J.D Applen reaffirms something I’ve known for a while: human creation is such a malleable thing. At length, Applen discusses how newer technologies remediate aspects of previous technologies. For example, we use personal computing technology for much of our text, nowadays. It’s not like books have been entirely replaced. The core ideas behind books have been reoriented for PCs, tablets, phones, what-have-you. Printed books are a remediation of hand-written manuscripts, even.
As Applen went further in, bringing in other examples along the way, it got me thinking. “It is so cool that core ideas can be transformed every which way.” The base emotion of comfort has so many different traits depending on what medium you use to express it. In physical terms, a couch is plush and soft; food can be warm and tasty. But, in more traditional media forms, music can be quiet and ethereal. Images, moving or otherwise, have no shortage of methods to exude comfort for a viewer. Human creation is stretchy like that.
And now, the nerdy example.
The character of Mickey Mouse entered the public domain this year. At least, the very original version of the character. A lot of jeers about horror movie renditions followed because, shocker, horror is quite cheap and quick to produce. I did not join these sentiments, because I have seen people go every which way with Mickey Mouse. Ironically, the popular sentiment that he is boring makes him the ultimate example of remediation. For the sake of everyone’s sanity, I will stick with one example.
Early in the character’s life, artist Floyd Gottfredson ended up being tasked to write and draw a newspaper strip about Mickey. It soon turned into an adventure strip that felt totally different from any 20s/30s cartoon. Experience has taught me that the difference between comic storytelling and animated storytelling can be a chasm. It doesn’t have to be, but it often will be. Don’t even get me started on how Carl Barks reinvented Donald Duck for comics, which then got remediated back into shows like DuckTales.
So like, I don’t think Walt Disney envisioned Mickey Mouse being a gritty detective later down the line, but I think it’s cool that we can let that happen. I guess what I’m trying to say is that remediation–the act of translating whole ideas into something else–is a healthy, vital, even cool aspect of our culture.
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