Understanding appropriation as a creative practice
Fan fiction involves original stories about characters from mainstream commercial franchises written by fans. Often these take the premises of the original commercial franchise and bend them in startling new directions. For instance, there are thousands of examples of fiction written by fans of Harry Potter who want more or different stories about the characters Read More …
A participatory culture is a culture in which the people who “consume” the culture also help produce it. For instance, folk dancing, home sing-alongs, Instagram, YouTube. A non-participatory culture is one where the culture is produced by elite professionals and the rest of us just consume the culture. For example, television, movies, ads. The Internet, Read More …
Guerilla film making appropriates real-world people, and often trademarked and copywritten settings, without permission. Example: the silly but fascinating Sundance Festival hit Escape from Tomorrow (2014), shot in Disneyworld and Disneyland without permission and without the knowledge of the theme park administration.
“Filming” a video within a virtual world designed for other purposes (mainly video games and virtual worlds such as Second Life), using the world’s scenery, avatars, and sometimes music etc, but typically providing voiceovers, new music and other elements not from the virtual environment. A few well-regarded examples. Red vs Blue (episode one) The French Read More …
Video mashup is often used as a general term for re-edited video footage that uses two or more audio/video sources to create a new video. The motivations for this kind of appropriation are as varied as the artists, but many theorists would suggest that the effect of much of this video remix is to create Read More …
A term used by some practioners to refer to a practice of making their creative work freely available for appropriation and transformation. The practice is sometimes symbolized by a flipped copyright symbol: Copyleft symbol by Zscout370, Sertion, e.a. – Own work, Public Domain, Link The term copyleft is obviously a take-off on “copyright,” and includes Read More …
Fair Use is the term used in the United States. In Canada, the principle is known as Fair Dealing. An article on the library web site of Stanford University summarizes some of the basic aspects of Fair Use in the United States: In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted Read More …
A travesty is a grotesque caricature or parody, or a “crude, inferior imitation.” So when people say something is “a travesty of justice” they’re saying it isn’t real justice, but a crude imitation of justice. On the stage, travesty refers to cross-dressing, and by extension to the practices to which it refers in this class: Read More …
“Retromania” is a shorthand term that I personally use for a phenomenon to which attention is drawn in Simon Reynolds’s book of the same name. Retromania is the tendency of post-World War 2 mass culture to recycle itself and ignore the majority of pre-20th century or even pre-World War 2 culture, especially the massive legacy Read More …
Parody occurs when someone (most often legally) copies the style and/or elements of someone else’s creative work to make fun of it (and usually also celebrate it). Harry Pothead parody People often assume that parody is critical mode, but as the “Harry Pothead” example suggests it is frequently very mild-mannered and need not be critical Read More …