Defining vids, defining source

[tishaturk]

One of the nicest thing about the guest lecture I did earlier this week was that, because the students in the audience had been studying vids and vidding for a couple of weeks already, I didn't have to go through the basics of What Is A Vid?, the way I usually have to do at conference presentations and even research presentations on my own campus. Such a relief!

When I asked the students in the audience what a vid is, a hand shot up immediately: "It's a visual essay that stages an argument!" Another student added that it's not just a visual essay; music matters too. So, yes, we might say a multimedia essay that stages an argument. And from there I went on to poke at the definition from another direction: for whom is the argument staged? how is it staged? Answering those questions is, for me, where things start to get really interesting.

One of the exciting things about working on vids right now is that we have this solid working definition that Coppa articulates in the essay linked above, but we also have lots of room—and lots of reasons—to expand and negotiate and explore that definition, which is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. A multimedia essay that stages an argument: What does that definition leave out? What kinds of vids, what kind of fannish activity through vidding, does it leave out?

The definition (and especially the subsequent claim about vids being "akin to arts criticism") implies, I think, that the argument is about the film or television show from which the video clips are taken. This is pretty clearly true the vast majority of the time, but it's not true all the time, right? To take just one example: To say that "I Swear" is an argument about Smallville may not be inaccurate, exactly, but it is certainly, er, incomplete. And if a vid received with as much joyful shrieking as "I Swear" isn't covered by that definition, then the definition needs further refining. Vids like "Anything For Love" and other meta-vids clearly make arguments, but, again, they're not just arguments about the source of the clips.

Looking back at that last paragraph and the words I chose for it, I find myself asking: What is it that we're talking about when we talk about source? What does that language do for us, and what can't it do? When vidders talk about source, it typically means the thing that's ripped or downloaded and then clipped and edited to make a vid. But what would it mean—artistically, legally—to think of the source of vids (some vids? all vids?) being vidders themselves or fandom itself, the way that the source of a painting is the painter's ideas and vision? What happens if we think of and talk about shows/films as tools or materials, like words or paint or the fabric that gets cut up for quilts?

Maybe this is just semantics. But I think about what a difference it makes to some of my students, when they're working on research papers, to stop thinking of secondary materials as sources and start thinking of their own questions as the sources of the paper, and I'm not so sure.

Comments

[kass]

ooooooooooh -- these are awesome questions. Yes: I think Coppa's definition of vids is a super-useful one, and I rely on it in my own attempts to educate people (however informally) about vids and vidding -- but you're right that that's not a universally useful / accurate definition.

What happens if we think of and talk about shows/films as tools or materials, like words or paint or the fabric that gets cut up for quilts?

I...kind of love that. Since that's more or less what vids are: patchwork quilts made out of bits of shows or films, stitched together in ways that we find beautiful or meaningful.

[tishaturk]

Yes! And, as oracne points out downthread, the quilt analogy has additional value in that quilts are actually much MORE than those bits of fabric on top: the batting, the back, the binding—all stuff that isn't immediately visible but without which the quilt doesn't exist in its finished form. So it's an analogy that allows us to talk about all the other work that literally underlies the quilted surface.

[hannah]

And on the other end of the spectrum, there's vids like Abby's "Walk The Line" or Destina's "Face of God" - which aren't precisely arguments, not as such, and whose source materials hardly qualify as fandom.

[tishaturk]

Right! I mean, I remember when those vids premiered at VVC, and there was quite a bit of discussion of "But are they vids?" I mean, they're made by vidders, they use the same tools and techniques, they're clearly REMIX, but given that they're made from quite different genres of media than vids generally are... They made some people nervous, I think.

Personally, I tend to think of genre as a spectrum or continuum rather than an on/off switch. I expect this comes partly from my background in the history of the novel: there is no single definition of the novel that applies to everything we intuitively respond to as a novel, but if we round up a large group of them we find that most of them share a critical mass of certain characteristics. Not every novel shares every characteristic with every other novel, but there’s overlap—and the places where they don’t overlap usually delineate a field of debate or inquiry. Which brings us right back to my point about vids.

[cathexys]

I've articulated my issues with Cesca's definition more than once, because it reminds me a bit of Hills' contention in his introduction to Fan Cultures: at what point do we find these academically analytic elements in fandom because this is what we're looking for?

i love the vids that make an argument and they are certainly a crucial aspect of vidding, but I always fear that they are also the ones we can most easily access and analyze and interpret as academics. What about the huge amount of shipping vids whose central function is to cherish and celebrate a pairing (and if it's a canonical one, it's not even something that pulls out subtext).

By phrasing it as staging an argument, I think there's already an academic bias that ignores not only a huge amount of vids but also a huge aspect of the enjoyment of many vidders and vid watchers. But then I still have some Lord King Bad Vids I watch unironically and entire folders of not necessarily well edited and intellectually astute vids that just share my love for a character or pairing....

PS

[cathexys]

Adore the quilt metaphor!!!!

[kass]

I hear you -- I think you're right that those of us who are drawn to this way of seeing vids tend to be able to think of vids which fit this mold. That said, I would also argue that vids which celebrate a ship (even a canonical one) are making an argument -- they're using clip juxtaposition and, often, lyrics and musical choice, to say something about the characters and who we think they are in relation to one another.

[tishaturk]

Yeah, this. In my view, most (not all) vids function as compilations of textual evidence for something, even if that something is as simple as "They really love each other" or "They are meant to be" or "They would have the most amazing angry!sex" or "OMG he is so hot."

I also think that, when we talk about canon, we sometimes elide the facts that a) canon can change (Buffy/Angel, Buffy/Riley, Buffy/Spike: all canon!), and b) in a fannish context, canon is never the only option. So vidding (writing, etc.) a canonical pairing isn't necessarily non-argumentative just because it doesn't pull out subtext or whatever; it can be a decidedly oppositional and argument-driven move.

[tishaturk]

Yeah, we've discussed this before. And obviously I am in sympathy with many of those concerns, which is part of why I insisted on writing about a straight-up 'shipper vid in "Toward an Ecology of Vidding"; I do think that, if our definitions can't account for the vids that are the bread and butter of vidding and vidwatching, then the definitions are missing something important.

That said, I think there's also academic bias in assuming that a vid can't be an argument just because it's not an academic argument. One of the vids I showed at Penn was Charmax's "I'm Your Man." I love that vid, I think it's a great vid, and I think it absolutely makes an argument, but I think that argument is more along the lines of "Crossdressing + Lesbians = YAY!" I mean, I could put it in fancier words than that, and in fact one of the students in the room did: "There's a lot of underexplored lesbian subtext in our popular media." But honestly? My own reaction has much more to do with "Lesbians, yay!" I think that IS an argument—and, for some of us, a really necessary one.

But then, I used to teach FYC from a textbook called Everything's an Argument, so... take that as you will. :)

And the quilt analogy was totally me riffing on Coppa: "It is also worth noting that editing was also one of the few historically female jobs in filmmaking, seen to be related to sewing (Ondaatje 2002), so it is perhaps unsurprising that vidding, an art form that happens entirely in the editing room, should be dominated by women" [4.10].

[princessofgeeks]

fascinating!

[tishaturk]

...okay, your icon is making me SUPER HAPPY. :D

[princessofgeeks]

:)

I swooned when I saw it. It's totally shareable; Anadapta made it.

[oracne]

I definitely think there needs to be more in there about all the potential layers of meaning that a vid can have. Not just the quilt top but also the batting, the back, the binding, the thread that was chosen, the quilting...some easily known, some only accessible if you watched the whole process, including the fannish environment before the vidder actually made the vid, etc., etc. rhetoric. *heh*

[kass]

Oooooooooh, yes: I love this expansion of the quilt metaphor. It's not just that we're cutting up footage and reassembling it in a pleasing new fashion; we're also putting in all kinds of invisible work to make a coherent whole out of our scraps, as it were.

[oracne]

And the whole will be different for each person. Actually, Tisha was sort of saying that in her talk, using different words.

I like the way a vid can ping all these different parts of your brain at the same time.

[tishaturk]

Oh wow—I hadn't even thought of all that, but yes, yes! (Thank goodness you know so much more about quilts than I do!) I am TOTALLY borrowing that extension of the analogy.

[ghost_lingering]

I'm still mulling over what you and other people are saying here, but one thing that I keep coming back to is that an essay doesn't have to be (primarily or at all) argumentative: you can have personal essays and informative essays, etc. So while I think that saying that a vid is a multimedia essay (that student is right: song/audio is totally important!) can be correct, I don't think that qualifying it with "argumentative" necessarily adds much, except the issue that some vids aren't (primarily or at all) argumentative.

Then again, I think of vidding as being like multimedia poetry. I don't know that I could come up with a compelling case for that, but it makes sense to me on a gut level. There might be an argument in the vid or poem, but oftentimes the aesthetics and lyricism are more important. Certainly I've been won over by poems and vids whose arguments I disagree with; I'm less likely to be won over by essays I disagree with.

[tishaturk]

I like your point about subgenres of essays and the analogy to different types of vid, and I agree that it's also possible to think about vids as poetry rather than essays—in fact, some of Coppa's more recent work takes up exactly that idea; she's been writing a lot about lyricism and also the relationship between vids and musical theatre. There's a way in which making a vid of a show is like writing a poem about a novel.

The way I see it, though, is that vids are inherently argumentative, whether they're overtly argumentative or not, because the vast majority of them exist in relationship (and there are a wide range of possible relationships!) to a specific existing text or texts in a way that most poems and essays do not—unless of course the essay is a review essay or a piece of arts criticism.

I guess part of what interests me about vids is precisely that they are both argumentative and lyrical (in varying proportions depending on the vid). But then I got my start as an academic writing about novels that rewrite other novels. The novelists could have written scathing essays; they chose to write novels that are compelling arguments about the earlier texts and beautiful artworks in their own right.

...long comment is long...

[ghost_lingering]

Hmmmm, even if vids are inherently argumentative, and I think they often are, I'm hesitant to describe vids as being primarily argumentative, because I don't think that argument is the driving force behind vidding as an artform. So I guess my issue is that, by describing a vid as a multimedia essay that makes an argument, argument becomes the primary definition of vidding and I don't think that's correct. Vids can be inherently argumentative without being primarily argumentative. Personally, I'd put fannishness, emotion, and storytelling before argument when it comes to elements that define vidding. A few reasons that I resist argument as the primary element in vidding ...

First, regarding your point about novels which rewrite other novels being inherently argumentative because they exist in relationship to an existing text — that's interesting to me, because I have a similar fascination with song that are covers or mash-ups. However, I don't think that musical remix automatically suggests an argument even though there is a relationship to an original version. Some covers and mash-ups do make arguments about the original (or most famous) version of the song, but not all of them do. Some manipulate the orginal to tell a completely different story, some tell the same story with a different spin or emotion, some make unrelated arguments and points, some are experiments with music and sound, and others are simply paying tribute to a well-loved favorite. (And some are an overlap of all of these things.) Which, imo, is very similar to vidding; argument can be a part of musical remix, the artform, but it's not the only or primary part.

Of course, argument *can* be the primary force behind individual covers and mashups, just as it can for individual vids or vidders. Additionally, like in vidding, I think that you can read arguments into all songs — covers, mashups, or originals — but just because an argument can be teased out doesn't mean that it's the driving force behind making and remixing music. (Aaaaaand then I started a whole digression into different covers and mashups and their meanings and goals here, but I realized I was getting away from vidding, so I cut it out; if you'd like examples of different songs that I'm thinking of, let me know.)

My second hesitation with putting so much emphasis on the importance of argument in vids is that, while we can find arguments in most vids, I'm unconvinced that these arguments are usually the primary reason the vid was made or the primary reason the vid is popular. On a personal level I can point to most vids I've made and say: "this vid makes [X] argument" but almost never is that argument what drove me to make the vid and, in many cases, the argument isn't something that I was aware was a part of the vid until the vid was almost complete or until I posted it and someone left a comment pointing it out. I can also point to vids I love and say: "this vid makes [X] argument" but usually the argument isn't what draws me to the vid; often I like the vid in spite of the argument not because of it.

I can only think of two vids that I made in order to make an argument. Otherwise I'm usually driven to make a vid by a combination of the following things: the desire to make a vid for someone else (which is a huge part of why I love festivids so much), because I'm drawn to a story on the edges of canon that I want to draw out, or an emotion. And, of the two argument driven vids I've made, the arguments I wanted to make weren't what drew me to the vids; they were, in a weird way, the means to an end. In each the central argument was about something in the canon, but I made the vids because I wanted to say something about canon to fandom.

One of my argument-driven vids hasn't been released yet; I submitted it to this year's VVC. The other is Butterfly to Wasp (Criminal Minds). In both cases the argument was about something that happened in the show, but the reason I made the argument was because of on-going dialogues in fandom. So, Butterfly to Wasp was made, not because I have particularly strong feelings about Haley Hotchner and how the dissolution of her marrige is largely not her fault, but because I did have strong feelings about how misognistic Criminal Minds fandom was when talking about Haley. The vid was an argument about her storyline on the show, a way to say "Haley had legitimate reasons to get a divorce", but it was an argument designed to be a "fuck you" to CM fandom. For me the "fuck you" was the pay-off, the most important part. I can't really talk in detail about the vid that I submitted to VVC, but I made it, again, because I wanted to make an argument *to fandom*. Luckily this vid wasn't made as a "fuck you", but rather as a response to other, related, arguments I'd seen about the fandom, both in textual and vid form.

The third, most idiosyncratic, reason I have for resisting a definition of vidding as being primarily argumentative is the same reason that I resisted a professor I had for creative writing who insisted that all writing was political. Even if that's the case, that all writing is political or all vids are arguments, I think that defining them as such ends up placing all the value of the text or the vid on it's ~message~, on it's ability to make a statement. For me, personally, vidding is valuable for many many many more reasons than the statement it makes. Besides which both "argument" and "political" are loaded terms with a history of connotations that suggest certain subjects over others, which might be partially why shipper vids then get overlooked when thinking of vids that make arguments, even when they do. I guess I just feel like argument is a very narrow lens through which to look at vids and it puts their value in what they are saying, not in what emotions they evolk or what fannishness they tap into or what artistry they're made with.

...aaaaand apparently I had more feelings on this than I expected when I first started typing this comment...