This is my shorthand way of talking about a phenomenon that has become more prominent with the advent of performance abduction in the late 20th and early 21st century, though decontextualization has always been a part of cultural evolution. There are two ways in which appropriated work may be decontextualized: (1) the appropriaters may be ignorant of or indifferent to the work’s meaning in its original context, and (2) the audience may be ignorant of the original context entirely.
Decontextualization and recontextualization happen when a creative statement is removed from its original political, social, and aesthetic context and put into a new one. For instance, the funky disco song “Good Times” from the 1970s was written for a mainly African American audience as a dance track, and was meant to celebrate some relaxing time off, dancing. When it is used as the soundtrack for driving around committing crimes in the video game Grand Theft Auto it has been taken from its original context and turned to a new one.
The idea of postmodern decontextualization is that it is now really easy to repurpose other people’s work and performances in new contexts. Commericial appropriaters such as advertisers do this all the time. For instance, the 60s Bob Dylan protest song “The Times Are A-Changin'”was used in the 90s BMO online banking ad. The original song was anti-establishment and about social change (anti-racism, feminism, counter-culture alternatives to mainstream capitalism, etc).
In many cases, as with the Bob Dylan song, the original context is well known and understood by the appropriaters, and they want at least some of the original context to colour their new context for at least some members of the audience (the baby boomers who are reminded of their rebellious youth and are expected to associate those feelings with the “radical” newness of banking on the Internet). In other examples, however, appropriaters may be unaware of or indifferent to what the work meant in its original context.
For instance, in the Gap ad that uses Audrey Hepburn’s crazy avant-garde dance from the 1957 film Funny Face, the original context is unimportant to the appropriaters. The dance is recontextualized as an ad for skinny black jeans, and occurs to the accompaniment of the AC/DC song “Back in Black.”
Hepburn’s dance in Funny Face was more than anything else a pastiche of the kind of avant-garde modern dance being done in the 50s by Martha Graham and other cutting edge choreographers. The original context is one of underground culture (Paris, books, artists, youth, beatniks). The new context is a party girl looking good in her black pants. The AC/DC song has a vaguer context, but is again part of rebellious youth culture. The lyrics sound not unlike an anticipation of rap songs where gangsters talk about getting out of prison (or free of something) and living large, for the moment.
The appropriaters may have liked some of these residual resonances, but they don’t need or want most of them in their performance abduction from Funny Face. More to the point, the typical viewer of the ad, especially those in the Gap’s target audience, are unlikely to recognize the context of Hepburn’s dance at all, and may not even recognize Hepburn.
- The appropriaters don’t care about and the audience mostly knows nothing about
- The intentions of the film maker or the scriptwriter
- What the choreographer was trying to do with the dance
- Who Audrey Hepburn thought she was when doing the dance – what either Audrey Hepburn’s character or Audrey Hepburn herself was dancing for
- The intentions of AC/DC in writing “Back in Black” and how their original audience would have understood the song
Although it is as common as dirt, I’ve been trying to suggest that postmodern decontextualization can be seen as disrespectful, ignorant, and a dangerous practice when the appropriaters themselves don’t understand the contexts of the works they are appropriating.
There are frequently painful ironies in examples of postmodern decontextualization, for those who know and understand the original contexts. When Puff Daddy uses a sample of “Every breath you take” by the Police, it adds an unexpected erotic (and creepy) undertone to a song that is meant simply to speak tenderly of his fallen friend, Biggie.
Two gay Jewish songwriters wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway musical and film Cabaret, an anti-fascist celebration of subversive theatricality in Berlin in the 1930s. This was the era when the Nazis came to power and wanted to stamp out this kind of diversity to establish a White Suprematist empire. One of the songs in Cabaret is a pastiche of the kind of white populist song popular with the Nazis, “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” Unfortunately, their semi-parody was too good a song, and has been used at times as a real fascist anthem. It has been adopted as an anthem by many White Suprematist metal bands, who either didn’t know or didn’t care that the song was originally intended ironically, as a commentary on the power of sentimental, catchy, but evil music.
I suggest that there are at least three good reasons why appropriators should fully understand the work they are appropriating in its original contexts:
- Because this shows the respect for and understanding of the original creator that the remixer would probably like for their own new creative work.
- Because the experience of the new work is richer and more multidimensional if the meanings, feelings, and context of the original operate as part of the new context.
- Because if the audience does understand the context of the original work, but the remixer doesn’t or ignores it, the audience may get a different message or have a different experience than the remixer intended.