Trek Wars

        Our project this week was a Webspinna battle involving several well-known scenes from both the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises. Since this style restricted the use of presenting video, our content solely relied on the use of audio to communicate each advance in the 'battle.' This style produced a form mixed with our own choreography to match each scene. Thus, we created something new, based on the foundation of something familiar.
          The Webspinna battle activity related directly to this week's reading specifically on the note of Jonathan Lethem's explanation of plagiarism. In his essay Lethem explains that “literature has been in a plundered, fragmentary state or a long time.” To this effect, people have been using and re-adapting archetypal themes for centuries. In one case, mentioned in the essay, William S. Burroughs incorporated several “snippets” of other authors' works into his own book titled Naked Lunch. Lethem explains that while at first glance many would have considered this an action of plagiarism, Burroughs does not. As Lethem details in his essay, there are many famous, replayed and reused themes that exist in space. Many of these are so well known, and so often alluded to that we have accepted theses repeats without the judgmental finger of plagiarism. In a similar aspect, our particular Webspinna performance was based on these types of familiar and instantly recognizable clips. Many of the clips we used have become part of our culture. This brings up the question: was using them then plagiarism? As Lethem states with Burroughs, we too were simply “interrogating the universe with scissors and a paste pot” to create something new and exciting out of something old and familiar.
          Memes can be viewed as the visual form of a Webspinna Battle. Some memes take images from well-known movies and their stars and edit them for comic effect. For example, soon after The Avengers and other various Marvel movies were released, several memes appeared and went viral on the Internet. To anyone who is not familiar with the world, these memes would not make any sense. Just as with our performance, there needs to be a familiarity with the subjects for the joke to be funny. One particular meme counts on the viewer knowing the Daft Punk song “Get Lucky,” as well as the Avengers world, for the joke to make sense. This is what makes the meme funny. The same follows for the Webspinna Battle: this prior familiarity with the sounds is what makes the new form fun and interesting.
         The form and the content of this assignment were particularly well suited to each other. In the case of Star Wars and Star Trek, many of the most recognizable features are quotes; these are very easy to share verbally. Since this was an audial battle, the various quotes and scenes were easy for the audience to identify, such as “Live long and prosper.” Therefore, this assignment's success was based on our success of “cutting and pasting” well known content, and presenting it in a form that the audience would be able to understand.