Theoretically Speaking
NUI Galway
Let the Credits Roll - "Saturday Morning All Star Hits!" and the Lack of Paratext Choice: On Kyle Mooney's Application of VHS Temporality to Streaming Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Helen Smith
When sketch comedian Kyle Mooney created the show "Saturday Morning All Star Hits!" for Netflix, he translated the form of VHS to that of streaming content. Mooney's VHS collection inspired the show, but the true inspiration is that of the recorded TV show instead of the retail VHS tapes that fill his shelves. His choices disrupt the psychology of binge-watching, disrupting the flow of the generalized streaming show. In particular, the segments include credits. I use theories of paratext and deconstruction to demonstrate that these credits physically engage the viewer trained to skip the credits, forcing them to recognize to what extent their viewing habits differ from those associated with childhood. The episodes' parataxis place the adult viewer in somewhat of a parental role, seeing the show from an alienated perspective. Through Derrida's work on differance, I challenge the idea that this perspective is lesser than that intended for the audience; the comedy of the show features a playfulness of form rather than a recreation of childhood entertainment. The show remediates the childhood morning show in the algorithmically-optimized space of Netflix, and studying the false disruption of the credits shows a replicatable example of how to play with the streaming service medium.
Featured Orality, Interiority, and Literacy in Edward Taylor's Preparatory Meditations View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yi He
Colonial American poet Edward Taylor’s Preparatory Meditation poems can be seen as a technological aid to speech. Past scholars have focused on these canonical poems’ use of theology and aesthetics, citing the poems’ vivid imagery and passionate lyricism. Yet, their work has not shown how these very qualities- sensuousness, as well as pleas for perfect communication to God-amongst others, actually point to the poems’ role in an early New England media ecology. The poems play a vigorous role in the interplay of orality and literacy in Puritan society. This paper examines the poems’ text and context for how they amplify oral thought and expression, even though they are written. This reinterpretation of Taylor’s poems reveals how speech deeply shaped why and how poetry was written in early America. It shows how literacy may not completely dismantle oral thought, as McLuhan and Ong might suggest, but rather encourage it. I focus on Taylor’s poems in his Christographia series, in which all his sermons have been preserved, scrutinizing the poems’ sensory details, meditative structure, and evocation of speech. The poems allow Taylor to emphasize the auditory nuances of voice, focus on pre-speech unformed thought or “interiority,” and renew his desire for the power of sounded words. Puritan New England may be shaped by the richness of speech more than its proliferation of printed pages would indicate.
