Some years back, when I was active in Indymedia, we were all excited about the possibilities digital media offered for reversing the polarity of broadcast media, restoring communication as the two-way affair it was for most of human history and letting everyone just talk. Having been rather disappointed with the narrow representation of this aim Indymedia turned out to be, I have also been pleased with other sites and software developed since. YouTube, obviously.
It’s a mixed bag. Obviously there’s a lot of rebroadcast of megacorporate material, which can be good if you missed something, or disappointing if you wanted real videos from real people. Those videos are there too, of course, and many are as disappointing as your average LiveJournal. Last night my roommate brought me in to watch a video of a bride sobbing and cutting off all her hair after getting it styled in a way she didn’t like, her friends still holding the camera and zooming in at all the right moments to capture the oh my god of it all. Whether it was real or not, the move to shoot a vignette like this was pathetic, and derivative of the worst impulses of TV.
But there are dialogues on YouTube which I think are really promising, even as a few go astray. Watching clips of kids from all over the world dancing and playing music is really inspiring, and you can get exposed to some dance styles that as an American you’d never hear of if you weren’t deeply entrenched in an immigrant community. Dancehall reggae seems to be the most fertile source. Go looking for the frog back (the Frog Back!), the bird flu, and the toe wop, for starters. I’d also point you to the dutty wine, but it’s worth considering the exploitative tone of the song and the dance.
And, the outrage of my friend Ra-Sun aside, I also still love the chicken noodle soup, and all its participants on YouTube. We had an exchange a while ago in which Ra noted some in the black community interpret it as “coonery,” in part because of the way the dance looks. I’ll take that criticism under advisement, but I also had kids in the high school where I was doing research last year speak fondly of the dance. When a college student comes down on a form of entertainment, calling it benighted and unenlightened, I can’t help but wonder about elitism. And if he was coming down on the interpretation of that entertainment as unenlightened, well, there’s not much ground to stand on there. There’s no controlling for interpretation. Gangsta rap is going to be embraced by kids in Harlem and Bed-Stuy, and if it travels, it’s going to be seen as an authentic expression of a foreign culture by white kids in Ohio. And then, what kind of coonery is it when people pass around links to fat white men doing the same dance?
Digressions. Yes, all of this is doubtless influenced to greater or lesser extents by corporate media. But the great thing about dancing is once you know how to do a dance, there is absolutely no doubt that the corporados don’t own it anymore. Not like software, not like a recorded song, not like your parody of a movie. It is on your body, and then can’t stop you from perfecting it, correcting it, turning it into a joke or doing it to a completely different form of music. (Yet. God, imagine if someone tried to turn dancing into intellectual property. I’m sure it’s been done.)
And that’s what people are doing on YouTube. What’s more, they are talking directly to each other, in parodies and face-offs. “Come see me if u wanna battle” challenges a video labelled “killer toe wop.” The woman in the video has a body which is nothing you’d see in a music video, god bless her, and she nails the shit out of that dance, reminding us that dancing in your neighborhood, unlike modelling for advertisements, doesn’t give a sweet goddamn how many pounds you’re carrying; it just matters whether you can pull it off.
Then there’s a whole series of VERY young drummers shown off on the web by loving acquaintances, such as Abdoulaye Chevrier and his brother Isaiah, who doesn’t just keep up on djembe, but solos like a total pro. And there are responses and responses.
I’ve been thinking lately that the promise of having people tell their own stories on video — that promise made by so many alternative production houses and youth video classes — is in a way a little unrealistic. Real production with storylines, actors, lighting, different angles — that’s a luxury. Sure, you can always video-blog as a talking head, but producing theatrical videos is a full time job, and you have to be real, real free in your free time to pull it off. Like much of the extracurricular activism I was involved with, you can’t do it easily if you have a family or work more than one job.
But a little music, a little dancing — not as much effort. The field can be a little bit more level — just a little — between MTV and these kids propping their cameras on the couch while they wine’. Tell a story with one body, one voice, one drum. Yes, there’s still an interpretation problem. Yes yes. But there’s also an opportunity to speak without the cultural baggage of a story, to speak a joy which doesn’t require a common language. People might look at you and go damn, that just looks good. I spent today at an African dance festival doing jitterbug and line dances and manjani and salsa; I was there because, at a school assembly at the age of ten, that is exactly what this suburban white girl saw and thought to herself. That just looks good, and I want to be part of it.
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