So it's been a little while since I announced that I would resume posting, but I have yet (as I'm sure you're aware) to post anything more substantial than a link or two. This may be attributed to three causes:
1. I'm busy.
2. I don't have a lot to say.
3. That which I would like to say is difficult to articulate, and would seem to require something like an essay which would then need to be edited, a lengthy process more or less prohibited by (1) above.
However, in the interest of trying not to come across as completely uninteresting, here are a few concise thoughts that may or may not merit your attention.
1. Radiohead's In Rainbows shipped with a disc of extra tracks for those who bought the super-deluxe $70.00 special edition box. I didn't (guess why), but I have obtained the tracks and I wanted to express my particular admiration for the song "Last Flowers to the Hospital." It's pretty for a b-side.
2. I hope that enough people sign up for my class in RC next semester so that I can actually teach it. I understand that this not happening is a distinct possibility, but I already have several wonderful lessons planned including, but not limited two, a conversation about what "meaning" means, an illustration of Richard Dawkins's ideas via YouTube, and a philosophical exploration of Ghost in the Shell 2. If the class ends up not happening, I'll try to compensate by making time to host meetings of the Kinbote Literary Salon throughout the semester. [UPDATE: a sufficient number of students have signed up, thank goodness]
3. I have begun thinking about the concept of "hyperintertextuality" (a word which, Google tells me, has been coined in at least 48 other places, though probably not in the sense that I intend here). As I see it, this might be a useful word to designate the kinds of linkages we're currently seeing among media objects like the YouTube video linked to in my last post, and the two videos that preceded it (here and here). Or, to take another favorite of mine, among The Combine Interview and its two preceding texts (the leaked Tom Cruise interview and the game Half Life 2). Unlike typical intertextuality, the texts linked via hyperintertextuality do not simply enrich the primary text, they are its conditions of possibility. The hyperintertextual text is a response to its preceding texts, but it responds to them in their own vocabulary. [Note: YTMND used to do something like this, but ever since it began allowing longer animated pictures and extended audio files, this creativity seems to have drained off.]
I know you might be thinking "big deal, so this is what nerds do when they want to laugh." On the one hand, yes, most of the examples of hyperintertextuality I could cite right now are banal in the sense of having little "substance" and lots of "absurdity." On the other hand--going back to the two videos I just cited--both do carry political messages in spite of their puns, messages that emerge as a property of textual juxtaposition (and in the case of McCain getting BarackRoll'd, this political message has been built onto an initial premise of pure absurdity). So to conclude: I think that these media objects, whatever we want to call them and whatever word we eventually designate to denote the intertextual linkages between them, are:
1. A fundamentally new kind of cultural unit.
2. Made possible only through technology.
3. A characteristic of "internet culture."
4. Immediately intelligible only to those familiar with the conventions and source knowledge that make up this culture.
And therefore I think they are worth further study.
[Edited 11/27/08 for style, clarity, brevity, and to insert links; I'd also like to make clear that I think "hyperintertextuality" is a bad term and should ultimately be replaced by something with fewer syllables.]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I don't listen to much of Radiohead, but they interest me.
About your class:
I believe that when I looked at the roster, there were maybe 11 or more signed up. (I could be horribly wrong, but I don't really think I'm too far off.) A good number. Enough for a good amount of discussion, I think. A funny thing: While reading the description for your class, I thought of Ghost in the Shell 2 and how fantastic it might be to make a discussion out of it from the topics mentioned. I thought about bringing it up to you, actually, since you like the movie so much. Best lesson plan ever.
I think I have more to communicate in response to this post, but at the moment I'm out of time. Expect another comment, hopefully. :)
Hey, 11, that's not bad! I was going by the numbers on UNC Genie which I guess haven't been all updated yet since everything has to go through the RC office (that one says 2 so far :)
You know, in a lot of ways, I'd say that absurdity is sometimes necessary to the growth/evolution of our ideas and sentiments. Maybe rickrolling could be a way of examining the music culture of the past and reflecting on the differences between then and now. People get rickrolled most of the time in good humor... it's something you laugh at with your friends. We think it's funny/stupid/corny because we've grown since then... it's an absurd concept to us now. (Of course, I'm sure that many people thought he was totally corny to being with, anyway. But just for the sake of the argument, bear with me.) Thus, can we find the same kinds of ideas in the Barackroll? Is Barack Obama an embodiment of the same kind of growth and change? He becomes a new kind Rick Astley: no longer the embodiment of corniness for us to laugh at and for us to rejoice in our own lack of this corniness, but of the triumph over an ugly part of our country's history in general (the reign of the bush administration, or the reign of the republican party as now embodied by McCain). It's a way of examining and celebrating our growth as a country, as humans. I would never argue that the links you post, or that any of internet culture for that matter, has little substance or absurdity. I think that absurdity in general can be something we can study and look at and find things within that are very worthwhile. A lot of it seems completely ridiculous and one might even be able to argue that one of the most paramount facets of internet culture itself is "absurdity." But surely there is a great deal of meaning in absurdity, when we really take the time to examine it. In the meantime we can be entertained. (And through entertainment, aren't ideas and sentiments more quickly and universally shared? That might be what I was trying to say in my first sentence.)
Anyway, I think that you're absolutely right about the importance of studying hyperintertextuality. I think it's important to study all internet culture.
Can you recommend a good Radiohead album?
Nice reply. I can't get to all of it yet because I just got home from work, but I can recommend a good Radiohead album: all of them (except maybe Pablo Honey). But if you're looking for somewhere to start, start with OK Computer.
I used the term "hypernarrative" in class a few weeks ago in order to describe a Slint song. The term, to the best of my knowledge and sleuthing, exists really nowhere but -- as is terminology with the "hyper" prefix -- it smacks of that bizarre optimism and mystification over technology that was in vogue from about '94 to '99.
I discussed the term in tandem with "hyperreal" -- that of a temporaneity located at multiple points simultaneously on a linear time scale and avoidance of anachronism in favor of universality of time (or so I'm led to believe) -- and defined it as a form of narrative with a multiplicity of semiotic devices that, while containing some sort of progression of plot, and cathectic and cathartic elements, elevates the language itself into the realm of being pure symbol and, in Barthes' terms, becomes a text only readerly and transcendent of any binary system.
I don't think they understood.
(this is tom.)
Post a Comment