Busy Week!
Posted by: elisa kreisinger on: October 18, 2009
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This week I finished the first SATC remix, wrote a blog post for BravoFan, and gave a talk at MIT. (Check out my YouTube playlist for the talk here.)
BravoFan is a space dedicated to the content of Bravo, a TV network owned by NBC Universal. For those of us looking for more concrete examples that misogyny still exists, BravoFan makes it easier to find posts about shows like “Date my Ex” and “Millionaire Matchmaker”. “Inside the Actor’s Studio” maybe the only legit show the network airs…and by legit I mean not targeted to just women and gay men, of course.
Are they completely independent of the Bravo franchise or is their relationship symbiotic? A channel known for hideous product placement and shameless ‘integrated’ marketing, Bravo’s commercials not only push products but it’s content does too! There’s no distinction on their site but I wouldn’t be surprised if BravoFan and the network have established a mutually beneficial agreement.
What I enjoy about BravoFan is that it encourages a lively comment culture on it’s posts and creates a space for fans to critically dissect and examine Bravo’s content, which often promotes misogynistic forms of beauty and endorses, supports and glorifies societal expectations for both men and women. The site appreciates it’s participants by profiling those most active in the discussion. My all time favorite profiles are from the unexpected young-male Bravo fans like Danny.
Most of the content is written by Maria Diaz of b5 media, a “global new media network featuring a wide variety of topics…one of the largest blog networks in the world.”
Maria is lovely. The description of her company…a little scary.
Sex and the Remix: Queering Sex and the City
Posted by: elisa kreisinger on: October 16, 2009
At its narrative core, Sex and the City is about women searching for love and acceptance, a premise neither gay or straight but merely human.
Sex and the City illustrates an authentic version female friendship, paying particular attention to dissecting social and sexual expectations. But the show also relies on the language of feminist politics to reiterated old patriarchal fairy tales of women longing to be swept away. Why is it so hard to give up these fantasies? Remixed and re-imagined, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda’s dissatisfaction with the opposite sex is no longer an unquestioned desire to follow the expectations of conventional heterosexuality.
This is the first of six videos in the Sex and the Remix series. Each season will be remixed into an episode, building upon the story line established in the previous work. The queering of on-screen relationships are especially important for LGBTQ fans and allies who have so few options of characters to identify with in popular culture.
This remix is classified as fair use in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.
CMS talk this week.
Posted by: elisa kreisinger on: October 13, 2009
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This Thursday I’ll be speaking at MIT’s 2009 Fall Comparative Media Studies Colloquia.
The series is intended to provide an informal exchange between CMS faculty, students and figures from academia, industry, and the art world. The sessions is free and open to the public!
CMS program has an amazing database of past speakers including my personal favorite, Junot Diaz. He and I met briefly after his wonderful, inspiring, unscripted talk last year. He’s my public speaking idol. Smart, sarcastic, witty and throws in the occasional curse word.
The talks are recorded and broadcast via Podcast and they’ve got 24-hour turn around time, so if you can’t make it, you’ll find it Friday on podcast.
Remixers are on the front lines of the battle between new media technologies and impeding copyright laws that threaten to obstruct the public discursive space for critiquing popular culture. These spaces are abundant with meticulously crafted and articulate video remixes that deconstruct social myths, challenge dominant media messages and form powerful arguments reflecting the participatory nature of both pop and remix cultures. We’ll deconstruct these videos, honor the history of female fan vidders and the influences of African-American hip-hop cultures and debate the remix’s ability to effect actual change.
L-Word Syndrom?
Posted by: elisa kreisinger on: October 5, 2009
I can’t decide if I’m disappointed or relieved by the lack of lesbian visibility on television. Don’t misunderstand me, I am completely sick and tired of the heterosexually-structured norms that have been fueling television romances and story lines for the last half-century. I think it’s sad that our media is so obviously LGBT-deficient. But, at the same time, if I hear another fucking girl compare me to a character on The L Word, I am going to kidnap Ilene Chaiken and expose her to rabies.Don’t get me wrong, I loved The L Word. It was groundbreaking and provocative. For six years, I fell in and out of love with those women. But, all the while, I understood that The L Word was a fabrication, a glossed-over crock of shit. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t real. Sadly, due largely to the fact that most people can’t help but become entirely brainwashed by pretty things in the media, I feel like I have dated far too many women who have not yet gotten passed the illusion of The L Word. And since it is one of the lesbian community’s few options on television, they tend to really live by happenings of these fictional characters.I am opinionated, aggressive, and have a degree in Art History. I direct a gallery, collect art, and like fashion. Those things combined do not make me Bette Porter. Yet still, too many women treat me like I’m her. Some of my flings were always waiting to catch me cheating on them, surely due to Bette’s infidelity. One girl went as far as to assume that I was half black. And, by god, if I grab dinner with another “Tina,” I am going to scream.Once, after successfully convincing one girl that I was not at all like Bette, I mentioned that I wasn’t really looking to be part of a monogamous relationship and her exact reply was, “So, you’re more like Shane.” Are you fucking kidding me?Trust me, being around people who insist on diagnosing you with Bette Porter Syndrome is far worse than actually having Carrie Bradshaw Syndrome. I’ve heard that Showtime will soon be releasing a reality-version of The L Word, again, I’m not sure if I’m excited or scared.
Words conveying information.
Posted by: elisa kreisinger on: September 28, 2009
One skill I’m trying to learn is brevity and succinctness in my thoughts, ideas and explanations while still trying to have fun and not take myself too seriously.
I’m studying my recent interview with Public Knowledge and reading the blog post on remix I wrote for their site.
This video on remix as activism by Jonathan is fairly succinct and to the point. He clearly articulates his thesis, that remix is a tool for creative cultural critique, and deviates only slightly to show examples…while this one by Francesca Coppa is a fast moving portrait of vidding herstory. I love her presentation style; blunt, funny, and easy to understand where she’s going with the whole thing. It’s two hours long but I keep watching because her dry sarcastic wit is smart and engaging; never a cheap joke.
Meanwhile, a google search turned up Great Presentations: in 9 Words where, if you scroll down to the comments section you’ll read first hand the brawl over presentation tips. Speaking of taking oneself seriously, two ‘professional’ presenters passive-aggressively duke it out over who’s more correct.
“Denise — I will cherish this moment. I think this is the first time you and I agree on something. That said, I would tweak something you said: Tell the audience what you know that they need to know….And as I said, there’s a lot more I could have shared. But step one was NINE WORDS. (Maybe you and I could collaborate on an e-book on “giving great presentations”. Nah, we’d never agree on what should be in it).”
Woah.
Carrie Bradshaw syndrome.
Posted by: elisa kreisinger on: September 21, 2009
I’ve been watching a lot of Sex and the City. A fucking LOT of it.
And it’s messing with the way my brain and sense-of-self function.
The symptoms:
I find that I’m siting in the window of my apartment on my laptop, typing out the answers to the week’s questions: Will blogs ever be read by the people you write them for? Can you ever walk around on a Saturday morning without being crammed off the sidewalk by two-tier strollers? Why do razors cost so much more money when they’re pink? What if all this social media, web 2.0 stuff is bullshit?
As if someone wants to know the answers…
When I talk to my girlfriends over breakfast the next day, they don’t even try to offer witty one-liners or crisp commentary.
In my pseudo-anthropological quest to make sense of modern technical-sexual mores, I find that it’s all in my head.
Where’s my heavy head of curly blond and washboard abs on a 5’2 frame?
Why doesn’t any one listen when I leave work, narrating “That night, on the Upper East side.”
A quick google search reassured me that I wasn’t the only one with Carrie Bradshaw syndrome.
The truth is I thought I came to terms with women in the media when I realized they all had personal trainers, hair and make up artists and assistants but I’ve come to understand that it is easy to be brainwashed, like so many women before me, into believing that the fantastical, carefully constructed life of Carrie Bradshaw is a viable option.
It all makes me wonder…
Am I a little too narcissistically co-dependent on the lives of these women characters for lack of other options?
Do men fee like a modern day Don Draper?
Is this syndrome covered under health insurance?
…and here we go again with the questions.
Project Report from the Field.
Posted by: elisa kreisinger on: September 15, 2009
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This project report was inspired by this report Nina Paley made at the DIY Days event in Philadelphia. I created this three page project report on remix communities, the challenges and the environment for distribution. Below is a summary of my findings. If you’d like the full report email me @ elisa.kreisinger at gmail dot com.
Summary
Political Remix Videos redefine and recontextualize proprietary content in an effort to build upon collective cultural knowledge but their creators are also on the front lines of the battle between new media technologies and impeding copyright laws. My findings in this report reflect the experiences of artists who navigate the murky waters to continually demonstrate the importance of remix as a vital art form.
Three challenges emerging from these findings include:
1. The continued lack of consistency in determining what
a Fair Use of copyrighted content is, resulting in
sporadic YouTube removals and unwarranted DMCA
notices.
2. The absence of women’s contribution to the history of
remix as we know it today. Women have been making
critiques of popular culture before the remix supplementing was acceptable. They
should be recognized for doing so.
3. The strict boundaries and concept of copyright law. It
reinforces a fetishism of originality, where the only
avenues for creativity confine the potential for creators
to build upon existing culture.
Queering of Sex and the City
Posted by: elisa kreisinger on: September 8, 2009
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I’m working on another new remix series: The Queering of Sex and the City. (Working title, let me know if you have something better). It seems to be going a lot smoother thanks to single-source materials.
This fall is “the lowest point in a decade for lesbian/bi visibility in fictional film and TV,”. Limited visibility has always been an issue, but things seemed hopeful with shows like The L Word and, well, The L Word. But with said TV show now off the air, I am reminded of the time when there was no visibility for alternative solutions to companionship and hetero was the coupling norm.
Amazingly under such media-malnourished conditions (or as a result of), women gathered and taught each other tech and a/v skills to create supplements to these normative story lines. They queered existing hetero-normative main stream media shows. These original remixers were fans of particular shows and their commitment to that programs characters and premise provided the impetus for the practice.The current dismal media landscape brings my thoughts back and inspiration back to this early vidding history and in particular, slash vidding.
I had been a fan of Sex and the City but was too young to understand many of the innuendos when it originally aired in 1998. Upon recently revisiting the show, I now understand them and cringe, 6 years after the final episode.
Honestly, the show is amazing and quite ground braking for several reasons, many of which will be listed in a future post. If the four women weren’t referencing men, marriage, and mild-misogyny all the time it would be even better (a problem that got worse with the show’s age).
Do I want them all to be radical lesbian separatists? No. That would severely limit the artisan shoe selection. But I would like to see women talking with other women about things other than relationships with f*cked up men. An ironic twist of heterodoxy wouldn’t hurt.
Season by season, Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte will continue their pseudo-anthropological quest to make sense of socio-sexual relationships but this time, they’ll be learning from their previous mistakes. While they experiment with same-sex coupling, I’ll be rewriting the hetero source material to offer a new gay show. I’ll let you know how it all works out…
how i spent my summer vacation
Posted by: elisa kreisinger on: August 31, 2009
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I spent two months navigating file formats, codecs, compressions, freeware apps and the intricacies of Final Cut Pro for a new remix: Jen and Ang: Forget About Brad! The idea was to queer Jennifer Aniston, the actress most American women identify with, and Angelina Jolie, the actress most American woman secretly crush on*. I hadn’t decided on the narrative storyline bringing them together (Does Ang kill Brad to get to Jen? Is he two timing them both? Shouldn’t Jen be the one to get revenge?) before running into graver difficulties.
Building my clip database was easy and fun. I watched every recent movie the two actresses made like Mr. & Mrs. Smith (somewhat feminist, except for that violent sex scene. #FAIL) and The Break Up (not as much fun). I found it reassuring that Vince Vaughn acted like himself in both movies, and thus it would be easier to construct a narrative bridge between the two films.
Their differences made them perfect for queering: Jen is American Classic and Ang is American Cult. The good girl and the bad girl, the blond and the brunette, the single girl and the mother. They couldn’t be more different, and thus, perfect for uniting as one supreme fem-force. But suddenly, sitting in the sweltering heat of the edit room attic, their differences became technological and and their potential relationship formulaic. Jen was H264 and Ang was DiVx; rendering would have been a prick-le. Jen’s aspect ratio is 1.85 : 1 and Ang was 2.35 : 1. Cutting between the two in the prototype stage looked obvious, despite color correction and match on action editing. Could it be that not even remix could construct their relationships?
The sweltering heat in which I began Jen and Ange: Forget About Brad! has now left. Perhaps a season apart will help. My patience for the fem-force is waning, though.
*source: Marie Claire April 2009; I threw out the article accidentally and can’t find the link online.
Do Men Matter?: Real Houswives
Posted by: elisa kreisinger on: June 27, 2009
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Thanks to a great paper written by a former professor and good friend, Dr. Suzanne Leonard called “Do Men Matter: Real Housewives as a Post-Romance”, I’ve reworked the theory around my fan remix for RHofNYC.
Her paper looks not only at the NYC season, but the Housewives franchise across the Bravo network, noting that the series abandon a “pretense of heterosexual coupling in light of post-feminist discourse of consumption and production.” She goes on to explain that the women featured in the show are still empowered consumers, but also gain subjectivity through being producers and pushing their own business. Bethenny, for example, advertises her book, her baked goods, and her line of “Skinny Girl” cocktails. The other women pedal fabric, moisturizers, jewelry and books.
“While the figure of the woman as empowered consumer has long been a cornerstone of a postfeminist identity, rarely has a postfeminist product been so unabashed in its conviction that conspicuous consumption can stand in for, and in turn obviate the desirability of, romantic attachment.”
The series is mistakenly named “Real Housewives”, presumably to ride the coattails of the “Desperate” ones. However, all the women work outside the home, their husbands rarely appear, and when mentioned, are not shown in a positive light. During the NYC season (on which the remix was based) Alex, the only “housewife” vocal about her successful marriage, was shunned and mocked by the other women. The irony lies in the fact that, for all the pretense of heteronormativity, the women do not pretend to endorse the idea that their straight relationships are all that fulfilling. Real Housewives of NYC had the unintentional effect of making compulsory heterosexuality actually appear compulsory, rendering the “Housewives” distinction inaccurate.
Why Queer the show? I wondered what Real Housewives of NYC would look like if it was edited to target a different demographic. Instead of following white, owning class housewives in a feminism-lite, low-calorie liberation, what if the story line stayed true to it’s lack of male presence and inaccuracy of the “housewife” distinction? I think this is a much more interesting storyline.
*thanks to Dr. Suzanne Leonard for her theory, “Do Men Matter: Real Housewives as a Post-Romance”
Pop-Culture Pirate
I'm a pop-culture pirate and hacktivist. I remix existing story lines into new ones.
My frequent writings on remix, fair use and new media can be found here.
