Remixing racism: a cautionary tale?

[crypto]

Creating a trip hop soundtrack to the flick, turning the screen red when the Klan shows up and superimposing thin white animated lines to highlight and isolate certain images onscreen like the stitching on a hipster T-shirt do not a remix make.

The kid gloves that critics seem to wear when dealing with this project says much more interesting and troubling things about where the intellectual/arty class is with Art and Race in this country than That Subliminal Kid’s freshman undergraduate treatment of the material.

 

 

From a Racialicious post on a recent MoMA screening of DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation, billed as a remix of DW Griffith's 1915 Birth of a Nation. One main theme in the critique is that the original source was insufficiently remixed; the result was, in effect, more a re-presenting of the film that reproduced its racism.

The whole post, and further discussion in comments, is worth reading.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

so, to continue the fandom nomenclature, it's not a remix so much as a DVD commentary with annotations?

[crypto]

I haven't seen it, but that sounds like a decent description.