen, P. (1989). Bitter victory: The art and politics of the situationist international. In E. Sussman (Ed.), On the passage of a few people through a rather brief moment in time: The situationist international, 1957-1972 (pp. 200). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. [1] A half-hour documentary about the group can be found on the website Ubuweb at: http://www.ubu.com/film/si.html, and the best gathering of the SI’s writing is the Bureau of Public Secrets: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/index.htm. [2] See Dow’s commercial at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsCG26886w8 [3] See at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DkG9UHRhop8 [4] See the commercial at: http://adsoftheworld.com/media/tv/rbc_olympic_torch_relay_sponsorship_flame_trail [5] See the remix video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKTpuLnKX_8 [6] See on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsQ5za-J6I8 [7] See on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDThHosFS_