Tag: hack-4

Link to YouTube Video: The Evolution of Protests for Racial Discrimination

All sources are linked in the description of my YouTube video.

Growing up in the age of technology and social media, I have always been surrounded by remixes of all different forms of media throughout my whole life. So many of my favorite music artists remix songs from other artists, my favorite YouTubers create parodies and reactions to other videos on YouTube, influencers all over socials are doing the same trends with their own personal touch, people are constantly editing photos, and so on. Remixing someone else’s work has always been a popular phenomenon in various forms of media, but it has become especially prevalent in today’s age with social media and the continuous rapid rise of technology, including newfound forms of editing software (Kuhn, 2012). With this new age, remixing comes in all different forms. At first I was a little confused on what a remix was because I thought it had to be some complicated, really well put together form of art, but that is not necessarily true. As I mentioned, a lot of the popular media we consume are remixes, whether we know it or not. Anything that is combining a new piece of media with another already existing piece of media, or even putting together numerous pieces of already existing media, in order to strengthen or contrast the message in that media. These messages can be very serious or very playful, it does not matter. 

For this fourth hack, we were tasked with making a remix of our own. At first I was caught up on the idea of the remix being heavily edited with complicated software, but once I looked back at our class discussions, I reminded myself that this was not the case. I also wanted to make sure I built upon a message that is both prevalent and meaningful in today’s society. In order to achieve this, I decided to center my hack around protests in the United States. More specifically, I wanted to compare how protests against racial discrimination have changed from the past with the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s to the Black Lives Matter movement that took place during 2020. In order to really capture the similarities and differences between these two movements, I gathered images, audio, and video clips from various digital commons spaces and compiled them together in order to hone in on the messages that the philosophical teaching from Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) have been lost as our protests today continue to grow more and more violent. According to Lizzie O’Shea, “the digital commons is the space where projects are worked on, where historical context allows integration with more recent initiatives. It allows people to scour the history of human endeavor to look at how problems have been solved in the past and how this thinking might usefully be applied to modern conundrums. It also facilitates the freedom for people to work in different ways, to spend varying amounts of time and energy on various elements of a particular project. The capacity to work in this way is diminished when the information commons is privatized” (O’Shea, 2019). Essentially, these spaces known as digital commons are places where people on the internet can have free access to past information for just about any topic that they may want to look into. These spaces are extremely useful when gathering information and learning about the past events. Spaces like these are the reason I was able to turn my ideas for my remix into a reality.

My source material for a project like this consisted of a lot of past news footage, interviews with past Civil Rights activists, actual footage of both past and present protests, etc. As I mentioned earlier, I focused on two distinct time periods for this remix; those include the Civil Rights movement and the Black Lives Matter movement. To really highlight the similarities and differences of these time periods, all the sources I gathered for this project were either from or about those two time periods. The sources that I looked at first focused more on the Civil Rights movement. First, I gathered real footage from the MLK’s march on Washington. The footage showed that peaceful protests could be successful and it displayed MLK’s true philosophy on protests. I next found an interview on YouTube with one of the activists that marched with MLK that day in Washington. In this interview, he speaks about how nonviolence and peaceful protests was the method behind the Civil Rights act. I thought this interview paired really well with the footage from the march on Washington, so I decided to extract a portion of the audio from that interview and have that play while the real footage was being displayed. This was a good way to start off my video as it captured the main ideology behind many of the protests in the 1960s. Although protests were civil a lot of the time, the police and Whites during that time were still extremely violent towards African Americans. A few weeks after MLK’s march, massive violence from the police force and Whites struck in Birmingham, Alabama as a church was bombed. I got real images of the damage and violence caused by this horrible act of violence from Wikipedia and archive.org. As these images were displayed on the screen, I played an audio clip of an interview I found on YouTube that was from two victims that were there that day in Birmingham. One of the people being interviewed spoke about how horrifying it was being a part of an incident such as that one, and the other spoke about how it was very hard to remain peaceful during that time and how many African Americans wanted to retaliate despite MLK’s method for change. I thought this was an amazing transition into the protests during 2020. 

The 2020 protests were filled with lots of violence. Many individuals felt that the issues at hand were too harsh and severe to be able to just sit back and not take action, so because of this, violence struck all over the country. As time went on, it grew tougher and tougher for people during the Civil Rights movement to remain peaceful as well. At a certain point, enough was enough and violence slowly started to grow. To show this massive wave of violence due to racial injustice in the United States, I gather a bunch of video clips off YouTube from the riots, looting, and violence from the protests in 2020. For context for the viewer, I played the audio from a news broadcast from archive.org explaining what happened to start this movement. At the end of my video, I played the audio of an interview I found from a Civil Rights activist explaining the main differences between the protests during the Civil Rights movement compared to those during the Black Lives Matter movement. I felt like this was the perfect way to tie the two time periods together and really put into words what my video was trying to convey to the audience. Throughout the whole video you can see the progression from peaceful to violent protests in the United States, but then at the end, the audience is able to take a step back and think about the two different time periods together at once.

I intentionally ordered every clip in the manner that I did. I arranged them in a way where the viewer can get some historical background and also see the progression of protests, but then in the end, have the opportunity to compare the two and process the two different ideologies from different generations. I felt like it was important to bring it back to the Civil Right movement again at the end of the video because I wanted the viewers to be able to get a reflection period to have to think deeper about the message at hand. I also strategically put audio clips over video clips that way the viewer could have background context on the historical events, but also see how horrible the protests were and make them emotionally feel for the victims. I initially wanted to edit the video in a manner that was more fun and engaging, but I felt like with a topic as harsh and serious as this one, more simplistic stc editing was needed. It did not feel appropriate to add music and comedic cuts when bringing attention to a topic that had such a negative impact on so many people in the United States. I think with a message such as the one being conveyed in this video, the simpler the better. I was aiming to be straightforward and make my message very clear, and I honestly think that I accomplished this goal of mine. 

When people think of protests these days, they often think of them all being extremely violent, but this was not always the case. Obviously one of my goals was to just compare protests and depict how they have changed, but the main goal of my video was to remind people that protests can be peaceful, although that can be very hard to do at times. I really do feel as though my video can bring this to the attention of all people. With so much political and governmental disagreements in the United States, I think it is of extreme importance to remind citizens of our country that we do not need to always be violated in order to provoke change. 

In this remix project, I criticized the “persistent and hidden forms of gender discipline language”. Through textual rewriting, AI voice substitution and image inversion of 1950s family gender education videos, I reveal how structural control over women has been constructed in a “gentle”, “considerate” and “natural” way in history, and attempt to trace the continuation and reproduction of such disciplinary mechanisms in contemporary technological discourse (especially AI voice systems).

Also, by introducing Meghan Markle’s public speech and a group of realistic image materials of outstanding women from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, I transformed the original “disciplined” object into “expressive subject”, making the silent body open and the blurred face clear. On this basis, I use the music and words of Vixen, an all-female Glam Metal band, as narrative support, giving the work structural rhythmic tension and symbolic meaning.

I tried to guide the audience through a journey of irony, empathy, and inspiration. I want them to not only understand how absurd disciplinary language can be, but also to recognize how it still shapes us today in new ways. This includes how we imagine and accept ideas like the “neutrality of AI” and the “naturalness of gender roles.” The opening scene of this remix is the most important structural starting point of the entire work. It is also the first moment when the audience is challenged in how they perceive what they hear and see. I used the script of a 1950s educational video called The Good Wife Guide as the base text, and I rewrote it carefully to create The Good Husband Guide. I kept the original structure, grammar, and emotional rhythm, and only changed the gendered words. For example, “your husband” becomes “your wife,” “he” becomes “she,” and “master of the house” becomes “mistress of the house.” I did not stop at changing the words, however. I also used an AI text-to-speech tool to generate a female voice reading the new script. This voice has a calm, smooth, and pleasant tone that sounds neutral, like a middle-class American speaker. It is not overly emotional and has no strong personality. It sounds like a mix of a newsreader and a digital assistant. I chose this kind of voice on purpose. I did not want a robotic or unnatural sound. Instead, I wanted a voice that feels gentle, clear, polite, but also firm. It should remind the audience of the kind of voices they have heard in traditional family advice or home education videos.

I used background music that was common in 1950s American household advertisements. The music is a piano melody in a minor key, and it represents a strong cultural memory of the “home atmosphere.” I chose this type of music instead of something heavy or dark in tone, because I wanted to build a contrast between the voice, the music, and the visuals. The spoken content is a form of structural violence. It tells the husband to give up his own judgment, to follow his wife’s emotions, to never ask questions, and to stay in a lower position at all times. However, the voice and the background music together create a feeling of calm and softness. The sound feels gentle, pleasant, and peaceful—almost as if this is how life is supposed to be. The visuals show men from the 1950s. They wear suits, smile, relax, clean the house, and wait for their wives to return. These men are placed in the kind of domestic scenes where women were traditionally expected to be quiet and obedient. This creates a strange effect of role reversal that feels both awkward and ironic.  Through this combination of voice, music, and imagery, the audience experiences cognitive dissonance. What they hear, see, and emotionally feel is a picture of a happy home. But what they actually understand is a system of gender-based control. This contradiction opens up a space for reflection: Why does all of this feel so “normal”? And why do we only realize how wrong it is when the script is given to men?

In the last scene, I chose a smiling male actor as the end of the segment. His eyes were calm and there was a polite, gentle smile on his lips. He did not know that he had just been taught “not to question his wife’s judgment,” “to be considerate even when she is out late at night,” or that he had been cast as the “submissive male” in a script of control and restraint. And it is this shot that further twists the dubbing in front of the picture into an invisible structure. When gender discipline is packaged as soft tones and family harmony, the danger lies not in violence but in “rationality.” That is to say, the core of the criticism in this part is to construct a cross-reference between the “pseudo-calm scene” and the “violent semantics” , and break the existing cognitive framework with contrast. If this language is unacceptable to men, it should never have been applied to anyone in the first place. This paragraph also foreshadows an important framework for the follow-up of the work. Since old structures can be “glorified,” is today’s AI discourse also a disguise for new structures? This issue will be extended from the first part to the “polite tone” of AI, the setting of assistant personality, and the presupposition of gender roles, and ultimately constitute a question and challenge to the contemporary “computational law training mechanism”.

After the first part, the piece cuts to Meghan Markle’s speech at the United Nations. It expresses that after the experimental structure of “men being disciplined,” the voice of a real individual finally emerges. I chose this speech not because Meghan Markle is a “celebrity,” but because the story she tells is pretty much the moment most of us have experienced when we first “sensed gender injustice” growing up. Instead of speaking in abstract political terms, she said she heard the boy say “women’s place is in the kitchen” and she became angry, saying: “I knew it wasn’t right, I knew something had to be done.” Visually, I kept the static close-up shot of Meghan standing on the podium, allowing the audience to face a “not so perfect but real” expression after just experiencing the calm discipline language and beautiful music. This is in sharp contrast to the “inorganic calm” of the AI female voice. AI audio conveys order and procedure; Meghan’s tone of voice, on the other hand, represents a genuine sense of self. I want to emphasize through this that resistance is not always grand, it often stems from a naive “this is not right” sentiment. It is this kind of primitive anger that is the first to be suppressed in our growth, is the most frequently “interpreted as misunderstanding,” and then leads to silence. Through this transition, I laid the foundation of “body with emotion and power” for the realistic female images that emerged in the following years. She is not an actress in a fictional play, but a speaker in real history.

After Meghan’s speech,I moved into a collage section made of both still images and video clips. This part of the project has the least amount of spoken language, but it is the most powerful in terms of challenging the structure of the whole piece. It directly responds to the “ideal wife or husband” image created by the earlier system of speech by showing real women from real life. 

The women I selected come from a wide range of ethnic, cultural, geographic, and historical backgrounds. Their accomplishments span politics, science, art, sports, and technology. I chose to highlighted their actions, ideas, and leadership by fast-paced editing and preserved the original contrast and texture of each frame. I also avoided softening filters or polished effects because I wanted to show each woman as a full presence, not as a symbol or decorative image. The viewer is not being told how to feel. Rather, they are invited to observe what these women are doing. My intention in this part was to shift the way women are seen. I wanted to move them from being the subject of explanation to becoming the ones who shape the narrative. They are not defined by the system. They operate beyond it and define their own terms. While some remix projects treat clips of powerful women as emotional highlights, I wanted it to be part of the central argument. I also paid attention to editing rhythm and the direction of their gaze. This was meant to challenge the way audiences are used to looking at women on screen. In most media, viewers are trained to evaluate women, to give them labels, or to assign them a certain value. In this remix, I wanted the gaze to reverse. The women look directly at the viewer. That moment of eye contact changes the experience of watching.

For the background music in this section, I chose Edge of a Broken Heart by Vixen. This song plays an important role in setting the pace of the visuals, but it also signals a deeper cultural meaning. Vixen was one of the few all-female bands in the 1980s glam metal scene. They worked in an industry dominated by men, where gender roles were strictly enforced. They were constantly asked whether they could play as well as male musicians. People assumed they got attention because of their looks. Their work was rarely judged on its own terms. Vixen’s presence was always compared to male standards. Even when they achieved success, it was framed as “impressive for women” rather than as artistic or technical excellence on its own. The issues they faced connect directly to the themes in this remix. Women are not only told how to behave or feel. They are also taught how to speak, how to perform, and how to present themselves creatively. Expression itself is shaped by rules that often reflect male-centered expectations. The band members often spoke about how they were treated. They were seen as girlfriends of other musicians rather than artists in their own right. They were excluded from touring with some male bands because the bandmates’ girlfriends felt jealous. These examples show how deeply ideas about gender shaped their professional world. The same forces that shaped the “wife” figure in The Good Wife Guide were still active in the world Vixen had to overcome. Vixen was described as a breakthrough act, yet the media kept defining them as “the female version of a male band.” Reporters focused on their looks, clothes, and sex appeal. Their skills in songwriting, performance, and live shows were rarely discussed with the same seriousness given to male musicians. Even in spaces that claimed to be open-minded or progressive, women were rarely treated as full creative subjects. More often, they were discussed as symbols, exceptions, or novelties. On one hand, they resisted the gender labels placed on them. On the other, they were shaped by those same labels. This tension gave their voice a unique strength. They were both outsiders to the system and deeply affected by it. That contradiction is what gives their work emotional weight and complexity. This remix ends by highlighting that position. Women do not need to copy power structures in order to succeed. They do not need to become a version of what already exists. What they seek is the right to define the terms of expression itself. The interview clip I included near the end ties everything together. It brings the remix full circle. In the beginning, the AI voice speaks from within the system. In the final scene, a real woman speaks for herself. The voice, once a tool shaped by others, becomes a weapon of her own.

The process of making this project turned out to be much more complex than I expected. The biggest challenges came from two areas. First, I had to balance the meaning of each source and make sure they worked together without conflict. Second, I needed to manage the emotional rhythm across the whole piece. In other words, it was not enough for each material to carry meaning on its own. When placed side by side, they also had to build up, not cancel each other out. Only then could the remix form a clear narrative arc and maintain a strong sense of critical depth. One example of this challenge came from the first section of the piece. I knew that showing men in the 1950s being “disciplined” in the style of old homemaking advice might make some viewers laugh. It was important to me that the scene did not feel like a joke or a parody. I did not want the humor to take over the argument. The tone needed to stay uneasy and thought-provoking. Later, when editing the section about real women, I decided not to use traditional voiceover. I let the rhythm of the Vixen song guide how the images were cut and arranged. This was not just a stylistic choice. It was a way to challenge structure itself. I wanted the rhythm of women’s presence, not a voice explaining what we see, to lead the experience of watching. Making this remix helped me see more clearly that every piece of sound, every image, and every edit I used had to respond to one core question. It is not just about letting women’s voices be heard. It is about allowing women to decide what should be said and how it should be said.

My hack is called “Vote With Your Feed” a project that critically examines the evolution of political messaging in the US, particularly how campaign slogans and platforms have transformed over time to influence voters through emotion, media, and more recently social media algorithms. My central critique is how political messaging has evolved from collective persuasion to individualized algorithmic influence, showing how campaign slogans and election media targets the audience through algorithms and user generated content. Throughout time, political communication has become increasingly emotional, manipulative, and personalized. This project asks what it means to vote in this day and age. By pulling from historical campaign materials, archival media, and contemporary TikToks, I explore how the strategies of persuasion in US politics have changed.

This remix draws on footage and media from 3 distinct time periods: the postwar 1950s (the Eisenhower campaign), the late 1980s (the Bush “Willie Horton” ad and election night radio coverage), and the current decade (TikToks and 2024 campaign ads). It also blends two different media types, video and sound, to reveal how forms of voter influence and engagement shift depending on the tools of the era. My remix breaks the rule of using 3 source materials, and I justify this rule break because today, everything is digitized, hence video and sound are more compelling. Other forms of media such as print and text, do not have the same engagement, reach, and worldliness that video and sound do. I decided to only use video content such as the poll places, past election campaign ads, events in the political sphere, as well as TikTok clips in order to emphasize the effect of modern political media. By using videos as the main form of media, I am able to focus on exemplifying digital media at its purest form. I remixed this hack to jump cut back and forth between different time periods and campaign videos, as I cut videos in different parts and mismatched combined them together.

To show how political influence has evolved, I juxtaposed archival campaign materials with modern media. The 1952 “I Like Ike” ad, an orchestrated and cheerful jingle promoting Dwight Eisenhower designed for TV audiences, marks a turning point in American politics as it is catchy, cartoonish, and optimistic, emphasizing personality over policy. Its jingle was mass consumed, and mass approved by citizens, setting the standard for all future campaign marketing. These kinds of slogans like “I Like Ike” built mass persuasiveness through communal identity and optimism through simplicity and repetition.

In contrast, the 1988 “Willie Horton” ad reflects a darker, more manipulative approach to persuasion. The Bush campaign used fear to shape public opinion. While “I Like Ike” sought unity, this ad weaponized difference, and narratives of crime, fear, and national identity were constructed and spread through mainstream media. The shift in tone between these decades highlights how American political discourse moved from optimism to divisive. Through tapping into fear, racial tension, and trauma, this campaign successfully provoked emotional response and votes.

Finally, the Trump MAGA ad from 2024 shows a return to grand catchy slogans (ex. Make America Great Again) and uses nostalgia and anger. Rather than persuasive logic, it’s almost entirely emotional. When I contrast this ad with modern TikToks, including those supporting Trump and Kamala Harris, I found a dynamic where politicians no longer need to persuade mass audiences. They target algorithmic spheres with niches such as Trump supporters and Kamala supporters. Engagement and virality have become new metrics of political success, and Trump even gives credit to TikTok for his election success.

The TikToks I selected range from user generated political propaganda, funny memes and compilations, and other random clips that have come across my for you page during the election. This reflects how political discourse can be turned into trends and performance. The Kamala TikToks, for instance, use popular sounds and dance trends to portray her as “relatable,” while Trump’s TikTok edits lean into personality or funny compilations. While mediums have evolved from TV ads to short form TikTok videos, the nature of the campaign ads remain the same, which is to persuade. It is interesting to look at how especially in this election, campaigns heavily use digital social media platforms, creating content that feels authentic and personal, but can at times distort or oversimplify the reality of the world or candidates.

The purpose of this hack is to show how persuasion changes based on media platforms, such as simple and catchy jingles to algorithmic videos. In my opinion, “I Like Ike” was designed for everyone, and on the other hand MAGA memes or Kamala TikToks are algorithmically curated per user. I am critiquing how the voter experience has shifted, from showing up as a participant in a democratic event (1960s polling footage) to being influenced and persuaded well before voting begins, through algorithmically curated content that blurs authenticity, identity, and manipulation (2024 TikToks about the election). In this remix I have mismatched the clips to go back and forth between each time period, capturing the evolution of political candidates, their campaigns, as well as TikTok memes that adds layers of irony, sarcasm, and humor in a more serious sphere. This transition shows that democracy today happens through for you pages, arguments in the comments, and user generated content.

What inspired this was the current state of US politics and how many people say that politics is just entertainment.  This remix suggests the platform that politics have and use now is media, as more than ever, campaigns are curated and targeted. TikTok brings humor, anger, and relatability, which changes traditional campaign strategies into a loop of viral content. This shift can be seen through the juxtaposition of the videos from different time periods. By placing historical media alongside TikTok videos, I aimed to highlight this shift in how the desire to persuade the audience has not changed, rather the use of platform. The feedback loop of TikTok prioritizes quick reactions, not fulfilling arguments. This dynamic changes not only how voters engage, but how candidates craft their image. It is interesting to think about the motivations behind each post. Another interesting notion was the idea of remix as recovery. I have never seen many of the archival footage from past campaigns, and by giving these materials new life, I did what this assignment calls “the beauty of second use”, and these sources are historical evidence, reused in a different context.

In conclusion, Vote With Your Feed is a media remix that investigates the evolving scope of political persuasion. By drawing on campaign materials from 1952 to 2024, polling place footage from the 1960s to today, and viral TikToks, this project challenges the viewer to rethink how voting, influence, and performance intersect in modern life remixing the old with the contemporary. It is a remix of history, emotion, and algorithms.

Citations:

1960 B/W A voter placing his ballot at a polling station, Getty Images, https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/voter-placing-his-ballot-at-a-polling-station-stock-video-footage/mr_00060856?adppopup=true

CU, PAN, Row of voting booths, St. Marys, Ohio, USA, Getty Images, https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/row-of-voting-booths-st-marys-ohio-usa-stock-video-footage/85184111

Americans voting in an election, Getty Images, https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/americans-voting-in-an-election-stock-footage/1959111546?adppopup=true

Extreme close-up macro video of a ballpoint pen filling in a mail-in voting ballot at home for Presidential, Senatorial, Congressional, or local election, Getty Images, https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/extreme-close-up-macro-video-of-a-ballpoint-pen-filling-stock-footage/1762005219?adppopup=true

I Voted Today, Getty Images, https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/voted-today-stock-footage/2160034819?adppopup=true

Eisenhower ‘I Like Ike’ ad (1952), The Living Room Candidate, https://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1952

Bush ‘Willie Horton’ ad (1988), C-Span, https://www.c-span.org/program/vignette/bush-campaign-commercial/97662

Trump MAGA ad (2024), Donald J. Trump, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OVOSIQOfpM

brett.tunechi, TikTok, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8j2mGua/

tpaction_, TikTok, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8j2SwVP/

yk000, TikTok, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8j2SPum/

mxwlch03, TikTok, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8j2Ajqx/

team.kamala_harris, TikTok, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8j2kggM/

historyeditz, TikTok, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8j2hNES/

1988 Election Night, Part 1, Dan Rather Journalist, https://danratherjournalist.org/political-analyst/election-coverage/1988-election/compilation-1988-election-night-materials/video.html

RuPaul’s Drag Race has been one of my favorite tv shows since middle school. I have always been in awe of the different queens’ abilities to explore fashion, humor, and performance. It is through the show that I was first introduced to what it means to be ‘camp.’ A concept I continued to be fascinated by through my freshman year writing 101, Bad Art. In this class, we read Susan Sontag’s iconic essay Notes on Camp, and discussed how viewing art through a camp lens allows us to find new meaning and appreciation to what high culture would view as bad or lacking in value. In this class, I was inspired by some of the ideas we explored when learning about radical play in thinking about how it connects to camp culture because they both incorporate playfulness as a way of commentary. I think these ideas as particularly expressed through drag, where engaging with camp serves as a rebellion to society’s cultural norms which are historically exclusionary to queer culture.

This exclusion is particularly seen through the actions of the Trump administration and the conservative agenda which seeks to eliminate LGBTQ+ language from books in school and stop the performances of Drag Queens across the country. However, this reality is somewhat ironic because many conservative politicians, like Trump, are somewhat camp figures and I argue are comparable to drag queens themselves. The theatricality of politics and performative nature of their inherently lends itself to camp culture. This inspired my remix project, Camp Figures, where my goal was to playfully point to how Trump’s actions are similar to that of drag queens through clips placing them in the same context.  In this way, I hoped to create a video that is both fun to watch, while still criticizing Trump and his actions. 

I began my remix with RuPaul explaining the definition of ‘Camp’ to Stephen Colbert because I thought this was a necessary contextualization considering it is a rather complex topic. In her essay, Notes on Camp, Susan Sontag explains how camp is “a sensibility that is as difficult to define as it is easy to identify.” This is something I particularly relate to because it is easy to point to something at camp, but the act of verbalizing why is always difficult. Even in Sontag’s essay, there are many instances where she contradicts herself. I wanted my video to be accessible to a wide variety of audiences, which is why I chose to try and make camp a more attainable and clear concept for viewers to grasp. 

To further demystify the confusing nature of camp, I chose to include three different Sontag quotes throughout the remix from Notes on Camp. While this essay has faced a lot of criticism since it was published in 1964, I think it is a necessary text to begin to understand what it means to be camp. I was mindful to choose quotes that I thought were easy to relate to the actions of Trump and the drag queens featured in the video. 

After RuPaul explains camp and the viewer sees the first Sontag quote, the remix features a series of drag queens strutting and posing down a runway to Rupaul’s song, Hustle that Cat. Then, at a dramatic moment in the music, a mysterious figure comes out from behind a curtain, only to reveal it is Donald Trump, who then struts down a carpet. I was purposeful to have Trump’s sudden emergence surprise the audience through having no clear context beforehand on what the video would be about. I thought this would contribute to the humor of the video and also would give the audience an aha moment, when they think back to RuPaul saying politicians should go to drag shows. I also thought the dramaticness of this reveal would contribute to the over the top campy editing style I tried to utilize to fit with my overall theme.   

After the reveal, begins a series of video clips that alternate between Donald Trump and drag queens from Rupaul’s Drag Race. All of the drag queen videos come from one video I found from the most current season of one of the runway challenges. I spliced the video into sections to show a variety of queens being silly and over the top as they strut down the runway in their elaborate costumes. In contrast, I searched tiktok and youtube for a variety of clips of Trump dramatically strutting and performing silly actions like when he solitarily gets off of an airplane or hugs and kisses an american flag. One of my favorite comparisons was my clip of a series of drag queens sipping from straws and then including a photo of Trump wide-eyed and funnily sipping diet coke. It is through these back and forth comparisons that I tried to convey that there are direct similarities to be found with Trump and Drag Queens. 

I also included a video I found from 2000 of Trump flirting with Rudy Giuliani in drag. This video helped emphasize that Trump himself is not that removed from drag because he has actively engaged with it. When this video came out, it served as a way of mocking women and queerness. However, in the context of the remix, where the clip is surrounded by other drag queens, the joke gets put on Trump and Giuliani as it further proves that they are like individuals they wish to be distanced from. 

In addition to the video clips, I also included a variety of Trump’s social media posts from X and Truth Social. I thought these were necessary to include because one of the ways Trump is most associated with being outrageous is through his posts on these platforms. It was easy to find lists online of some of the craziest and most outlandish tweets because he has posted so many. I tried to choose tweets that I thought were something I could see a queen saying on RuPaul’s Drag Race, but in that context the sentiment would have been completely performative. In the case of Trump, these tweets are also quite performative to his audience, but not in the same intentional way as the drag queens. 

The backing track to my remix is the song ‘Hustle that Cat’ which is a Rupaul song that is used as the runway song in the most recent season of RuPaul’s Drag Race.This made sense as the song because it is iconic to anyone who is a big fan of the tv show. In addition, the message of the song is about having ambition and working hard to achieve your goals, yet the lyrics argue that in order to achieve this success you must “put your whole kitty in it.” This language was particularly relevant because it speaks to harnessing one’s inherent femininity. Specifically in relation to Trump, I felt like the lyrics respond to what he said on the leaked Access Hollywood Tape. Through having Trump ‘strut and pose’ to this song, it demonstrates Trump playing into his femininity, this same femininity he feels entitled to taking advantage of in others. 

In the middle of the remix, I include a clip from Larry King’s show, where a famous drag queen explains how she and Trump have more in common than one would realize. This was one of quite  a few pieces of media I found where drag queens compare themselves to Trump. This was notable because while the drag community seems to find humor in the fact that Trump is somewhat like them, this remix would have outraged Trump. This speaks to the importance of camp in acting as a way for people to find meaning in the not serious and how humor and irony are methods of political statement. Trump himself  is not able to really understand how he acts as a camp figure, which on one hand makes him more camp, ​​but it also gives those who do engage with camp a unique way to critique him outside of his awareness.

In regards to breaking one of the rules, I broke rule #2 that states the source material must come from at least three distinct time periods. Technically, I did break rule #4 because upon completion I realized I used content from 3 different eras (1960s, 2000s, & 2020s), but I did this completely unintentionally. When I began my remix, I was mindful of breaking rule #2 because I believe Trump is very specific to our current cultural moment, so I wanted to mainly utilize content from the same time period. Also because my method of comparison of him and drag queens is already rather upfront, I didn’t want to overcomplicate my message by creating comparisons over time as well. 

A hesitation I had with my project is that it paints Trump as a joke, yet the realities of his administration remain deeply serious. I did not want the message to be that we do not have to be concerned about Trump’s policies because he engages in camp performance. Labeling Trump as ‘camp’ is not the solution for those of us who disagree with his administration, as camp is not designed to solve life’s problems. Instead, labeling Trump as camp reveals how the very subcultures his administration seeks to suppress find ironic empowerment in the fact that he, unwittingly, embodies aspects of them.

In this current day and age, when prompted with mentions of “contemporary cultural concern,” my thoughts gravitate toward technology. I’d like to think that this hack completes some sort of a technological trilogy in my previous hacks: my first hack addressed short-form content’s impact on attention spans; my second examined the exploitation of resources for technological advancement; and now this piece offers a reflection on technological evolution and the phenomenon of what I like to call “compressed time.”

I’ve attributed Gen Z’s fascination with the past to our position as “Digital Natives” – those who have grown up with technology and the internet as integral parts of our lives. Unlike previous generations who witnessed the gradual introduction of new technologies, we were born into an already-digital world that continues to accelerate at an unprecedented pace. This creates a unique paradox where we experience nostalgia for technologies that existed barely a decade ago.

This compressed nostalgia exists because our technological environment evolves at a pace never before experienced in human history. When devices or interfaces that defined our childhood become obsolete within 3-5 years rather than decades, nostalgia accelerates correspondingly. The traditional time required for something to become “vintage” or “retro” has collapsed for our generation. What once took 20-30 years to become nostalgic now takes a mere 5-10 years, creating a temporal dissonance unique to our generational experience.

Consider how rapidly the smartphone evolution occurred: from the revolutionary first iPhone (2007) to the refined iPhone 4 (2010) to the larger-screened iPhone 6 (2014). Each represented not just incremental improvements but distinct cultural moments. The original iPhone’s interface with its glossy buttons and realistic textures created an entirely different emotional response than the design introduced with iOS 7 in 2013. Apple’s iOS 6 featured realistic leather textures, paper fibers, and drop shadows that mimicked physical objects, while iOS 7 suddenly eliminated these in favor of minimalist, flat design principles. Microsoft made a similar leap from the dimensional Aero interface to the completely flat Metro UI in Windows 8. Yet both exist within the same compressed decade, each evoking its own form of nostalgia.

The implications of this compression create both challenges and opportunities for Digital Natives. Unlike Millennials who largely share memories of the same technologies spanning their childhood and adolescence, Gen Z’s technological memories vary dramatically even among those born just 3-4 years apart. A person born in 1997 might remember MySpace and Windows XP, while someone born in 2005 has never known a world without iPhones. This creates a sort of mini generational divide within Gen Z itself.

I have taken some time to reflect on potential positives of this. In particular, I believe that being a generation experiencing technological acceleration, we may be equipped to navigate the inevitable disruptions of the future. Perhaps our nostalgia for rapidly obsolete technologies isn’t trivial, but functions as a necessary emotional processing of constant change. We’ve developed a sort of resilience to technological evolution that previous generations had to acquire more gradually. When multiple “eras” of technology can exist within a single decade (from the iPod in 2003 to the Apple Watch in 2014), our very concept of what constitutes a historical period requires reconsideration. 

To explore this phenomenon, I deliberately focused my remix on a compressed time frame (2003-2014) that demonstrates how rapidly technology evolved during Gen Z’s formative years. By beginning with McCullough’s critique of Frutiger Aero nostalgia, I acknowledge skepticism about the legitimacy of Gen Z’s nostalgic impulses. His perspective represents an older generation’s view that our nostalgia is somehow less authentic because of its compressed timeframe.

The technology timeline that follows serves as my counterargument, employing what Virginia Kuhn calls “digital argument” – “using remixed elements to make claims and provide evidence.” By documenting the rapid succession of technological changes within this brief period, I demonstrate how our generation experienced multiple “eras” within a decade. Each technological shift represents not just a product release, but a distinct cultural moment with its own aesthetic language, behavioral norms, and emotional associations.

Kenneth Goldsmith’s concept of “textual ecosystem” helps explain our relationship with technological interfaces. Just as he observes that all digital media is ultimately composed of text-based code beneath its surface, our timeline reveals that seemingly superficial interface changes actually represent profound shifts in our digital experience. Each interface pattern functions as an environment of interaction that generates its own nostalgic response. This approach to remix allows me to construct what Goldsmith would call an “uncreative” perspective – one that reveals truth precisely by reframing existing material rather than generating original content. As he argues in “Uncreative Writing,” the most profound insights often come not from creating new material, but from reconfiguring what already exists. My work arranging these technologies across a compressed timeline creates meaning through context and arrangement rather than original creation.

I found the evolution within this technology timeline to be especially evident in UI design trends. The progression from Windows XP (2004) with its rounded buttons and nature imagery, to Vista’s (2007) translucent “Aero” design, to Windows 7’s (2009) refined transparency, to Windows 8’s (2012) radical flat tiles wasn’t merely aesthetic evolution. Each represented a fundamentally different “language” through which we interacted with technology, creating different emotional imprints and cultural associations.

These design languages reflect broader cultural shifts as well. The glossy, reflective surfaces of Vista’s Aero interface embodied early-2000s optimism about technology – transparent, impressive, but still somewhat separate from daily life. The “flattening” n in the early 2010s coincided with technology becoming more invisible, seamless, and integrated into every aspect of our lives. The interface became less about impressing the user and more about disappearing into the background of our lives.

Within my remix, I wanted to add to this evolution. I thought this would emphasize how “long ago” these bits of technology felt. I deliberately applied a film grain effect to the early footage that gradually lessens and eventually disappears as the timeline advances toward 2014. This visual technique serves as a metaphor for technological advancement – the “old” grainy footage giving way to the crisp, clean aesthetic of newer technologies. The evolution of the video itself mirrors the evolution of the technologies it documents, my editing style helping communicate the general message of the entire work.

I found that my relationship with technology provides an emotional foundation for this remix. I’ve always gauged time by the technologies present at different moments of my life – getting my first computer at age 7, receiving my iPhone 6s in 7th grade (2015), and upgrading to the iPhone SE2 in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. Because of how I gauge time, this project has forced me to examine whether my nostalgia is genuinely about the products and technologies themselves or about the developmental stages they represent. Perhaps I’m not nostalgic for Windows Vista’s button design so much as I’m nostalgic for the person I was when those interfaces framed my experiences.

This personal technological timeline exists within a broader context of accelerated obsolescence that shapes our entire generation’s relationship with the past. The rapid succession of devices, interfaces, and digital environments has created layers of technological memory that accumulate at unprecedented rates. Our generation doesn’t just experience nostalgia for distant childhood memories, but for the continuous parade of technological eras that have defined even our recent past.

When we express nostalgia for iOS 6’s skeuomorphic design or Windows Vista’s Aero interface, we’re not just fixating on superficial aesthetics. We’re also processing the emotional impact of constant technological disruption and transformation. Our nostalgia serves as a psychological mechanism for integrating these rapid changes into our sense of self and history.

By cataloging and arranging these technological markers, I’m engaging in what is Goldsmith’s “uncreative writing” – finding value not in originality but in selection, arrangement, and framing of existing materials. The juxtaposition allows me to make an argument about Gen Z nostalgia that would be impossible through traditional creative expression alone. Through this remix, I hope to validate the authenticity of “compressed time” and nostalgia, while exploring its characteristics in our accelerated digital age.

I’ve concluded that our nostalgia isn’t a shallow or premature response to recent technologies, but a necessary adaptation to technological acceleration. By acknowledging and examining this phenomenon, we gain insight not just into our relationship with specific technologies but into how technology shapes our very experience of time, memory, and generational identity in the digital age.

Ideally, I would have tied in the advancements in AI, and how the increase in ability for these AI systems has been exponential. However, I wasn’t quite sure how to add this into the video as I was focused much more on hardware and design, and not so much the ability of a chatting interface. This may be something to explore outside of the class though, looking at how AI will affect younger generations in the long run.

Find the hack here or watch below.

References:

Gillis, Alexander S. “Digital Native.” TechTarget, 8 Dec. 2020, https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/digital-native.

Goldsmith, Kenneth. Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age. Columbia University Press, 2011.

Kuhn, Virginia. “The Rhetoric of Remix.” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 9, 15 Mar. 2012, https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2012.0358.

“Where words fail, music speaks”

– Hans Christan Andersen, 19th century Danish author

Music has, and will always be, the medium that represents the human condition and innate creativity. While other creative mediums certainly allow self expression and representation, music remains special for its ability to move emotions beyond visual practices. Whether through rich oral traditions like Griots or through angsty breakup-pop songs, music creates a platform that allows those who listen to participate firsthand in the feelings, emotions, and experiences of an artist. Thus, music has been used for generations to advocate for groups, allowing voices to be heard and stories to be told. 

For my Hack #4: Remix, I tapped into this inherent quality of music to create a product that pays homage to legendary songs of advocacy throughout different time periods. By using Logic Pro, a digital audio workstation, I combined and remixed the tracks “What’s Going On” (1971) by Marvin Gaye, “This is America” (2018) by Childish Gambino / Donald Glover, and “Water No Get Enemy” (1975) by Fela Kuti. These three songs all share a common theme of using music as a way of fighting oppression and injustice caused by institutionalized racism, prejudice, and government corruption. It is important to note that despite their different time periods, historical contexts, genres, and styles, music gave these artists a platform to spread awareness and advocate for the oppressed. 

In 1971, Marvin Gaye, one of the most influential and important musical figures of history for his contributions to Motown and Soul, released arguably his most important project, What’s Going On. The album instantly gained attraction for its heart-wrenching melodies, applicable lyrics, and emotional grip, giving it both commercial and critical attention. The title track (by the same name) was mostly responsible for this overwhelming success. It topped the Hot Soul Singles chart for five consecutive weeks, remained at number two on Billboard Hot 100, and was ranked number four on the Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time magazine in 2004. What mainly inspired this single (and project as a whole) was through an experience with police brutality in People’s Park (Berkeley, California). On May 15th, 1969, Renaldo “Obie” Benson, a member of the Motown group, the Four Tops, encountered police brutality against anti-war activists who were holding a protest for the Vietnam War. Struck and bothered by what he saw, Benson wrote and composed a song about love and understanding in response, which he then presented to Marvin Gaye. Gaye then altered the song, adding new lyrics and melodies, forming it into a narrative rather than simply another musical track. Eventually, the track became just as monumental to Gaye as he had been inspired to advocate against war and hatred upon hearing emotional stories from his brother Frankie Gaye, who had served three years during the Vietnam War. Some lyrics that reflect these feelings include:

“You see, war is not the answer

For only love can conquer hate

You know we’ve got to find a way

To bring some lovin’ here today

Picket lines and picket signs

Don’t punish me with brutality”

Similarly, “This is America” by Childish Gambino uses tactics of music and art to advocate against hate and societal inequalities. In 2018, Childish Gambino, or Donald Glover, released this gripping single alongside one of pop culture’s most famous music videos. Both the single and the music video gained instant traction with over 12 million views / listens in the first 24 hours and over 950 millions views to date. It won all four of its nominations at the 61st annual Grammys: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Rap Performance, and Best Music Video. Its popularity was not only due to its catchy rhythms, melodies, and bassy instrumental, but its reflections on the Black Lives Matter Movement, systemic racism, racial prejudice and injustice, gun violence, and the Black Experience. While lyrics like, “police be trippin’ now” or “guns in my area” explicitly offer Glover’s stance on these societal issues and his purpose of artistry, “This is America’s” music video offers a far richer commentary on the Black Experience in America. The music video has also been analyzed by countless scholars on institutional levels (even here at Davidson, FMS220), to unveil its depictions of historical inequality. From the allusions to Jim Crow caricatures, the 2015 Charleston Church Shooting, and even South African dances, Gambino relies on artistic musical and visual choices to deliver powerful commentaries on racism and prejudice within America. 

Finally, Fela Kuti’s afrobeats track, “Water No Get Enemy,” also uses music and artistry to fight against systematic oppression and discrimination. Afrobeats is a genre originating from Nigeria in the 60s and 70s that features a blend of West African music with American jazz and funk. It emerged primarily through Fela Kuti, a crucial figure for the genre’s historical, social, and musical importance. Oftentimes, Kuti used his music to criticize and advocate against the Nigerian military dictatorship during the 70s, using Afrobeats as “a form of resistance” against pervasive norms, government structures, and colonial brainwashing. Through the genre’s blend of traditional Yoruba music (specific West African styles and rhythms), afrobeats relies on syncopated rhythms and complex percussive elements to act as method of self expression and storytelling. “Water No Get Enemy,” one of Fela Kuti’s most famous tracks, was released in 1975 in response to controversial actions regarding clean water sources. Alternatively translated to “water has no enemy,” the song is based on a Yoruba proverb that advises living in harmony with nature. Through the lyrics, the song claims that water, since it is an essential part of life, has no enemies; it is the basis of all life and provides sustenance to every corner of the earth. Kuti, however, is arguing that humans have become the enemy of water, polluting its sources, limiting availability, and destroying the harmonies of nature. By using jazz-inspired structures and methods of improvisation, Kuti (and the other musicians in the recording) freely advocate and criticize the systems that perpetuate the antagonization of water through music. 

With this historical context of each song, my Hack #4: Remix exhibits the ways in which music has been used to advocate for or against a purpose larger than itself. By using intentional choices like resampling, chopping, splicing, stem-splitting, and MIDI recording, I combined each track to tell a new story of how music has and will always be used as a powerful voice for society. 

Firstly, I used Logic Pro’s time warping ability to match the tempo of every audio track. Luckily, “What’s Going On,” “This is America,” and “Water No Get Enemy” are relatively around the same tempo, so time stretching and altering tempo wasn’t an issue. I then used the stem splitting ability in Logic for each track, which allowed me to isolate the vocals, drums, bass, and other musical elements of the song. Using this feature allowed me to blend the different parts of each song in a fluid, clean way. After each track was ready, I decided to juxtapose the smooth, orchestral instrumental of “What’s Going On” with the energetic vocals and trap inspired drums of “This is America.” This juxtaposition created an engaging product that thus recontextualized the meanings of each song. I also resampled vocal sections of “This is America” further emphasizing this idea of recontextualization and storytelling. I then combined a 4 bar looping instrumental section of “Water No Get Enemy” with vocal samples from both “What’s Going On” and “This is America.” “Water No Get Enemy” is in the key of D minor while “What’s Going On” is in the key of E major, so I had to transpose “What’s Going On” up by one semitone so they could fit together. Finally, I concluded the remix with my own recording of a neo-jazz, funk piano solo. I thought that adding my own language and voice in the form of a jazz inspired solo paid homage to the idea of music being a form of free expression for all. In conclusion, my Hack #4 combines these three very different, yet similar for their purpose in the context of societal contribution, songs to depict how music acts as a form of advocacy and voice. 

I broke rule #2

Credits:

Marvin Gaye, Al Cleveland, Renaldo Benson. “What’s Going On” (1971), Tamala.

Donald Glover, Ludwig Göransson, Jeffery Lamar Williams. “This Is America” (2018), RCA.

Fela Kuti. “Water No Get Enemy” (1975), Knitting Factory Records.