Ballet at BART
Two years ago I wrote about the shooting of Oscar Grant as an example of the way that police brutality videos shot by cell phones circulate through both broadcast news and YouTube. This video adopts a different series of generic conventions that draw viewers who watch either vernacular dancing videos or "improv everywhere" style clips.
The filmmakers also make an interesting decision in choosing not to incorporate footage of the actual shooting of Grant at the Fruitvale BART station or depict anything other than a highly stylized representation of the event. Unlike many of the human rights remixes that Sam Gregory and I will be talking about in our DML workshop Thursday that use gory images of graphic violence, those who memorialize Grant in this case do so in a highly abstracted hip hop ballet.
Labels: human rights, urbanism
posted by Liz Losh at 5:25 PM
1 Comments:
Liz: Interestingly, I thin this amazing video works in ways quite similar to the video by VJ Um Amel that I am quoted on elsewhere in your blog. When we've seen so much viral violence some eloquence, abstraction, affect, and metaphor can go a long way to help us think and feel.
Post a Comment
<< Home