Just a thought: perhaps part of the reason there's such a smorgasbord of ways to represent oneself on the Internet now (not just via prose, but audio and video, too) is because some of us are far better at speaking and acting, giving a holistic, three dimensional impression, than we are at writing. Or perhaps vlogging is preferable because some people simply aren't stellar spellers or in love with the written word. :) With all the different mediums we can use to harness this media it makes it very accessible to people of many sundry talents and strengths. (Thank God blogging doesn't necessarily involve math, or I'd be driven to videolog, too). Then again, nobody'd watch my ugly mug posting every day...or at least I highly doubt it.
I think video is a fantastic addition to what we can do with the internet, but as someone who IS a lover of lexicon and an adamant enthusiast of the written word, I fear that we may be slowly eradicating the respect for and attention to writing it so well deserves. When middle schools begin offering classes in vlog casting in favor of essay writing, I'll probably draw myself a warm bath, light some candles, doff the fluorescents, turn on some Enya and sob until the water goes cold. Or just slash my wrists with my celadon inked fountain pen. But I suppose I'm just a bit of a drama queen, and I only have Enya on tape and no longer own a tape deck. There goes that dream.
Michelle Malkin IS indeed a firecracker. Her video "open letter to YouTube" is simple, pithy and well conceived. I think it's probably pretty impactful, too, because Malkin got to be an actress--she got to almost have a conversation--because of that video and because that letter was in fact a VIDEO, not a letter. She may have made more of an impression upon the YouTube execs who watched that than she might have had she simply written an incendiary email. Attaching a human face to a thing (especially if this "thing" happens to have the potential to inflame) always makes it that much more compelling; and when you're clever, attractive, and have excellent public-speaking skills, using these assets are not only natural but necessary. By accessing video as her medium for rebuttal Malkin clearly selected what would be best for her persona and her cause.
On to blogs and art!
Quite frankly, I don't know what the story is behind this site--it's not something that I can or want to sum up in a handful of words--but I like it. A lot. This amalgamation of videos by creator Mica and the vibrant little implied community swirling about it really appeals to me. Mica's About Me section reads like an introduction I'd like to have made as a precursor to making a new friend (i.e. Mica's cool shit, and her shit is cool, too. I'd seek her out to be friends if I lived in New York).
I particularly enjoyed watching this for its random circusy music and Pythonesque motion.
Mica says, "The moving images I put here are not even sketches, they are more like doodles." In this case, one of those really elaborate, astoundingly finely done doodles you orchestrate in class whilst your wizened Professor drones on about psychoanalytic theory as applied to 15th century to-do lists of aging housewives and hopejusthopehopehope that somebody looks over your shoulder because, really, your doodle is amazing but you don't want to brag. Really. I think Mica's vlog stands testimony to how very liberating blogs are for artists of all sorts. This medium offers an instant, interactive audience that can watch, think, react, and give feedback. What other venue (aside from perhaps the stage in stand up comedy) allows for this? I keep thinking about degrees of perfomativity in various art forms and in various venues, and I'd like to say that there must be something similar to what blogs facilitate. I first thought "Hey. Why not plays?" but the theater audience is more or less a quiet, removed spectator (unless, of course, the drama unfolding is TRULY atrocious and someone's come armed with rotting fruit). Blogs really are unique in their immediate capacity for critical review, feeling out your audience's demands, and getting an instantaneous idea of the reception of your work (whether you write, vlog, sing, or strip). Hmph. Pretty liberating and pretty scary all at once.
I also really enjoyed this. Okay, I admit I liked it first because of its title's allusion to Cervantes' masterwork but I got dragged into the trippy video drama shortly thereafter. It's an anxious internet soap opera. Behind each episode there's this twitchy edge that wants to say just a little bit more. The episodes could easily lapse into full on cheeze (yes, with a z), but they don't. Instead, they seem honest and relevant and really, truly like the stories you'd be told if you were able to perch on the shoulder of a stranger on the street. A little campy? Mmm. Yeah. Is that the appeal? Shit, yeah it is! I hate TV unless it involves Hugh Laurie or the best show to ever go off television for being achingly too smart, but I rather like chasingwindmills and so, I hear, did a certain crazed campesino living on the Iberian Peninsula.
I love Don Quixote. And videos. And also ginger tea and snickerdoodles (obviously my Saturday nights are incredibly exciting and full of licentious and illegal activities).
Paz.
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5 comments:
i think this is a great post and asks a lot of the important questions. obviously writing will not be rendered useless, but maybe, in this case, malkin almost HAD to respond in the medium that constituted the battleground. Maybe one thing writing can do though, is TELL us stuff. for example, in the tidal wave of video product out there, it becomes more important for a writer to tell us why, for example, Rebecca Spektor is not just any old vocalist. Because the vide always happens in real time. and there's too much of it.
Hey Colin!
That's Regina, to you. ;) (And everyone else) *grin*
I think you're absolutely right about Malkin's response being most appropriately administered via video.
So are you saying that writing will become the only way OPINIONS and qualitiative analyses are done?
One thing I was thinking that video does uniquely in some instances is let EACH VIEWER JUDGE for himself. Stripped bare of opinion and presenting only an actuality, perhaps video is less biased than editorials? (Roll with me, though I know this has its falsities because video can be creatively edited and scenes can be elided to serve a purpose, it may have some truth!).
I'm taking a class called media philosophy...it's all about how technology affects society and culture (or subsumes it, if you believe Adorno). But one thing that all these philosophers seem to agree on (by all, I mean Heidegger, Adorno, and Benjamin) is that technology has a profound effect on how we express ourselves, and that its increasing at a far more rapid pace than ever before - the only thing that could be comparable to the last 100 years' outgrowth of film and radio, etc. is that of the printing press.
Out of that, though, here's a concept. Man needs a new way to represent history, and that's exactly what film does. Before, through writing, history is represented in a linear way, in a sense of A to B to C. But with video, and the techniques of cutting and montage, there is a more accurate way to represent our experience/history, as it has been shattered by the rapid growth of technology and the World Wars.
This idea could easily be extended to the idea of blogs - posting short, fragmented pieces of commentary or experience - and then, VLogging is an attempt to harness the latest technology of webcams, etc, and a natural outgrowth of the piecemeal nature of the blog.
I could be making great sense, or none at all.
I don't think video is devoid of bias or that it can't "TELL us stuff." Not all the vlogs are acting, many of them are people speaking directly to the camera. If they were to read a written commentary aloud, how would that be different from a written post?
Go with the Orinoco flow, yo.
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