Online TV/Film Archiving - The Celestial Mulitplex

This is a response to a blog entry by Kristin Thompson, which was a response to A.O. Scott's article in the NYTimes about the promise of online film distribution and archiving.

The stumbling blocks, for Thompson, seem to be issues of fidelity and/or accuracy. User-generated archives like the vast library of TV shows and ads floating around on YouTube are often (or always, depending on your standards) of low quality, frequently mislabeled, and may be just clips of a longer original or may have a logo imprinted on them (either by the network that broadcast it or by the uploader). If online TV/film archiving works like wikipedia, then you would start off with a partial, mislabeled, low-quality bootleg of a TV show/movie/ad, then it would be corrected/replaced by another person, and then that one would be replaced by an HD version, until you had a copy which would be, in some cases, more true to the original than any well-funded archivist could possibly produce. We, the viewers, would have to make due with more inaccurate, partial, low-quality versions of these motion picture texts, but its better than the alternative: nothing. And it certainly wouldn't be surprising if the improvement of each text evolved at a rate akin to that of wikipedia.

Many experts still have trouble understanding why wikipedia isn't filled with inaccurate information, just as I'm sure many motion picture archivists cannot imagine an open, online archive that won't be filled with incomplete, mediocre copies of films. The debates around the accuracy of wikipedia continue, but I think its safe to say that wikipedia is better than nothing. That's the thing: wikipedia is "competing" with existing encyclopedias. What would the celestial multiplex be competing with? Netflix? Your local library? I'm not saying the online archive would be perfect, but its not hard to imagine it being far more comprehensive than any motion picture library the average citizen has access to. Is being a purist about obscure, out-of-date cinema really worth depriving most people access to millions of films?

Even the google book archiving project seems to miss the point of Web 2.0 (or 3.0, or whatever people are calling it). Experts have to let go of the idea of one person or a group of people being the arbiter(s) of the "truth" of an idea, or, by extension, a book or a film. If there is a site like wikipedia for motion pictures, the experts are free (and perhaps would have a duty) to upload their own pristine copies of films, and correct any misinformation that people have provided along with it.

But how would this work with copyright? Its not unthinkable that once videos are uploaded by users to the celestial multiplex, they can be claimed by their original copyright owners, but instead of being taken down by those owners, they would charge $ to let users view them. I think Google video has set up some sort of pay-per-view archiving of TV shows along these lines. If studios/copyright holders refuse to go along with this centralized, monetized system, one will evolve anyway (see: Napster, gnutella, bittorrent, YouTube, etc). Music labels smartened up by working out deals with ITunes. If motion picture copyright holders won't, then Bittorrent and YouTube (and whatever's next) are likely to pick up the slack. Again, people imagine that we'll either be consuming media in the traditional way, offline, or we'll get it free, illegally, online. Compromise becomes inevitable. ITunes and music labels have made it work. Why wouldn't this work for motion pictures?

These things are hard to predict, of course. I'm only saying that the celestial multiplex isn't as miraculous (nor as inevitable) as Thompson or Scott seem to think. Really, the two authors are writing at cross-purposes. Scott, like most of us, just wants to watch films to experience pleasurable emotions and learn more about life in general. Thompson is more concerned with cinematic artifacts. For scholars, sites like wikipedia or YouTube are insufficient. But that certainly doesn't mean that they aren't of some use to some people, and it doesn't mean (as Thompson suggests) that these sites won't continue to pop up, incorporating different types of information - words, music, films - in the future.

Freakish Behavior

This is an expansion of some musings from an earlier post on freaks and YouTube. I stumbled across the videos of DaxFlame. Like many other video bloggers, he exhibits what could be called unusual behavior in his videos. This unusual behavior is humorous to many, and, at the very least, intriguing to the rest of us. His unusual behavior seems reminiscent of a mental/emotional disturbance, perhaps Tourette or Asperger's syndrome. So, is he faking it, completely, or partially?

If he is bluffing, then we shouldn't even watch his videos, because that will just make him more visible. He could potentially profit by acting as though he has a mental problem when he, in fact does not, and he tacitly encourages others to do this by being so popular. If he is not acting, then many would say that disturbed individuals shouldn't be hid from public view, but should be out there in the public sphere, making videos, chatting with others, so more power to him.

There are certain cues or qualities we can look for in order to determine whether or not (or to what degree) his performance is a put-on. His apparent age would make us believe that it is less likely that he's acting (unless we have another Andy Milonakis on our hands). He's got about 44 videos, so that makes him less believable than someone like Beebee, who has hundreds. Interestingly, interaction with other people seems to reveal bad acting to a far greater degree than the direct mode of address that most vlogs employ.

It becomes clear that we may never know whether or not many of these video bloggers are imitating freakish behavior in order to mock it and draw attention to themselves, or whether they are just being themselves. The freakish behavior becomes unmoored from the individual. At that point, we have to judge ourselves, the audience, and not the person who created the video. Do we find any of this behavior to be amusing? Do we find it intriguing enough to watch? I suspect that many people who want to watch freaks (and the people who exploit this desire by imitating them in order to get attention and the $ that will come from getting attention once vlogging becomes commodified) don't feel any genuine contempt for them, but just find it worthy of their attention, like anything that is unusual in the world.

Ultimately, isn't it better to acknowledge the fact that we find unusual behavior and appearances (whether a person is responsible for it or not) to be worthy of our attention instead of pretending that we don't feel that way? Many of these videos seem to evoke sympathy, derision, and laughter. This combination of reactions, and the visibility of those reactions, seems like a step in the right direction, away from the total lack of visibility of freakish behavior and appearances and/or the politically correct "noble freak" images pushed by traditional, paternalistic media. Once we get past our initial shock and interest, maybe we'll begin to think about how people become freaks, why its important to maintain behavioral diversity, and the relationship between neural health and "normal" behavior.

One also wonders whether people who guest star in video blogs like this one know whether or not the star of the show is affecting a personality. The more I think about it, Borat may be the most resonant film in this age of video blogging.