Monday, April 27, 2020
The curiously material remediation of TV by the Internet
Has anyone else noticed that YouTube videos re-presenting or re-purposing TV content is interestingly material? Take Binging with Babish, for example, a cooking channel dedicated to making iconic dishes from film and TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzd0mLf366I. It is as if the Internet fulfills the desire for yummy 2D food to materialize into reality, even though it is itself a digital simulation. It also adds to the iconicity of the dish, sometimes in ways that the show itself had not anticipated. While the Krabby Patty is likely an intentional symbol for Spongebob, it's harder to argue that Carmella's ziti from the Sopranos had the same function in mind. And yet, when these shows go through the meat-grinder that is the Internet, they come out the other end with material symbols extrapolated. There are other channels that make miniatures of iconic TV sets, for example. I don't really have a conclusion or answer to this, just thought it was interesting and ironic that the Internet is material-driven in its remediation of TV.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
First of all, thank you so much for introducing this into my life, finally some exciting alternative to my late compulsive Great British Baking Show rerun bingewatching. Its an interesting take to interpret this as internet deriving materials from TV, which seems to be right. It also strikes me as an attempt of interactivity that comes with the idea of convergance, now we can actually touch, see and taste these imaginary food (I know I am not alone in my prolonged desire to taste the Krabby Patty). But it also reminds me of the illusionary character of this interactivity, in the sense that this recipe is equally imaginary as the version in spongebob. In theory, we are all free to invent our own Krabby Patty recipe and it would be as legitimate as this one. However, we are willing to accept is as the real decoding of a highly desired imaginay TV symbol, just because a real person in an internet video content told us so.
ReplyDelete