Capturing Voice, Distilling Truth

I will have to admit one of my favorite things in the world right now is You Tube. Why not. Instant videos where you can search and find clips of your favorite band from 1988 but we're not able to see because they broke up before they came to your area. (For me this was the influential Rites of Spring of D.C. Hardcore scene). Or how about video clips of "The Wire" and the infamous line made famous by dirty politician Clay Davis? Brilliant.

Of course with all new Web 2.0 technologies there are negative points and silliness that is pervasive. But one aspect of You Tube and its popularity has been the development of people as video writers and directors of their own film. This does provide an area where people can make non-sensical or immature films (i.e. the collections of video capturing people sleeping and snoring).

On the positive side, You Tube, or any video casting for that matter, has become an arena where everyday folks can express their ideas about current events, politics or their own personal lives. This idea of anyone producing video clips for mass consumption must keep the board of directors of major media corporations up at night. So much so that they have to produce their own movie clips on You Tube for promotional purposes.

The combination of voices going unheard, a Do It Yourself (DIY) mentally and the access that new software programs like iMovie have created new voices that can no longer be ignored. In their article, "A Teacher's Use of Digital Video with Urban Middle School Students: Expanding Definitions of Representational Literacy, the authors' call this new practice a "representational literacy" or "a vehicle for adolescents to represent themselves and publish their identities."

While true about the identities I think that people are also using these videos and broadcasting on the web to publish the truth that they see and that is not seen on corporate run television news for that matter. This potential can possibly lead to potential future movements against racism, sexism or even capitalism.

This is true with two of the videos that I saw at the Media That Matters, "Right on the Line: Vigilantes on the Border" and "Superstar". "Rights on the Line" exposes the trenches in the current debate about immigration. On the one hand, the lives of the workers who risk their lives to come to the United States to work for their families and the vigilante racists who pursue them because of "national security reasons" or the whole idea that immigrant labor is taking away the jobs of the native-born workers. The voices you here are from the actual workers who have been captured by these vigilantes; voices that you never hear while Lou Dobbs is cranking out hate with other liberal politicians on CNN or other news programs.

In "Superstar", Naiquan Green's records the personal and historical plight of his family through his grandmother through his mother and through his father as he himself tries to find his way in life. In doing this, from this singularly personal story through multiple voices, Greene gives a short snapshot into the plight of the majority of African-American workers living in the United States for the last hundred years. This is not the stories you hear on the 11 o'clock news about a family struggling and overcoming set backs and just living and trying to provide the best for their son or grandson. The mother's line pertaining to when asked if she is happy at her telecommunications customer service agent job, "Happiness is not something I would say . . . in regards to it." Giving a voice to millions of workers who aren't doing jobs that they love but are doing jobs to survive.

These videos are changing the landscape of what not only is literacy but what we accept as truth from the use of videos to take control of how people are represented vis á vis how they are represented in society. Thus the representational literacy that Beike and Stuve talk about can be a method of teaching and understanding the world we live in as well as one that we can give back by showing it on a handheld camcorder.

Beilke, J.R. and Stuve, Matthew J. (2004). "A Teacher’s Use of Digital Video with Urban Middle Schools Students: Expanding Definitions of Representational Literacy." The Teacher Educator. Vol. 39, no 3. Winter