By Any Media Necessary: Mapping Youth and Participatory Politics

Remix

How can appropriating and remixing content from popular culture lead to new kinds of political consciousness? And, how do activists who use remix and appropriate existing media in their campaigns resolve issues around copyright?


We are seeing examples of the merging of the identities of fans and citizens across a range of political movements -- most spectacularly in our work through the Harry Potter Alliance and the Nerdfighters, but also in the use of remix for political expression via the Occupy Wall Street movement, the protests against Gov. Walker in Wisconsin,  “Binders of Women” during the 2012 Presidential Campaign, and the use of the Guy Fawkes mask, most closely associated in the United States with V for Vendetta, by a range of activist groups.

Real World Example:
The First Day Fast music video is a parody of the popular radio hip hop song “Birthday Sex”. The Fast video is very effective in creatively maintain the melody and rhyme structure of the original song while completing changing the meaning. The playful nature of the video as well adds to the comical juxtaposition of the original song and it’s new lyrics. The song speaks to specific issues and struggles of fasting but delivers a humorous message of encouragement to those going through the process. It shifts the emphasis of pop music away from sex and romance towards addressing the everyday experience of a marginalized population. The amount of stylistic detail in both music and video reappropriate the projected values of the popular medium to the specificities of the Islamic experience. It must be noted that though most of the youtube responses were positive, there were a couple individuals who were offended by what they perceived was a conflation of sex with an Islamic holiday.

This page has paths:

Contents of this tag:

This page references: