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]

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?