Structure and Narrative

[astarte]

Often, though, I'll be thinking What's so great about this 'narrative' and why would it be any better or worse today?

I think you answered that in a different thread in which you talked about the difference between vidders on LJ, youtube and AMV. I think narrative comes also often down to the culture niche for which you vid, what your audience is expecting and how well you archive these standard's set in a community. There are always vids that surpass every expectation and will be universally understood, but like you said they often rely on fandom tropes and clichés that are completely ingrained into our pop culture. We frequently don't even realize them on a conscious level. The multifandom vids Xandra and I collaborated on had strict general themes like apocalypse, incest, antagonistic male or female slash. The slash ones are so easy to understand, if you spend one day in fandom, they explain themselves.

What you did say about fanon is so true, I completely agree with this point. We don't vid in a vacuum and this way, we reconnect with an audience that loves the same things in a canon - be it a couple or character. If you can tap into what makes people fannish, you are already half there for a lot of people. My 'Be a Ghost' did that for Dean Winchester and fandom had a blast with the vid and even people that didn't know Supernatural understood the ass-kicking hero with issues trope.

But I always loved to invert this way of manipulating vidding like for example in 'Move' I vidded Scully like a male character. Not flinching away from her being tied up or beaten down and it was interesting the way female fans didn't exactly know, how to react to that. It was a deliberate move on my part and there were some interesting discussions attached to that vid, because showing Mulder in the same circumstances would have been unquestionable hot, but with Scully there was a queasy feeling attached for a lot of people.

[obsessive24]

I haven't seen Move, astarte, but now I really want to after reading your description. So interesting and, based on what I've seen of other vids which explore this, so true as well.

[xandra]

But I always loved to invert this way of manipulating vidding like for example in 'Move' I vidded Scully like a male character. Not flinching away from her being tied up or beaten down and it was interesting the way female fans didn't exactly know, how to react to that. It was a deliberate move on my part and there were some interesting discussions attached to that vid, because showing Mulder in the same circumstances would have been unquestionable hot, but with Scully there was a queasy feeling attached for a lot of people.

astarte Really? So I'm just dense then? Cause I thought she was hot.

[astarte]

Now I feel like I did build it up to more than it is, but here you go: astartexx.livejournal.com/47140.html

There were several things at work here for me. It was a vidlet challenge going on with Charmax, so taking back the song felt natural. So spinning its meaning and doing a 'Fuck yeah, Scully'-vid were frontrunners on my mind while vidding. I didn't make it easier for txf fandom by embezzling the fact that the PoV was that of female Scully fans or mine to be more specific. But I have to say, this vid had the most interesting reaction posts up to date for me, especially the way fans felt guilty for loving it and how that clashed with their understanding of feminism.

[obsessive24]

Oh, that was very interesting indeed! (And very well made, of course, but with you that sort of goes without saying. ;D ) I watched it with this discussion in mind, and for me, a lot of the discomfort ended up turning on the song choice. You were saying that you edited her the same way you edited a male lead; that's a fair enough point, but would the corresponding song have been all "he's sexy! ... He loves it!... He wants me, I could see it in his eyes" etc? For me, there seemed to be a very intentional disconnect between the violence of the clips and the sexualised nature of the lyrics, specifically revolving around the idea of she's somehow asking for it. I can think of plenty of male action lead vids that get him massively beat up, but I can't think of any off the top of my head that implies at least in certain readings that he's asking for it and deriving sexual pleasure from submitting and being abused. (This line of thought links naturally to sisabet and sweetestdrain's On The Prowl, though it's not quite the same kettle of fish.)

[thatyourefuse]

Nov 25, 2011 17:52:35 GMT -5 obsessive24 said:

I can think of plenty of male action lead vids that get him massively beat up, but I can't think of any off the top of my head that implies at least in certain readings that he's asking for it and deriving sexual pleasure from submitting and being abused.

Oddly enough, that's sort of part of what I'm vaguely trying to gesture in the direction of with "Hello Time Bomb," although I don't think I'm there yet. (The first chorus of "dirty enough, I got me a love and it's so bad" is going to be pretty much exclusively violence, although of what variety I'm still trying to work out, which is why I haven't started laying it down yet.)

And, well, there's this, although that may be a slightly different kettle of fucked.

And I'm trying to pull together a thought concerning the actual subject of the discussion, but it's not quite there yet...

[astarte]

I had a lot of fun with the internal disconnect while vidding - believe me. Even when a part of my hindbrain whispered, they will crucify you for this, which never happened. Plus the inherently sexist narrative of the song made me want to vid it very badly. Charmax gave me several songs, but I instantly took notice of this one and it was a nice challenge to make it bend to my vision of Scully. And then we have the part that comes down to personal character interpretation, which made me go for it completely. For me Scully is never a helpless victim, it's just not how I see her in the first eight seasons. The strength she possess even while fighting overwhelming odds, made her my first girl crush and the fact that for every time Mulder saved her ass, she pulled him ten times back from the abyss.

Another thing that played into the creation was the fact that being in the SPN fandom at that time lead to a lot of unashamed sadistic manpain loving in ep reviews and comments, this really lowered my inhibition to go there. Strangely I can't even think of a SPN vid that goes there on the top of my head. Oh, wait, what about 'Want' by destina: destina.livejournal.com/411786.html The release was also surrounded by plenty of great discussion, especially in regard of how the Azazel PoV could be interpreted as a fangirl one, because those things were exactly what the fandom wanted.

But you are right, Nicky, we rarely go to the dark place without shame or dressing the hurt/blood up as some psychological revelation about our heroes. Vidders really try not to objectify in their narrative so much, when it isn't in a fun way. I think it has a lot to do with the LJ vidding community being female driven and so we think twice about some boundaries and why they are in place. I think an interesting exception to this rule is Cara from Legend of the Seeker. Her torture scene was completely sexual in nature, but again this was with a strong character that fandom felt didn't break easily. The BDSM theme was part of the show and so this scene is used as that in fanvids without much guilt.