Karina’s Capsule: GOOD Magazine
Never underestimate the power of a half-naked girl to draw attention to something good — or, in this case, something GOOD. According to Technorati, the most linked-to video in the blogosphere today is this clip, in which slow camera pans reveal factoids on the omnipresence of internet porn, each one written on the body of online porn star Kelle Marie.
The video was produced by GOOD Magazine, the flagship of a media empire built by Ben Goldhirsch (the son of publishing mogul Berni Goldhirsch) around “the sensibility of giving a damn.” Part of GOOD’s mission is to post original videos several times a week on YouTube, each one dedicated to one small act of cultural intervention or gesture towards “transparency”.
With its twinkly score and, um, subject-matter-specific mise en scene, Internet Porn is an excellent example of GOOD’s somewhat cheeky approach to media activism. There’s nothing that turns me off faster than didacticism, so I definitely appreciate GOOD’s reluctance to preach.
It’s propaganda for sure, but each of the five or six videos that I watched were, first and foremost, highly watchable pieces of entertainment. Subversive but not in-your-face, persuasive but not obnoxious, each clip plays kind of like a Sesame Street segment engineered specfically for the media-fried adult brain (obviously, Big Bird doesn’t hang with a lot of internet sex workers). They can be a little twee, especially when digested back-to-back, but I’ll take slightly-too-precious over overly-self-serious any day.
The GOOD videos are, thus far, mind-bogglingly well-done when you consider range of topics they cover and the rate at which new clips are added to the library. Over the course of the past month, the GOOD factory has spit out a partially animated examination of “the disparity between the myth and the reality of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s birth.”; a fully animated look at the secret life of our tax dollars, a video profile of new media artist/engineer/GOOD Mag covergirl Natalie Jeremijenko’s Floating Clinic–and seven other clips.
How do they do it? When profiled by the Wall Street Journal last year, Goldhirsch talked of feeling a responsibility to work hard to make the most of his inheritance. “We’re in a quite rare and luxurious position. We’re young kids with the capital to put behind our passions,” he said. “There is such great potential given by the resources my father left, it would be a shame not to hustle toward that possibility.” So far, the hustle seems to be working.
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Do you want to get some of that cool Internet porn (or other web video, streaming or downloadable) on your TV? Is there an easy way to do it? Tell your TVMama! Take our short survey and let us know if you think PC-TV convergence will happen this year. TVMama thanks you!
TVMama on May 16th, 2007 at 5:23 am - Permalink
Do you want to get some of that cool Internet porn (or other web video, streaming or downloadable) on your TV? Is there an easy way to do it? Tell your TVMama! Take our short survey and let us know if you think PC-TV convergence will happen this year. TVMama thanks you!
http://www.surveymonkey.com/Users/75086557/Surveys/428233887570/3F5646E2-5463-4A25-BF14-E1134EF91191.asp?U=428233887570&DO_NOT_COPY_THIS_LINK
TVMama on May 16th, 2007 at 5:24 am - Permalink
[...] NewTeeVee, I took a look at a series of videos being produced by GOOD Magazine. Read the full story here. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and [...]
Vidiocy » Today on NewTeeVee: GOOD on May 16th, 2007 at 6:19 am - Permalink
Get out of here. That was yesterday’s most linked to clip. Technorati ranks videos based on links over the previous 48 hours. What you need is a ranking based on linkage over the previous 24 hours and that gets updated every 5 minutes ;)
Fab video though.
Scott Button on May 16th, 2007 at 6:32 am - Permalink
Funny that even mentioning the word Porn will get your half a million views (and a bunch of spammy comments!). sighs Should I even linkback my blog on this comment for fear of an Askimet windfall?
Mark Schoneveld on May 16th, 2007 at 11:30 am - Permalink
[...] A finales del año pasado Tomás nos contó que un profesor de estadísticas de la Universidad de California había resuelto que sólo un 1% del contenido en Internet es pornografía, y nadie le creyó (al profesor). Bueno, aquí tenemos otro… em… “estudio”. La revista GOOD hace pequeños videos sobre diferentes temas y los sube a YouTube. Esta vez le tocó a la pornografía en internet, representada en este caso por Kelle Marie. ¿1%? Algo así como 12% para ser más exactos, y un 89% proviene de los Estados Unidos. Insisto, gracias mujeres. (via NewTeeVee) [...]
Cifras de Pornografía en Internet - FayerWayer on May 19th, 2007 at 8:59 pm - Permalink
[...] What better way to present porn facts, than on a porn star? Camera pans reveal factoids on the omnipresence of internet porn, each one written on the body of online porn star Kelle Marie. [...]
Ghettocooler.net - It's like myspace, digg, and cnn all in one site! on May 22nd, 2007 at 8:05 am - Permalink
[...] multimedia company with a print magazine, has produced numerous excellent video shorts, which we’ve profiled here, but On Skid Row is the most ambitious and longest video project they’ve undertaken to date. [...]
GOOD & MySpace On Skid Row « NewTeeVee on February 21st, 2008 at 5:00 am - Permalink