Wednesday/ 3 Lists/ Hyperintertextuality

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.]

Internet Justice

I love internet justice. This is what happens: somebody does something reprehensible and word of it gets out. It gets made popular on the internet. Internet people then find the guilty party's personal information and post it everywhere, while flooding said person's social network account(s) with hostile messages and comments and contacting said person or their family directly and communicating their displeasure. Today I call your attention to David Motari, a US Soldier in Iraq who appears in a video throwing a puppy off a cliff. Here's the Digg article. The actual link to the video is down. Check out the comments (sort by most diggs) for a mirror if you actually want to see it, or just go straight to his Bebo site [now private] to enjoy the justice.

See also: Lori Drew

[Perhaps at some other time I'll attempt a more level-headed discussion of the ethical implications of this kind of punishment. It seems like there's a lot here to talk about.]