Remix as Art/Political Statement

Thinking about the videos we watched in class, I’ve come to the conclusion that many of the remix videos involving film transcend the typical ‘film as a narrative’ trope they have been placed in for so long; The re-contextualizing these remix videos have reinforced my idea of remixed video is moreso an art form than one of film, with many of the videos we’ve watched being closer to art than to a typical film. One such video that I’ve seen that is actually one of my favorite pieces of art is called Ultimate Reality, a collaboration between musician Dan Deacon and artist Jimmy Joe Roche, in which they re-appropriate Arnold Schwarzenegger films into a kaleidoscopic piece of art, taking the clips as throwing away the emotional/mental/psychological attachment the viewer associates with the original footage. I felt this especially with the clip we watched, Telephones; the original intended emotion the viewer was supposed to have towards the original scenes is gone, with all that’s left being the emotion they feel the new director is trying to show; with Telephones, we have no context to the original scenes in which the director has taken his clips from; instead, we are subject to the multiple tropes films take when showing scenes with telephones, with emotional scenes taking on almost comedic qualities, making the viewer hyper aware of how a scene stereotypically plays out, almost in every film. 

Another common denominator in the films we watched, is how none of the films retained the artistic qualities the original films had; all of them could be linked closer with visual arts as opposed to a film or television show; they functioned more as a social or political statement as opposed to an emotional statement to the characters. Taking these scenes out of context removes all of the emotional build-up of what the director was trying to show and re-appropriating it into what the remixer was trying to show; with the Wonder Woman video we were shown, instead of a strong female superhero, how even someone trying to be empowering towards women shown as a hypersexualized object. With the clip remixing the newscaster clips, we are shown a deeper, more psychologically dark peek into the human psyche as opposed to the neutral, unemotional tone most newscasts run with. I think this is the most interesting aspect of remixing videos, giving a deeper meaning to otherwise light or unassuming video clips.