Love-Letters and Thing-Bads: Video Essays and 'Intellectual' Self-Presentation
/This is another in a series of blog posts written by PhD students in my Public Intellectuals seminar.
Love Letters and Thing-Bad’s: Video Essays and “Intellectual” Self-Presentation
Steven Proudfoot
"Maybe there's even a lesson to be learned in this awful, awful way. What else am I going to do? This is my brand, I think? So, let's give talking dog movies the true rigor of academic analysis they've long been sorely in need of."
– Jack Saint, The Political Implications of Talking Dog Movies
Let’s talk about tone. I am an academic (grad student), writing on a blog platform created by a Big Name Scholar, writing about YouTubers doing various kinds of analysis. Naturally,I will talk a lot differently here than if I was trying to write an article for a publication. The medium and intended audience could make the same argument look completely different, argued in different ways. For example, I can say “fuck” outside of a relevant quote here, just for fun. Take that, Ivory Tower.
Using this space and freedom of tone, I want to talk about academia and video essays. More pointedly, I want to talk about some YouTubers’ sometimes mixed relationship to academia and how many benefit from defining themselves in contrast to it. The few I highlight here don’t take an anti-intellectual stance, but present as post-academic dropouts or debt-burdened graduates who are qualified to talk the talk but will tell it to you straight without lecturing you like an academic. By reflecting on how we present ourselves as academics and subsequently considering some things they do to maintain an “authentic” self-presentation that we can’t. Particularly, I’ll highlight how they take advantage of this post-academic positioning with patterns like using alcohol as a visual tone-setter and simply using humor in place of academic distance to make passionate visual love letters to their favorite things or arguments of why something is bad where it could have been good (often called the “thing bad” format).
While it is important to foreground these techniques in an academic context, I’ll be focusing on the work happening on YouTube. Even though YouTube is sometimes a long way from the ivory tower, there’s a lot we can learn from it about subtle and intentional techniques of self-presentation.
As a quick disclaimer: for this post, I’ll mostly be discussing the work of four video essayists on YouTube: Lindsay Ellis, Jack Saint, KaptainKristian, and ContraPoints. Notably, not all of these fit within the same niche. Some of these channels do deep dives into seemingly innocuous topics while others are very up front with the fact that their work is activism. Some of them switch between those attitudes. The first three channels are mostly about media analysis while ContraPoints works more on general societal issues. Each of these creators have videos that have excellent arguments and analysis, and they also all have videos or arguments that aren’t so great and fall into some holes. Sometimes they have bad takes. Sometimes they present things in ways that are worrying, but ultimately aren’t in bad faith. I don’t think that the accuracy or consistency of their claims are important for the conversation I’m trying to have here. I’m not going to go into any of these YouTuber’s arguments or talk about why they’re wrong or right, but more look at how they talk about things and the surrounding context that drives it.
Negotiating with the Ivory Tower
Now that I’ve specified that I’m going to talk about YouTubers specifically, I’m going to talk about academia instead. Oops. Before talking about the weirder informal stuff that YouTube video essayists tend to do, it’s important to emphasize that these don’t only exist on YouTube.
While more formal, video essays do exist in academia. Relatively speaking, they’re rare, but there’s a movement within media studies to make a space for this format within a serious academic sphere. There are now journals like [in]Transitionentirely for videographic essays. These journals are home to some well-crafted and compelling work ranging from editing film into montagesthat make a statement to essays that use visual evidence to short documentaries.
As is natural for publishing in an academic space like this, the tone of these videos then to be more serious than those on YouTube. The simple fact that there is academic space to publish work like this is worth taking a moment to call out. This work of making a serious space for this sort of work in academia where “alternate” formats have been not commonly accepted is being done by a number of academics like Drew Morton and Jason Mittell and this movement is growing. While there has been acceptance of academic video essays as far back as the early 2000’s, it’s important to emphasize that this wasn’t always widely accepted.
In general, academia is slow to change from what it has always been doing. While we are on a path towards academia at large acknowledging serious video essays occupying the same space as written work, it will be a slow process of getting there. Any academic who has tried to use a different medium than articles or has tried interdisciplinary work is likely familiar with the phrase “when you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The line quickly makes a point that lies at the heart of many people’s pushes to do any number of new or not-yet-normal things within academia: sometimes it’s best to do things outside of the box because it fits the problem better. Because sometimes it’s a screw and just whapping that thing with a hammer will probably end up clumsy and worse off than it could have been.
Except, sometimes it’s really hard to see that a screw isn’t a nail. Sometimes, it’s even harder to pick up the screwdriver when you do see it. Even if you do use a hammer and a screwdriver both to make some really cool shit, sometimes it doesn’t matter because the publications build their reputation and livelihood on talking really, really well about hitting nails with hammers. The Journal of Hammer Studies might think that’s great work, really cool, really cutting edge. But it’s not what they do, they don’t want to publish it themselves. Doing different-than-normal things in academia is always a question of finding and negotiating space. So, when something like [in]Transition comes along and makes a space for this for a different tool, that is radical and important work.
Talking in metaphor like this makes it seem light and like if you just stop and think, it’s actually quite logical and, after all, why don’t we all just do it. While I believe in these ideas, it’s worth mentioning that it’s not simple to just do things like that. People often have good reasons for working the way they do and making space for new modalities, methods, and interdisciplinary work is hard. Even if you do find space to do this kind of work, it can also be a question of if a hiring committee is even able to properly consider, assess and “count” less traditional types of work if they don’t have an expert among them already. Even though my own identity as a scholar is built around trying to mix psychology and humanistic work on games and fandom, I’ve only ever written from one or the other field without actually using both. It’s a problem I spend most of my time thinking about, yet I’ve done very little to actually do anything about it.
Simply engaging with all of this broad umbrella of work is an active process of negotiating your own existence within an ivory tower stuck in its ways. While these spaces exist now, they’re not always well known yet and a budding video essayist might miss the chance to give their work a real platform inside the academy.
So what happens when those negotiations fail and someone falls through yet-to-be-filled gaps? What of those who, instead of taking up the fight for a space inside the academy, said “fuck this” and went to talk to a different audience?
Post-Academic Intellectuals
Youtubers. Sometimes, YouTubers happen. YouTubers with academic training doing analysis on a similar level to what you could see in any number of fields in a different way with a different set of rules. They’re using different tools in different ways to approach similar topics as many academics, and they’re doing it well. And that idea that they learned how to talk the talk and then left because they’re not going to deal with the system and debt is a big part of how some YouTubers present themselves.
Admittedly, I am, in part, focusing on these four creators because of how they position themselves in relation to academia. Lindsay Ellis has an MFA in Film from USC, Jack Saint has an MA in English Lit, kaptainkristian dropped out of undergraduate film school, and Natalie Wynn (creator of ContraPoints) dropped out of a PhD in Philosophy at Northwestern University. This sample of four channels isn’t necessarily representative of all of FilmTube or the wider “BreadTube.” There are great series in these spaces like FilmJoy’s Movies with Mikeyor hbomberguy’s “Measured Response” by people who don’t have a fancy piece of paper declaring some kind of expert training.
While none of them are openly hostile to academia and don’t yell for people to stop going to school, they pretty universally present their academic credentials as something that they wouldn’t recommend or are helping others avoid. Lindsay Ellis’ merchandise page on DFTBAintroduces herself as a video essayist with degrees from NYU and USC, noting that “She conveys the knowledge she gained at these great institutions so her viewers won’t be burdened with student debt like she is.” Kaptainkristian dropped out of film school when he “realized everything they were teaching was available online” (Liptak, 2016).
Are they right?
Well, yes and no. You can’t get everything online, but , a course is more than the articles you’re assigned to read, but sometimes it isn’t worth it to go into academia to get it. If I were to list everything wrong with academia, this would be a book not a blog post, so I’ll be brief here. In short, sometimes it’s not a great idea to be in academia. The academic job market is depressingly sparse, and it’s gotten worse since the global pandemic. Sometimes it isn’t worth going into debt to do this. It can work for those who find their passion here, but it’s not universally good. Often, dropping out isn’t the bad choice or failure of someone who wasn’t good enough to finish. Often, it can just be a good decision for your career and mental health.
So, academia…. Bad?
Sometimes, yeah. But more importantly, these YouTubers present themselves as aware of this state of academia-bad and it frames nearly all of what they do. By establishing credentials and then subsequently distancing themselves from it, they show expertise without being a lame professor who would lecture you about something. They can take a shot straight from a bottle of vodka and tell you some shitabout everything wrong with Jon Snow’s characterization in Game of Thrones.
Watch from starting timestamp (20:29) to 21:10 for a brief example of this tone.
And that works. I often find myself procrastinating reading theory by listening to these people talk about different theories in entertaining ways. Put simply, reading most theory is a lot less fun than watching a ContraPoints video about why Autogynephilia (a transphobic theory on why trans people are trans) is blatantly wrong as she provides her own experience, perspective, and analysis of the relevant texts.
Watch from starting timestamp (10:58) to 13:21 for snippet of this.
Instead of existing within the highly regulated, toxic environment of academia and writing articles, they now exist within the moderately regulated, toxic environment of YouTube and make video essays with similar content. Here, you can say “fuck” and call people cucks. Take that, Ivory tower.
To be serious though, while these video essays have certain freedoms of expression that you don’t have in an academic context, like swearing and drinking on camera, there’s still informal rules and citational practices. As an example, if you want to make a case about what the ideology of the apocalypse is in Mad Max, you’re expected to bring your citations instead of just talking about what you thought. See this clip of Jack Saint’s video for an example of providing an argument, citation, joke, then video clips of the text to back it up (timestamp 28:22 to 29:46).
While you can of course talk in these spaces without citing Hegel, there is clear expectation of having done your homework instead of simply showing up excited to talk about the idea. Even when no academic sources are used, like in the above Game of Thrones video, creator commentary, pieces of a show or movie, or other similar sources are presented to back up what they’re saying.
Whether its about a thing they like or why thing-bad, these argumentative video essays are compelling, in part, because you tell that they genuinely care about the content. Because someone frustrated with how good Jon Snow couldhave been developed better and yet wasn’t is a lot more compelling than an article explaining how character development works or a professor lecturing about the concept. Someone who finds the use of color pallet in the Watchmencomics compelling and their use in the 2009 movie is more interesting when they lean in to show you the panels and the shots in question instead of describing them in text.
In this example (from 1:53 to 2:12), his argument is essentially: Lookat how cool this is and how flat the film’s reproduction was. And, yeah, he’s right, those comics looked really damn cool. This video captures a feeling that runs throughout kaptainkristian’s work. Looking at his YouTube channel description, you’ll find only three words: visual love letters. He’s clearly a nerd who is excited to show you some really cool shit. Whether he’s talking about the color in Watchmen, the animation in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, or rhyming for two straight minutes to talk about Dr. Seuss, these videos are clear projects of passion. And that passion is infectious.
That impression is no mistake, nor probably unrelated to his success. In a way similar to how academics are compelled to present as emotionally distanced, cooly rational, and calmly argumentative, YouTubers of various genres have been rewarded for presenting a sense of authenticity. Lindsay Ellis, has an insightful essay on “Manufactured Authenticity” in which she uses How to Cake It with Yolanda Gamppand some others as case studies in how presenting as informal and authentic tends to go hand in hand with audience growth as well as talking to her friend and fellow YouTuber Hank Green about how they perceive these ideas impacting their own channels. Critically, I don’t think that this drive to seem authentic is presented as condemnation, but as an impact of the medium they are on. No one is really immune to it.
There’s quite a lot that these creators do that very intentionally presents themselves as genuine, authentic, or passionate and shapes the way they present their points. While kap might show this by rhyming for two minutes, there’s more subtle ways this shows up. One way that a number of YouTubers do this, including both Lindsay Ellis herself and Natalie Wynn (creator of contrapoints), is using alcohol as a visual tool.
In a lot of videos, Lindsay will either take a shot straight from a bottle of liquor before getting into something she presents as particularly eye-roll-worthy or will drink a glass of wine after saying something bad that a movie or director did. For example, in same the video as linked above, she drinks various kinds of beers and liquors throughout “The Last of the Game of Thrones Hot Takes.”The copious amounts of empty beer bottles and cans in the background that progressively grows almost every time it cuts back to her in is likely not an accident. Natalie, when talking about getting “cancelled” on twitter, is persistently drinking in a bathtub.
(First minute)
They both seem to use this as a way to signal that they’re tired of or exasperated with the topic and that they will need to drink to really get through talking about it. Drinking here is signposting that they’re going to tell you like it is without having to say that outright. In reality, they aren’t saying this in a moment of probably-a-bit-buzzed rambling: they’ve taken months to prepare scripts and carefully controlled every element of the presentation, including that impression.
Humor itself can do essentially the same thing. Saying something funny instead of “in this essay I will…” is a great way to set the tone for a video that does a longform argument anyways. The ContraPoints video on The West is a great example of this.
(From starting timestamp 1:29 to 2:00)
She ends her intro here with saying what one should do to talk about this topic, then instead dismisses it with the 16-corndogs/dicks joke right before doing what she just dismissed anyways. Which is a lot more engaging than ending your thesis paragraph in an educational essay with “in this essay I will operationalize The West.” Similarly, Jack Saint opens his talking dogs movies video by pointing out how absurd it would be to do a video about it and plays on the humor of applying serious “rigorous analysis” to a topic that sounds extremely not-serious immediately before he does it anyways. All of these four channels do things like this because sarcasm and humor works. It helps make their arguments actually seem genuine and entertaining instead of feeling like a lecture.
Pointing out how these creators intentionally use these strategies to present themselves as more authentic isn’t to say that it’s all artifice. While there is a lot going on to help build that impression, it’s clear that these people genuinely care about the things they’re talking about. Instead, I want to use this to draw attention to this format and how it’s not only been shaped by the influences of YouTube, but by presenting as an intellectual without seeming like they’re lecturing. By doing things like this that academic pointedly can’t, they can lean on academic authority without falling into its patterns. The details of how they present themselves are carefully crafted to maintain this image.
So what? Why should I care?
Thinking about how we, as academics and “public intellectuals,” do something similar in articles but in the opposite emotional direction can be instructive in thinking about what spaces we create with our work and the personas we develop simply by inhabiting that space. By shaping to the norms of our medium, we’re letting it shape who we present ourselves as. In most journals, that means presenting as emotionally distant and expositing knowledge.
Naturally, there is also passion in academia. There is writing that comes off as personal and authentic, but sometimes it’s quite hard for that to survive the peer review process. Similarly, academics like bell hooks have talked about how passion is an essential element of teaching (hooks, 1993). Personally, a lot of my favorite classes have been ones where the professor is passionate about the topic. Yet, the norms of this system typically push towards not presenting that passion.
They’re approaching a similar nail as we are, then they’re hitting it with a different tool in a different way and doing so with passion. They’re being intentional about presenting themselves as emotionally present and in conversation. They’re writing love letters (and thing-bads) to be shared instead of lectures and articles to be published.
We too could just try to be more authentic and be intentional about how we present that authenticity. Underneath the layers of authority and “academic rigor,” many academics are simply passionate about what they study and will endlessly ramble lovingly about the topic they’re fascinated with if prompted. All my friends certainly know that I wouldn’t shut up about video essays for weeks before I wrote this.
I don’t think you have to drop out and start a YouTube channel, but I do implore you to consider maybe folding something you’re working on into a love letter instead of hammering it into an article.
Referenced videos and links to these aforementioned creators’ platforms:
[in]Transition
http://mediacommons.org/intransition/
Watching the Pain of Others by Chloé Galibert-Laîné
http://mediacommons.org/intransition/watching-pain-others
Who Ever Heard…? By Matthew Thomas Payne
http://mediacommons.org/intransition/who-ever-heard%E2%80%A6
ContraPoints
https://www.youtube.com/c/ContraPoints/videos
https://twitter.com/ContraPoints
Autogynephilia | ContraPoints
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6czRFLs5JQo
The West | ContraPoints
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyaftqCORT4
Canceling | ContraPoints
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8
Cringe | ContraPoints
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRBsaJPkt2Q
Lindsay Ellis
https://www.youtube.com/c/LindsayEllisVids/videos
https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis
Her book, Axiom’s End: https://read.macmillan.com/lp/axioms-end/
Aforementioned merch page: https://store.dftba.com/collections/lindsay-ellis
YouTube: Manufacturing Authenticity (For Fun and Profit!) - Lindsay Ellis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FJEtCvb2Kw
RENT - Look Pretty and Do As Little as Possible: A Video Essay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0qfFbtIj5w&t=2369s
The Last of the Game of Thrones Hot Takes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGr0NRx3TKU
Is Titanic Good, Actually?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW4U_lfgPac
kaptainkristian
https://www.youtube.com/c/kaptainkristian/videos
https://twitter.com/kaptainkristian
An article about him that I pulled a quote from: https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/1/12318900/kaptain-kristian-video-blogger-interview
Watchmen - Adapting The Unadaptable
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oltd-Jsi2I
Jack Saint
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdQKvqmHKe_8fv4Rwe7ag9Q
https://twitter.com/LackingSaint
The Political Implications Of Talking Dog Movies | Jack Saint
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq8AYICXVUs
FilmJoy, home of Movies with Mikey
https://www.youtube.com/c/filmjoy/videos
hbomberguy
https://www.youtube.com/c/hbomberguy/videos
Steven Proudfoot is a Ph.D student at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism. He studies video games and fandom, especially where they intersect in fields of psychology and cultural studies.
