This is a well calculated anti-video meant as a critique of YouTube content. By watching the video, commenting on it, and rating it 1 star, a viewer can essentially contribute to a petition that exists within the medium it is protesting. Brilliant.
The most disturbing thing is that YouTube removed ~YouTube Worst Video of All Time~ vote 1 star, leave comment from it's most viewed page. Youtube is becoming Themtube. What I don't understand about this is why they would sort of half censor the video. Why not just remove it entirely? When a totalitarian government discovers an enemy in their ranks they don't just stop them from getting state-controlled-media attention, they eliminate them entirely. The neutrality of YouTube moderators is essential to maintaining a free environment on the site. When they begin censoring videos that are critical of their site then things start to slip down the slope of controlled content.
I believe we are starting to see the decline of YouTube. It began as a medium capable of catapulting an unknown in their bedroom from anonymity to meme status but is becoming a dumping ground for major label music videos and soft core pornography. 13 of the top 20 most viewed videos are music promos. 63 of the top 100 are music vids or music related (high school musical) vids. 8 of the top 100 have images of sex or strip tease, or have the word sex or xxx in the title. YouTube is becoming little more than Skinemax meets MTV. Sad. Whatever happened to all the cute but ridiculous videos of teens lip-syncing to their favorite songs. Oh right, copyright infringement. The compromise that YT has made to major label record companies has made it nearly impossible to find interesting videos in the top 100 most-viewed. The only videos holding strong are Evolution of Dance, laughing baby, Potter Puppet Pals, guitar, Charlie bit my finger, and Battle at Kruger. Yes, I just wrote that a video of a baby laughing is interesting. It's all relative. Oh, and I really like Charlie the Unicorn, Chocolate Rain, and Daft Hands. I'd watch something homemade over a big budget music video any day.
Anyway, this brings me back to the point of this post. We should all be celebrating the rise of ~YouTube Worst Video of All Time~ vote 1 star, leave comment to #1 because it stands as a reminder to the powers that be at YouTube that the viewers want better.
OK, I think it's time to collectively declare Steve Barron a master of the music video. I was watching the video for a-ha's Take on Me and thinking about how perfect it was, not only for the song, but in general as a kind of complete short film. I was then inspired to find out who made the video. Wikipedia led me to the Steve Barron page.
Nearly all of his videos are classics, not just because many of the songs are classics but because my memory of many of these songs is inextricably linked to their visual counterpart. He manages to deliver three act mini-narratives with intertwining band performance footage without privileging one over the other. The videos are truly balanced works of film making and commercial functionality. Here are links to some of his videos on YouTube.
A-Ha - Take On Me:
Dire Straits - Money for Nothing:
According to the Music Video Database he made this two months after the a-ha video. Can you imagine any contemporary music video director making two genre defining videos in a year let alone a span of a few months? The only thing I've never understood about this song is how the singer insists on saying "faggot" THREE separate times. We get the point the first time and all it does is make you think they're really focused on promoting their homophobia.
Def Leppard - Let's Get Rocked:
This is one of my favorite videos from my early teens. Much like the ground-breaking Money for Nothing video he incorporates 3D animation into band performance. Here is my comment on YouTube: "It's amazing how much this video shares with the film version of Sin City on a visual level. The green screen generated high contrast black and white with red highlights is a total match. If you took out the 1992 Lawnmower Man style 3D animation segments this vid would be considered way ahead of its time." Of course someone took offense to my comments on the effects. hateoprah49 wrote, "that animation was damn good for 1992. this video probably won a shitload of video awards" Fair enough. What I was saying is that the 3D effects were firmly 1992 but the other effects actually look fresh in 2008.
Michael Jackson - Billie Jean Everyone knows this video, it's 100% pure classic, and for whatever reason YouTube won't let you embed it. We wouldn't want bloggers putting that video all over the internet and forcing millions of people to watch the video yet again. Here's a link to the video on YouTube.
Bryan Adams - Summer of 69:
He takes narrative elements from the songs and actually adds to them rather than just illustrating them. He provides a larger visual context.
Toto - Africa:
This video is incredibly visually inventive. It uses an image of the band playing on a giant stack of books sparingly but to great effect.
Don Henley - All She Wants to do is Dance:
He even made an addition to the post-apocalyptic genre. This came out the same year (1985) as Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The post-apoc disco set is amazing.
Culture Club - Do You Really Want to Hurt Me:
Culture Club - Karma Chameleon:
Human League - Don't You Want Me:
I wonder if this was the first video to break down the fourth wall with a "music video inside the music video" concept. Damn, and the final shot makes it a video inside a video inside a video.
ZZ Top - Rough Boy:
Shit, I don't remember this video. This is the first time I've seen it and it's insane. Watch this now. It features ZZ Top all sci-fi style playing their instruments, singing, and being super bearded in hovering boards. They look like mounted deer heads. The song is a total waste but the imagery is incredible. It features a torso-less pair of walking stockinged high-heeled legs. Not to be missed.
He was one of the early practitioners of the medium and is perhaps the quintessential mini-narrative music vid director. There are plenty more videos I didn't include here. Maybe I'll do a second round. I wish this story had a happy ending. I would tell you that his brand of short storytelling lent itself particularly well to the big screen but unfortunately that is not the case. I won't go into too much detail but here is a list of his feature film credits: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Coneheads, the Adventures of Pinnochio... Not bad films per say but absolutely mediocre compared to his stunning videos. Not all directors are able to transition into film nor should that be the final goal of all directors.
Inochi is one of the best pieces of video art I have ever seen. It effortlessly combines directorial authorship with industry craft to create a conceptual commercial campaign capable of containing and critiquing the Freudian psychological complexes of an entire nation (Japan). I totally just got my alliteration on.
As much as I love this video, I was hugely disappointed by the new Kaikai Kiki animation in his retrospective. Korean and Japanese cartoons have dealt with fecal matter as subject for quite some time. The only thing new he is bringing to this is that he is showing normal subject matter from that part of the the world to Western audiences. He could have just popped in a DVD of Doggy Poo. The book that film was based on was written in 1968. Don't even get me started on Dongchimee. I'm only using Korean examples because I know them better; there are plenty of Japanese examples out there.
The "trailer" for his new live action movie looked way off as well. For one thing, it was at least 6 or 7 minutes long (trailers are exactly 2:30 or less) and it was nothing but amateurish atmospheric shots. I'm going to reserve full judgment until I see the whole video, but if a trailer is supposed to make you want to see the movie, this one failed.
His video for Kanye West (bootleg shot in MOCA):
I'm not sure how this is anything more than entertainment. Murakami seems to have stopped trying to insert any kind of Freudian psychological discomfort or tripped out post-nuclear narrative into his video work (its still deeply embedded in his painting and sculpture). In my book, after Inochi, he pretty much earned the freedom to do anything with video and get my attention and respect. He instantly squandered that. It's as if he sees video as only capable of being the commercial. He has dropped the conceptual aspect of it all together. Video as a medium is not a logoless Louis Vuitton bag waiting to have a design put on it.
This book contains one of the best dictionaries of vaudeville acts I've ever seen. I'd love to go through and make a dictionary of YouTube acts. Not that Encyclopedia Dramatica isn't already doing that but I'd prefer something with less editorial and more objective description. It's like a mash up between an encyclopedia and a flame war and YouTube already has some of the least interesting comment forums on the internet. It's like every comment section on each new video provides more and more evidence that people are rapidly losing their ability to write as their view count increases. Either that or, as one user commented on my video Ow My Balls! vs. Cremaster 4 vs. Rolling Rock vs. Humor, everything on YouTube is written by "a couple closet homo 12-year-olds playing with (computers)."
I counted them and there are 30 cities on that map that Bob Hope performed in in a year. I am applying for a travel grant now and hope to travel to 14 cities in a month.
No, it's not insane. It fits nicely within the continuum of video art. Jack Goldstein established the foundations for this kind of looping editing based work in 1975. The video below is a strange montage of various Goldstein films (FILMS!):
You can see the films in their original separated states at UBUWEB: The Films of Jack Goldstein but these still need to be seen as film loops in person to really appreciate them. But what the hell do I know, I've only seen the bootleg VHSrip version.
Of course in 1978 Dara Birnbaum took Wonder Woman down the same path that the MGM Logo had gone only this loop didn't reverse back on itself:
As much as I appreciate The Video Databank putting their previews on YouTube, I wish they would make them a length that is A. watchable and B. long enough to actually get an idea of the piece. For some reason they have also removed their own list of videos from their channel page to be extra annoying. Why they want to both hide and show their video previews is beyond me. I think they should just make up their minds. Making something accessible but hard to get to is just pointless.
Another artist whose work slides between acting, performance, and performance art is Ryan Trecartin. His small but growing body of videos displays an ability to use overly dramatic acting that does not become hammy or overly ironic. In a Family Finds Entertainment Trecartin bounces between vloggeresque direct camera address (Skippy locked in the bathroom) and large ensemble dialogs. His ability to weave the vlog into soap-operatic grand narrative is both intuitive and masterful. The way he uses his body on camera bridges the gap between acting and performance. He strikes a balance between clowning it up for the camera and discussing the serious issues of a young gay man in a web 2.0 world, but of course everyone is clowning it up in front of the camera these days. I can't praise Trecartin enough for his willingness to put his videos on YouTube. I just wish he had more hits.
I've realized my more specific problem with Tamy Ben-Tor is that I see better acting from YouTubers like LisaNova, Smosh, and HappySlip everyday. If they are professional amateurs then Ben-Tor seems stuck in the amateur amateur mode.
LisaNova has a long list of characters that she does, this one is Teenie Weenie (notice how she doesn't ram the character down the viewers throats):
I can't believe that I'm writing this but the following video displays how much better or maybe about equivalent the acting skills of Smosh and Ben-Tor are:
In fact, now that I'm looking at HappySlip again I think I've found a performer that could teach Tamy Ben-Tor a thing or two. HappySlip aka Christine Gambito makes videos that use humor to illuminate different aspects of life as a first generation American immigrant. Her acting isn't that different from Ben-Tor's except for the fact that she has the ham-factor seriously toned down in comparison.
I think we're seeing a moment in video art where YouTubers might be doing the job of certain artist better than the artists.
Having established some loose categories of actions, I'd like to critically address the practice of several contemporary video artists.
Artist/Filmmaker William E Jones once suggested to me that artists often use the fact that they are artists to hide that they are engaging in certain activities without the skill required. An example he gave was of an art student shooting a narrative movie and saying that the poor acting was intentional because it was an "art video." Just because something is an artwork doesn't mean it is immune to the critical perspective of the forms it is referencing. If an artist takes on the role of a performer or an art director and does that job poorly then they should be held accountable.
As much as I like the work of Tamy Ben-Tor I see her on camera personality as deeply flawed. Her performances in video (Women Talk About Hitler, Alejandra, The Contractor) and her live performance (Exotica, The Rat and The Liberal) don't involve acting so much as caricature. Ben-Tor is a graduate of The School of Visual Theatre in Israel which is described on its website as "a school meant to develop the art of puppet theater into an interdisciplinary form." I've seen puppets emote with more depth than her. She gets into each of her characters as deeply as a Saturday Night Live cast member might. They are so thinly constructed and acted with such ham-fisted schlockiness that they aren't humorous or serious nor do they really create a compelling gray area between. I would think this is just one intentional aspect of this particular body work if it weren't for the fact that all of her other work is in the exact same tone. If she were to call herself an actress or a comedian instead of an artist she would be considered an amateur at best, but because she is in the fine art world she is given the space to essentially put on a sub-par show. What is it about wigs, fake teeth, and ridiculous voices that I am supposed to find interesting in relationship to Jewish and Israeli culture or is it just that she isn't a particularly skilled actress?
Here is a performance called Exotica:
Here is a particularly obnoxious song displaying her goofy voice skills called Thank You Jesus:
Another artist that I think covers similar ground but has at times (or maybe just one time) performed it correctly is Alex Bag. Her video Untitled '95 uses bad acting so perfectly as part of the larger conceptual function of the work that the intentionality is beyond question. Her subject is the artist and more specifically the art student. Untitled '95 traces Bag's undergrad career in dead-pan parody. Her comedic timing and skilled under-performance show a kind of mastery of both comedy and acting.
Even though both artists use wigs, makeup, costumes, and odd voicing they manage to hit very different notes as performers. Ben-Tor comes across as a hammy goof ball over acting her way through every "sketch" while Bag's performance portraits subtlety and comedic strength. Bag never allows the character to over shadow the subject matter even though she is working with much lighter material than Ben-Tor. Both seem to be hiding behind ridiculous performances, the only difference is that one artist is showing how much is being hidden while the other is simply distracting us for much greater issues.
Where is the line drawn between acting and performance art? While this question may seem to be attempting to create a binary where one does not exist, I believe the distinction is an important one to make. There is plenty of overlap between the two and some artists and directors use both interchangeably, but that does not mean that it can not be used as a way to analyze a practice. There are several key examples that I will introduce to represent each proposed category of action allowing the examples to define each category (videos are included when available).
The actor: Meryl Streep
The actor: Charlton Heston
Between the actor and the performer: Klaus Kinski
Between the actor and the performer: Napoleon Dynamite (John Heder)
The performer: Yvonne Rainer Trio A
The performance artist: Chris Burden Through the Night Softly
Between the performance artist and the actor: Vito Acconci Theme Song
The performance director/choreographer: Merce Cunningham
Here is a wonderful introduction to internet celebrities on YouTube called Internet People by Dan Meth:
It is becoming abundantly clear that there is a very strong relationship between YouTube and the variety theater. Henry Jenkins explores the similarities in this blog entry: YouTube and the Vaudeville Aesthetic
Here are some quotes from his blog:
"As the name suggests, the variety stage was based on the principle of constant variation and diversity. It represented a grab bag of the full range of cultural interests and obsessions of an age marked by dramatic social, cultural, and technological transformations. In the course of an evening, one might watch a Shakespearean actor do a soliloquy, a trained dog act, an opera recital, a juggler or acrobatic turn, a baggy pants comedian, an escape artist or magician, a tap dance performance, and some form of stupid human tricks (such as a guy with hammers on his shoes hopping around on a giant xylophone or an act where baboons play musical instruments). Similarly, YouTube brings together an equally ecclectic mix of content drawn from all corners of our culture and lays it out as if it were of equal interest and importance, trusting the individual user to determine the relative value of each entry."
"Second, vaudeville performances were short modular units -- usually less than 20 minutes in length -- and much was written about how the demands of economy -- get in, score big, and get off -- impacted the aesthetic choices made. There was no time for elaborate characterization or plot development. Every element had to pull its own weight. Nothing that wasn't necessary for the overall emotional impact could survive. Again, one of the characteristics of YouTube has been this similar push to conciseness. In theory, content can be of any length. In reality, the stuff that gets passed around the most is short and streamlined. YouTube viewers get restless if anything lingers too long. And there is thus a similar emphasis on the immediate emotional impact."
Below are some exemplary vaudevillian and neo-vaudevillian videos:
Of course by this point OK Go! is old news on YouTube but this video still represents a band using the aesthetic of YouTube to get their promo video through the clutter. One of the strongest elements of vaudeville was the musical performance.
Here is Eddie Cantor performing a comedic song from 1923.
The Evolution of Dance is the most viewed video on YouTube with a current count of over 67,000,000. This performance would have fit right in on the vaudeville stage but would have had little place on broadcast television.
W.C. Fields performing a juggling sketch from 1934.
Smosh with their video Transformers Rap. Smosh are the most subscribed to channel on YT. Their brand of comedy appeals perfectly to suburban upper middle class white males, a demographic they fit very comfortably into.
