Angela Kitzan
405 Final
You know you do it. You do it in the shower, in the car, and when you are all alone at home just in your skimpy underwear. Yeah, you know you do it---sing when you think no one is watching, that is. Sure, you are doing it for fun and deep down you know you can’t sing, right? Right? You aren’t going to audition for American Idol because deep down you know you can’t sing. I mean, you do realize you can’t sing right?
Yet you have this yearning to upload a video of yourself singing and dancing in your underwear, yet if your parents found out you would get in trouble, have a little too much pride and you honestly don’t want to know what other people think so you refrain from doing so. However, there are millions of other people around the world that don’t have any shame and want that fifteen seconds of fame so that maybe they will be on one of those VH1 countdown clip shows, perhaps “Best of the Web 2009”.
I stumbled across my media artifact on one of my friend’s facebook page, which is of a youtube clip of a girl by the name of Nichole butchering a Taylor Swift song. The girl looked a lot like my best friend’s ex-girlfriend and considering that none of our friends like her, I posted it to his page hoping to get a good laugh or two (mean, I know, but after all I am only 23 and pretty damn childish) which we did. I decided to see if she had anymore videos only to discover that she had 64 uploaded videos of her covering songs as well as a few originals that she has written.
She has a good amount of fans and friends as well as a lot of comments, most of them extremely rude and sometimes a bit heartbreaking. Yet as mean as it sounds, I have to wonder if she actually does deserve them because anyone who isn’t deaf can hear that she can’t sing to save her life. Why would someone honestly put themselves through all the negativity she is receiving or is she just in her own little world, thinking that she has talent?
With websites such as facebook, youtube and various blogging applications it seems that more and more people are putting themselves on public display, craving that fifteen minutes of fame, hoping that one day they too will be famous, especially now with the ever so popular idea of reality television which keeps spewing out new shows each season. With more and more people turning to their laptops and computers to catch up on television shows on websites such as Hulu, could video blogs and youtube clips be the next new wave of reality television?
On page 65 of Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins, there is a small poster of a boy, sneering and saying “You Got Three Seconds To Impress Me”, which when one might see this, they may think that it needs to be a positive impression, rather than a negative one. But is this so? Granted, this young girl attempt to belt out a Taylor Swift song isn’t anything to be impressed about, however, the fact that she is terrible made me come back for more. I was impressed by her terribleness. I highly doubt that if she was truly talented I would have passed it on to my friends and would have simply thought to myself, “Well it is a shame that she isn’t pretty, she can really sing. Then again, plastic surgery does wonders. How come this ugly girl can sing? So not fair. God, you pissed me off today, thanks” and moved to youtubing something that would make me laugh, never to look at this girl’s website ever again.
Jenkin’s idea of “Zappers, Casuals and Loyals” can be tied into my media artifact with ease. Zappers would be the ones who have “internet manners and class” as I put it; the ones that either don’t view it or just view it without passing it on to their friends or leaving her a comment. Casuals are those who out of boredom leave a comment whether it be positive or negative and come back to it only if it starts a spark and ends up into an all out internet rage. As for those Loyals? They are the ones who spend their every waking moment on the girls’ page, bombarding her with comments, mostly negative in hopes that they make her life a living hell and that she will eventually shut down her youtube page, never to be heard from again.
Both the viewers of this artifact as well as the performer in this artifact are doing what they do because of personal fulfillment. Chances are this girl knows what she is doing and probably does think she can really sing, despite what her “haters” say. We don’t know her background or her story; maybe she is a lonely girl whose only social interaction is the comments she gets on her youtube profile and by posting her videos, she is just looking for some much needed attention, whether it be positive or negative. But no matter what, she loves to sing and that is what she is going to do. It’s her art and it’s her love, nothing and no one can stop her.
The viewers are gaining personal fulfillment by posting negative comments and making someone feel bad. As pathetic as it sounds, there are people, those internet trolls that do get joy out of being a complete dick head on the internet because they need someone to belittle to make themselves better; because in real life, they suck as a person and are a complete loser. But hey, making fun of some girl who is not the best looking and can’t carry a tune will make me feel better; because in our society looks and a talent are important in making it in this world. However, those who leave nice compliments and are sticking up for her do gain personal fulfillment as well. Making someone’s day is always a nice feeling and whether or not you agree with her singing or not, some people just take it too far and haven’t those meanies ever thought about “thinking it and not saying it”, hopefully leaving her a nice comment will cheer her up.
Would Benjamin call this art? Then again, what exactly is art? Perhaps what is art to you is certainly not art to me so therefore is art just a thing?
Benjamin stated that, “the uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable.” Well one thing is for sure, this artifact is definitely unique in itself and therefore can be declared as art, she is bucking tradition and showing that deep down, anyone can be well known whether it is on the internet or television, all you have to be is unique. Art changes throughout the ages from magical, to religious, to the completely bizarre.
He says that “works of art are received and valued on different planes. “ And by the looks of her comments, she is being received on many different planes, from the negative mean spirited planes to those who are trying to stick up for her and telling people to leave her alone to those like her who might see her as inspiration. Certainly those who express negatively view her as low cult and low class, but that doesn’t mean those who stick up for her view her as high class, they just respect that she is a unique work of art who is simply expressing herself and her creativity.
“For the film, what matters primarily is that the actor represents himself to the public before the camera, rather than representing someone else” is one sentence that now fits into the mold of reality television and especially video blogging. Granted, this year we have talked about the aspects of reality television characters and how in almost every reality television show you are automatically typecast/stereotyped into a certain persona that you are expected to carry out the full length of series, but when it comes to video blogging, all that is there is you and your webcam. Nothing else unless you want it that way; how you represent yourself to the public is up to you and the only one you can blame for the negativity you are getting is yourself.
One question that was imposed on me during my presentation was how exactly am I going to fit aura in here? My media artifact would defiantly be “cult” value even though it has 3 million hits. View her page and see that she has a small, but sufficient following. She is one of those “youtube secrets” that the Today Show has probably passed up and didn’t let her go mainstream. In the big world of the internet, she is just a small wonder, a cult classic for 2009. Two years from now when something else catches our attention on facebook, we may even strike up a conversation and say “Hey remember that girl who sang off key, let’s look her up again”, giving her foundation as a “cult classic” on the internet.
Should have Benjamin written this article today, he would have included the internet and perhaps stated that once it is put out there for the whole world to see, it is always there, forever and ever to be remembered and held onto either for good memories of the good old days or for blackmail against a now enemy. And we have all heard the stories of people getting fired or losing what respect they have due to what they have in their public blogs as well as facebook page.
Although Benjamin wrote during an entirely different time that Jenkins, I was annoyed to find out that Jenkins rarely touched on the idea of becoming an “overnight internet celebrity”. Granted, his book was published in 2006 and is only a couple of years old, but the idea of being an internet celebrity has been around for at least the beginning of the decade. Although reality television shows are still popular, they are becoming more and more decreased and only the strongest, like Survivor and Big Brother seem to survive. People, especially my generation are getting tired of celebs like Brett Michaels who keep doing dating reality show after dating reality show just so they can make a buck or two and increase their celeb status. We want those happy surprises that suddenly become famous because someone posted a youtube clip of them singing horribly or singing beautifully. We want every day joes as our new celebs, ones that we can look at and go, “Hey, I can upload something similar on youtube and gain 1,000,000 hits too!”
In reality, whether we want to admit it or not, we wish that deep down, we could have our chance at fifteen minutes of fame. Because if a girl who sings as horribly as that gets around 3,000,000 views and her video hasn’t been up for a year yet, then why the hell can’t I have my own youtube fame? In the end, with the internet---anything is possible. Anything.
Works Cited
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New
York University Press.
Benjamin, Walter. The Work Of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Oxford University Press
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