Tupac: Recut, Reframed, Recycled

From Tupac Amaru

to Tupac Shakur

by Jim McKinney

The Execution of Tupac Amaru [Tupac_amaru_execution.jpg‎]

(Enciclopedia Historia Argentina de Diego Abad de Santillan)

First, on a serious note…

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

George Santayana

In a book of history that I have been re-reading these past few weeks, The Open Veins of Latin America, a book presented to President Barak Obama as recommended reading at the Summit of the Americas by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez last year, the author Eduardo Galleano begins with a startling quote from a revolutionary proclamation issued in 1809 in La Paz, Bolivia: “We have maintained a silence closely resembling stupidity.”

Later in the book, as Galleano details the rape and looting of the continent, he writes about the uprising in Peru led by Tupac Amaru, Tupac Shakur’s namesake that took place thirty years before that proclamation:

“In 1781 Tupac Amaru laid siege to Cuzco. This mestizo chief, a direct descendant of the Inca emperors, headed the broadest of messianic revolutionary movements… Mounted on his white horse, Tupac Amaru entered the plaza of Tungasuca and announced to the sound of drums and pututus that he had condemned the royal [viceroy] Correidor Antonio Juan de Arriaga to the gallows…. A few days later Tupac issued a decree liberating the slaves. He abolished all taxes and forced labor in all forms. The Indians rallied by the thousands to the forces of the ‘father of all the poor and all the wretched and helpless…;’ in the end, betrayed and captured by one of his own chiefs, Tupac was handed over in chains to the royalists. The Examiner Areche entered his cell to demand, in exchange for promises, the names of his rebel accomplices. Tupac Amaru replied scornfully, ‘There are no accomplices here other than you and I. You as oppressor, I as liberator, deserve to die.’”

“Tupac was tortured, along with his wife, his children, and his chief aides, in Cuzco’s Plaza del Wacaypata. His tongue was cut out; his arms and legs were tied to four horses with the intention of quartering him, but his body would not break; he was finally beheaded at the foot of the gallows. His head was sent to Tinta, one arm to Tungasuca and the other to Carabaya, one leg to Santa Rosa and the other to Livitaca. The torso was burned and the ashes thrown in the Río Watanay. It was proposed that all his descendants be obliterated up to the fourth generation.”

Such was the savagery of some 200 years ago. Then this past week, I watched the almost-two-hour-long Tupac: Resurrection. To me the movie was depressing and it made me feel angry at the pathetic ways in which things have evolved in human society over the past centuries. What a waste. Such promise and talent squandered in modern-day “thug culture,” the gruesome realities of which were not really shown in the movie—realities that are getting even worse now with Latin American drug cartel wars escalating to unheard of levels of violence and terror.

But then movies that glamorize thug life go way back, from the Great Depression-era “Come and get me, copper!” thrillers of Jimmy Cagney, to Coppola’s operatic Godfather series, and now the latest on HBO, Scorsese’s glossy Boardwalk Empire soap opera. We fantasize, glamorize, and romanticize thug life to death (pun intended), Tupac Shakur’s contradictory semantics and pretzel logic notwithstanding.

But then I have to admit, I am a 64-year-old white guy, and I may be missing something. I am sure that the sensitive comments from the New York Times reader following film review by A. O. Scott resonated with millions of Shakur’s fans:

“… Lauren Lazin has done a very good job of sharing with the world the many dimensions of a man who was loved, hated, misunderstood, and understood all at the same time. This movie is for Tupac Shukur's fans. It's not to feed into the controversy surrounding his death, it's not meant to explain the East Coast/West Coast beef. It's meant to give you insight to the man, his convictions, his inner and outer struggle, and why he was who he was and believed what he believed so passionately. If you want to see those beautiful brown eyes and that infectious smile again, if you want to be moved and see and feel his motivation, if you want to be entertained; then you don't want to miss this movie. I f you want more than that, this is not the movie for you.”

Ok, point taken. And I realize, having had not that long ago a teen-aged son who was into poetry slams and passionately defended, and still defends, hip hop music, that there is a progressive side. Out of what I believe was initially a criminally inspired genre, preoccupied with turf wars, drug money, gang affiliations, pimping and abusing women, and focusing on “bling” and prison as a rite of passage à la Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land, something good had to come (didn’t it?). And the music has definitely grown in its international influence and inspirational manifestations.

Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, interviewed on ThugArmyLife.com, talks about her struggles over the course of her own lifetime, taking inspiration from Miriam Makeba in her own youth, her political activism, later drug addiction and rehab, and how she is now trying to salvage something good from what has happened to her son. She admits that she is from another generation from the hip hop generation, and may not always understand or agree with them. Her efforts are commendable, working with children in her organization, Pac’s Kids, the summer camps, publishing Tupac’s hip hop music to finance the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation, and growing organic vegetables on her 56-acre farm in North Carolina.

Now hip hop is everywhere, from full-on high school classroom curriculum to milder Sesame Street versions, in poetry slams, and efforts like those at Youth Speaks, which “…aims to deconstruct dominant narratives in hopes of achieving a more inclusive, and active, culture…” encouraging young people “to express themselves using their own vernacular...” in the believe that “having knowledge, practice, and confidence in the written and spoken language is essential to the self-empowerment of an individual… combating illiteracy, alienation, and silence, creating a global movement of brave new voices bringing the noise from the margins to the core.” Right on.

And as testimony to his endurance, Google searches related to Tupac Shakur himself alone number at about 4,240,000 results (in 0.12 seconds), with everything from Tupac Shakur’s life and death, to his music, quotes, lyrics, poems, etc. But checking in with recent music video postings (one week old) at MeFeedia—Media Engine, (“Tupac feat. Busta Rhymes - Lord can you hear me” and “Tupac Breathin Remix by Frozen”) I believe that some things have not evolved all that “m*****f*******” much….

But, on a slightly different note…

However, one thing must be acknowledged. It appears that the film Tupac: Resurrection is a prime example of how the creative and innovative the techniques of mashup and re-mixing can be; i.e., taking pieces of home video, music video, movie video, audio tracks, and other cinematic data sources, and then overlaying, re-editing, inter-cutting and replacing the component parts to make something entirely new and different. In this case, it made it seem like Tupac was actually brought back from the dead just to narrate the movie—very impressive, I have to admit.

Time, time, time—oh, how I wish I had more time! I loved watching some of the other mash-ups that we were given links to for our class assignment this week! Although I really do not have the time to learn how to do any of this at the present moment, I would really like to learn the basics of this sometime in the near future.

As an ESL instructor, I am hoping to make use of documentary films in my classroom. However, I am reluctant to show long-form documentaries in their entirety as it would take up too much class time. I am getting more and more interested in a lot of the short-form user-generated video that is available on the web, but I would also be interested in being able to edit and re-mix my own clips.

French in Action is a language learning program that was produced in part by WBGH in Boston and funded by the Annenberg/CPB Collection. The television course is based on an innovative method developed by Pierre Capretz of Yale University, and part of the success of the program is the way that it uses a lot of video and film clips. After a common word, phrase, or expression is introduced, for example, a barrage of very short video and film clips follow in rapid succession to illustrate how it is used. I would love to be able to excerpt language features from documentaries my students have seen in class to illustrate and reinforce the specific grammar and vocabulary they are supposed to be focusing on.

I certainly hope that the findings of the study, “Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video,” conducted by the American University's Center for Social Media and Washington College of Law holds up in the courts. They conclude that “many uses of copyrighted material in today's online videos are eligible for fair use” including: “satire, parody, negative and positive commentary, discussion-triggers, illustration, diaries, archiving and of course, pastiche or collage (remixes and mashups), all of which could be legal in some circumstances.” I got even more interested as I watched several of the mashups listed in their “Researcher's Top Five Videos in Each Category,” including, Satire and Parody, Negative or Critical Commentary, Positive Commentary, Quoting in Order to Start a Discussion, Illustration or Example, Incidental Use, Personal Reportage/Diaries, Archiving of Vulnerable or Revealing Materials, and Pastiche or Collage.

[http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/fair-use/related-materials/documents/recut-reframe-recycle]

However, scanning through just some of the “Top 10 YouTube Mashups of All Time” was positively daunting in just seeing some of how much is out there. I cannot even begin to imagine how one goes into all this without sinking into a swamp of video quicksand…

[http://blog.programmableweb.com/2010/02/02/top-10-youtube-mashups-of-all-time/]

I thought the video mashup “True Grit + Toy Story 3 = Toy Grit” was a real production pearl.

[http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/2010/10/14/video_mash-up_true_grit_toy_story_3_toy_grit/]

And to me “Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in ‘Right Wing Radio Duck’” (October 2, 2010) was a work of socially responsible genius.

www.rebellious[http://wpixels.com/]

Even some of the less complicated mash-ups were rather sophisticated in their art and subtle messages. For example, “MTV/VMAs Remix: Kanye West Interrupts Obama’s Speech” featured in New York Times columnist Robert Mackey’s blog, “The Lede,” appeared simple yet delivered a very effectively humorous message .

[http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/the-inevitable-wilson-kanye-mashup/]

Mashups on YouTube such as, “aMazing Movie Mashup Music video” and “Michael Jackson - Thriller (Monster Movie Mash-Up)” were also fun to watch.

I am convinced that I would like to learn the basics of this technology, but how and when will I ever find the time….

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