I found this video a couple of years back and I found it very interesting because it is nearly as mesmerizing as the stories themselves. While it has only the video and sound clips out of the movie, I think you can still understand some of the ideas that are represented by the story. I think it relates to class because it is a deformation of the Disney movie of Alice in Wonderland. It also relates with the idea of remixing a part of popular culture to create something completely different. I found the fact that you still get to see all of the characters as they were animated, but to the beat of the song is very interesting , it creates this parallel universe where the characters are dancing around in this orchestrated dance. It feels very reminiscent of the Fantasia movie, which has a series of animations to a number of scores written for orchestras. While this song is not performed by actual people, it still has the same feel as Fantasia's orchestra pieces. The video is a series of clips from the Disney version of Alice that have been put together to form a song.
There are also many other remixes like this on youtube with other Disney movies such as Snow White and Up, the user also makes remixes out of movies such as The Terminator, Pulp Fiction, Monsters Inc., Scooby Doo, and many more. Those can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/user/Fagottron/videos?view=0
Is this song still part of the culture revolving around the Alice stories, or does it delve into the culture of remixing? Also, does this user have the right to take the works of other people and remix them into songs of his own?
6 Comments
Unknown User (snl4)
Wow! I definitely agree with you that it is deformance (I watched a few of the others, too). I do wish there were subtitles, though, because I found myself distracted by trying to understand the way the user strung the words together. Of course, in the case of the Alice one, not understanding perhaps enhances the experience of it. I thought the video was expertly put together to show the characters supposedly dancing to this new music, and I think that says a lot about how someone with the right skills and understanding of material can enhance it or deform it to bring out something new entirely.
Unknown User (ggs1) AUTHOR
I agree that the fact that this video is hard to understand the lyrics is a part of it. Some of the other examples use much clearer bits of audio from characters. For example, the Pulp Fiction one is very clear what words are being used. I think it was the intention of the user to make it hard to understand. It correlates with the fact that the stories can be a bit hard to understand. I think that he is doing both enhancing and deforming of the movie by cutting it up to create this new form of art. It is not one or the other, but a mixture of the two.
Unknown User (aa24)
Hi Gregory!
This is a really interesting question to think about. I would say that this video in particular can belong to both the culture of the Adventures of Alice in Wonderland as well as the art of remixing. I don't think there is necessarily a stipulation that states a subject can only belong to one culture. This video has Alice and Wonderland characters which link it to Alice in Wonderland and since it has been remixed, it has new characteristics that make it apart of remix culture. This reminds me of a certain term that we learned in my sociology class called "cultural universals" that I think we could relate to what we are currently talking about in Criticism. Cultural universals are customs and practices that are found in every culture. It is also interesting to dwell on the thought that in every culture, there are certain intrinsic qualities in us that give us the need to do things like celebrate, perform ceremonies, play sports, and have funerals. Just something I thought i'd add to the conversation.
Unknown User (ggs1) AUTHOR
Thanks for your input, I think you have a good point that things can belong to more than one culture. Could you elaborate on how this relates to cultural universals though? I am not so sure that this could be considered a universal idea, the idea of remixing is one that seems to belong to a more developed culture such as ours, but I don't know that it could relate to everyone, such as ceremonies such as funerals do. I could be swayed by a good argument, but I think that this is a very unique part of culture, the idea of taking the work of someone else and using it in a new way that makes it a different form of art. I do think that it could relate to our class in the idea of cultural mannerisms and how Alice compares those of her world to those of the world of Wonderland. However, I feel that this video is in its own world of culture, taking from a pop culture reference to create a song and music video for it, that is very unique.
Unknown User (aa24)
I was relating cultural universals to the idea that something could belong to more than one culture, but I think I looked at your question in a more cut-and-dry question than you had intended! But now that you bring up the question of whether "mixing" can be considered a universal culture, and there are a few things we can consider that suggest that it could be. Is not every culture technically a mixture of it's own personal values combined with ancestral characteristics of a past culture influencing it? The idea of taking something unfamiliar and personalizing it seems quite natural. Many cultures are mixtures. I think a good example of remixed culture would be the history of dance. Moving to rhythmic music is certainly a cultural universal. In analyzing the art of dance, one can see that many dance styles are outcomes of the mixing of two genres of music, and the dance turns out to be a mix of how to move to the beat of both types of music. I feel that 21st century dancing is an evolving mixture of European dancing and African dancing.
Unknown User (ggs1) AUTHOR
I like your answer and I agree with you. Dancing is definitely a good example of how mixing of ideas can be considered a universal culture. I think that you are right in that culture is usually that of a mixed origin, I would not say all cultures because there are those remote civilizations that do not take any outside ideas, but I would say that most cultures take ideas from a variety of places, especially developed cultures. Thanks for the elaboration, I think you have successfully swayed me to your point of view!