We Are Creators Too. Francesca Coppa on vidding

I've been enjoying Public Knowledge's 4-part video series "We Are Creators, Too," but I never expected Francesca Coppa discussing vidding to come across my blog roll!

Kudos to PK for treating vidding like any other form of video remix, not as some weird dysfunctional female behaviour. And kudos to PK for doing the shockingly unusual behaviour of not normativizing male video creation; 3 of the 4 interviews are with women, and video remix not treated as a male activity that some women do as well.

And of course, kudos to Francesca for for an excellent interview which touches on so many of the key points of vidding culture, history, and law.

Liar, liar, pants on fire

I'd probably not have leapt to read Justine Larbalestier's Liar so fast if not for the cover kerfuffle, so I suppose I should be grateful for it. But I am frustrated at how many expectations of the book I had because of various information revealed during the brouhaha. The book premise, packaging (with either US cover), and characterization set me up for an entirely different story, and many of the narrative's reveals might have come differently to me had I not been reading with expectation in mind.

That being said, I loved the book -- and I can't even talk about the two most interesting reasons it struck me particularly with where I am in my literary interests right now, because the briefest discussion of why it made me so thoughtful will give you the same spoilery experience it gave me, grr argh. Maybe once its nature is more generally known, or more of you have read it. I will go so far as to say that today before and during class we had some interesting discussions about varied types of unreliable narrators, and I will leave it at that.

One thing I can say is that having read it, Melanie Cecka's defense of the original cover rings a lot less true to me. I'm unwilling to attribute bad faith argument to anyone in the industry -- I've never yet met a children's literature person who didn't want to do the right thing -- but I can't imagine how any reading of Liar could leave the heroine's race and nappiness in doubt (or at least, any more in doubt than, say, her age, her gender, or her existence). As it is, the cover's not a great represntation of her, though it's more marketable than a more accurate represntation would be.

( Okay, I can't say *nothing*. As unspoilery a comment as I could make it, and really, if you read the same articles I did, no surprises )

Side note: Any class discussion which leads me to make the note "Xander:Willow :: Meg:Charles Wallace" has got to be great, eh?