Remix etc.

Here‘sthe dilemma and confusion. Asking students to conform to a print based logic in an electronic world is not teaching anyone to think on one‘sown. Indeed, this kind of pedagogy translates into a continual academic stubbornness, a refusal to recognize the communication shifts we have experienced and are experiencing currently. Telling students to write according to the logic of print (whether the writing is on paper or not I am talking about the logic not the medium) is to force students to reject the communicative practices around them: IM, the Web, Film, TV, music, etc.

The other serious problem here is that the refusal to recognize the remix is also a refusal to recognize the nature of texts we often value and admire in English Studies (and the university in general). The Wasteland? Remixed. Shakespeare? So remixed. Las Meninas? Remixed Velasquez. Pick a Medieval text at random. It will be a remix. Newspaper stories? Always remixed (I remember my own newspaper experience at several publications? we would go through other papers looking for ideas). Literature reflects a Borges universe where every story is remixed and mixed. Spun around on a literate turntable and wondered over. —JRiceRemix etc. (Yellow Dog)

It’s true that one’s own ideas only come after one has filtered through many other ideas. I think the problem I see in the classroom is that students find it difficult to trace details back to the source. It’s one thing to read Shakespeare, and then write a creative work that riffs on Shakespeare. It takes perhaps a bit more skill to read, say, The Jew of Malta alongside The Merchant of Venice, or any of a number of standard revenge tragedies alongside Hamlet, and note what elements of a common story Shakespeare kept, and where his artistry made the common story into his own dramatic work. It’s something else entirely to be shown a creative work, or a marketing pitch, or a political speech, and — without an authority figure telling you what sources the author consulted — independently seek out the influences that were remixed and remediated in order to produce the new result.

So students who can only remix don’t get practice thinking critically about culture — and it’s certainly possible to recognize remix culture and design assignments that ask them to think critically about it, without rejecting it out of hand as plagiarism.

One problem with remix culture is that the products of remixing are meant almost exclusively for audiences that are familiar with the sources. I had a roommate who sometimes wrote poetry or short stories that quoted long passages from popular songs. Since I usually hadn’t heard of those songs, they didn’t have the emotonal effect my roommate wanted them to have, so they fell flat for me and I wasn’t really able to get the full impact he wanted his creative writing to have. Since he was mostly writing for himself, he didn’t need to cite and explain every cultural reference, but if he were giving a speech to a local city council meeting or writing a proposal for a scholarship, it would be his responsibility to make sure that his audience understood all his references. One way to do that is to identify the source of those references.

I don’t know much about music, but I have heard on NPR references to composers who “quote” each other. You can’t interrupt a symphony to identify the source of a certain passage, so I recognize that some media are better suited to the kinds of explicit citation that college composition courses require.

In the early 90s, Johnny Carson did a comedy bit about psyops campaign against American troops, where the troops were warned that back home, their wives were being seduced by movie stars like Homer Simpson. A serviceman overseas must have heard about or watched that show, but changed the name to “Bart Simpson,” and passed the story on to a reporter. A legend was born.

I don’t expect students to arrive at college knowing everything they need to know — if they did, none of us would have jobs.

Remixing is one thing when it comes to the creation of cultural artifacts — but when it comes to examining facts about the world, and making decisions that may affect people’s livelihoods or even their lives, the culture of the remix is sloppy and dangerous.

I certainly don’t feel that students should never, ever remix — but if we graduate students who can ONLY remix, and have never been forced to trace an idea back to its source and critique its validity, but instead settle for riffing on it and referencing “www.somehomepage.com” as one of a handful of “Works Consulted,” then we are doing them — and our culture at large — a great disservice.

4 thoughts on “Remix etc.

  1. Jeff and Derek, I can see your points… Jeff, by using a novelist and a singer as your counter-examples, you’re keeping within the paradigm of creative writing. My point is that students who are more familiar with the rhetoric of the remix are not going to be equipped for the kind of factual attribution that is expected in college research papers, or in some professions (technical writing, journalism, science, law).

    And Derek, I do typically let students work their way towards a fully attributed research paper, by first having them discuss assigned readings in small groups and writing very short response papers, then giving an informal oral presentation where they don’t necessarily need to source every single thing they say (though the ones who simply read from web pages are wasting their time). I also sometimes have students blog along the way, since the culture of blogging lets you easily attribute via a linked keyword, without forcing you to interrupt your flow of thought or supply a formal works cited list. (And I that has worked so well I’m going to use it more extensively next term.) But you’re right — none of that mechanism is a sure-fire way to prevent some students from being unimaginative or intellectually flat, just as I’m sure I have days in the classroom when I’m less imaginative or intellectually sharp.

  2. Once we get around the challenges of attribution and citation in remediated textual mixes, does remix enjoy a more elaborate potential than otherwise conventional, paper-tied, tried-n-true essay genres (those more civically or vocationally valued)? I want to do a bit of both, but I haven’t ever thought of remixing as composition lite or as a gross departure from tracing an idea back to its source and critiquing validity en route. In fact, I’d say it excites students toward the complex cultural and rhetorical layers of their texts (media mixes, writing, audio, etc.)–the same qualities humdrum composition fails too often to stimulate, to reveal. Seems like remix failing “sloppy and dangerous” isn’t so different from conventional essayism taught unimaginatively or flatly. Seems like all of it can be done badly. -DM

  3. I’m still thrown off how you two find remixing to be “irresponsible.” I think you are drawing a false dichtomy here, and assuming that there is some way around the remix in order to engage in critique. There isn’t. The minute you teach research, you fall into the trap.
    When you tell students there is another way, I think there lies the danger because you are working outside the paradigms evolving within media.
    I also think you are confusing a rhetorical gesture with specific applications (say, advertising) then saying: hey look, advertising isn’t critical (or whatever the message is you’ve chosen). But the rhetorical gesture extends beyond that specific application.

    So when you write Jerz:
    “when it comes to examining facts about the world, and making decisions that may affect people’s livelihoods or even their lives, the culture of the remix is sloppy and dangerous.”
    it doesn’t follow.
    A. I’ve seen students do this in order to generate critique and policy (and I see the public policy holders do it too and the popular press do it).
    B. We see well known writers do this in order to create the critical gesture – from the novelist William Burroughs to Hip hop singer Chuck D, to the various weblogs circulating on the Web.

    Anyway. We can debate more if you like.

    best

    Jeff

  4. I’ll probably have to Pedablogue this one eventually. I just read Rice’s full essay and I do see his point (and I suspect I’m the “colleague” he’s arguing with over there), but I think you’re right. Remixing is irresponsible (or disrectful) citation, pure and simple.

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