A Hard Day’s Night of the Living Dead

John, Paul, George, Ringo … and a world full of Zombies! If you thought it’d never happen, then you were wrong, because wonderous world of video mashups can bring two classics together to make A Hard Day’s Night of the Living Dead

It’s the best Beatles clip since the Grey Video and some of the smoothest mashups since the Brokeback Mountain inspired series early last year.

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When Captain America Drops His Mighty Shield

“It’s a hell of a time for him to go. We really need him now.”

Joe Simon (co-creator of Captain America)

While Peter Parker and his alter-ego Spider-Man have long been the iconic representation of the layperson (or everyperson) — the ordinary guy who, by accident rather than intent, became a hero — Captain America, in contrast, has always been stood for the ideals of the American dream and the democratic system at its heart. Captain America was created in the midst of World War II, and has fought the Nazis, communism and many other threats to the ‘American way of life’. Given his role, the demise of such a figure is more than a ploy to sell comic books (although it is that, too); it’s a commentary on the upheaval at the heart of what being American actually means. As Joe Simon, Cap’s co-creator along with Jack Kirby, has stated in interviews on the back of Cap’s death: “It’s a hell of a time for him to go. We really need him now.”

In July last year I wrote about the parallels between Marvel’s Civil War storyline and the ‘War of Terror’, noting that the Civil War stories borrowed heavily both from September 11 and the related special-edition tributes done by various comic book publishers. The image of Captain America’s sorrow was used powerfully both in Marvel’s renderings of the ruins of the World Trade Centre Towers and the tragedy which kick-started Marvel’s Civil War. During the past months, I was also impressed by the directness with which the Civil War stories appeared to address the situation in Guantanamo Bay when one of Marvel’s more jovial characters, Speedball – or Robert Baldwin – was arrested as an “an unregistered combatant” and locked away in a prison which seemed to exist outside of legal jurisdiction. To some extent that critique continues beyond the conclusion of the Civil War storyline as Robert Baldwin has now backed down and accepted Registration and become a new ‘hero’ (in the broadest sense of the word) under the guise ‘Penance’, a self-hating hero, wracked by guilt about the deaths his team unwittingly caused, and whose powers emerge proportionally to the amount of pain he’s in (it’s hardly a shock, then, that Warren Ellis is penning Thunderbolts, which now features Penance in the team’s line-up).

[Image from Marvel’s Civil War: Frontline #10; click to enlarge.]

Captain America's Death on the Marvel websiteAfter those impressive beginnings, I was completely stunned at how badly the Marvel wrapped up its Civil War run, with Cap seemingly surrendering on a revelation — that the war between heroes was hurting a lot of innocent people in its wake — so mundane it bordered on stupid. That said, when Cap was actually gunned down by an assassin in Captain America #25, I could see where the story was supposed to have gone (I still think, though, that his death should have occurred in the last issue of the Civil War story, not another tie-in edition, even Cap’s own book). Cap’s death has altered the Marvel Universe, with even Tony Stark (Iron Man) privately admitting that the Civil War wasn’t worth the death of one of Marvel’s greatest icons (in Civil War: The Confession, yet another Civil war spin-off). There has been a lot of press about Marvel killing off one its core characters, but I think these stories are best summed up by Damian Fowler writing in The Guardian‘s books blogs with these insightful thoughts on ‘Why Captain America had to die’:

Created by Marvel comics in 1941 to battle the Nazis, the massively-pumped “Cap” was first seen punching Hitler in the face. Nice work if you can get it. But last week the patriotic crusader was shot and killed by a sniper in the latest issue of the long-running comic book.

Over the years, Captain America’s storyline has always reflected American moods and attitudes. When he first showed up, he was a sentinel of liberty and the fight for right. He was a mirror of everything that America stood for during the second world war. He always fought relentlessly for values that the US held dear.

How times change. Now he’s very much dead, something that was confirmed by the president and publisher of Marvel Entertainment. The New York Times all but wrote an obituary for the man, albeit in the arts pages, dead at 66. But it’s a sign of the times.

His demise is so much more than a tragedy in Toontown, even as the comic-book geeks mourn his passing. […] Cap’s death is being seen, analysed and discussed through the prism of national politics as a damning indictment of George Bush’s America. Even the major American TV networks picked up on the story, cutting images of the war in Iraq with the comic book images.

The Marvel Universe post-Captain America is an unfamiliar place. It’s a Marvel Universe in tune with the US and the Western world more broadly; a West which invaded Iraq four years ago but has to bring any semblance of stability to the region. With Cap’s shield gathering dust, his ideological opposite, Iron Man (a weapons manufacturer and alcoholic as well as a superhero) is now in charge of Marvel’s registered super-hero fighting machine (with a team in every state of the US). Spider-man, who revealed his identity during the Civil War, is now part of a small but notable underground resistance, but is also desperately trying to deal with the death of family members. Captain America’s death hangs over the comic book world, and leaves lasting questions about the direction and politics of the world of Marvel and its heroes.

However, As Benari Poulten reminds us, Captain America has been dead before and Steve Rogers has been replaced as Cap in the past, so it’s unlikely that the iconic hero will be gone from the Marvel universe for good. That said, Marvel have enjoyed amazing press and attention in the wake of the assassination of one of their key heroes — Cap’s demise even made ‘the Word’ on The Colbert Report and Steven Colbert now has Cap’s shield in his trophy case — so if death is to carry any weight at all in mainstream comic books, the inevitable return will have to be handled carefully, not just commercially. Personally, I think Steve Rogers should stay dead now, I think his death was representative of many things, including changes in Marvel both as a comic book universe and as part of a multi-national company. That said, words by Peter David about the X-Men titles are increasingly true about all comic book characters: “Mutant heaven has no pearly gates, only revolving doors” (X-Factor #70). If he can’t stay dead, Marvel, please earn any return of Captain America or one of your most striking characters will be diluted beyond a meaningful existence.

(Yes, the title of this post is a shameless adaptation of the Cap cartoon theme song; it’s also an homage to Henry Jenkins’ brilliant essay ‘Captain America Sheds His Might Tears: Comics and September 11’ which appeared in Daniel J. Sherman and Terry Nardin (eds), Terror, Culture, Politics: Rethinking 9/11, Indiana UP, 2006.)

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Hillary 1984

The races for party nomination and the Presidential election in the US always tend to bring out the most creative political media and mashups. The first great political video of the 2008 race is definitely Hillary 1984, which mashes up one of Apple’s most famous advertisements from 1984, using the imagery of 1984, with Hillary Clinton’s campaign launch speach. (Actually, the Apple ad used is the updated version released in 2004, with the sledgehammer-weilding Anya Major given an iPod to wear as she attacks the projections of an Orwellian big brother.)

An article called ‘Political video smackdown’ in San Francisco Chronicle has these sparse details:

It may be the most stunning and creative attack ad yet for a 2008 presidential candidate — one experts say could represent a watershed moment in 21st century media and political advertising. Yet the groundbreaking 74-second pitch for Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, which remixes the classic “1984” ad that introduced Apple computers to the world, is not on cable or network TV, but on the Internet. […]

The compelling “Hillary 1984” video recently introduced on YouTube represents “a new era, a new wave of politics … because it’s not about Obama,” said Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank on politics and new media. “It’s about the end of the broadcast era.” […]

That theme — reflecting a generational change in the relationship between media, politics, candidates and voters — suggests that “Hillary 1984” could have the iconic power with the 21st century political generation that another classic political ad called “Daisy” represented to Baby Boomers, says Leyden. That 1964 spot for President Lyndon Johnson — featuring images of a child plucking a daisy, which morphed ominously into a nuclear mushroom cloud — battered GOP presidential candidate Sen. Barry Goldwater because it, too, portrayed “a shattering of the whole world” in both political leadership, and media.

Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama, said he is aware of the “Hillary 1984” video and has gotten calls from reporters on it — but he insisted that the campaign is not connected to it. “It’s somebody else’s creation,” he said, declining to comment on the ad’s biting content. […]

The ad is proof that “anybody can do powerful emotional ads … and the campaigns are no longer in control,” Rosenberg said. “It will no longer be a top-down candidate message; that’s a 20th century broadcast model.”

Citizen media and participatory culture, indeed! 🙂 And the video itself:

[Via Rebecca Blood]

Update: For more on the politics on this mashup, see Chuck Tryon’s column ““Why 2008 Won’t Be Like 1984:” Viral Videos and Presidential Politics” in Flow. Also of interest is a statement in the Huffington Post by the video’s creator Phil de Vellis: I Made the “Vote Different” Ad.

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Four Corners: ‘You Only Live Twice’

In conjunction with their purchase of a Second Life Island, the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) dedicated a full Four Corners programme to exploring the world of Second Life. It was actually quite a fair representation of SL (at least, as I understand it, only having spent a few hours in-world); it was also neatly structured to familiarise viewers who’ve never heard of virtual environments with SL as it began with Ticky Fullerton’s (the journalist’s) signing-up process, and showed both in-world and material-world footage as she developed her avatar, checked out Orientation Island and eventually explored the people, the markets and the inevitable red-light districts of SL.

Also of interest was the way in which the programme was presented – it wasn’t just a 45 minute slot, but also has a substantial online presence on the Four Corners website. The layout of the extra material is a little busy for my taste, but the wealth of material is excellent – there are longer versions of the interviews with Philip Rosedale (Second Life’s US creator), Ted Castranova (a well-respected academic voice on Virtual worlds and virtual economies) and Clay Shirky (SL’s most prominent critic). I particularly like these ‘raw’ interviews as you can hear all the questions asked, something that regularly gets lost in the tight editing which happens in putting a 45 minutes show together.

The ABC, like the BBC, is not hampered by trying of extract every last cent for their productions; rather, their mission statement is to disseminate their shows as accessible to Australians as is possible. It means these sort of extended versions are part of their core mission, and I’m quite impressed with the amount online (my only gripe is that it’s all flash video, so not so easy to download – a concern if I wanted to use a few minutes of one of the interviews in a lecture!).

For those who prefer to check out a lo-fi version before spending the time watching the videos, there is a full transcript of the ‘You Only Live Twice’.

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