EXAMPLES | cccc2013

Examples of Student-Created Remediations and Remixes

Below are examples of eight student-created remediations and remixes. Although students have the option to create a non-digital remediation or remix, the examples below are digital only. To access them, click the respective number to the left. To the right, you’ll find the title of the project and a synopsis of it.

Breaking Bad Stereotypes

This Tumblr page hosts a set of memes, each of which works to highlight stereotypes about Hispanics that are perpetuated, explicitly or tacitly, by the popular AMC television show Breaking Bad. Aside from the clever title, this remediation is particularly impressive because of the amount of attention it received: many of the memes were re-blogged, and one in particular generated a contentious discussion about racial depictions, which prompted the author to deviate from her typical posting practices and write a response justifying and contextualizing the memes. Although the author admits she’s a fan of the show, she also states that she isn’t oblivious to the pejorative ways Hispanics are represented and raises the question of whether such representations are intentional or not.

A Softer Homework

This Tumblr page contains a set of comics modeled after A Softer World, an online comic since 2003. This subgenre of the comic includes three panels. An image might be spread across two or all three panels or the same image might be used for each or a set of panels, just zoomed in and cropped in different ways. These images are accompanied by written text, which de- and re-contextualizes the images in a different, often dark and sardonic, fashion. This remediation was created in homage of the original A Softer World comics and in order to provide entertainment and amusement for those familiar with the subgenre.

Advice for Surviving College

This Tumblr provides advice for incoming and current college students. The advice is provided not only through writing but also through memes and .gifs that include images from popular movies (at least popular amongst college students, the primary audience). While some of the memes and .gifs include what some might consider crass language, such language is meant to provide humor and is appropriate for her audience; what’s more, the corresponding writing does provide earnest advice spoken from a source of experience. This is a common form of remediation, and as a form of writing, it’s a way for this generation to comment on and make sense of their day-to-day lives.

Pinkman Poetry

This blog contains poetry written from the perspective of Jesse Pinkman, a character from the popular AMC television show Breaking Bad. The exigence for this remediation was fans’ desire for additional, different content based on the show while it was in-between seasons.

Endangered Parking Spaces

This YouTube video is a parody of the popular ASPCA commercial featuring Sarah McLachlan. Rather than raise awareness about animal cruelty, this video highlights and satirizes a common complaint amongst students at Florida State: there’s a lack of student parking.

Karina Hennigs’ Playlist

This YouTube playlist is of Karina Hennigs, a student and aspiring musician, playing covers of some of her favorite songs. This is a practice Karina was engaging in prior to the assignment, but she created and uploaded an additional set of covers particularly for this project. Karina not only sings but also plays guitar and piano. Karina is well acquainted with both the ways cover songs may violate copyright and the licensing agreement YouTube has struck with music companies to allow this online practice to continue.

Trending Tees

This webpage allows one to purchase remediated t-shirts based off the YouTube video of Navy students performing the popular PSY dance Gangnam Style. Put another way, this is a remediation of a remediation. The author’s boyfriend was one of the Navy students performing in the video, and given the popularity of the video amongst Navy students, the author decided to create a set of shirts memorializing the video. The shirts, though made for a select few, became quite popular, and as a result, she created this webpage to sell additional ones.

The Grand Isle Gazette

This webpage contains a fictionalized gossip column based off Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. This remediation is intended to act as supplementary material for students reading the book. The webpage, through the genre of the gossip column, reiterates many of the important plot points and developments; in addition, and more impressively, it carries forward the feminist themes present in the novel by adopting a voice and rhetoric that reifies the patriarchy and ideology that surrounded Edna Pontellier and spurred the “radical” actions detailed in the narrative.