{"title":"Rewatching with the Gilmore Guys: Rewatch Podcasts and Residual Consumption","authors":"Nicholas Benson","doi":"10.7560/vlt9103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/vlt9103","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article considers Gilmore Guys to be an urtext of rewatch podcasts and uses fan survey responses to situate rewatch podcasts within a set of emerging consumption practices and industrial conditions that blur the lines between television and podcasting, old and new media, and network-era and post-network-era consumption practices. I expand upon Rebecca Williams's notion of post-object fandom by suggesting that these podcasts restore the ontological security brought about by the absence of the original show. Throughout, I attempt to untangle certain gendered discourses and antagonisms that inevitably emerge in a podcast about men watching a show originally marketed to women, and I suggest that residual modes of consumption can often be entangled with and reproduce gendered assumptions about audience engagement.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"82 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114513197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"An Extraordinary Piece of Engineering\": The Artificial Woman as Digital Effect","authors":"Mihaela Mihailova","doi":"10.7560/vlt9104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/vlt9104","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:In the history of science fiction feature cinema, the manufactured female body has long been treated as a blank canvas for spectacular visual effects, arguably beginning with Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). Nearly a century later, fembot bodies tend to be computer generated rather than constructed on-set, but they have retained the role of a diegetic tech demo highlighting the latest advancements in visual effects research and design. Drawing on the persistent cultural notion of the female body as a site for simultaneously negotiating gender roles and technological progress, my article offers a close reading of cyborg, nonorganic, and biologically enhanced women and/as digital effects. I examine a range of feature films, including Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2014), Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017), Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017), and Alita: Battle Angel (Robert Rodriguez, 2019). I argue that such media texts cast sexualized digital Galateas to affirm (digital animation) technology's capacity to fulfill white male heteronormative fantasies. At the same time, depictions of the computer-generated female body as a sexual object aim to compensate for the digital effect's artificiality. Both within the narrative and in paratextual discourse, tying technological progress to male sexual wish fulfillment becomes the digital female's benchmark for authenticity.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123932989","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The New Pirate TV: Examining the Remediation and Online Narrowcasting of Justin.tv in a New Media Environment","authors":"Connor D. Wilcox, S. M. Walus, Jonathan Mattson","doi":"10.7560/vlt9106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/vlt9106","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article examines the rise of online narrowcasting and the battle over the right to remediate ephemeral televisual content through the case study of Justin.tv. The platform became wildly popular, garnering forty-five million monthly users at its height, because it allowed anyone with a stable Internet connection to become a distributor of content. The platform quickly transitioned from a place for \"life-casting\" to one where users were narrowcasting a wide array of content, including original media, copyrighted live television and sports programs, and taped archives of television shows. This platform-shifted retransmission of televisual content caught the attention of traditional broadcasters and the US Congress. Justin.tv's narrowcasts followed the traditional linear model of broadcasting but also included the interactivity and open-source usage rules of Web 2.0. This led to a conflict in which the copyright holders attempted to redefine the retransmission of the content—which had originally been intended to be temporary—as stealing. Considering the explosive growth of live-streaming platforms such as Twitch (Justin.tv's successor) during the COVID-19 pandemic, reexamining the antecedents of narrowcasting and contested sites of remediation through Justin.tv provides important context for understanding the current media ecosystem.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"91 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129697207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Plastic Orientalism: Surface Logic and Cultural Technique in K-Pop","authors":"Rita Rongyi Lin","doi":"10.7560/vlt9105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/vlt9105","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article proposes the notion of \"plastic Orientalism\" as an emergent cultural phenomenon in recent K-pop music through a textual analysis of BTS's 2018 music video \"Idol.\" The music video features a yellow pavilion structure vaguely resembling the Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul, but with a two-dimensional flat appearance and a derealized space imposed with computer-generated special effects. By taking a signifier conventionally coded as Oriental(ist) in dominant visual representation and returning such an image ironically with extra saturation, the yellow pavilion is characteristic of plastic Orientalism as a reflective and reflexive cultural technique that radically performs the logic of the surface. \"Idol\" reclaims the overdetermined associations of \"the East\" with inscrutability and excess by aligning itself with the architectural facade, offering a conception of subjectivity as routed through objecthood. I argue that plasticity as a visual rhetoric and reparative reading practice allows a renegotiation of the politics of hegemony and resistance for an ethnic-racial identity that disrupts and modulates among the discourses of Orientalism, techno-Orientalism, and ethnonationalism.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"18 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125992310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Revolutions in Resolution: Cultural Passing through \"Cinematic\" Video","authors":"M. Larocco","doi":"10.7560/vlt9102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/vlt9102","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article investigates video production in the early digital era in relation to the \"cinematic mode,\" a practice in which video makers have attempted to emulate the look and feel of analog film with cheaper digital video. As a marker of esteem, professionalism, and legitimacy, the \"cinematic look\" has served as a qualitative image standard and a visible point of separation that places cameras and their users in hierarchies of cultural importance. Utilizing the video production trade press, I discuss the differences between early digital cameras' \"video look\" in relation to the cinematic standard and speak to the stakes of achieving and leveraging the \"cinematic look\" as a potentially revolutionary act of cultural passing, as its use elevated the status of video practitioners and enabled them to pass cultural gatekeepers, to further cultivate and diversify a culture of low-budget independent cinema and to generate opportunities for personal and company growth so long as they functioned within the preexisting industry power structure.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116799705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Distribution in the Streaming Era: A Scholarly Roundtable","authors":"","doi":"10.7560/vlt9007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/vlt9007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116719742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Streaming’s Skip Intro Function as a Contradictory Refuge for Television Title Sequences","authors":"Max Dosser","doi":"10.7560/vlt9005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/vlt9005","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article argues that streaming television’s “skip intro” function, although designed to allow audiences to forego title sequences, has created a space for theme music and title sequences. In doing so, it preserves the cultural technology of theme music and furthers audience control in a time of changing viewing habits and increasing binge-watching. In the creation of this space, one sees how portals are embracing a hybrid model of linear and nonlinear television in order to create a feeling of agency that is increasingly key in practices of post-network television.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131275765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Tale of Two Indies: Amazon Studios and A24 in the Streaming Age","authors":"Ryan David Briggs","doi":"10.7560/vlt9002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/vlt9002","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article tracks the evolution of the US indie film sector in the 2010s by examining as case studies two newly formed film companies, Amazon Studios and A24. Through historiographic and industrial analyses, I reveal how the companies simultaneously embraced new streaming technologies, thus destabilizing long-standing notions of indie film culture, and established brand identities around the culture’s traditional hallmarks, auteur filmmaking and theatrical exhibition. This examination of the separate but intersecting trajectories of A24 and Amazon Studios provides insight into a decade of indie filmmaking marked by the incredible rise in global importance of streaming services.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128034095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Residual Fandom: Television Technologies, Industries, and Fans of Survivor","authors":"Cameron L Brown","doi":"10.7560/vlt9003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/vlt9003","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In this article, I explore the relationship between industrial practices and fandom. Specifically, I ask how fandom has developed and changed because of the new availability of Survivor on streaming platforms such as Hulu and Paramount+. I provide context through Amanda Lotz’s theorization of the post-network era. Additionally, I take up Rebecca Williams’s conceptualization of post-object fandom. Importantly, Williams asserts that fandoms provide fans with a sense of “ontological security.” I argue that fans make use of Survivor’s streaming availability to develop this new security that fandom promises.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"407 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126701807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}