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Remix Culture!

by Will on March 14, 2010

Provoked by a great Battlestar Galactica-Sabotage mash-up, Sonny Bunch gets curmudgeonly about remix culture. The ensuing comment thread is pretty interesting; the (awesome) video that started it all is below the fold:



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7 comments

1 Scott { 03.15.10 at 7:12 am }

Since when does an honest assessment of a lack of originality make one a “curmudgeon”? Every time I hear about a sequel or movie remake like The Karate Kid (I wonder if Hollywood will remake each sequel as well) or the movie incarnation of a TV show like 21 Jump Street I feel the same way. I’m still trying to forget about the remake of BSG.

Jaybird Reply:
March 15th, 2010 at 8:21 am

The Karate Kid itself was a remake. Check out any given kung fu movie from the 70′s. You’ve got a dorky kid, you’ve got a gang of toughs, you’ve got the dorky hero getting the itshay kicked out of him, you’ve got a drunken master who hasn’t had a student for a while, you’ve got a training montage, and you have a rematch.

Dude, this is, like, half of Jackie Chan’s pre-Hollywood career. They just took the formula and made it American (adding, for example, a sweeet car).

We’ve started remaking remakes. I’ll probably not really get worried until we start remaking remakes of remakes. (“They’re remaking ‘Last Man Standing’!”)

That said, I’d rather see a perfectly executed, if unoriginal, piece than, say, something like ’9′. Original only takes you so far.

greginak Reply:
March 15th, 2010 at 12:18 pm

Well Drunken Master was 20 kinds of awesome.

joeyhepatitis Reply:
March 15th, 2010 at 12:37 pm

And that the original Sabotage video was itself a sort-of-remake/parody of 70s cop shows and movies. Really, Spike Jonze’s career was built off the Weezer video which was a high concept remix of Happy Days. I don’t really think that remakes of movies and television shows fit into the same dynamic as internet remix videos, as one mostly lifts characters/scenarios that people already know to build off an existing audience, while the other combines two incongruous cultural objects to make a joke that depends on an audience’s recognition of what is being played with. It’s what made A Very Brady Movie more than just a remake of The Brady Bunch and more like a remix. I think the best remixes are the ones that are not only funny but can illuminate the things being combined – the Weezer video not only was funny but also fit perfectly with the aesthetic of the band and capitalized off co-opting a cultural signifier that many people had strong connotations with.

Jaybird Reply:
March 15th, 2010 at 2:44 pm

I will say that humor that is based on little more than “I remember that!” is probably the worst thing to happen to humor since the pun.

joeyhepatitis Reply:
March 15th, 2010 at 5:23 pm

Sure, although I do like puns.

2 Sam M { 03.15.10 at 7:30 am }

“Since when does an honest assessment of a lack of originality make one a “curmudgeon”?”

I think it has something to do with the fact that, as far as I can tell, nobody anywhere is extolling this video as exemplary in terms of originality.

It’s kind of like walking into a diner and complaining that the meatloaf platter is not fine French cuisine. Well, nobody SAID it was fine French cuisine. If they had said that it was, the critique might be valid. But nobody did.