infobong.com

The other day bOINGbOING posted a link to this TV clip of The Boxtops lip-synching their 1967 hit "The Letter." Alex Chilton and the rest of the band are clearly unexcited about the promotional appearance and do a lousy job of matching their motions to the record. To throw out some B.S. theorizing, the creators of a media text have become trapped in their own creation - they are pnly on TV to complement the record, rather than perform as musicians. They seem aware of their subservient status to the fixed text.

Watching this nearly 40 years later, it's hard to ignore the textiness of this clip. I watch it on the Web in a low-res video file, which was captured from an analog tape. The clip includes a substantial flaw in the tape - the video breaks up and the audio slows down then returns to "good" video - calling attention to the analog medium. (I presume this is an nth-generation dub from an master tape that had been trading among a fan community.) Finally, in the source material itself, the band is only there to act out the music on the single - the TV show is replaying another text.

In addition to all of these layers of mediation, Chilton's status as a cult figure adds another layer of meaning that would have been unavailable to a viewer in 1967. My mom would recognize "The Letter" on the radio, but she would have no knowledge of Alex Chilton or of Big Star. (She might recognize "In the Street" as the theme song of "That 70s Show.") Regardless, Chilton's cult status is certainly responsible for the presence of this clip on the Web - for this tape to circulate, it requires dedicated fans to care to make dubs of the tape and keep them. Treating the Web-video as a text in itself, it's as fan-generated as it is a product of the entertainment business.