Dangerous Mediations: Pop Music in a Philippine Prison Video

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Description

In 2007, an unlikely troupe of 1500 Filipino prisoners became Internet celebrities after their YouTube video of Michael Jacksons ground-breaking hit 'Thriller' went viral. Taking this spectacular dance as a point of departure, Dangerous Mediations explores the disquieting development of prisoners performing punishment to a global, online audience. Combining analysis of this YouTube video with first-hand experiences from fieldwork in the Philippine prison, ine Mangaoang investigates a wide range of interlocking contexts surrounding this user-generated text to reveal how places of punishment can be transformed into spaces of spectacular entertainment, leisure, and penal tourism. In the post-YouTube era, Dangerous Mediations sounds the call for close readings of music videos produced outside of the corporate culture industries. By connecting historical discussions on postcolonialism, surveillance and prison philosophy with contemporary scholarship on popular music, participatory culture and new media, Dangerous Mediations is the first book to ask critical questions about the politics of pop music and audiovisual mediation in early 21st-century detention centres.

Reviews

In this rich ethnographic case study, ine Mangaoang brings together a welcome, provocative and highly original mix of music, YouTube and prison. She raises thoughtful questions about participation and incarceration, leisure and exploitation, the global and the local, that will resonate far beyond her case. * Nancy Baym, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research, USA *
An enlightening, extensive, and engaging work! ine Mangaoangs explanation of the phenomenal popularity of the Dancing Inmates' Thriller, a YouTube sensation, unearths layer after layer of paradoxes embedded in Philippine history, musicological studies, prison performances and digital cross-currents. The tensions that spring from navigating between rehabilitation and oppression, creativity and captivity, entertainment and punishment, submission and assertion, cultural identity and stereotyping, among others, make Dangerous Mediations a cautionary tale in adapting inmate performance, especially of the digital variety, as a vehicle for prison reform. * Ricardo Abad, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines *
This book deepens our understanding of the mediation of music in the digital era. Through a wide-reaching analysis, Mangaoang reveals the subversive potential of music and how new media texts are bound up with power, punishment and postcolonialism. * Barley Norton, Reader and Senior Tutor in Music, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK *

Author Bio

ine Mangaoang is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Popular Music at the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo, Norway.