Sunday, October 10, 2010

Pirates. Drugs. Gay Marriage. - Everything's Funnier with TPain.

In chapter 8 our text book spends a short bit of time explaining that many people use media for entertainment. I was surprised to read that we shouldn't make a sharp distinction between "fun media" and "serious stuff". And while I do partly agree with this, it's also quite obvious that we won’t be able to get anywhere in life if we spend all our time watching TV and surfing the web. But I then started thinking about different ways to mesh these two categories together. Even though the book is talking about taking fun more seriously, I personally think it would be more productive to approach serious subject matter with a less severe perspective.
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The example I thought of is called "Auto-Tune the News". For those of you who are familiar with the musical artist TPain, this is basically a couple of guys infusing TPain's voice generator with the news to make a melodic and comedic YouTube video.
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Basically these guys take what I consider fairly mundane and dry news reports of important happenings around the world (although it's more specific to the US) and make it more enjoyable (actually much more enjoyable) to watch. The videos are hilarious. 
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This is a perfect example of how you can infuse the entertainment aspect that we all value (especially our generation today) and merging it with the "serious stuff that really matters". I personally would love it if there was a news channel on TV that had all of their news reports in this format. 


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5 comments:

  1. Jose Carlos FormosoOctober 12, 2010 at 9:03 AM

    I agree with you, I would like to see a news channel like this. The problem would be that most people specially older people would not find it as interesting as our generation. Some might even find it disrespectful or a waste of time.

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  2. Matt WilliamsOctober 12, 2010 at 11:19 AM

    I think Auto-tune is hilarious as well and especially in the last few years, it has become a part of mainstream culture. The bedroom intruder video, which is probably the most well know auto tune video these days, has become viral. Its a perfect example of how generation y is evolving news to be more entertaining. Shows like the colbert report and the daily show with jon stewart are also examples of how the news is becoming a lot lighter and younger.

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  3. Christina HawkesOctober 12, 2010 at 3:38 PM

    This is a great topic allie and I agree with matt about colbert and jon stewart, their humor is intelligent which makes it addictive to watch and hard to ignore becuase although they are making fun of the news, they are doing it with fact and making us be active audiences because we are forced to interpret what they say as legitimate or not.

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  4. WilsonOctober 12, 2010 at 8:04 PM

    Very interesting point. I also agree with you that I was surprised to see that the book thought fun and serious media could mix. But as you've pointed out, it is true. I loved your example. I had never heard of Auto-tune and I'm glad you shared it with the class! Great thoughts :)

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  5. maryFREAKINGhalpinOctober 18, 2010 at 11:14 AM

    Allie I think this is absolutely hilarious. If it wasn't as hard to understand, I would suggest all news programs switch to autotune! :]

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