Did you get a chance to see “Buffy vs Edward: Twilight remixed“? It was recently nominated for a Webby! And it might be the only feminist anything that is nominated at all this year, which is why I think it’s so important that it wins the people’s choice award for best remix/mashup video! Currently it’s only in third place and it needs a big boost of votes to bring it to first.

There are only a few days left (voting ends on April 29th) and it only takes a few minutes to vote on the Webby YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/webby?x=remixmashup

Click here to view the embedded video.

This remix was inspired by Sloane’s “Star Trek Dance Floor“

It is no secret that most video games star overly muscular men often carrying big swords, guns, baseball bats, chainsaws and other phallic weaponry. Many of these games normalize a macho masculinity and glorify war and the military.  They especially celebrate grotesque displays of violence. Few popular games provide any opportunity for creative non-violent forms of conflict resolution and with the ever growing graphic technology, the blood and gore seem to look more and more real.  And now with first person shooter games, players can really experience the destruction and gore up close and personal.

Not only are these games dominated by male characters but even the few women characters who get staring roles are replicating the overly patriarchal, violent, macho behaviour all wrapped up in a hyper sexualized body.  Not surprisingly the vast majority of game producers, designers and writers are men.

To put it simply, there are too many dicks on the dance floor!

***Note: there are two games in this video that I offer as improvements of the more traditional games I’m critiquing.  A clip of Portal appears during the line “Easy to Fix” and it is a game of non violent conflict resolution where the protagonist is a woman although you hardly see her during the game.  On the lyric “Not Enough Sisters” there is an image of the protagonist from Mirror’s Edge which stars a woman in a dystopian future who is not hypersexualized.

Thanks to Becca Marcus and Laura Shapiro for beta-viewing and also Jonathan McIntosh for his meticulously detailed suggestions throughout the creation process.

List of Games Under the Cut

List of games in order of appearance:

Halo 3
Assassin’s Creed 2
Alien vs. Predator
Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty 4
Modern Warfare 2
Soul Caliber Broken Destiny
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Bayonetta
Call of Duty 4
Devil May Cry 4
Resident Evil 5
Halo 3
Postal 2
Halo 3
Grand Theft Auto IV
Lego Universe
Army of Two
GTA IV: Princess Robot Bubblegum
Assassin’s Creed
GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony
Gears of War 2
Left 4 Dead 2
Bayonetta
Soul Caliber 4
Prince of Persia
Perfect Dark Zero
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2
Star Trek Online
Splinter Cell Conviction
Call of Duty 4
Dead Rising 2
Tekken 6
Portal
DJ Hero
XMen Origins: Wolverine
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Modern Warfare 2
Heavenly Sword
Dead Rising 2 Multiplayer
Star Wars: The Old Republic
GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony
DJ Hero
Vampire Rain
Mirror’s Edge
Wolfenstein
Bio Shock 2
Gears of War 2
Uncharted 2
Tekken 6
Dead Rising 2
Grand Theft Auto IV
GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony
Devil May Cry 4
Left 4 Dead 2

Click here to view the embedded video.

This remix is just what I’ve been wanting – death to Edward Cullin!  I might be a little biased because I was a consultant on this project but I think it turned out wonderfully.  It is a meticulously crafted discussion about the disturbing and unacceptable behaviour of Edward Cullin.  Where in Twilight his controlling and stalkerish ways are celebrated as romantic, in this reimagined narrative, using the empowered yet complicated character of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jonathan McIntosh demonstrates an alternative way of looking at Edward’s character.

I find the Twilight series to be the antithesis of anything feminist from the over dominating, stalking (and murdering) boyfriend to the disempowered female protagonist.

In this re-imagined narrative, Edward Cullen from the Twilight Series meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s an example of transformative storytelling serving as a pro-feminist visual critique of Edward’s character and generally creepy behavior. Seen through Buffy’s eyes, some of the more sexist gender roles and patriarchal Hollywood themes embedded in the Twilight saga are exposed – in hilarious ways. Ultimately this remix is about more than a decisive showdown between the slayer and the sparkly vampire. It also doubles as a metaphor for the ongoing battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century. — This transformative work constitutes a fair-use of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US copyright law. The remix is licensed under a creative commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 license.

Read an article from Jonathan McIntosh about why he made “Buffy vs Edward” at WIMN Voices where he discusses his pro-feminist interpretation of Twilight and also gives a big shout out to the vidding community which was a primary influence in making this video.  His other remixes can be seen on his blog at www.rebelliouspixels.com