Original Upload Date of Plinkett Star Wars
Dan Hassler-Wood
The video marked the eagerly awaited return of a graphic symbol and a form that had pioneered the art of videographic film criticism a good half-decade earlier. With its series of elaborately produced, ambitiously framed, and richly layered series of lengthy video reviews, independent pic visitor Red Letter of the alphabet Media established its reputation with its 2009 "Mr. Plinkett" video review of The Phantom Menace. Released as a series of vii YouTube videos – the sharing platform at the time non allowing for segments over ten minutes long – the grapheme'due south epic takedown of the notoriously unpopular kickoff prequel film speedily became a geek civilization phenomenon, with celebrity endorsements from figures such as Damon Lindelof adding to its rapid circulation amid Star Wars fans and more widely within the growing geek civilization of Web 2.0 and social media.
This stunningly aggressive video critique of the ten-year-erstwhile prequel film ran completely confronting the ascendant logic of spreadable media: it was most lxx minutes long, where online videos tend to exist brief and byte-sized; it voiced criticism that was meticulously argued and illustrated, where so many vlogs have been mostly dedicated to unstructured and often emotional first-person rants; and it was securely cocky-enlightened and self-critical of fan culture's obsessive investment in popular culture, and its unhealthy, even pathological public image.
As a geek-oriented video essay that plays like a Star Wars-era adaptation of Nabokov's metatextual masterpiece Stake Burn, the Phantom Menace review married the linguistic communication of geek culture to the visual logic and aesthetic annals of the essay film, yielding a text that is constantly in the procedure of deconstructing not only its main object of analysis, only also its main character and narrator, and, ultimately, itself. Just as online fandom had been transitioning from a subcultural grade to a more visible, more "mainstream" facet of 21st-century convergence culture, the Mr. Plinkett reviews both acknowledged and parodied this tenacious stereotype of excessive fandom.
For the uninitiated: Mr. Plinkett is a character played past Mike Stoklasa, a Milwaukee-based filmmaker, actor, and lifelong Star Wars fan. After a few previous appearances in other Red Letter Media video productions, Plinkett became something of a cult phenomenon post-obit the viral success of his first Star Wars review. As its narrator, Mr. Plinkett is near as much the subject of the video essay as the film he and so mercilessly dissects: his sharply organized, clearly argued, and vividly illustrated analysis of the kickoff prequel film is also constantly undermined by constant verbal slips, tics, and "accidental" reveals of the grapheme'southward ain obsessive-compulsive, misogynistic, and even psychopathic tendencies.
As a performance of a detail blazon of fan stereotype, Mr. Plinkett plays into many common representations of fandom: his slurred delivery and deliberately off-putting speaking voice is far removed from the professionalism of mainstream picture criticism; his intricate noesis of the very films he criticizes demonstrates fandom's "unhealthy," pathological investment in pop civilization trivia; and the disgusting murder-rape basement setting from which the essay is narrated both acknowledges and satirizes preconceptions virtually fandom every bit being associated primarily with calumniating men lurking in creepy basements.
The first Star Wars review was followed by fifty-fifty more elaborate video reviews of the other two prequels, as well as downloadable sound commentary tracks, video reviews of variousStar Trekfilms, and the ongoing spider web seriesHalf in the Bag, in which Stoklasa plays a somewhat more well-adapted VCR repairman who reviews recent film releases with a colleague. But while the viral popularity of the Mr. Plinkett videos from 2009–2011 provides a fascinating illustration of fan culture in transition, his recent return to a genre that his video helped popularize also reflects uncomfortably on agonizing trends in online fandom and mashup culture.
On the one hand, the stereotype of the fan as a socially inept obsessive-compulsive living his life in a state of arrested development has in recent years appeared to exist difficult to maintain in the gimmicky cultural loonshit: once-nerdy fantastic franchises, from superhero series to fantasy epics and space operas, are no longer the domain of male-axial niche cultures, merely fully dominate the cultural conversation. And most of these popular transmedia storyworlds, including Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, have successfully rebranded themselves in the Disney era as franchises that are diverse, inclusive, and respectful of fandom's history and transmedial nature.
Simply at the same time, we have too seen a troubling resurgence of toxic masculinity within online fan civilization. While the growing academic field of fan studies has approached fandom as a transformative customs that is inherently progressive, reactionary phenomena similar GamerGate, the Sad Puppies, and the "#boycottStarWars" hashtag movement suggest that racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, and white supremacy are gaining ground within global fan civilisation. Concentrated and organized via MRA groups, extremist "alt-right" organizations like Breitbart and Infowars, and online platforms similar 4chan and 8chan, this vocal community has been emboldened by the recent Trump victory in the US elections.
While this growing faction of neo-fascist fandom shares some of Mr. Plinkett's characteristics, it besides clearly represents a new strain of toxic masculinity that is far removed from this "out-of-touch on basement-dweller" classic. These groups are completely at dwelling house within digital civilization, and take pushed back violently confronting progressive developments within popular entertainment, harassing women and "SJWs" on social media, and describing TFA'south more diverse cast equally a course of "white genocide." Mr. Plinkett therefore no longer seems to function equally a relevant template for contemporary fandom. While the prequel reviews drew so much of their appeal from their indictment of cultural texts that were hopelessly out of touch with their cultural context, it is now ironic to detect that the grapheme of Mr. Plinkett has become a satirical effigy that is poorly attuned to our times, doubling down on a portrait of pathological fandom that has already mutated into a new, far more dangerous strain. Today, nosotros need to learn to recognize and understand these new forms of online fan civilisation that are mobilizing nether the neo-fascist "alt-right" banner in the Trump era.
Bio: d r. Dan Hassler-Forest, Assistant Professor of Cultural Theory and Zombies, Dept. of Media and Civilization Studies, Utrecht Academy, The Netherlands: D.A.Hassler-Forest@uu.nl
Source: https://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-12/mr-plinkett-and-21st-century-star-wars-fandom/
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