HU2642 Assignment #1 (draft)
REVISED; THIS FINAL VERSION POSTED at 9:25 PM, EDT on 21 SEPTEMBER, 2010
In this post, I will be considering an online Flash cartoon, namely "A Jorb Well Done" from the Homestar Runner website. In this cartoon, the character Coach Z gets lessons from several other characters on the subject of how to pronounce the word "job", since he can’t seem to figure it out on his own. I will argue that this work falls in the category of digital media and discuss various aspects of the context of the cartoon.
The cartoon is delivered via the website at homestarrunner.com. The page can be accessed with any web browser, but the cartoon will not play unless the Adobe Flash plug-in has been installed. Fortunately, this plug-in is available for free download. Many websites incorporate Flash modules for playing videos (such as news broadcasts, YouTube hijinks, or silly cartoons), for making available interactive online games, or for displaying animated advertisements. (Some websites, such as AddictingGames are dedicated to providing a variety of free Flash-based games, with costs offset by Flash-based advertisements.)
History of Flash
The precursor to the Flash platform was called SmartSketch, which was a drawing program developed for pen computers in the mid-1990’s and was eventually converted for use on regular desktop models. After feedback suggested that there was a market for computer-based animation, the developers adapted SmartSketch to include this functionality.
As the focus of the software shifted to animation, the product was renamed FutureSplash Animator. When it was sold to Macromedia in 1996, the name was shortened to Flash. Due to its widespread use, Macromedia, and later Adobe, have continued to develop the software, so that today’s current player is version 10.1.
Our class discussion of Lev Manovich’s chapter "What Is New Media?" from The Language of New Media gave us the definition that "digital media" is that which is native to computer code format (as opposed to "digitized media" where a non-digital artifact is converted to computer format, such as a page scanned from a book). Because of this, digital media can be manipulated only in a computer environment, such as Flash editing software.
Using this definition, original animation created using Flash software - such as that seen in "A Jorb Well Done" - qualifies as digital media. One could make the distinction that the voices captured and used in this cartoon are digitized. However, these sound files are spliced together after they enter the digital realm, creating a digital sound file distinct from its parts. Furthermore, the .swf file that instructs the Flash Player to run the cartoon bundles the picture and sound files together into a single synchronized entity. This entity, the complete cartoon, is born of digital parts in a digital environment and can only be received by digital means. A Flash animation such as this must be considered digital media.
The Brothers Chaps
The Homestar Runner universe was created by Mike and Matt Chapman, who affectionately refer to themselves as "The Brothers Chaps" in the credits. Mike, who has a degree in Fine Arts, started learning how to use Flash software in 1999. For material to work with, he turned to some characters that he and Matt had created for a whimsical children’s book they had made together a few years earlier. Mike got his brother and his girlfriend, Missy Palmer, to do the voices for the cartoons.
Not realizing what they were starting, they posted their work online for a few friends to see. In the great tradition of the Internet, word spread without any advertising on the part of the Brothers, and they soon had a following. Real incoming e-mails were derided by the character Strong Bad in yet more cartoons, and within a few years the site and its creators were supported entirely by sales of Homestar Runner themed merchandise.
Audience and Context
The original purpose of posting the cartoons online was to entertain some friends. If we loosen the definition of "friends" to over 200,000 visitors per month from the USA alone (see here, under the Site Profile tab), we could say that the toons still do just that. It is a certainty that even the early toons have been seen by more than their originally intended audience. I first saw Homestar Runner in "A Jorb Well Done" during the 2006-07 school year on a recommendation from a classmate and have been entertained ever since.
Because word about the website spreads without influence, it is difficult to determine with certainty who the audience consists of. It is certainly the sort of thing that is popular among contemporary college students: online, free, crude, dripping with satire, and above all else, a colossal waste of time. (I mean that only in the nicest way; I greatly underestimated how tempting a distraction this would provide when I selected this topic.) But since literally anyone with an Internet connection (and a free Flash plug-in) can watch "A Jorb Well Done" the biggest barrier to the world audience is that it is only available in English.
As we discussed in reference to Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, the environment where a piece is created and those it passes through become embedded in the piece itself. In the case of "A Jorb Well Done" the point of origin is Atlanta, Georgia; it thus comes from a point of view of American culture. The creators strive to homogenize any regional variations by calling the characters’ home "Free Country, USA" and by providing vague or conflicting evidence about the location; it is inevitable, though, that the creators’ experience will influence the product they create. In particular, The Brothers Chaps use numerous references to technology that is well out of date. Even when "A Jorb Well Done" was released in 2001, the audio cassette Strong Sad gives to Coach Z would have seemed quaint to those hip enough to be watching online cartoons. (And so the medium in which the cartoon is delivered becomes relevant to the audience receiving it.) In 2010 - and there is nothing to suggest that the toon couldn’t be occurring now any more than when it was made - the set of Flash cartoon users is significantly larger, and their access to recording devices more advanced than a cassette recorder is almost universal. In a digital space, the joke only gets funnier with time.
Cartoons have been part of the culture in the USA for several decades. We seem to like watching vaguely humanoid people and anthropomorphized animals do and say things that would be quite unexpected in the real world. As technology has advanced, we’ve brought cartoons along. First delivered in newspapers as static comics, eventually with motion and sound in movie theaters and later television, they have now made the jump to the digital realm. It is probably safe to expect that when someone comes up with a new way to deliver content, someone else will figure out how to use it to make a beagle fly his doghouse, how to make a wabbit foil the poor little nimrod, how to make a dude in a boxing mask reply to real correspondence, or most likely of all, something nobody’s ever thought of before. After all, a new medium deserves a new message, right?
In this post, I will be considering an online Flash cartoon, namely "A Jorb Well Done" from the Homestar Runner website. In this cartoon, the character Coach Z gets lessons from several other characters on the subject of how to pronounce the word "job", since he can’t seem to figure it out on his own. I will argue that this work falls in the category of digital media and discuss various aspects of the context of the cartoon.
The cartoon is delivered via the website at homestarrunner.com. The page can be accessed with any web browser, but the cartoon will not play unless the Adobe Flash plug-in has been installed. Fortunately, this plug-in is available for free download. Many websites incorporate Flash modules for playing videos (such as news broadcasts, YouTube hijinks, or silly cartoons), for making available interactive online games, or for displaying animated advertisements. (Some websites, such as AddictingGames are dedicated to providing a variety of free Flash-based games, with costs offset by Flash-based advertisements.)
History of Flash
The precursor to the Flash platform was called SmartSketch, which was a drawing program developed for pen computers in the mid-1990’s and was eventually converted for use on regular desktop models. After feedback suggested that there was a market for computer-based animation, the developers adapted SmartSketch to include this functionality.
As the focus of the software shifted to animation, the product was renamed FutureSplash Animator. When it was sold to Macromedia in 1996, the name was shortened to Flash. Due to its widespread use, Macromedia, and later Adobe, have continued to develop the software, so that today’s current player is version 10.1.
Our class discussion of Lev Manovich’s chapter "What Is New Media?" from The Language of New Media gave us the definition that "digital media" is that which is native to computer code format (as opposed to "digitized media" where a non-digital artifact is converted to computer format, such as a page scanned from a book). Because of this, digital media can be manipulated only in a computer environment, such as Flash editing software.
Using this definition, original animation created using Flash software - such as that seen in "A Jorb Well Done" - qualifies as digital media. One could make the distinction that the voices captured and used in this cartoon are digitized. However, these sound files are spliced together after they enter the digital realm, creating a digital sound file distinct from its parts. Furthermore, the .swf file that instructs the Flash Player to run the cartoon bundles the picture and sound files together into a single synchronized entity. This entity, the complete cartoon, is born of digital parts in a digital environment and can only be received by digital means. A Flash animation such as this must be considered digital media.
The Brothers Chaps
The Homestar Runner universe was created by Mike and Matt Chapman, who affectionately refer to themselves as "The Brothers Chaps" in the credits. Mike, who has a degree in Fine Arts, started learning how to use Flash software in 1999. For material to work with, he turned to some characters that he and Matt had created for a whimsical children’s book they had made together a few years earlier. Mike got his brother and his girlfriend, Missy Palmer, to do the voices for the cartoons.
Not realizing what they were starting, they posted their work online for a few friends to see. In the great tradition of the Internet, word spread without any advertising on the part of the Brothers, and they soon had a following. Real incoming e-mails were derided by the character Strong Bad in yet more cartoons, and within a few years the site and its creators were supported entirely by sales of Homestar Runner themed merchandise.
Audience and Context
The original purpose of posting the cartoons online was to entertain some friends. If we loosen the definition of "friends" to over 200,000 visitors per month from the USA alone (see here, under the Site Profile tab), we could say that the toons still do just that. It is a certainty that even the early toons have been seen by more than their originally intended audience. I first saw Homestar Runner in "A Jorb Well Done" during the 2006-07 school year on a recommendation from a classmate and have been entertained ever since.
Because word about the website spreads without influence, it is difficult to determine with certainty who the audience consists of. It is certainly the sort of thing that is popular among contemporary college students: online, free, crude, dripping with satire, and above all else, a colossal waste of time. (I mean that only in the nicest way; I greatly underestimated how tempting a distraction this would provide when I selected this topic.) But since literally anyone with an Internet connection (and a free Flash plug-in) can watch "A Jorb Well Done" the biggest barrier to the world audience is that it is only available in English.
As we discussed in reference to Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, the environment where a piece is created and those it passes through become embedded in the piece itself. In the case of "A Jorb Well Done" the point of origin is Atlanta, Georgia; it thus comes from a point of view of American culture. The creators strive to homogenize any regional variations by calling the characters’ home "Free Country, USA" and by providing vague or conflicting evidence about the location; it is inevitable, though, that the creators’ experience will influence the product they create. In particular, The Brothers Chaps use numerous references to technology that is well out of date. Even when "A Jorb Well Done" was released in 2001, the audio cassette Strong Sad gives to Coach Z would have seemed quaint to those hip enough to be watching online cartoons. (And so the medium in which the cartoon is delivered becomes relevant to the audience receiving it.) In 2010 - and there is nothing to suggest that the toon couldn’t be occurring now any more than when it was made - the set of Flash cartoon users is significantly larger, and their access to recording devices more advanced than a cassette recorder is almost universal. In a digital space, the joke only gets funnier with time.
Cartoons have been part of the culture in the USA for several decades. We seem to like watching vaguely humanoid people and anthropomorphized animals do and say things that would be quite unexpected in the real world. As technology has advanced, we’ve brought cartoons along. First delivered in newspapers as static comics, eventually with motion and sound in movie theaters and later television, they have now made the jump to the digital realm. It is probably safe to expect that when someone comes up with a new way to deliver content, someone else will figure out how to use it to make a beagle fly his doghouse, how to make a wabbit foil the poor little nimrod, how to make a dude in a boxing mask reply to real correspondence, or most likely of all, something nobody’s ever thought of before. After all, a new medium deserves a new message, right?