(ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX WILLIAMSON via New Yorker)
Did anyone else read the article in New Yorker called Hollywood and Vine, about the emergence of viral video sharing and how frightened Hollywood is becoming of where young people are watching video? I was intrigued, and wondering how folks are using the 6 second Vine app (and the slightly longer Instagram video sharing) to create small movies with vast and young audiences, and then I realized: it’s becoming all about audience and profit.
It’s not about art.
Duh.
But, darn it, it should be. Our media tools have opened up some amazing possibilities, and yet, as writer/reporter Tad Friend follows some famous “Viners” around, he notices that every shot for the Vine flick (all 6 seconds of it) is done with hopes of garnering a larger audience of followers and likers, and that is done in hopes of getting commercial ventures (like Taco Bell and others) to pay the Viners for using products in their flicks. The Viners do voluntary product placements. They reach out to corporations. They aim for the paycheck.
Ack. Gag. Repeat (or loop, maybe).
Is this what we are moving into now? Hybrid media making as hybrid advertising? I am not naive. I know businesses look to trends and then dig their claws in. They entice media makers. They sometimes “remix” (in a bad way) close enough to resemble the original, and hope no one is noticing. And I know people need to make a living.
But I can’t help but be dismayed and worried that the shift into this powerful movie-making culture is really about an “all eyes on me now” mentality, where the art that is made is not made for art, but for commercial sensibilities. This is not a knock of the selfie-generation. Plenty of people are making interesting movies that focus the lens on the self. This is a knock against using the self to sell stuff to those who are watching your self.
I’ll end this bloggy diatribe of a middle-aged, middle-class white male (ie, probably out of the loop, so to speak, with the culture featured in the article) with this belief:
I want my students, and my own children, to see the possibilities of creating media the way I see it: an ocean of possibilities that allow you to express yourself in new and interesting ways, with (yes) a potential audience that can connect and further your art. Let art be the center of what you do.
Is that too much to ask?
Peace (in the wonder),
Kevin