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Reclaiming Critical Remix Video

Remix is now considered by many to be a form of derivative work, but

such generalizations have resulted in numerous non-commercial remixes
being wrongfully accused of copyright infringement. Gallagher argues
that remix is a fundamentally transformative practice. The assumption
that cultural works should be considered a form of private property is
called into question in the digital age. Thus, he proposes an alternative
system to balance the economic interests of cultural producers with the
ability of the public to engage with a growing intellectual commons of
cultural works. Multimodal analyses of both remixed and non-remixed
intertextual work, with a particular focus on examples of critical remix
video, fuel the discussion, synthesizing a number of investigative meth-
ods including semiotic, rhetorical, and ideological analysis.

Owen Gallagher currently lectures at the department of Web Media,

Bahrain Polytechnic where he teaches remix through audio, video, ani-
mation, and game design. He has lectured on design and media theory,
as well as studio practice at a number of universities and colleges in
Ireland and the UK, including the University of Ulster, LYIT, and IT
Tralee. He is co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Remix Stud-
ies (2015) and Keywords in Remix Studies (2017). He is the author of
a number of book chapters and articles on remix culture, intellectual
property, and visual semiotics, and has presented his research interna-
tionally. Owen is the founder of TotalRecut.com, an online community
archive of remix videos, as well as co-founder of the Remix Theory and
Praxis seminar group.
Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.

110 Media Practices, Social Movements, and Performativity

Transdisciplinary Approaches
Edited by Susanne Foellmer, Margreth Lünenborg, and
Christoph Raetzsch

111 The Dark Side of Camp Aesthetics

Queer Economies of Dirt, Dust and Patina
Edited by Ingrid Hotz-Davies, Georg Vogt, and
Franziska Bergmann

112 The Materiality of Love

Essays on Affection and Cultural Practice
Edited by Anna Malinowska and Michael Gratzke

113 Fashion and Masculinities in Popular Culture

Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas

114 Geomedia Studies

Spaces and Mobilities in Mediatized Worlds
Edited by Karin Fast, André Jansson, Johan Lindell, Linda Ryan
Bengtsson, and Mekonnen Tesfahuney

115 Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror

The Melancholic Sublime
Matthew Leggatt

116 New Feminisms in South Asia

Disrupting the Discourse Through Social Media, Film, and Literature
Edited by Sonora Jha and Alka Kurian

117 Women Do Genre in Film and Television

Edited by Mary Harrod and Katarzyna Paszkiewicz

118 Reclaiming Critical Remix Video

The Role of Sampling in Transformative Works
Owen Gallagher
Reclaiming Critical
Remix Video
The Role of Sampling
in Transformative Works

Owen Gallagher
First published 2018
by Routledge
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For Jennifer and Rebecca
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

List of Figures and Tables ix

Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction 1
Critical Remix Video 1

1 The Specificity of Intertextual Media: Distinctive

Characteristics of Remix Video 10
1.1  Painting vs. Poetry: An Age-Old Debate 11
1.2 Photography-Film-Video 14
1.3  The Evolution of Media 17
1.4  Remixing Genre: An Evolving Taxonomy of
Remix Video 21
1.5  Sampling vs. Original Recording: An Ongoing Struggle 25
1.6  Remixes, Remakes, and Adaptations: Not
Everything Is a Remix 31
1.7  New Media Specificity: Alternative Distinctions 38

2 Visual Semiosis in Critical Remix Video: Decoding

Echoes of the Past 47
2.1  Visual Semiosis in Non-Remixed Media Content 49
2.2  Methods of Remix Analysis: A Semiotic Approach 52
2.3  Remix Semiosis: The Recontextualization of Meaning 55
2.4  Syntactics, Semantics, and Pragmatics in Remix Video 70
2.5  The Memory Still Remains: Perception and
Cognition in Remix Video 80

3 Seeing Is Believing: The Multimodal Rhetorical

Potential of Remix Video 91
3.1  Visual Rhetoric, Language, and Argumentation 93
3.2  Methods of Remix Analysis: A Rhetorical Approach 97
viii Contents
3.3  Persuasion and Propaganda 99
3.4  The Perception of Truth in the Photographic Image 102
3.5  Motivation, Intent, and Techniques of Persuasion 107
3.6  Rhetoric in Critical Remix Video 111
3.7  The Impact of Media Manipulation on CRV
Argumentation 116

4 Critical Remix as Ideology Critique: A Social Libertarian

Alternative World View 131
4.1  The Dominant Ideology Thesis 133
4.2  The Ruling Class in Contemporary Western Societies 134
4.3  Negative Effects of Neoliberal Capitalism 140
4.4  Resisting Ideology 151
4.5  Methods of Remix Analysis: An Ideological Approach 160
4.6  The Spectrum of Ideology in Critical Remix Video 165

5 Rethinking Intellectual Property: In Defense of the Right

to Remix 205
5.1  The Myth of Intellectual Property 206
5.2  Transformativeness and Fair Use 217
5.3  Ethics of Appropriation in Remix Culture 222
5.4  Politics and Rhetoric of Cultural Ownership 231
5.5  Societal Costs of Copyright and the Benefits
of Remix Culture 238
5.6  Remixing Copyright and the Culture Industry 244

Conclusion 271

Glossary of Terms 277

Acronyms 279
Index 281
List of Figures and Tables

Figures
1.1 Photoshop collage to oil-painted portraits, 2014 11
1.2 Sub-genres of Remix Video by Gallagher, 2017 25
1.3 Screenshot from Disney’s “101 Dalmatians,” 1961
(Featuring “Silly Symphonies,” 1929) 28
1.4 Screenshot from MTV’s launch video, August 1, 1981 28
1.5 Screenshot from “Election Collectibles,”
Bryan Boyce, 2001 30
1.6 Google search for “Remix Products,” 2017 32
2.1 Pope Benedict XVI brings reform to the Catholic Church 48
2.2 “Vote Different” by Phillip de Vellis, 2007 58
2.3 “Go Forth and Revolt” by go4thREVOLT, 2011 60
2.4 “I’m a Ginger” by Jacob Saucier, 2010 63
2.5 “Primetime Terror” by Joe Sabia, 2011 66
2.6 “Planet of the Arabs” by Jackie Salloum, 2005 67
2.7 “Hitler Reacts to the Hitler Parodies Being Removed
from ­YouTube,” 2012 77
3.1 “Enda Kenny Meets Simon Cowell”; “Bertie Ahern on
Dragons’ Den” 92
3.2 The Noun Project Logo, Representing “Person, Place
and Thing,” 2017 94
3.3 Communicative “Reaction Face” meme categories 96
3.4 Post Newtonianism (War Footage/Call of Duty 4
Modern Warfare) by Josh Bricker, 2010 105
3.5 Jeremiah Wright painting a picture of US aggression by
Diran ­Lyons, 2008 106
3.6 Four congresswomen “Photoshopped”
at Capitol Hill, 2013 117
3.7 Floating Chinese government officials meme, 2017 117
3.8 Tiananmen Square protests—“Photoshopped,” 2007 118
3.9 “The Kuleshov Effect” by Lev Kuleshov, c.1929 120
3.10 Postproduction techniques in CRVs 122
x  List of Figures and Tables
4.1 “Miley/O’Connor Mashup—Nothing Compares to a
Wrecking Ball” 132
4.2 “Workers Leaving the Lumiére Factory in Lyon” 139
4.3 Still frame from Universal Studios 100th Anniversary
trailer, 2012 160
4.4 Google search for “Iwo Jima cartoon” 162
4.5 Evolution of the “Big Brother” representative form 163
4.6 One-dimensional linear political spectrum 165
4.7 One-dimensional horseshoe political spectrum 166
4.8 Two-dimensional political spectrum 167
4.9 The Nolan chart 167
4.10 The “Political Compass” 168
4.11 The rational spectrum 169
4.12 Erickson “NPOV” political chart 170
4.13 The Critical Spectrum of Economic, Social and
Political Ideology (CSESPI) 171
4.14 Dominant and alternative ideologies visualized using
the CSESPI model 173
4.15 Moving image ideographs in the sample CRVs 175
5.1 “Vote Different” / Apple “1984”, side-by-side comparison 219
5.2 Patrick Cariou, “Yes Rasta,” 2000 and Richard Prince,
“Graduation,” 2008 223
5.3 “Still Life with Chair Caning” and “Guitar, Sheet
Music, Glass,” Pablo Picasso, 1912 224
5.4 Screenshots of “Every Hitchcock Cameo Ever” and
“Every Donald Trump Cameo Ever” 225
5.5 Evolution of the term “intellectual property” 232
5.6 Screenshots of top 5 most viewed CRVs on YouTube 241
5.7 “Dramatic Chipmunk” meme v. Carmax commercial 242
5.8 US copyright term extensions, 1790–1998 247
5.9 Evolution of Movie Media Vehicles, 1981–2012 248
5.10 Suite of Creative Commons Licenses 250

Tables
1.1 Sub-genres of Remix Video (Gallagher, 2017) 24
1.2 Innovative practices enabled by Sampling and
Remixing (Gallagher, 2017) 37
1.3 Examples of Intertextual Clusters (Gallagher, 2017) 38
2.1 Syntagmatic categories identified by Metz (1974);
Hodge and Tripp (1986) 51
2.2 Examples of deductive, inductive and abductive
reasoning (Gallagher, 2017) 56
 List of Figures and Tables  xi
2.3 Potential communication problems in CRVs
(Gallagher, 2017) 68
2.4 Creative remapping of existing metaphors
(Gallagher, 2017) 74
2.5 CRVs featuring new metaphors (Gallagher, 2017) 75
3.1 Reasons for increased public impact of CRVs
(Gallagher, 2017) 109
3.2 The use of humor as a rhetorical device in CRVs
(Gallagher, 2017) 110
3.3 Postproduction video techniques used in CRVs
(Gallagher, 2017) 123
3.4 Reasons for lack of professionalism in CRVs
(Gallagher, 2017) 123
4.1 Dominant and alternative ideologies evident in the
sample CRVs (Gallagher, 2017) 173
4.2 Ideological comparison of the sample CRVs
(Gallagher, 2017) 182
5.1 US copyright cases involving fair use (Stanford Law
School, 2017) 218
5.2 A copyright holder’s exclusive rights over a cultural
work (17 USC, § 106, 2017) 244
This page intentionally left blank
Preface

This is my third book on remix. I have spent the past number of years
co-editing two collected volumes on remix studies with my colleagues
Eduardo Navas and xtine burrough—The Routledge Companion to Re-
mix Studies (2015) and Keywords in Remix Studies (2017). For these
books we collected more than sixty diverse contributions from all over
the world, considering remix from multiple perspectives, such as eth-
ics, aesthetics, history, politics, and practice. These volumes have been
important in helping to establish remix studies as a field of enquiry in
its own right. Having the privilege to work so closely on these texts
provided me with the opportunity to see the state of the art of remix
theory and practice—a global overview of remix studies. Through these
experiences, I observed a distinct lack of consensus among scholars and
practitioners in relation to the varying aspects of remix. There are many
competing ideas, conflicting theories, and an apparent tendency towards
presenting remix as a kind of all-encompassing cultural concept. In ad-
dition to this, while conducting research for my Ph.D., I noticed a shift
towards the commodification of the remix concept and its increasing
cooptation by commercial interests. The meaning of remix was being
stretched and diluted and one of the primary aims of this book is to
address this ongoing problem.
Our previous book contributors come from many different back-
grounds, with a diverse range of motivations and goals in writing about
remix, offering multiple perspectives. Remix studies is truly an inter-­
disciplinary area, so we included contributors with backgrounds in
media studies, art history, philosophy, rhetoric, cultural studies, com-
munication studies, visual culture, digital humanities, film studies,
music, sound studies, literature, new media, critical theory, linguistics,
sociology, law, philosophy, and politics. While such diversity is certainly
a positive thing, enabling us to represent many different points of view,
at a certain stage it becomes important to reach some kind of consensus
on fundamental terms and concepts in order to be able to move the dis-
cussion forward, or risk an intellectual impasse where further progress
is impeded.
xiv Preface
Remix studies is now the subject of numerous research projects and
is taught as part of many courses at universities, colleges, and technical
institutions around the world, primarily in the USA, Canada, Europe,
and Australia. I have also personally taught remix as part of a number
of undergraduate courses in the Middle East, including filmmaking, an-
imation, and game design. I actively encourage my students to create
remixed content for their various projects, and the production of remix
video, in particular, has been my primary focus for some time.
I have been researching, practicing, teaching, and writing about remix
for over a decade now. My remix journey really began around 2007
when I wrote my Masters thesis on the “remix revolution,” published a
few widely-circulated political remixes, and founded TotalRecut.com,
a website dedicated to remix videos. I pitched the idea to the Kauffman
Foundation and was lucky enough to win an entrepreneurship scholar-
ship to the US to explore the potential of turning Total Recut into a busi-
ness. I was almost coopted by capitalism at that point; however, there was
no money to be made, and it turned out that Total Recut aspired towards
more social libertarian ideals. While in America, I made a point of trav-
eling to meet some of my heroes to talk to them about remix—­Professor
Lawrence Lessig at Creative Commons in San Francisco; Professor
Henry Jenkins at MIT, Cambridge; and Professor Kembrew McLeod at
the University of Iowa. I was so inspired by our conversations that I de-
cided to host a video remix contest on Total Recut, and Lessig, Jenkins
and McLeod agreed to be judges. The contest was a relative success and
received entries from all around the world, producing three-minute re-
mix videos on the topic: What is Remix Culture? Following the contest,
Total Recut developed into an online community of video remixers, and
a growing archive of remix videos, resources and copyright education.
In the intervening years, I continued to publish my own remix videos
online and dedicated five and a half years of my life to researching remix
for my Ph.D., which enabled me to formulate many of the ideas you are
about to read in this book, now updated and remixed to reflect the con-
temporary political landscape. In contrast to the majority of publications
on remix to date, which tend to focus on music, art, and literature, this
book considers examples of remix video, tracing the history of film sam-
pling through the lens of the moving image arts, reframing aspects of the
debate on remix in relation to existing sound, image, and text-focused
studies. Critical remix video (CRV) is arguably one of the most potent
and powerful forms of remix, capable of educating, persuading, and en-
abling social and political change, similar in many ways to persuasive
advertising, documentary filmmaking, and political propaganda. In the
present political landscape, CRVs are more important than ever. In fact,
there are now so many Trump remixes circulating online, I could write
another book just about them! (…I’ve already started collecting the best
ones on criticalremix.com).
 Preface  xv
Each chapter in this book presents a series of insights about critical
remix video from various points of view and poses a series of thought-­
provoking questions. Each section provides a contextual introduction,
analytical methods, case studies, and findings, as well as numerous il-
lustrative examples. The media analysis tools deployed in Chapter 2,
­Chapter 3, and Chapter 4 are potentially transferrable to many other
types of short-form video content and could be useful in future studies
of TV commercials, political ads, music videos, short films, and video
games.
There are many possibilities for the future of remix. I strongly believe
that CRVs can have an impact on the world—they can influence people,
alter opinions, raise awareness, and expose wrong-doings among those
we elect to represent us and make decisions about society on our behalf,
ultimately controlling many aspects of our daily lives. CRVs are a po-
tentially powerful tool for political change. I would encourage everyone
who reads this book to download some footage from YouTube, edit it
into a remix video, and then publish it. If your video receives a take-
down notice, file a counter notification and make sure it gets reinstated
on grounds of fair use. The process of making remix videos is so much
easier these days. The barrier to entry is lower than it has ever been. A
decade ago, when I made my first remix videos, I needed a whole suite
of software just to convert the video files into compatible formats for
­editing—a very slow process—and even then, they were often 240p or
less, lower quality than standard definition television. Now you can eas-
ily download up to 8K video at 60FPS from YouTube and most content is
available in at least HD quality. Thanks to standardized codecs and for-
mats like H.264 and MP4, most video formats now play nice with each
other. There is rarely a need to convert footage and if you have to, video
editing and conversion software is fast and easy to use. Most published
video content can be downloaded from YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion,
Kodi, or through a Google search, and used as source material in remix
videos. It is my hope that reading about the CRVs in this book will in-
spire you to make your own remixes—to express your unique point of
view on whatever issues are most important to you.
The number of critical remix videos online has grown exponentially
since I started working on this book, but the once-edgy veneer of remix
has now been largely coopted by capitalist interests. In spite of the some-
times dystopian tone in parts of this book, I remain hopeful. We live
in very interesting times—a reality TV star real-estate tycoon is Pres-
ident of the United States; regressive copyright proposals are working
their way through the legal system; net neutrality and online privacy
are threatened by big business; civil wars rage around the world; pov-
erty and unemployment are rising; climate change disasters are on the
increase—and many people are reacting by publishing, watching, and
sharing more remix videos than ever before. In researching this book,
xvi Preface
I have read every other book and article on remix I could lay my hands
on and I believe the contents herein represent the most up-to-date liter-
ature on remix you will find in print. However, remix is in a constant
state of rapid change and development, so I would encourage readers
to check out the book’s companion website, reclaimingremix.com, for
regular updates.
In closing, it would be remiss of me not to mention the irony of pub-
lishing a book about remix under a relatively restrictive traditional copy-
right arrangement. This apparent paradox has been acknowledged by
myself and my co-editors in both The Routledge Companion to Remix
Studies and Keywords in Remix Studies; however, the message in this
book is certainly more openly critical of copyright than either of the
previous publications. Ultimately, as you will read in the final chapter of
this book, I propose an alternative system to the existing copyright re-
gime, but that is a long-term ambition that will take some time to come
to fruition. For now, outdated copyright law is the system we currently
have in place, and within which we must operate if we wish to publish
credible books that will be widely publicized and hopefully read by our
intended audiences.
There is also a certain irony in the problems associated with using
copyrighted images in a book like this, which focuses on the analysis of
sampled images from beginning to end. While it has become standard
and acceptable to reproduce a single frame of a film or video in printed
form (especially for the purposes of research, analysis, or critique), when
it comes to other types of images—photographs, illustrations, and com-
pany logos, for example—it is more difficult to publish such images
without permission from the copyright holder, who may often charge
for the privilege. Luckily for this book, the vast majority of images used
are stills from videos so it has been possible to include over fifty images
to accompany the textual analysis and discussions of remix. The trend in
recent discourse has been towards counting the entirety of culture, and
more, under the heading of remix. It is now time for us to acknowledge
that not everything is a remix.
Acknowledgments

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the most important peo-

ple in my life—my partner, Angela O’Brien, and my daughters, Jennifer
and Rebecca Gallagher—for providing unwavering love, support and
encouragement, and for putting up with me having to sacrifice time with
them so that I could complete this book. I would like to acknowledge
my deep debt of gratitude to Dr. Paul O’Brien, who freely gave his valu-
able time; provided support, advice, encouragement, and motivation;
offered essential feedback and unique insights; and helped me to shape
and distill my ideas over the past number of years. I would also like to
thank Dr. Francis Halsall, who provided sage advice and direction in the
early stages; helped me to connect with important contacts; and offered
acute observations on my work through our many fruitful conversations
and meetings. I am very grateful to Prof. Jessica Hemmings, Prof. Des
Bell, and Dr. Áine O’Brien for taking the time to read my work and of-
fer constructive feedback. A number of people at the National C ­ ollege
of Art and Design (NCAD) helped me immensely along the way so
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Prof. Siún Hanrahan and
Dr. Kevin Atherton, who supported my ideas through the final stages of
my research, as well as Margaret Phelan and Pauline Delaney for their
good-natured administrative assistance and efficiency.
I would especially like to thank my editors at Routledge, Christina
Kowalski, Felisa Salvago-Keyes, and Erica Wetter, as well as the edito-
rial board, for seeing potential in my proposal. Thanks also to Assunta
Petrone and her team at codeMantra for their diligence in copyediting
the manuscript. I am deeply grateful to my long-time remix colleagues,
Eduardo Navas and xtine burrough, who have been such a pleasure to
work with on our Companion and Keywords publications for Routledge
over the past few years. I look forward to our future projects. Thanks
also to our editors Mia Moran, Margo Irvin, Megan Hiatt and Simon
Jacobs, who helped us bring our remix studies books to life.
I am indebted to the initial members of my remix theory and praxis
seminar group, Eduardo Navas, Martin LeDuc, Mette Birk, Mark
­Cantwell, Eli Horwatt, and Byron Russell, who collaboratively engaged
with my research, freely shared their ideas and suggestions and joined
xviii Acknowledgments
me to present my work at numerous conferences, leading to subsequent
publication in journals and books. In this regard, I would also like to
thank Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson for inviting me to
collaborate with them on the Participatory Cultures Handbook.
Many practitioners, scholars, and activists within the remix commu-
nity have freely given their time and feedback in compiling this book,
so I would like to thank Francesca Coppa, Henry Jenkins, Lawrence
Lessig, Kembrew McLeod, Desiree D’Alessandro, Arthur Asa Berger,
John Logie, and John Shiga in an academic context; and Jesse Drew,
Diran Lyons, Davy Force, and Christian von Borries for responding to
my interview questions and providing permission to include their com-
ments in this book. I am also indebted to the hundreds of other critical
remix video producers whose work eventually became the focus of this
research. I would like to thank Brendan Muller, Nollaig Crombie, Pat
Campbell, Mary Lucey, and Kay Fitzgerald for facilitating my research
while I was lecturing at LYIT, IT Tralee, and Bahrain ­Polytechnic.
I would also like to thank Seamus Gallagher, Fergus MacAogain, Mary
Gallagher, and Owen McGonagle, who inspired and encouraged my re-
search and writing at an early stage.
I am grateful to my oldest friends, Karl Quinn and Tom Reddy, for
their support, affirmation, and patient indulgence of my outlandish the-
ories and incessant talk of remix over the years. I am very appreciative of
my brother, Vincent, for his insights on the film industry and for foster-
ing in me an early interest in remix. I would especially like to thank my
parents, Brendan and Frances Gallagher, and my sisters, Leona, Emily,
and Stephanie, who have provided unconditional support, guidance, and
reassurance at every stage of my remix journey. Thank you all.
Introduction

There is growing confusion over the meaning of “remix” in mainstream

and academic discourse, which has resulted in a broadening of the term
to include non-remixed cultural texts, such as remakes, adaptations, and
parodies. Remix is now considered by many to be a form of derivative
work; however, it is a fundamentally transformative practice. Such gen-
eralizations have resulted in numerous non-commercial remixes being
wrongfully accused of copyright infringement.
In attempting to address this widespread confusion, the following
claims are advanced in this book:

1 The presence of sampled source material is the defining aesthetic char-

acteristic of remix that distinguishes it from other forms of media.
2 Visual semiosis occurs differently in remixed and non-remixed content.
3 Remix has the potential to communicate convincing propositions,
in comparison to content that does not use sampled source mate-
rial as evidence.
4 Remix is used by many as a political tool to circulate anti-­capitalist
­counter-ideologies, representing a social libertarian alternative world-
view. However, many remixes suffer from inherent ideological ­contra-
dictions, which negatively impact their potential to persuade users.
5 Remix is not morally wrong, but the current legal system treats sam-
pling as a form of theft. Thus, remix is often considered legally wrong.

The assumption that cultural works should be considered a form of pri-

vate property is no longer tenable in the digital age; thus, an alternative
system is required to liberate online content and balance the economic
interests of cultural producers with the ability of the public to access and
use a growing intellectual commons of cultural works.

Critical Remix Video

A critical remix video (CRV) is a digital video composed of previously
published media elements, which have been appropriated, repurposed,
2  Introduction
and reconfigured in the creation of a new work that communicates dif-
ferent messages and meanings than the source material. These new mes-
sages are often highly critical of someone or something and attempt to
expose hidden information about the object of criticism.1
Over five hundred CRVs were collected for this study, of which
approximately half were selected for further analysis and categori-
zation, according to the subjects of their critique. From this sample,
twenty-five representative cases were considered in relation to a set
of contextual factors and subjected to close readings using methods
of visual semiotic, rhetorical, and ideological analysis at the level of
the individual shot. The results of this analysis were synthesized with
findings from the literature on medium specificity, 2 visual semiotics, 3
visual rhetoric,4 ideology critique, 5 and the emerging field of remix
studies,6 which led to the development of the five propositions outlined
above. This research advances knowledge in the field of remix studies
and establishes a solid theoretical framework upon which future remix
scholars may build.
Reclaiming Critical Remix Video develops over five chapters, each
of which introduces a specific theory and proceeds to provide evidence
to support it, drawn from analysis of the relevant literature in each
case, synthesized with findings from the selected sample of twenty-five
CRVs. In each chapter, the relevant findings are discussed with refer-
ence to “the sample CRVs.” It is recommended to view the CRVs as you
engage with the book, in order to be familiar with the material under
discussion. All twenty-five videos, along with a brief exegesis can be
viewed on the companion website, www.reclaimingremix.com. When
each CRV is first mentioned in the book, you will find a brief overview
and URL at the side of the page. Most of the videos are less than five
minutes in duration, so you can easily stop to watch them and then con-
tinue reading. A list of acronyms and working definitions for specific
terminology used throughout the book can be found in the glossary at
the end.
Each of the chapters seeks to clarify the issues identified in relation
to the primary proposition, that there is evidence of increasing social
and cultural confusion around the term remix in academic and popular
discourses. This confusion manifests in a number of ways, such as mis-
understandings about what remix is, what it means, how it works, what
it is capable of rhetorically, what it stands for ideologically, and how it
is treated as a legitimate artistic pursuit in contemporary society. This
book calls for the term remix to be reclaimed, redefined, and clarified,
hinging on the critical role of transformative sampling as the defining
characteristic of remix.
Chapter 1 focuses on medium specificity, arguing for the specificity
of remix in relation to other forms of intertextual media. Chapter 2
 Introduction  3
considers the visual semiotic capabilities of remix in relation to
non-remixed content and how the presence of sampled material al-
ters the process of perception. Chapter 3 deals with the potential of
remix to function as a form of visual argumentation, situating the
analysis within the discourse of visual rhetoric. Chapter 4 focuses on
the use of CRVs as ideology critique, promoting a social libertarian
worldview, while considering the limitations of cultural artifacts that
succumb to ideological contradictions. Chapter 5 expands upon ar-
guments related to the concepts of intellectual property and cultural
ownership and the changing role of remix in contemporary digital
culture.
The majority of CRVs in the sample were produced by US citizens
and, unless otherwise stated, the discussion focuses primarily on remix
culture and copyright law in the USA, as this is where the majority of
remix-related activity and innovation has historically occurred and con-
tinues to emerge today.

Chapter 1: The Specificity of Intertextual Media:

Distinctive Characteristics of Remix Video
Argument: The presence of sampled source material is the defin-
ing aesthetic characteristic of remix that distinguishes it from other
forms of media.

There is an increasing lack of consensus among scholars and practi-

tioners in terms of what constitutes remix, as exemplified in the work
of Lev Manovich,7 Kirby Ferguson,8 Eduardo Navas,9 and David Gun-
kel,10 among others, who broaden the boundaries of remix to include
non-sampled content. This chapter explores the shifting borders of
remix and argues that remixes and remakes are related but inherently
different forms. Remix materially samples from previously published
sources, whereas remakes and other similar forms contain primarily
newly produced content and merely emulate or refer to previous works,
without directly sampling from them. Such distinctions have been im-
portant in the past in order to come to a more complete understanding
of specific media forms, such as the differences between film and video
or between photography and painting, as described by Tom Durley,11
Rosalind Krauss,12 and Noël Carroll.13 The chapter explores the nature
of CRVs through the lens of medium specificity and considers defini-
tions, taxonomies, and aesthetic concerns, extending the discourse on
video art in the digital age to include remix. It ultimately concludes that
the boundaries of remix need to be retracted and more tightly defined to
provide a more useful theoretical framework upon which future remix
scholarship may build.
4  Introduction
Chapter 2: Visual Semiosis in Critical Remix Video:
Decoding Echoes of the Past
Argument: Visual semiosis occurs differently in remixed and
non-remixed content.

In this chapter, a case is made for the claim that the presence of sampled
content in a remix video affects the process of visual semiosis to the ex-
tent that previously understood meanings of particular visual signs are
altered and updated through recontextualisation. The ability to recall the
meaning of a specific visual sign and immediately understand it points to
the fact that its meaning is stored in memory as a result of having been
perceived in the past. It is not necessary to undergo the process of inter-
preting the sign again, as the brain has already done so on a previous occa-
sion. However, in the case of remix, previously perceived and understood
signs are presented in a very different context, which causes a moment of
realization in the viewer, during which comparisons are made between
the old and new meanings and a reinterpretation of the previously under-
stood signs occurs. Thus, in remix, echoes of visual signs in their original
context are ever-present and the process of visual semiosis occurs quite
differently than it does in the case where cognition is achieved upon first
perception of a given set of signs in a non-remixed text. It is argued in this
chapter that when a viewer watches a CRV without having previously seen
the source material, comprehension of the text is incomplete. However,
when the source material is watched in its original context after viewing
the remix, the meaning of the remix is updated in the viewer’s mind to ac-
count for the new information. Through the analysis of a sample of CRVs,
the process of visual semiosis in remix is demonstrated, concluding that
comprehension requires prior familiarity with the source material and a
lack thereof can result in aberrant decoding of the visual signs in the text.

Chapter 3: Seeing Is Believing: The Multimodal

Rhetorical Potential of Remix Video
Argument: Remix video has the potential to communicate convinc-
ing propositions in comparison to content that does not use sam-
pled source material as evidence.

Many scholars, such as Sonja Foss14 and Göran Sonesson,15 claim that
images alone are not capable of providing the degree of rhetorical com-
plexity necessary to formulate a thesis and communicate it effectively.
Navas16 and others have explored the potential of remix to communicate
as a visual language in its own right. This chapter argues that critical
remix videos do possess the potential to communicate propositions vi-
sually. However, the strength of a CRV’s argument diminishes as the
 Introduction  5
degree of manipulation or alteration of the source material increases.
Sequences of images presented in succession generate narratives, which
may take the form of propositions, communicated visually, supported
by compelling evidence in the form of sampled source material. The
more manipulated a remix is, for example, by juxtaposing footage out
of context to produce false associations and meanings, the less trusted
its validity and the less persuasive it becomes. In such cases, the credi-
bility of the evidence provided is called into question, especially where
the manipulation is deliberately concealed to deceive the audience into
thinking that the remix might be “real.” It is concluded that the most
effective examples of remix as argumentative visual rhetoric are those
that provide valid evidence to support their claims and either minimally
alter the source material or make explicit the remix process instead of
attempting to conceal it.

Chapter 4: Critical Remix as Ideology Critique:

A Social Libertarian Alternative World View
Argument: The dominant socio-economic and political ideologies
of neoliberal capitalism and liberal democracy in the United States
have led to increasing instances of human rights violations and
social injustices against American citizens by the ruling class, in
the name of profit. Those holding power reinforce such ideologies
through the circulation of hegemonic messages embedded in cul-
tural texts, delivered primarily through the media and permeated
throughout society via business, politics, social institutions, and the
practices of everyday life. Pockets of resistance to these ideologi-
cal manipulations have been emerging for decades and CRVs are
among the first to utilize the potential of democratized new media
technologies and distribution networks to circulate anti-­c apitalist
counter-ideologies, representing a social libertarian alternative
worldview. However, many CRVs suffer from inherent ideological
contradictions, which negatively impact their potential to persuade
users. Highlighting and examining such ideological contradictions
will enable future CRV producers to benefit from the errors of their
predecessors, by minimizing these issues and becoming increasingly
effective in pursuing libertarian socio-economic and political goals.

Most CRVs are predominantly counter-hegemonic, adopting oppositional

or alternative perspectives in relation to the status quo. Although there
exist disparities and contradictions in the coherence of the individual ide-
ologies within specific CRVs, collectively they tend towards similar over-
arching goals. When considered together, the CRVs in the sample advocate
an alternative worldview, calling for the introduction of radically different
social, economic, and political systems. Many CRVs align with practices
6  Introduction
of culture jamming and tactical media activism, as they are a form of civil
disobedience, due to the fact that they are technically illegal, in most cases,
according to US copyright law. To make a remix is a political act—an
anti-establishment statement that defies the law and challenges the exclu-
sive rights of copyright holders. As such, many remixers choose to remain
anonymous online and hide their true identities. CRVs have the potential
to enable people to become conscious of how society functions through
critical education and provide means to resist dominant ideologies by ex-
posing, critiquing, and remixing them. Remixers have a certain ethical
responsibility to consider, as their work has the ability to reach large au-
diences through digital platforms. Collectively, CRVs can be highly effec-
tive tools, promoting messages of social change; however, many are not as
effective as they potentially could be, due to inherent ideological contra-
dictions in their approach. This chapter extends the concept of the ideo-
graph to sampled moving images and uses ideological analysis to examine
the specific arguments and propositions made by the CRVs, the ideologies
with which they align and those of the subjects of their critique.

Chapter 5: Rethinking Intellectual Property:

In Defense of the Right to Remix
Argument: Remixing is not morally wrong; however, the current
legal system treats sampling as a form of theft, thus remixing is
often considered legally wrong. The assumption that cultural works
can be considered a form of private property is no longer tenable in
the digital age. An alternative system is required to liberate online
content and to balance the economic interests of cultural producers
with the ability of the public to access and use a growing intellectual
commons of cultural works.

Remixers are not free to appropriate and repurpose copyrighted con-

tent without permission, due to the threat of legal action in cases of
alleged copyright infringement. The misuse of copyright law as a form
of censorship by large copyright holding companies to ensure the re-
moval of infringing content from the Internet has become a significant
problem. Today, remixers have access to more content than ever before,
but the majority of this content is copyrighted. Copyrighted works are
protected by law in the US, which means that it is illegal to appropriate
and repurpose them without permission. One may potentially be sued
for damages, imprisoned, or sent cease and desist letters and takedown
notices, all of which are effective ways to infringe on freedom of expres-
sion through indirect censorship. Although it is true that file sharing
has had a negative economic impact on business models that rely on
copyright protection to generate revenue, the negative effects for soci-
ety of clamping down on the rights of individuals to express themselves
 Introduction  7
freely using copyrighted content far outweigh the benefits to a hand-
ful of large media corporations. History demonstrates that business
models must evolve with technology and, in the context of new media,
­t wentieth-century culture industry business models and the laws that
protect them are now obsolete. Critical remix videos serve important
societal and political functions as a form of cultural commentary and
criticism. It is argued that the fundamental problem with copyright law
is that it is based on the incorrect assumption that cultural works are a
form of private property. This false assumption has gradually spread as
a result of its constant reiteration by stakeholders in the culture industry,
who stand to benefit from the proliferation of the constructed concept
of “intellectual property.” In Chapter 5 of this book, it is proposed that,
within the confines of the current US legal system, the fair use provision
of US copyright law should be expanded from its current state as an
ambiguous defensible legal position, to an explicit exemption of remix
practice from the potential misuse of copyright law, intentional or oth-
erwise, by copyright holders.

Notes
1 Owen Gallagher, Ideology in Critical Remix: A Visual Semiotic Analysis
(Argentina: IAVS Conference, 2012).
2 Lev Manovich, 2013; Rosalind Krauss, 2000; Noël Carroll, 1996.
3 Sandra Moriarty, 2002; Theo Van Leeuwen, 2001; Winfried Nöth, 1998;
Roland Barthes, 1977.
4 Kenneth Burke, 1966; Keith Kenney, 2002; Michael Hardt, 2005.
5 Antonio Gramsci, 2011; Slavoj Žižek, 1989; Michael McGee, 1980.
6 David Gunkel, 2016; Eduardo Navas, 2012; Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss, 2010;
Aram Sinnreich, 2010; Lawrence Lessig, 2008; Eli Horwatt, 2009.
7 Lev Manovich, What Comes after Remix? (USA: Manovich.net, 2007).
8 Kirby Ferguson, Everything Is a Remix (USA: Everythingisaremix.info,
2011), www.everythingisaremix.info.
9 Eduardo Navas, Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling (New York:
Springer Press, 2012).
10 David Gunkel, Of Remixology: Ethics and Aesthetics After Remix (Boston:
MIT Press, 2016).
11 Tom Durley, Medium Specificity in Film and Video (USA: tomdurley.com,
2005), www.tomdurley.com/v1/essay_medium.html.
12 Rosalind Krauss, A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-­
Medium Condition (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000).
13 Noël Carroll, “Medium Specificity Arguments and the Self-Consciously
­I nvented Arts: Film, Video and Photography,” in Theorizing the Moving
Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
14 Sonja Foss, Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice (Illinois: Wave-
land Press, 2004), [Originally Published 1989].
15 Göran Sonesson, Current Issues in Pictorial Semiotics (Toronto: Semiotics
Institute Online, 2002), www.univie.ac.at/wissenschaftstheorie/srb/cyber/
soneout.html.
16 Eduardo Navas, Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling (New York:
Springer Press, 2012).
8  Introduction
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Economy. New York: Penguin Press, 2008.
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 Introduction  9
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1 The Specificity of
Intertextual Media
Distinctive Characteristics of
Remix Video

In July 2013, I presented part of my research on sampling and remix at

an international summer school in Hamburg entitled “Repeat, Remix,
Remediate: Modes and Norms of Digital Media Repurposing.” The na-
ture of the questions and debate that followed strongly reaffirmed my
belief that remix and sampling are widely misunderstood concepts and
that such confusion can detrimentally affect progress in theorizing and
discussing this kind of work. By then, I had already carried out extensive
research into the area, but my discussions with other experts on remix
that week only served to strengthen my resolve. To date, I have had the
privilege of researching remix in a number of different regions, including
the USA, Europe, and the Middle East, as well as co-editing two volumes
on remix studies, which have enabled me to see first hand how people
from different cultures and societies tend to understand and respond to it.
For me, it has always seemed apparent that remix can only be consid-
ered remix if it uses samples; however, over the past number of years, a
trend has emerged among remix scholars and practitioners, whereby the
term has been used to encompass much more than that. Being a musician
myself, as well as working and teaching in the areas of graphic design
and digital media production, the distinction between making some-
thing original and making a remix is very clear to me. A few years ago, I
commissioned an artist to paint a portrait of my daughter for her birth-
day. I provided the artist with a photograph of my daughter and another
photo of our family holiday cottage to be used as a background. The
artist produced a portrait using oil paints on canvas, based on these two
photographs. The end result is a newly produced work.1 As part of her
process, the artist “photoshopped” the two photos I gave her together,
cutting out the image of my daughter and placing it in front of the image
of the cottage. This photoshopped collage was used as a reference image
for her painting. One of these images is a remix; the other is not.
Clearly, the photoshopped collage is a remix because it uses elements
of the actual photographs as samples, combining them together in a new
way to produce a composite image from these preexisting images. The
painting, however, is not a remix, as it is composed of nothing more than
paint, each brush stroke carefully applied to the canvas in a uniquely
 The Specificity of Intertextual Media  11

Figure 1.1  P
 hotoshop collage to oil-painted portraits, 2014.
Courtesy of Owen Gallagher.

personal way by the artist. The painting is certainly intertextual be-

cause it is inspired by the collage—there is clear evidence of aesthetic
­emulation—but it is not a remix because it does not actually use any
sampled elements in its composition. It is a work that has been newly
produced by the artist. Incidentally, I was so pleased with the final por-
trait, I had the artist paint another one of my youngest daughter for her
birthday, using the same intertextual process (Figure 1.1).
Unfortunately, there has been a tendency in recent discourses on re-
mix to inaccurately define intertextual works, such as these paintings,
as remix. Every creative work is arguably inspired in some way by some-
thing else, but this does not mean that it is a remix. If every creative act
is a remix, then nothing is a remix and this is simply not the case. As will
be shown in this chapter, medium specificity distinctions have always
been important for the theorization of media artifacts as new technolo-
gies emerged enabling different media forms to exist. Thus, it is essential
to demonstrate what differentiates remix from other forms, especially
related intertextual activities with which it is often confused.

1.1  Painting vs. Poetry: An Age-Old Debate

The sister arts of painting and poetry, representing the historically
dominant forms of the visual and literary arts, respectively, have been
central to the discussion of medium specificity since the concept was