NuttyMadam is a young, self-professed Twilight fan. So excited is she about the the popular series that she tapes herself watching the film trailers as they are released and then publishes these videos on YouTube.
NuttyMadam’s videos are shot in extreme close up of her face and consist of a lot of swearing, screaming and high emotion. They are also very popular. Her reaction video for the latest film has been viewed more than 900 thousand times at the time of writing after being featured on Perez Hilton.
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| The story of Courtney Malt viewing Wall•E |
Another video maker, Courtney Mault, posted her reaction to the Wall•E teaser trailer when she realised it made her cry on cue. In a charming tale, Courtney blogs how exhausted Pixar employees found and used her video as motivation to complete the film and as thanks, flew her to the wrap party screening of the film.
The reaction video has a dark history of people either willingly watching or being set up to watch obscene or humorous videos and taping their reactions. The more extreme or funny the initial video, the bigger the reaction and the more entertaining the resulting reaction video (Tossell, 2008). For NuttyMadam and Courtney, they are conscious of their viewer and the genre of the reaction video in setting up the camera, constructing their image, editing the video and posting it online. In taking a private experience into a public forum, they break down the barrier between the spaces raising the question to what extent the reaction is genuine or performed (Lange, 2007).
If you can bear the noise (and language), the reaction video is an interesting genre to bring in to the class room to talk about performance of identity and fandom. Just imagine in an alternative universe a young David and Margaret starting out their reviewing career pointing webcams towards their faces as they sit down to watch film trailers.
References
Lange, P. G. (2007), Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13: 361–380. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00400.x
Tossell, Ivor (2008, July 18). Every action's reaction, now online, The Globe and Mail,
Retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Courtney Mault’s YouTubed reactions to the trailer and its subsequent good fortune for both Pixar and herself are a testament to the power of this media form and our “more self-focussed culture”(Twenge, 2011). With over 52 000 views, and a trail of positive comments, the concern suggested in this blog of reaction video’s “dark history,” digs into aspects of voyeurism, copycat and questions concerning authenticity/reality (Bagdasarov, et al., 2010).
ReplyDeleteSimilar to the genre of Reality TV, the viewer must discern whether what they are watching is real or scripted. Michael Wesch delivers a highly thought provoking Cook’s tour of the power of You-tube (2008), considering many of the issues raised in this blog regarding identity, authenticity and participation. This is supported in the “A 21st Century Renaissance or Hyperreality?” posting, located at http://cln647thevoices.blogspot.com/2011/10/21st-century-renaissance-or.html by the notion that new media forms such as YouTube are an extremely effective resource for educators.
Using film to capture reactions is nothing new. It was the basis for the popularity of the first reality TV show “Candid Camera”(Miller, 2011, p. 137), albeit the ‘reactor’ was unaware of their being filmed until after the fact!
This video of Courtney takes me back to undergraduate college days, when we were filmed during microteaching sessions. For me, having the camera on changed my persona. I knew whatever I was doing or saying would be available for not only my re-interpretation, but also others! The main difference is now, the participation is “moving away from a world in which some produce and many consume media, towards one in which everyone has a more active stake in the culture that is produced”(Jenkins, 2009, p. 12).
References:
Bagdasarov, Z., Greene, K., Banerjee, S. C., Krcmar, M., Yanovitzky, I., & Ruginyte, D. (2010). I Am What I Watch: Voyeurism, Sensation Seeking, and Television Viewing Patterns. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 54(2), 299-315.
Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century: The MIT Press.
Miller, S. (2011). Demythologizing Reality TV: Critical Implications as a New Literacy. The International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3(3).
Twenge, J. M. (2011). Narcissism and Culture. The Handbook of Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Theoretical Approaches, Empirical Findings, and Treatments, 202.
Wesch, M. (Producer). (2008, 2011) An anthropological introduction to YouTube video retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU
No doubt, many people scoffed when artist Andy Warhol forecast, "In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes". But a quick glance at the statistics provided by YouTube seems to support his prediction. The equivalent of forty eight hours of video footage is uploaded to YouTube every minute, while the number of views per day is in excess of three billion!
ReplyDeleteIs the desire to be 'famous' the main motivation in creating 'self' videos?
In considering the reaction videos shared in your post, I think part of the appeal is the opportunity to create an identity based solely on what one chooses to reveal to others. Blinka and Smahel (2009, p735) assert the reason these kinds of videos are so popular with young people is that the “key developmental task [in adolescence is] identity formation”. Unlike “traditional [...] broadcast media” where editors manipulate the footage to create a representation, in this format the subject is in control of how she or he is portrayed (Saul, 2010, p458).
Typically, films and television shows featuring adolescents provide narrow, stereotypical representations of teenagers as victims of “raging hormones [and] peer pressure” (Saul, 2010, p460). The ability to disseminate ‘self’ videos to a global audience has allowed young people to challenge and disrupt traditional social constructions of ‘teenagers’ and generate their own (multiple) definitions of adolescent identity (Saul, 2010, p458-459).
References
Blinka, M.A. and Smahel, D (2009). Fourteen Is Fourteen and a Girl Is a Girl: Validating the Identity of Adolescent Bloggers. Cyberpsychology & Behavior. 12 (6), 735-739. DOI: 10.1089=cpb.2009.0044
Martin, G. (n.d.) 15 minutes of fame - Meaning and Origins. In The Phrase Finder [website]. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fifteen-minutes-of-fame.html
Saul, R. (2010). KevJumba and the Adolescence of YouTube. Educational Studies, 46(5), 457-477. doi:10.1080/00131946.2010.510404
YouTube statistics retrieved 27 October 2011 from http://www.youtube.com/t/press