12: Remix

History of Remix

The earliest tales we told were passed orally from the speaker to their audience, and each new speaker told a different version of the story, spoking with a different cadence, and considering their audiences as they spoke. While remix had already been an ongoing form, the advent of writing allowed these tales to be recorded using alphabetic text.

With each new telling (or now, writing), new elements and details were altered. The stories changed historical contexts, their audiences changed, and their affordances changed. So, they too adapted, and the ethical concerns of such technological developments grew more and more important. Remix, which has alliances with musical recording and sampling, stresses how the newly shaped work can also involve the blending of two different pieces to create an alternate third piece.

There are many types and sub-groups of remix: imitation, alteration, offshoot, parody, revision, mash-up, spin-off, and more.

Remix Terms:

• Citation: quotes or paraphrases other texts in the new text
• Imitation: sticks as close to the original as possible
• Parody: stresses the comical and humorous aspects of the new text
• Alteration, Revision: revises the original to stress particular aspects, or changes only some parts of the text
• Offshoot, Spin-off: focuses on a selected element of the original and builds a new story from that
• Mash-up, Hybridization: joins together more than one text or mode
• Appropriation: forcefully takes over another's ideas or work; raises ethical issues around authorship or ownership of materials
• Adaptation: revises the original to make it work for a new purpose or setting or time period

Each of these terms stresses a particular dimension of the remix process and the nature of the connection between the original source and the remixed product. These terms apply to using established artistic pieces and strategies to create new works.

Remix Today

Remixes range from sampling a song to completely overhauling a film script. A very common method of musical remix on social media involves editing small clips to a beat; the musician subsequently creates a rhythm from an otherwise arrhythmic visual medium. To remix other works, you must interact with and pay attention to other artists and how they have contributed their own adaptations. Remixing should involve a careful look at the genres, forms, texts, images, videos, songs, and stories, recombining and repurposing components of an original source.

Remixing applies to genres and forms other than music, of course. After you’ve considered the most important aspects of the element you wish to remix, study the affordances of the new medium you want to use and identify ways to translate ideas from one medium to another. How does a screenplay translate to a TV show? How does a music video become a short, ten second promotional reel? How does anime spring forth from a manga’s original comic-book style?

Remixers must also consider how faithful to be to the original material. A remix can stray away from the source, but it must usually keep the original work recognizable, even as the new author adds their own touch.

We can see an example of triumph and failure in the recent Disney live-action remakes of their hit animated films. These films have proved popular with audiences. Leslie Felperin explains that success in her Hollywood Reporter review of the live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, "This remake of the company’s 1991 animated hit tracks closely to the earlier version’s plot and story beats, includes revamps of all the old songs and arrives just in time to exploit generational nostalgia—to lure viewers who loved the last version as kids and are just becoming parents themselves.”

In terms of box office success, these Disney “remixed” films are performing well. As of 2023,The Lion King (2019) is the #9 highest grossing movie of all-time at the global box office, generating $1.66 billion (“The Lion King”). Thus, the success of a remix depends on the metric: Are you looking for audience and fanbase satisfaction or profit? Raking in huge profits for a remix is an exciting reason to revive an old classic, but it is also helpful to consider how the remix can contribute to an ever-evolving socio-cultural landscape.

But financial success doesn't necessarily indicate artistic triumph. Alison Foreman, in her IndieWire article “Disney’s Unending Live-Action Adaptations Ranked, from Pinocchio to Mulan to The Little Mermaid” suggests these films are artistically vacuous. “By and large, Disney remakes are exhausting regurgitations that tend to undermine the joy of Disney’s most historically significant films.” Perhaps these remixes are too close. If they don't offer enough new material, they end up making both the original and the remake tiresome.

Consider the example new material in Beauty and the Beast. The change was made to LeFou, played by actor Josh Gad. In the original animated film, LeFou, Gaston's side kick, had such enthusiastic support for him that some viewers interpreted it as infatuation or love. Disney’s animated film never elaborated on the sidekick’s sexuality; he was repeatedly treated like a sack of potatoes by his love interest.

In crafting the remake, the company picked up on fans’ intrigue about LeFou’s sexual orientation and attempted to create a kairotic moment by claiming that LeFou has an “exclusively gay moment” in the new film. In an interview with The Independent, actor Josh Gad gives a lengthy statement about this issue:

“We didn’t go far enough to warrant accolades, we didn’t go far enough to say, ‘Look how brave we are.’ My regret in what happened is that it became ‘Disney’s first explicitly gay moment’ and it was never intended to be that. It was never intended to be a moment that we should laud ourselves for, because frankly, I don’t think we did justice to what a real gay character in a Disney film should be” (Pollard).

All we got from this live-action retelling was a “blink and you’ll miss it” on-screen waltz between LeFou and another man. And that is why actor Josh Gad spoke out five years later to inform readers about the company’s questionable agenda.

Whether you choose to remix your own IP (intellectual property) or other people’s original material, always remember that remix is a chance to expand and modernize artistic pieces, but you must do so carefully and thoughtfully. It is important to be immersed in the zeitgeist of your culture to produce an effective adaptation of various tales, even if they are really old.

Remix and Other Concepts

Remixing is central to the creative process, whether you are creating a piece using alphabetic text, images, or any other mode. We remix when we draft and revise our own written work to emphasize our personality and ethos. We remix when we alter a rough draft and recreate it to suit different modes and genres. We remix to maximize the circulation potential of our art and reach new fields. We remix when, in aiming to make an original contribution to a particular scholarly field, we locate and integrate the ideas of others in with our own observations (citing appropriately, of course!).

When we remix our work for new audiences, we may have to change our language and style, include more images, sound, video, think about different arrangements and juxtapositions of content on the page or screen, and so forth. Adaptation and remix involve knowing how texts circulate and spread via media and culture. Remix also requires us to learn about our audiences and imagine what they would expect from an effective re-envisioning of an original piece.

A remix that focuses on genre is quite common in music. Music samples are a great way to transpose compositions from one period to another and from one genre to another. Revivals of classic pieces offer us a chance to contribute to a kairotic conversation. When we remix, we participate in a long history of adaptation, we create new spaces for cultural politics, and we can give voice to individuals and issues that have been ignored or silenced by the mainstream media. As genres become increasingly hybridized, remix becomes the norm.

The digital omnipresence of our art has allowed everyone to reproduce, re-imagine, and re-create each other’s work; and with the conundrum of robotic sentience looming large, we are now questioning the very notion of originality. Remix existed before the Internet, indeed, since the beginning of rhetoric itself, and the concept will continue to be a creative (if not financial) goldmine. It’s up to us to recognize the most effective ways to mine it.

When we engage in a sustained, ongoing conversation about a big idea or question, as we are asked to do in writing and other classes, we inevitably employ remix. In our research, we draw from past and contemporary voices that have weighed in on the conversation, and we synthesize these voices with our own evolving perspectives. We are part of a perennial conversation in the humanities: Who are we? How do we live? What do we value? This conversation began long before we arrived, and it will continue long after we leave, for it is a conversation of cosmic proportion.

One of the most obvious and important ways that a researcher participates in remix is through citation. We locate texts that expand our conversations and excerpt them in our work assigning credit to the original source. We adapt texts, films, and tales by recontextualizing them into new conversations, and sometimes into new modes of communication. Certainly, we can also spot examples of minor remix where creators tell the same story by slapping on a fresh coat of paint to maximize profit.

Two of the most common ways we encounter remixes -- in citations and in memes (or other kinds of social media circulation) -- challenge us to consider the "other side" of remix as well. As we think about the way our text might circulate, we should consider how the text we are making might, itself, be remixed. When you work on a post that might become viral, you should take into account how others might make new use of it. Scholars Jim Ridolfo and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss call this movement "rhetorical velocity." Considering how the text might move through culture once we've released it is next level stuff, but it's important to think about.

Remix, Ownership, and Culture

There are a variety of ways in which remix can move beyond the usual give and take of creative expression, and into something less ethical. As digital tools make remix ever-easier to do, it's important that you consider carefully your relationship to the texts you're remixing. Three ideas to consider as you approach remix projects are Appropriation, Intellectual Honesty, and Copyright.

Appropriation can be simply understood as taking something that doesn't belong to you, claiming it as yours and using it.

Appropriation involves a series of missteps: locating something that does not belong to us, removing it from its intended context, and claiming it as our own. It is a hostile takeover of someone else’s work or creative expression; it’s a colonization, if you will. Appropriation is perhaps the worst rendering of privilege. It is the assumption that we can take whatever we want from someone else without consideration or consequence. A common sub-set of appropriation is cultural appropriation: the act of assuming someone else’s cultural markers, without deference to the cultures and traditions those markers may symbolize.

For example, in the United States, many sports teams from local communities up to professional teams have appropriated imagery from Native American tribes to use as mascots. This appropriation was usually done without permission or much consideration for the people being depicted, and almost never with attention to the specifics of the indigenous groups being colonized. Thankfully, recent public conversations about cultural appropriation seem to be having some effect. Many teams, including the NFL team the Washington Commanders, have retired their old mascots.

Intellectual Honesty is the idea that when we remix someone else's work, we're obligated to give them credit. In rhetoric, failing to acknowledge the source of ideas you've borrowed is plagiarism. When we draw from others’ work, and when we remix that work into something new, it is important that we do so ethically. The conversation among sources, from which you're drawing your evidence and context, depends on a shared tradition of mutual acknowledgement.

When you borrow ideas from other writers (creators, musicians, artists), you are laying the foundation for your own ideas. Acknowledging where they come from enhances your ethos, as it demonstrates that you are understand your field. Failing to do so risks making you look arrogant (for representing other peoples' ideas as your own) or dishonest. By contrast, when you remix conscientiously and acknowledge your sources, you demonstrate an ability to respectfully contemplate other voices and integrate them into your own perspectives.

Copyright and Intellectual Property are ideas that put into formal, legal language the notion that we own our creative expression. These laws represent the legal challenge of making room for two competing ideas: 1) that a healthy society benefits from the free exchange of ideas, and 2) that creative people need to be able to make a living from things they create. And the way to make money from things they create is by selling copies.

As we learned above, remix has always been part of human culture. But before mass-produced texts, ownership of creative works was not (at least, not in the way we understand it now). If you heard a story, you could tell that story to your friend without ethical concern. But when authors get paid for the work they produce, copying that work and cutting out the author becomes ethically tricky.

Things get even more complex when we introduce digital tools, which allow us to quickly and easily copy, cut up, and manipulate those texts. Some see remix as an art form fully distinct from their source texts, and envision the new texts as new objects. If new novels draw on storytelling tropes from the past or new symphonic pieces borrow from themes crafted decades or centuries ago, we can see how remixes continue that artistic tradition in a new medium.

At the same time, some owners of today's source texts see remix as theft--the direct appropriation of creative work leading to unauthorized profit.

Here’s a simple rule of thumb for remix: Give Credit Where It’s Due.

Take pains to be conscious of the broader context of the work we are drawing from, which may include the social or cultural impact of the original work or may represent the lifetime of scholarship and lived experience of the writer/artist. Pay close attention to the norms for your field and for the expected circulation of your text. Remix is complicated right now, so it's important to think about how you approach it.

Next time you consider remix, think of the translator whose job is to bridge cultures with the power of language. The translator is always careful to show a mastery of language in translation while also remaining transparent and hidden behind the original piece and its intended meaning.

Remix in AI-Assisted Writing

A system that always errs on the side of avoiding transgression is hamstringing itself from ever achieving human-level creativity, which is often grounded in a rejection of tropes and norms. (Ippolito et al.)

AI-assisted writing has reached new heights with recent experiments turning to professional writers and expert creatives for inspiration. The article Creative Writing with an AI-Powered Writing Assistant: Perspectives from Professional Writers clearly states that the machine is still lacking the capacity for subversive creativity, which is probably the most valuable kind of creativity. This eighteen-page article relates a study conducted with writers of diverse ethnicities and backgrounds who belonged to various creative writing fields: novelists, short story writers, poets, educators, comedians, and game designers (Ippolito et al.).

The participants were tasked with writing a story that spanned 1,000-1,500 words in length. They were left to use the AI writing assistant without any prior explanation of the affordances of the model. In this study, the AI chatbot was Wordcraft and each creative person had a different workflow. Some used Wordcraft as a research assistant, others took to considering the bot as a writing partner, while others created prompts that would push the software to rewrite sentences in more interesting ways. The relationship between the writer and the AI-powered assistant is primarily governed by the concept of remix.

For example, the writer gives the machine a prompt, and then the machine transforms the prompt into a sentence. Since AI creativity remains in its infancy many, if not all, of the sentences are then re-written by the author. But there was one consensus about AI-assisted writing: It can be a useful brainstorming tool. In fact, the article states: “Participants found suggestions from Wordcraft to be helpful for worldbuilding and detail generation even when they did not end up incorporating the exact wording of the suggestions into their stories. For example, ET used the chatbot interface to home in on the appearance of the Worm-Mothers, the god-like entities in their story. Wordcraft suggested details such as the Worm-Mothers swallowing birds whole.” (Ippolito et al.)

The process of brainstorming involves an infinitely repeating process of remixing, polishing, and re-arranging ideas that will be included in the final draft of a story. Accordingly, we need to consider the importance of not offloading the creative process onto the machine and foregoing the need to come up with ideas ourselves. Instead, we encourage you to look at AI-assisted writing as a gateway to a productive writing process and a fun back-and-forth remix between humans and machines—one that must be cited if it is consulted, as with any other source.

Remix Activity

This chapter discusses the ubiquity and prevalence of remixes as well as their different uses, formats, and presentations. Review the arguments made throughout the text before diving into this chapter’s activity: Remixing your favorite artworks.

When you remix pieces you love, consider how you are absorbing the original material, synthesizing them and allowing them to grow through the process of remix.

Here are a few ideas for remixes, but feel free to expand beyond these suggestions. Find your own methods and reasons for remixing if that feels right to you. Write an essay that documents how you came up with your remix and the process of creating it:

• Remix a film you love by re-writing it under a completely different Genre. For example: Write a synopsis/logline imagining Mulan as a horror film instead of a children’s animated drama.
• Create a spin-off based on your favorite fictional character. For example: How about an entire show dedicated to the life of Uncle Iroh from Avatar: The Last Airbender?
• Sample a recording of an old song you think is interesting and create a new song out of that sample. For example: Sample Billie Holiday’s music and use the scratchy vinyl and old-timey quality for a lo-fi beat.
• Remix a story to adapt its political concerns to modern socio-cultural issues. For example: Write a version of The Notebook that strays away from the quintessential tropes of the heteronormative love story.

The Authoring Culture Podcast: Remix   

Podcast for Remix, Chapter twelve of Authoring Culture: Foundations of Twenty-First Century Writing, 11:04.

Columbia College Chicago faculty members Brendan Riley and Karl El Sokhn explore a key concept in writing, and Karl chats with students Petey Holman-Herbert and Charles Metcalf about their take on the idea. (Transcript available)

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Foreman, Alison. “Disney’s Unending Live-Action Adaptations Ranked, from ‘Pinocchio’ to ‘Mulan’ to ‘The Little Mermaid.’” IndieWire, 22 May 2023, Disney's Live-Action Adaptations [indiewire.com].

Ippolito, Daphne, et al. “Creative Writing with an AI-Powered Writing Assistant: Perspectives from Professional Writers.” Arxiv.Org, November 2022, Creative Writing with AI [ arxiv.org].

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Ridolfo, Jim & DeVoss, Dànielle Nicole. "Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery". Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. Issue 13:2, Spring 2009. Composing for Recomposition(opens in new window) [ kairos.technorhetoric.net ].

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