“Veni, Vidi, Vids!

”
Fan video editors and the strategic
remix of popular culture
Katharina Freund
University of Wollongong
Australia
What are vids?
• Fan-made remix videos
• They appropriate pre-existing film and television
texts and edit them to music
• Vids often convey meanings not intended in the
source material
My research...
• What vids and their (most female) communities
can tell us about how audiences interpret
the media they are presented with
• How new media forms are being utilized to
critique mainstream values in the media
• An exploration of the gendered reading and
creative practices of the vidders to discern the
implications for current concepts of audiences
and online community
Who are the vidders?
• Over 90% female
• Over 82% aged 18-35
• Most probably white, English-speaking, and
from the United States, United Kingdom, or
another Western/European country
Struggle Over Meaning
• Media-savvy female audience consuming media
products mostly created by men
• How the text does or does not provide pleasure /
conform to audience desires
• “Ongoing struggle for discursive dominance”
between fans and producers over control and
desires for the text (Johnson 2007; also Jenkins
1992)
• Fans adapt the text to suit their unique
interpretations and interests
Asserting Control
• “Open-source text” (Hellekson & Busse 2006)
• Taken up and reworked in a postmodern,
multivocal and intertextual fashion (Stasi 2006)
• Vidders use their tech savvy and extensive pop
culture literacy to:
▫ Highlight specific elements
▫ Shift the focus of the text
▫ Invent subtext
▫ Restructure the narrative
▫ Engage in critical commentary
How is this done?
• “The true art lies in the mix” – Manovich 2004

• Extraction of paradigmatic / thematic elements

• Re-arranged into a syntax / narrative
• Following genre and television conventions
• Music focuses the emotional impact and adds
narrative structure through suture theory
(Gorbman 1987)
Supernatural (2005 – present)
Highlighting Specific Elements
We Will Rock You
by Melissa
• 70s rock ballad used
• Congruent with CW’s vision
of the show
• Focus on machismo,
violence, fighting,
investigating murders, saving
lives
• Manly camaraderie
Shifting the Focus
Forgiven and Forsaken
by loki
• Slower, dramatic ballad
• Focused on relationship
between characters
• Visuals muted/black & white
• Action elements are removed
• Emphasis on facial
expressions to allow intimacy
Inventing Subtext
Here in Your Car
by dayln03
• “Slash” video
• Romantic pop song
• Uses familiar television
conventions to suggest
relationship
• Advanced video
manipulation
Restructuring the Narrative
Impulse
by NYCalls0909
• “Alternate Universe”
• Creating a new story using
existing footage
• Clips used out of context
• “Art is in the mix”
• Pleasure for audience in
seeing how clips are
misinterpreted in the
narrative of the vid
Criticizing the Text
Women’s Work
by Sisabet & Luminosity
• Frustrated response to text
• Critically examines
representations of women:
victims, sexual objects,
martyrs, monstrous
• “Hopeless feministic
impotence”
• “I love the show, but I’m not
blind to its faults”
Intertextual Commentary
Channel Hopping
by Ash
• Draws parallels between
SPN and TV as a medium
• Vidders extremely media
literate and genre-aware
• “Flow”: TV flows from
series to series rather than
being discrete, unique
programs
• Engaging with the
“mediascape”
Thriving Interpretive Community
• Vidders consume media, make thoughtful
commentary on it, and share their insights with
a specific audience
• Specific interpretive community with unique
reading practices and aesthetics
• Playful, well-informed, and creative /
critical with industry standards and traditions
Thank you very much!
Are there any questions?
References
• Appadurai, Arjun (1990). Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy. Public Culture 2(2): 1-24
• Allen, Robert C. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.
• Ang, Ien. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London: Routledge, 1982.
• Bleich, David. “Gender Interests in Reading and Language.” in Flynn, Elizabeth A., and Patrocinio P. Schweickart,
eds. Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1986.
• Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. 7th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004.
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York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2005.
• Gorbman, Claudia. Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987.
• Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse, eds. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities on the Internet: New Essays.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006.
• Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.
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Jonathan, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington. Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World.
New York: New York University Press, 2007.
• Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004.
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Fan Fiction and Fan Communities on the Internet: New Essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006.
• Williams, Raymond. Television, Technology, and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books, 1975.