Another look at Festivids

[cupidsbow]

Snapshot of Livejournal entries for 2012 Festivids, taken 11am, 28 January.

Red = Femslash
Blue = Slash
Green = Het
Purple = Bisexuality
Black Bold = Gen, or sexuality is not the primary focus

Most Commented-on Festivids on LJ

01:45 am - Gift for Gianduja Kiss (Maru the Cat) [ +49 ]
"Outside the Box"
Primary: race/gender-neutral animal

04:23

Comments

[cupidsbow]

Is there any link to quality of the vidding here? Or do you think people clicking, watching and commenting has to do with the content only?

That's the question, isn't it? I'm glad you asked it, and with the self-awareness to know that it's a problematic question.

It's easy to handwave the results as, "those are just the weakest vids". I feel the pull of handwaving due to quality myself, even with the gender/race/sexuality breakdown staring me in the face.

The thing is, some technically poor vids have a lot more comments, so it's not just about technique. It's definitely about content to a greater degree I'd say.

As honestly as I can judge, this is what I think about these specific vids.

The case of RED
I haven't seen the move RED yet, so I hadn't watched any of the RED vids until I made this list. As it appears in both lists it's a useful measure of my own reactions.

In my opinion, one of the Helen Mirren vids in the bottom list is more enjoyable than, and technically as good as, the slash vid in the top list.

The case of the Asian lesbians
Most of these vids are cute, but some of them are technically rough. No rougher than some vids with more comments, though.

It's hard for me to judge these vids, though, as these fandoms are not to my taste. I wouldn't watch them anywhere but festivids (although festivids has sold me on the idea of trying Kamikaze Girls). But the thing is, my taste is very, very western. And the sources for these vids are really not. Possibly the vidder has used a non-western sensibility in vidding them, too. So I'm not even sure how to address that, but I think it's worth mentioning.

I haven't even started to try and think through the politics of who asked for what, yet. It's a whole other layer, isn't it?

(I've been double booked for tomorrow, so I may turn up for a bit, but not for the whole day. So I might see you, and we can discuss it more. :)

[sholio]

You know, quality wouldn't even have occurred to me as a possibility here. I would assume it's mostly down to popularity of source and/or pairing - that the comments are basically a popularity contest, I mean. Rather like Yuletide. In my case, I only watched the Festivids for which I was familiar with and already fond of the source canon, plus a few others because the song choice looked interesting or because I saw a glowing rec somewhere - which probably came about because the reccer was already a fan of the source and/or pairing, so.

... which is, of course, a damning comment on what media fandom (and I) choose to consume, more than anything else. I recognize a few of the names in the bottom-tier source canon, but haven't seen any of it, whereas I recognize all but two of the source names in the top tier, and have seen most of it. And that's entirely on my head, for not seeking out more sources with chromatic characters or queer characters. (Among other results of this, I don't generally go for non-canon pairings, so I also generally was not clicking on vids with non-canon pairings in them - which weighted my Festivids viewing very heavily towards het pairings, since the sources I was familiar with were predominantly het.) But on the other hand, a lot of what turns up in Festivids - and I think most of what I would have asked for, too, if I'd done it this year - is older, nostalgia sources, which are almost entirely non-chromatic, non-queer shows for most of us, since that's what we were largely exposed to on network TV and from friends and family when we were younger.

Erm, I don't know what I'm saying here - mostly, I guess, that I thought it was interesting that "quality" would even be a factor that would occur to you (even as an option to be dismissed), because to me it seems to be all about popularity, and not popularity of the vid itself, but of the source and pairing - which is dependent, in turn, on what fannish background an individual fanvidder brings to the table. I guess the demographic breakdown of Festivids seems to me a not-at-all surprising consequence of what fandom watches in the first place, so that would be the end to tackle it from, if one was going to do something about it - sort of like dark_agenda tries to raise awareness of chromatic sources for Yuletide and encourage people to check them out and request them. It would be neat to see something along those lines for chromatic source or queer source for Festivids!

[cupidsbow]

Thank you for such a thoughtful response.

I agree that popularity of source (with all the problematic politics that implies) is a big part of it.

The reason I think of quality as a factor is a complex one, which I'll try to unpack a bit here. Firstly, part of the conditioning of privilege in the west is to sell us the myth of the meritocracy -- that the best will be recognized, no matter their gender, race, age, beauty, etc. It's a load of bunk, of course. Things which are clearly excellent, but made by the "wrong" people in the wrong time/place get ignored all the time. But for me that thinking pops up in all sorts of weird and unhelpful ways.

It pops up in festivids, because there's a part of me that assumes if I make a kick-ass vid, it will be recognised as kick-ass, no matter the content. The corollary being that any vid which isn't popular must be poorly made. I keep telling myself this is a giant red-herring and not to get sucked into explaining things this way. But it's really hard not to fall back into meritocracy thinking.

Second, I love the diversity of festivids. I love discovering new things. I love watching a vid from a new fandom cold (I love constructed reality and AU too, and probably for the same reasons). For all of these reasons, I do actually try to watch every vid in festivids each year. I didn't watch RED this time, until I made this post, because I didn't want to be spoiled. But I watched at least the first 20 secs of every other vid.

The ones I didn't watch all the way through were technically poor and boring -- that "and" is important, as I'll usually watch technically brilliant and boring vids all the way through at least once, and technically terrible but interesting more than once.

So that said, I'm more likely not to watch the vids at the bottom all the way through. In hindsight, this is because I find the source boring (ie. too challenging for my privileged western sensibilities to enjoy in a 1-4 minute bite). But as is usually the case with privilege, it's easier to focus on the other side of that "and" and blame the vidder's poor technique. "Oh, I'm bored; it must be because the vid is poorly made." It neatly skips over the race/gender/sexual/age politics of the source and gives me an easy out.

When I re-watched for this post (which I started to do, because my goal for the day was to comment on anything with less than 5 comments), I made myself pay more attention. That's why I realised that poor technique was not the issue at all. In fact, the "Poor Prudence" vid is a knock-out, really cleverly vidded, and should be way more popular.

So. Technique. It's a giant distraction from the real issue. Yet still so seductive as an excuse for privilege.

It's kind of horrible, isn't it, that whether you just pick fandoms you're familiar with, or whether you watch everything, it's still easy to end up in the same place of dismissal and discrimination. The excuses we're programmed with to support privilege are fucking endless.

dark_festivids
On a more positive note, I like your idea of dark_agenda for festivids. I think it needs to follow the other axes as well, given that sexuality and race are only two dimensions indicative of the wider trends of discrimination -- gender, race, sexuality, age. Gender and race together actually seem a bigger indicator than race alone.

I wonder how such a thing should be set up. Thoughts?

[china_shop]

Re the RED vids, I tried to watch them all, but the slash one was the only one that held my attention (this was after about three hours of watching my way through festivids), and I'm pretty sure that was largely because of the song/pacing and the humour/juxtaposition of song and source. But perhaps that's just rationalisation, IDK.

I do think you'll find that many of the most popular ones are humorous in some way, either because the source was comedy (Maru, Fresh Prince) or because of a song/source juxtaposition (What a Man, Me Against the Music, Let's Go to the Mall) or whatever.

I'm attempting to watch all of them, except those that warn for sexual violence, but I'm dropping out of most of the SciFi ones pretty quickly because it's not really my thing, and I find that there are some songs/music choices that turn me off very quickly too (auto-tuning, or very muddy instruments/vocals).

[cupidsbow]

*nods*

After technique, personal taste is the next easiest thing I want to blame.

Taste isn't neutral though, obviously, or this pattern wouldn't emerge.

[china_shop]

Absolutely. I just tried to add this to my previous comment (but you'd already replied):

ETA: Aaand I just went and looked at my recs so far, and yeah, all white, all the time. /o\

Thanks for raising the issues and, with it, my awareness.

[cupidsbow]

I went back and looked at my recs too. And while they are not quite all white, they are close, and there are no women of colour at all.

*shares the fail hat* /o\