Political Video Friday
My colleague and I been doing some work on our article on political mashup videos this week, but as we’ve been working on the article, I’ve become acutely aware of how quickly new forms of political video have emerged on the web. To some extent, it feels like the best we can do is offer a brief snapshot of something that is evolving very rapidly, and mashups are, of course, only one form of video circulating right now. But as a result of this project, I’ve become increasingly addicted to the techPresident blog, one of the better places out there for analyzing this online video culture from a variety of perspectives (check out, for example, their charts tracking cumulative video viewership per candidate).
But what really has me blogging before I’ve finished my second cup of coffee this morning are a number of intriguing new political videos, including a number of videos I discovered via techPresident. Like many people, I’m intrigued, fascinated, or maybe just confused by former Senator Mike Gravel’s two recent videos, “Rock” and “Fire.” “Rock” shows Gravel staring directly into the camera for nearly a minute before walking away and dropping a rock into a lake, the video continuing to run as the ripples in the water slowly return to normal, while “Fire” shows Gravel building a bonfire and then we watch as the fire burns for six or seven minutes. The videos are oddly minimalist and quiet, more like experimental video than a campaign ad. When the videos are embedded into a blog, they are oddly disorienting, jarring us–or me at least–briefly out of what I normally expect to see in a campaign video, which is probably the point. Significantly, if you view “Rock” on YouTube, you discover that it is also a video response to a video of Gravel’s performance at the most recent Democratic debate (suggesting, maybe, that Gravel’s performance barely made a ripple?).
But one of the most widely discussed videos of the week is also one of the most interesting: “I Got a Crush on Obama,” by Obama Girl and the comedy team at BarelyPolitical. If you haven’t seen the video yet, go watch it…my blog isn’t going anywhere. It’s a funny video with great lyrics (Universal health care reform/it makes me warm…), clearly more polished than most, and as Micah Sifry points out, it may complicate definitions of what the folks at techPresident have been calling “voter-generated content.” It also presents a potential interpretive challenge. In his discussion of the video, Alan Rosenblatt seems to take the video at its word, asserting that “it means this girl likes Obama, at least on the face of things.” I read the video more directly as a parody of the sexualization of political candidates, particularly someone like Obama who has been described in terms of his charisma and charm. But Rosenblatt is certainly correct to assert that the “teaching moment” of this video is that it, like many other “voter-generated videos,” will present some interesting interpretive challenges for the audiences that encounter them and pass them along to others.
Finally, Sifry pointed out one of the better mashups I’ve seen in some time, “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” which mashes up Republicans calling for, umm, enhanced interrogation techniques with clips from Monty Python’s “Spanish Inquisition” sketch. Like “Godfather IV,” the video is a relatively specific policy critique of the Republicans through a popular culture text, requiring at least a limited knowledge of the pop culture text to make sense of the critique, and identifying McCain and Romney’s endorsement of these interrogation techniques with the absurd torturers in Monty Python is pretty funny (and because of blog entries on techPresident and BoingBoing, starting to get lots of traffic).
On a related note, because of all of the material out there, I’m now considering doing an election theme this fall in my composition classes, much like the Rhetoric and Democracy course I taught at Georgia Tech during the 2004 election (and discussed in a “From the Classroom” article in the journal Pedagogy). At this point, it’s pretty clear that there will be plenty of material out there to work with.
Sonja Baumer Said,
June 15, 2007 @ 3:49 pm
Hi I enjoyed the post. I also wrote an essay on presidential election videos on YouTube http://today-on-youtube.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html. It is a bit too long, but maybe some points about idenitiy and authenticity could be interesting for you.
I am postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley studying YouTube
Sonja Baumer
Sonja Baumer Said,
June 15, 2007 @ 3:55 pm
Hi I liked the post. I also wrote a blog post on YouTube political videos. See: http://today-on-youtube.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html
The post is a bit too long , but you may be interested in some points that I am making around self-presentation, authenticity and identity of presidential candidates on YouTube.
Feel free to visit or contact.
BTW: I am a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley as youcan see on the website.
Michael Said,
June 15, 2007 @ 8:07 pm
Thanks for all these links. I’m wondering: must there always be a teaching moment? I’m not sure that Obama Girl presents much of a challenge. Who is going to think that it’s mocking Obama or his overly enthusiastic supporters except people like us who are in the business of analyzing everything we can sink our teeth into? I read it as a very straightforward expression of affection, not at all tongue-in-cheek. Not much like, say, “Ode to Zach Braff.” But maybe that’s just me.
Chuck Said,
June 15, 2007 @ 10:43 pm
Michael, you’re probably right about needing to find a “teaching moment” here. That being said, I loved doing the “rhetoric and democracy” theme in my freshman composition classes before, so I think it would be fun to do something like that again.
I may be wrong to read it as (partially) tongue-in-cheek. I’m probably reading too much into the fact that BarelyPolitical seems to be promoting itself as an entertainment site. Again, I think the video is great fun, no matter what its goals.
Chuck Said,
June 16, 2007 @ 12:37 am
Hi, Sonja. Thanks for the pointer to your post. For some reason, my comment filter read it as spam (maybe because the comment was submitted twice?), and I certainly agree with many of the basic points in your blog post (especially that YouTubers tend to prefer mashups/parodies to more sincere campaign videos).
The issue of “authenticity” is an interesting one, especially as it is performed by politicians on YouTube (UK politician David Cameron who did a videoblog from his kitchen is an interesting example of this practice). I’ll try to read your post in more detail when I’m more fully awake.
Chuck Said,
June 17, 2007 @ 9:11 am
Maureen Dowd’s columns give me a headache, but her most recent column (behind the Times Select wall, sorry) quotes the Obama Girl actress as saying she’s not sure she’s planning to vote for him.
I do think she’s right for criticizing Obama for the “Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)” memo. Of course, MoDo takes that as license to attack the Clintons yet again for having the temerity to take money from people who are willing to give it to them.
investigaciones sobre youtube « mediaciones Said,
June 17, 2007 @ 6:00 pm
[...] sobre este medio polimorfo y polifónico. Especialmente intersante me ha parecido el link a los “mashups” de video político y de su incidencia en las campañas electorales. A nivel de política local, me ha recordado que [...]