Mashup

Mashuppppp

My mashup mixes images from Nicki Minaj’s “Knockout” music video (ft. Lil Wayne) with images from a classic boxing match between Thomas Hearns and Angel Espada, and the song is a (decidedly choppy) edit I made of “Down Home Girl” by Old Crow Medicine Show.

I was initially interested in exploring of the sources of eroticism or sexual explicitness in different genres of music (Hip-hop/pop/rap and country/bluegrass). Although hip-hop and rap is often criticized for encouraging violence and misogyny (among other things), after listening to this particular song by Old Crow Medicine Show repeatedly, I was surprised by the overwhelmingly sexual undertones that pervade much of the song in very strange and obscure ways (not only are the lyrics strangely erotic, but the slow, grinding rhythm is itself of a very sexual nature.) Having listened to a lot of hip-hop (especially Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj), I came to the conclusion that although Lil Wayne’s lyrics are typically overtly explicit and over-the-top, none of his songs came anywhere near “Down Home Girl” in terms of its quiet, (fascinating, delightful) “filthiness.”

So I set out to simply overlay the most sexual elements of each song on top of each other--the “sexy” images of Nicki Minaj’s dancing and general presence vs. the surprising seductiveness of Old Crow Medicine Show’s music--offering the suggestion that the explicit might perhaps be more an abstraction of perception rather than an inherent element of any one thing (like music genre, for example) in particular.

But as I began piecing the video together, I became more and more interested in the concept of the “knockout” (the characterization of an attractive girl as a “knockout”) and the violent undertones of the term that are often forgotten about, and I started to wonder about the ways in which this violence (“hidden” in the language that we use to discuss sexual/romantic topics) might affect society’s perception of the relationship between romance (or sex) and violence.

So I spliced in another set of images from an older boxing match, which changes the context of the surrounding images, encouraging the viewer to consider the relationship between each image and what implications that relationship might have on our cultural understanding of sexuality and violence as well as the ways in which this affects the media’s treatment/portrayal of these topics.

For this video, I was more interested in exploring relationships rather than determining causality or judging the “value” implied by conclusions that might be drawn (I want to avoid saying simply that “violence is bad” or “sexuality in the media is bad,” because I feel the situation is more complicated than that, and these judgments may not always be the most helpful attitudes), so I think that the video is largely open to interpretation by the viewer.

It can be viewed as an indictment of the implicit connection between violence and sex in media (e.g. as the song progresses, the images of violence begin to gradually dominate the video, forcing the “Nicki segments” to fight for attention by “upping the (sexual) ante” to compete for screen time before the video collapses in on itself in a chaotic conclusion), or it could be viewed as an abstract narrative, exploring the inner workings of a boxer (or anyone engaged in violent physical or mental conflict) as the mind succumbs to the “beating” and thoughts become more and more fragmented, latching onto random images (in this case, a pretty girl) before losing consciousness.

In regards to fair use, I think each element is significantly altered and placed within a new context that transforms the original content, forcing the viewer to examine it in a new light, and the video has the ability to serve as social commentary if the viewer seeks to pursue that line of interpretation. I also feel that I used an “amount” of material appropriate to my goal, and the finished project does not simply echo the intent of each piece of original media.