So I finally downloaded the free PDF of Lawrence Lessig’s book “Remix” from the internet archive, something I had been meaning to do ever since his interview on the Colbert Report which lead to a series of remix videos. I was surprised and excited to find that he talks about one of my remixed commercials poking fun at the fox news channel. Here is an excerpt:
My favorites among the remixes I’ve seen are all cases in which the mix delivers a message more powerfully than any original alone could, and certainly more than words alone could. For example, a remix by Jonathan McIntosh begins with a scene from The Matrix, in which Agent Smith asks, “Do you ever get the feeling you’re living in a virtual reality dream world? Fabricated to enslave your mind?” The scene then fades to a series of unbelievable war images from the Fox News Channel— a news organization that arguably makes people less aware of the facts than they were before watching it. Toward the end, the standard announcer voice says, “But there is another sound: the sound of good will.” On the screen is an image of Geraldo Rivera, somewhere in Afghanistan. For about four seconds, he stands there silently, with the wind rushing in the background. (I can always measure the quickness of my audience by how long it takes for people to get the joke: “the sound of good will” = silence). The clip closes with a fast series of cuts to more Fox images, and then a final clip from an ad for the fi lm that opened McIntosh’s remix: “The Matrix Has You.” — Remix by Lawrence Lessig (page 71)
Here is the original remix I made back in 2003.
