Meagan’s Blog

I’ll be honest.  When I signed up for this class, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but alternative media sounded interesting and fairly easy to grasp.  Afterall, alternative media is the opposite of mass media, right?  

Well, the first day of class rolled around and we we’re asked to discuss in groups the definition of alternative media.  Simplistic me could only come up with “not mass media,” and as the list went up on the board with phrases like “content generated by the people,” “nonprofit seeking,” “niche interest,” “unique,” and “unconventional,” I realized that my definition wasn’t quite right, but I wasn’t quite wrong either.  In fact, no one was right or wrong.  Clearly (or not so clearly), alternative media is a lot of these things, and yet something more then these simple defintions.  In fact, it’s so fluid and dynamic that a definition can’t really capture it properly.  As a college student who appreciates an old-fashioned clear-cut definition, this was hard for me to grasp at first, but as the semester went on from that first day of class it became quite clear that alternative media is not really definable with it’s varying content, formats, and distribution.  However, as I have come to realize over the course of a semester, there is one thing that never varies in alternative media, and that’s the do-it-yourself attitude.  In fact, it is the one thing that remains constant, from punk culture to machinima,

            We’ve studied punk culture, craft culture, Harry Potter fandom, the 1999 WTO protest, culture jamming, memes, zines, mashups, the alternative press, cyberactivism, the open-source movement, guerilla advertising, graffiti around the globe, and machinima; all these things couldn’t be more different from each other, and yet so the same.  There wouldn’t be any of these alternative media forms without the do-it-yourself attitude of people who have a desire for what the mainstream media landscape doesn’t give them, and as long as the mainstream media continues to be limited in what it presents because of what sells then these forms of alternative media (and new forms for that matter) will always exist, especially in an age, like Jenkins said, where we want “the kind of entertainment [and news] experiences [we] want” and we have the technological means and knowledge to make it happen.  With the increasing loss of public space at the hands of advertisers and a mainstream media landscape that has grown increasingly vanilla across the board, alternative media serves as an important way to fill in the holes of the mainstream media landscape.

Alternative media and its varying content, format, and distribution may not be definable.  However, if there was one clear-cut definition I think it should include the do-it-yourself attitude it grows out of because without this attitude we wouldn’t have alternative media to fill in the holes of the mainstream media, and what would that be like?

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I have a history of enjoying and yet trash talking the mashup.  At my worst, I’ve called the mashup little more than “the hobby of enthusiastic and technologically-inclined group of top 20 listeners with no real musical talent,” (harsh, I know).  However, after attempting (more like failing) to use jamglue to put together my own mashup and browsing mashuptown.com, I’m ready to eat my words and acknowledge the value of the art form.

            Creating a mashup is a lot harder than it seems: creating a good mashup even harder.   At its least complex, you have to think of at least two songs and match up the lyrics and rhythm, which still sounds easy to me when I read it back, but it is truly a skill that involves a good ear, decent computer skills, an expansive knowledge of artists and their songs, and a talent for putting it all together.  I don’t exactly have that talent, and, although I still want to believe the real musical talent involves creating music with instruments and self-penned lyrics, who’s to say a mashup isn’t creating music?  Although the instrument is a computer and the lyrics are not self-penned, the mashup takes music that already exists and creates something entirely new, yet shockingly familiar.  It’s that fresh familiarity that makes the mashup so interesting as an art form, yet so easy to disregard as unoriginal at the same time too.

 I guess the mashup’s value will always depend on the listener, but as mashups move further into mainstream music its value may change, as well as the issues that surround it.  Even as a convert to the mashup as a legitimate art form, I can’t help but wonder: how the music industry will deal with copyright issues? And how this nontraditional user generated content will affect the traditional music industry?  A bit lengthy, this article touches on these questions in it’s introduction with Danger Mouse’s Grey Album as an example, but I suppose that only time will tell the real answers.

Our lives are filled with advertising.  It’s all over television and the Internet, in every magazine and newspaper, and plastered on billboards, busses, and taxis.  It’s virtually inescapable, especially in the urban environment of the country’s third largest city, Chicago.

Advertising has become so overwhelming in its takeover of public space that it often feels like we are no longer spoken to as American citizens but rather as consumers whose value depends solely on the amount of cash in their wallet, and with this there is bound to be some back lash.  In fact, it’s no surprise that the “citizen art” of culture jamming has emerged as a critical response to the pervasive messages of advertising.  Like Naomi Klein states “culture jamming badly rejects the idea that marketing—because it buys its way into our public spaces—must be passively accepted as a one-way information flow,” and I could not agree more.  We need to talk back to advertising; it is placed in our homes and our communities so we deserve a say in the messages of the advertisements, as well as where and when these messages will be displayed because advertising does have an effect on society (an effect that corporations and ad agencies are often unwilling to accept); it’s revenue pays for many of our media vehicles and it’s images often tell us about the unrealistic kind of people we need to be in order to be “valued” in society.  We as citizens, not consumers, have to be the ones to question advertising and hold the corporations and ad agencies responsible for the messages and images they convey in their advertisements, and culture jammers are a prime example of those who are out there questioning advertising.  Their work and art is important because it asks the important questions we should all stop to think about—what are the implications of living in a democratic society where we are no longer spoken to as citizens, but rather as consumers?  And what kind of standard of civic responsibility should big business and advertising be held to?  These questions are far from easy to answer, but at least culture jamming starts the dialogue.

I’ve linked two videos…

This is an example of a culture jamming cartoon that is pretty cool (sorry the title is in Spanish).

http://youtube.com.watch?v=SBnVxNGeN08&feature=related

And this is the first 10 minutes of Naomi Klein’s documentary No Logo (again, sorry for the Spanish title and subtitles) where she makes some interesting points on advertising and it’s role in modern society, as well as the backlash against it. 

http://youtube.com.watch?v=IDTG_e714hU

I became entranced by R.E.M.  My friends and I spent hours listening to their records and talking about them.  Their tours were the social highlights of the year—we’d throw our bags into a van with two seats and a mattress and take a movable party on the road to see their shows.”

This statement in Nancy Baym’s “Online Community and Fandom” speaks to me, not because I’m a diehard R.E.M. fan, but because I know what fun it is to throw my bags into car packed with best friends and head to a Midwestern concert venue to see my favorite jam band—DMB (the Dave Matthews Band for those of you who aren’t familiar with the acronym).  In true jam band fashion, DMB tours every summer, and I have to admit that I have been to at least one DMB concert every summer since the beginning of high school; it has become a ritual between my friends and I.  In fact, when I think about summer time I think of a car stereo blasting on a road trip, playing bags in a venue parking lot hours before the show, and standing on the lawn on a hot summer night surrounded by my friends and the sounds of DMB.

I have far too many stories from the 10 or so shows that I have been to over the years to share all of them, but meeting one particular group of devoted fans stands out to me.  They had spent the summer following DMB around the country, taping each show to post online for others to download, and sleeping in their van; they knew every set list from that summer’s tour and they made a drinking game out of guessing the opening song.  When we suggested that DMB would open with “So Much to Say,” they immediately shot us down; “Dave hasn’t opened with that song in two years.”  I remember being impressed by their devotion to the band and a little embarrassed that I didn’t’ know as much as they did, but I also wondered what drives someone to be such a devoted fan?  And what kind of fulfillment does someone get out of taping live shows for others?  It sounds like a lot of work, money, and time to get nothing back.  Whatever, the answer may be, here is a link to http://antsmarching.org, a fansite dedicated to the Dave Matthews Band and filled with downloads of shows that were taped by dedicated fans just like the ones I met.

I agree with McChesney; the mass media has weakened the diversity of opinion in America.  This may sound like a broad statement, but spend just one evening flipping through the news networks and you can understand what I mean.  Network after network you see the day’s news as reported from two extremes; I’m talking about the Keith Oberman extreme on the far left of the ideological continuum and the Bill O’Reilly extreme on the far right.  And, yes.  I am aware that I implied that these respective programs are a form of news, but I am also aware of how far of a stretch that may be since they are more opinionated than the traditional news programs who claim to stick to the journalistic value of objectivity.  However, what is objectivity anymore?  From my observations, objectivity is simply giving the reader or viewer little more than the who, the when, and the what of a story alongside a liberal opinion and a conservative opinion.  So after a night of media consumption you either think the American public is full of Keith Obermans and Bill O’Reillys (a pretty scary thought) or you wonder…where have all the moderates gone?

A lot of them have turned to alternative media or created their own forms of alternative media; many of them are filling in the ideological continuum that exists between the two extremes, and it is for this reason that I believe strongly in the importance of alternative media.  We need a diversity of opinion.  In fact, it is a fundamental democratic value, and we should be grateful to those who are passionate enough to create it.  Now, we need more of the American public to engage in it as both producers and consumers.  But can it then be considered alternative media anymore?   I don’t think the answer is simple.  I think it rests on many factors, but it is certainly an interesting question for discussion.