Vid meme days 16-18: an Issue Vids post
Aug. 19th, 2010 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labellementeuseI just made a whole bunch of new friends, so OBVIOUSLY what I'm doing is posting another meme post. SORRY GUISE. For those playing the LJ game, I just unfriended a bunch of people and communities: people I'm following on dreamwidth who don't flock their entries, and communities that got annoyingly spammy. I really doubt I got up anyone's nose and as you guys know I'm way, way too lazy to flock, but if I defriended you and you want back on, tell me tell me. I was really aiming at consolidating, not cutting. (Also: defriending amnesty. If you've been wanting to, do it, I promise not to cry.)
So this is particularly bad timing for three vids that are all basically Issue Vids. If you have Issues with Issue Vids, steer clear! For these vids I think it's particularly important that you watch them before reading my commentary, so uh. Please do?
Day 16 - A vid that told you something new about a show/movie you already loved
My Medea, byyunitsa
Joss Whedon shows; Girls in Boxes; premise spoilers for Dollhouse; spoilers for Firefly; Buffy included but (IMO) no significant spoilers; violence against women, general creepiness.
So. THIS VID. This vid is one of those unfortunate vids, like How Much Is That Geisha In The Window, that makes you see something you just can't unsee. It also reminds me a lot of - you know those fics where you pull back and think, um, wow, author, I can see your id there and I don't like it? Yeah. So it's been said a lot that Joss Whedon really likes girls - I mean girls, not women - and I've always felt that that was true, but this vid says something a lot more visceral about Joss and girls. Girls in boxes. It creeps me the fuck out, tbqh.
I really admire the vidder's ability to use this song, which I would have said was a pretty iffy choice for a vid, since it hasn't got especially clear beats, it's kind of slow, and its lyrics are kind of, you know, vague. Instead, though, I found that the vid really elucidated the song for me, which is great. I also think that this vid is exactly the right length, and I admire her restraint. I've recced vids recently which could definitely have been shorter; this one packs its emotional punch in a neat, tidy way, and then stops.
Best bits: I love how she opens with Mr. Universe and ends with the tv screens from the Dollhouse credits. Very canny. I love everything about the opening, actually, I think it's brilliant. Using Mr. Universe and Topher as clear stand-ins is very smart. "Daylight falls" with the bag zipping up - very creepy. At 1:40, "tap into your strength and drain it dry" - this, to me, elucidates the entire message of the vid: the fetishisation of the "strong woman" or, rather, the strong girl: the girl with superpowers who can't control them, the girl who is surrounded and directed by men who tap into her strength - sometimes forcing her strength, or her ability to commit physical violence which is seen as the same thing, upon her - and use it.
In fact, what this vid really strikes me as is a deconstruction of the "strong woman character" As Seen On TV. It happens to feature Joss shows but, to my mind, this vid would have worked as well with NCIS (Ziva, Kate, and Abby), Supernatural (Ruby, Mary, Jess, Jo, Pamela), etc. (SG-1 too, maybe. I desperately want to see a vid about Sam Carter on these themes, although the song I have in mind is Psychobabble, by Frou Frou, and I won't get into it because I can just go on and on.)
Day 17 - A vid you wish you had made
Let There Be Guns, bykuwdora
Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis; everybody has guns; tv violence, no spoilers worth mentioning.
I'm not a vidder, so this was tough for me, but this is sort of an attainable goal: I wish I was as witty as this vid. Of course it starts off with a bit of an advantage because it uses a hilarious song, but the spark of genius that first combined the two - well, I desire it! There's nothing much to this vid except wit, and I love it.
Best Bit: Definitely "naw, not me, I got me a rifle." &Vala; The timing on "we could go out and shoot things" is really good, and "we wouldn't need the police no more" is extra-good because it comes from an episode about, like, separationists so I think it's hilarious. The vid mostly depends on visuals rather than canon knowledge, so I like that that's a scene where canon knowledge makes this extra funny.
Day 18 - A vid that made you investigate that vidder's other work further
Bachelorette, by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
obsessive24
BTVS, ensemble, spoilers for the whole series, rapid cuts
GUISE GUISE, I know I've recced like fifteen vids which are all RARR JOSS HAS PROBLEMS, but this vid? sort of pro Joss! You should watch it!
So obviously, this vid, which was only posted in October last year, was NOT the first obsessive24 vid I'd ever seen - I don't know how any vid fan would have managed that, tbh! But this vid made me go, oh, wait, and download everything she'd ever vidded and now I know her back catalogue in a much more coherent way than I did before. OK. so. this vid. this vid, to me, is a brilliant summary of how the story of BTVS is basically the story of Buffy vs. the Patriarchy, BUT WAY MORE CLEVER THAN THAT. It extracts layers and layers of subtle comparisons between characters and spreads them out before the viewer so all they can do is go: whoa, that was in there, alright.obsessive24, in her vidnotes (which are really interesting), said that she wanted it to be clear that the issues addressed in the vid are those facing women everywhere, and I think that not only comes across well, but also puts forth how BTVS itself addressed these issues, how in Buffy everything stands for something. I think the vid captures wonderfully how Joss captured and described real, serious problems. And as I have outlined in many, many previous posts, Joss didn't always do this perfectly, but he still did it and this vid shows you how.
Best Bits: UGH SO MANY. I think the beginning is brilliant - the scene at the beginning is, to me, part of BTVS' keynote, and it sets out the plan for the vid as well. Then the forced cuts between the various characters make it very clear the kinds of problems that BTVS addresses and which the vid will describe - Spike and Angel stand for obsessive, stalkery "love" and sexual violence, and sexual relationships that take advantage of women (literally draining them, haha, vampires are so the perfect metaphor); Giles and the Watchers stand for men who control women; the Initiative and the Mayor stand for the patriarchy, literally, for a society constructed in a way that validates the "masculine" and denigrates the "feminine"; and Caleb and Warren are the misogynists, plain old men who hate women. I love what this says about the depth and range of BTVS, and how it was able to be critical not just in the easy domestic-violence-is-bad way. I also really enjoy how the vid is kind of forcing a slightly against-the-text reading of Giles. The walking-to-running cuts of all the different women is a very strong sequence that reminds me of the beginning of Glorious, which I recced last week, and it works in very nicely with the ugh, stalkers theme. At 1:38 the second section about the Watchers starts. I love the way Buffy, in these clips, is treated as a child, then trapped and imprisoned, and I think it's pretty incredible that this entire sequence comes across with its message loud and clear without any lyrics at all; it occurs entirely between verses.
2:00-2:07 is my favourite sequence in the whole vid, I think because it makes an incredibly clear point about an issue that women face every day. This is the beginning of the section that explores the way, structurally, women and women's voices are excluded from society, and I think the pairing of the lyric "I'm the whisper in the water" with shots of Buffy and Willow in class, college, and in the Initiative - that shot of Buffy raising her hand is one of my favourite shots from the whole show - is just, ugh, BRILLIANT. I love this entire section, actually, I think it is damn excellent, perhaps partly because I increasingly think that the Initiative are a seriously underrated part of the show. The shot of the gun on the table... yeah. And this rejection of women's voices leads beautifully into women being rejected by men, and then women beginning to decide that, wait, wait... that's not OK! (I love Buffy looking at her hands here, like she's beginning to realise what's in them.) And then we have "the branch that you break" sequence which :((( for obvious reasons: this is men who hate women, really, it's horrible and brilliantly timed (Caleb and Angel breaking the necks is pretty incredible.)
And then it's like women all over the vid are looking up and going, yeah, no. No thanks, man. We've talked before about how much I love vids that love women, and this ending does, but I think what really gets me about it is that it is clearly about women standing up under enormous pressure, and standing in awareness of what's going on around them. (I mean, these women don't, in the moments they're in, understand this. But they do in the vid.) And it's just, unf. LOVE IT. It's such a RELIEF as an ending, after this string of horrible things happening to women in all kinds of ways: to say, wait wait, this is not fixed, this is changeable. Hell yeah.
SO THAT WAS A LOT OF TL;DR. Watch some vids, guys!
So this is particularly bad timing for three vids that are all basically Issue Vids. If you have Issues with Issue Vids, steer clear! For these vids I think it's particularly important that you watch them before reading my commentary, so uh. Please do?
Day 16 - A vid that told you something new about a show/movie you already loved
My Medea, by
yunitsaJoss Whedon shows; Girls in Boxes; premise spoilers for Dollhouse; spoilers for Firefly; Buffy included but (IMO) no significant spoilers; violence against women, general creepiness.
So. THIS VID. This vid is one of those unfortunate vids, like How Much Is That Geisha In The Window, that makes you see something you just can't unsee. It also reminds me a lot of - you know those fics where you pull back and think, um, wow, author, I can see your id there and I don't like it? Yeah. So it's been said a lot that Joss Whedon really likes girls - I mean girls, not women - and I've always felt that that was true, but this vid says something a lot more visceral about Joss and girls. Girls in boxes. It creeps me the fuck out, tbqh.
I really admire the vidder's ability to use this song, which I would have said was a pretty iffy choice for a vid, since it hasn't got especially clear beats, it's kind of slow, and its lyrics are kind of, you know, vague. Instead, though, I found that the vid really elucidated the song for me, which is great. I also think that this vid is exactly the right length, and I admire her restraint. I've recced vids recently which could definitely have been shorter; this one packs its emotional punch in a neat, tidy way, and then stops.
Best bits: I love how she opens with Mr. Universe and ends with the tv screens from the Dollhouse credits. Very canny. I love everything about the opening, actually, I think it's brilliant. Using Mr. Universe and Topher as clear stand-ins is very smart. "Daylight falls" with the bag zipping up - very creepy. At 1:40, "tap into your strength and drain it dry" - this, to me, elucidates the entire message of the vid: the fetishisation of the "strong woman" or, rather, the strong girl: the girl with superpowers who can't control them, the girl who is surrounded and directed by men who tap into her strength - sometimes forcing her strength, or her ability to commit physical violence which is seen as the same thing, upon her - and use it.
In fact, what this vid really strikes me as is a deconstruction of the "strong woman character" As Seen On TV. It happens to feature Joss shows but, to my mind, this vid would have worked as well with NCIS (Ziva, Kate, and Abby), Supernatural (Ruby, Mary, Jess, Jo, Pamela), etc. (SG-1 too, maybe. I desperately want to see a vid about Sam Carter on these themes, although the song I have in mind is Psychobabble, by Frou Frou, and I won't get into it because I can just go on and on.)
Day 17 - A vid you wish you had made
Let There Be Guns, by
kuwdoraStargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis; everybody has guns; tv violence, no spoilers worth mentioning.
I'm not a vidder, so this was tough for me, but this is sort of an attainable goal: I wish I was as witty as this vid. Of course it starts off with a bit of an advantage because it uses a hilarious song, but the spark of genius that first combined the two - well, I desire it! There's nothing much to this vid except wit, and I love it.
Best Bit: Definitely "naw, not me, I got me a rifle." &Vala; The timing on "we could go out and shoot things" is really good, and "we wouldn't need the police no more" is extra-good because it comes from an episode about, like, separationists so I think it's hilarious. The vid mostly depends on visuals rather than canon knowledge, so I like that that's a scene where canon knowledge makes this extra funny.
Day 18 - A vid that made you investigate that vidder's other work further
Bachelorette, by
obsessive24BTVS, ensemble, spoilers for the whole series, rapid cuts
GUISE GUISE, I know I've recced like fifteen vids which are all RARR JOSS HAS PROBLEMS, but this vid? sort of pro Joss! You should watch it!
So obviously, this vid, which was only posted in October last year, was NOT the first obsessive24 vid I'd ever seen - I don't know how any vid fan would have managed that, tbh! But this vid made me go, oh, wait, and download everything she'd ever vidded and now I know her back catalogue in a much more coherent way than I did before. OK. so. this vid. this vid, to me, is a brilliant summary of how the story of BTVS is basically the story of Buffy vs. the Patriarchy, BUT WAY MORE CLEVER THAN THAT. It extracts layers and layers of subtle comparisons between characters and spreads them out before the viewer so all they can do is go: whoa, that was in there, alright.
obsessive24, in her vidnotes (which are really interesting), said that she wanted it to be clear that the issues addressed in the vid are those facing women everywhere, and I think that not only comes across well, but also puts forth how BTVS itself addressed these issues, how in Buffy everything stands for something. I think the vid captures wonderfully how Joss captured and described real, serious problems. And as I have outlined in many, many previous posts, Joss didn't always do this perfectly, but he still did it and this vid shows you how.Best Bits: UGH SO MANY. I think the beginning is brilliant - the scene at the beginning is, to me, part of BTVS' keynote, and it sets out the plan for the vid as well. Then the forced cuts between the various characters make it very clear the kinds of problems that BTVS addresses and which the vid will describe - Spike and Angel stand for obsessive, stalkery "love" and sexual violence, and sexual relationships that take advantage of women (literally draining them, haha, vampires are so the perfect metaphor); Giles and the Watchers stand for men who control women; the Initiative and the Mayor stand for the patriarchy, literally, for a society constructed in a way that validates the "masculine" and denigrates the "feminine"; and Caleb and Warren are the misogynists, plain old men who hate women. I love what this says about the depth and range of BTVS, and how it was able to be critical not just in the easy domestic-violence-is-bad way. I also really enjoy how the vid is kind of forcing a slightly against-the-text reading of Giles. The walking-to-running cuts of all the different women is a very strong sequence that reminds me of the beginning of Glorious, which I recced last week, and it works in very nicely with the ugh, stalkers theme. At 1:38 the second section about the Watchers starts. I love the way Buffy, in these clips, is treated as a child, then trapped and imprisoned, and I think it's pretty incredible that this entire sequence comes across with its message loud and clear without any lyrics at all; it occurs entirely between verses.
2:00-2:07 is my favourite sequence in the whole vid, I think because it makes an incredibly clear point about an issue that women face every day. This is the beginning of the section that explores the way, structurally, women and women's voices are excluded from society, and I think the pairing of the lyric "I'm the whisper in the water" with shots of Buffy and Willow in class, college, and in the Initiative - that shot of Buffy raising her hand is one of my favourite shots from the whole show - is just, ugh, BRILLIANT. I love this entire section, actually, I think it is damn excellent, perhaps partly because I increasingly think that the Initiative are a seriously underrated part of the show. The shot of the gun on the table... yeah. And this rejection of women's voices leads beautifully into women being rejected by men, and then women beginning to decide that, wait, wait... that's not OK! (I love Buffy looking at her hands here, like she's beginning to realise what's in them.) And then we have "the branch that you break" sequence which :((( for obvious reasons: this is men who hate women, really, it's horrible and brilliantly timed (Caleb and Angel breaking the necks is pretty incredible.)
And then it's like women all over the vid are looking up and going, yeah, no. No thanks, man. We've talked before about how much I love vids that love women, and this ending does, but I think what really gets me about it is that it is clearly about women standing up under enormous pressure, and standing in awareness of what's going on around them. (I mean, these women don't, in the moments they're in, understand this. But they do in the vid.) And it's just, unf. LOVE IT. It's such a RELIEF as an ending, after this string of horrible things happening to women in all kinds of ways: to say, wait wait, this is not fixed, this is changeable. Hell yeah.
SO THAT WAS A LOT OF TL;DR. Watch some vids, guys!
no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 12:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 11:35 pm (UTC)This, very much! I completely agree. She puts things together so coherently and so compellingly that her reiterpretation and argument is so CLEAR. I LOVE IT TOO.