Debbie Nathan

Margaret Mead meets the web meets cybertribal rituals against HR 1955

I dropped by the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, held at NYC’s Museum of Natural History over the weekend. The fest began decades ago, to showcase moving-image offerings by anthropologists — materials that have been coming out since stuff like Man of Aran first appeared in the 1930s. Back then, the medium was 35 or 16mm. Later Super8. Then camcorders. Now there’s cheap, digital equipment — including cell phones. And currently, some of the most interesting “ethnographic” productions aren’t even made by anthropologists.

Instead, they might be by human rights, political and media-democracy activists.

“The Machine is Us/ing Us: Content from YouTube, WITNESS’ The Hub, and Karma Tube” was the title of a presentation I attended.

Margaret Mead in Samoa as a young woman

There, YouTube’s film manager, Sara Pollack, said YouTube is fueling political activism by posting practically any video that’s submitted, including those promoting all sorts of justice and social change projects. She clicked on an example (see it here): about Eric Volz, a young US guy running an environmental magazine in Nicaragua who says he was falsely charged and convicted of murdering an ex-girlfriend in that country. According to Pollack, the video made by Volz’s supporters, then posted on YouTube, has garnered attention for the case from the mass media.

Also up was Sameer Padania, of the brand new site The Hub. It’s part of Witness, a group that trains people worldwide how to use technology so they can go on the streets and videotape human rights abuses. Anyone who creates such a product, even if it’s just with a cellphone, can submit it to The Hub. The person who filmed Seinfeld comedian Mike Richards making racist comments at his show would not send that video to The Hub. The one who recorded Egyptian police torturing suspects in the jailhouse would. Great site!

Another speaker was Michael Smolens, founder and CEO of dotSUB — which allows polyglot volunteers to translate YouTube-style videos into a second language. And a third, fourth, etc. It’s a Wiki-esque version of the Tower of Babel razed.

Very strange Mead images found on the web

Here’s how it works: Say someone translated one of those tortured Egyptians’ words from Arabic to English for the Hub video. Using dotSUB, someone can then translate the English to Swahili, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish or any other tongue. One person can translate a fragment of the video, then fall asleep or have to go to his or her day job. A second volunteer can pick up where the first left off. Maybe V2 doesn’t finish, either, but V3 takes over. And so on till the whole thing is done. Very cool.

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I still don’t know how to embed YouTube items into my blog. So you’ll have to follow the links yourself, but I hope you go to this one. It was recommended to me by Naomi Dagen Bloom, whom I met because she was sitting behind me at the Mead festival. She’s has been using her blog to spread the word about a bill that just passed through the House of Representatives and is headed now for the Senate.

It’s HR 1955, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism and Prevention Act of 2007. It’s an amendment to the 2002 Homeland Security Act. From a First Amendment point of view it’s very scary, particularly because it’s aimed not at foreigners, but at US “natives.” True to name, it would establish a commission to study and come up with ways to prevent “violent radicalization” and “homegrown terrorism.”

“Violent radicalization” in the bill is defined as the “process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.”

“Homegrown terrorism” is “the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence…to intimidate or coerce” — among other entities — “the United States government….in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

Hmm. If you replaced “United States government” with “British government,” wouldn’t the American revolution and its activists have fit HR1955′s definitions of extremists and homegrown violent radicals? The mainstream media has published almost nothing about HR1955 but the web is roiling with protest denouncing it as the “Thought Crime Bill” — including on YouTube (click here for examples).

To learn more and take action, see various entries this month on the excellent blog, “As Time Goes By.”

Margaret Mead would be proud of how her festival is promoting all this online ferment. Granted, she knew nothing about the internet, and most pictures of her make her look very unhip and old. (Though I think the one I mounted at the top of this post is exceptional.) I look pretty old, too, and so does Naomi. OK, well, let’s just say old enough that we know how to spell.

Which is why, when I went on YouTube to view all those anti-HR 1955 videos, I felt like a weirdo invading MySpace. I mean, I’ve never seen so many apparently smart, educated people dubbing their videos with “accept” when they meant “except”, “intimadate” for “intimidate,” and so on like sounds of chalk on the retina blackboard. All the lefty and righty civil libertarians seem to be about 20 years old: that’s the only way to explain their semi-literacy. No doubt they’re intelligent, but they’ve done 2 much TV watching & txt mssging, and damn, I wish they’d get edited so people like me won’t feel ancient and like we’re not members of their new “The Machine is Us” club.

But hey, kids. Now that you’ve made it to this site, the crone is going to give you a lesson about sex politics, which is what I blog a lot about. So — like, did you ever hear of Margaret Mead? She wrote a book back in the 1920s, Coming of Age in Samoa. It was a real breakthrough in modern anthropology and in the US as a whole, because it said certain things about Samoan adolescents. To wit, that they and their parents were open and relaxed about sex, which allowed them to engage in much sexual exploration. This led Mead to propose that attitudes about sex are formed culturally rather than naturally, and if it weren’t for cultural repression, people would masturbate, have homosexual relations, and engage in unwed sex and other erotic acts without feeling anxious and guilty. The book caused quite a stir when it first appeared. It was as innovative then as the net is now.

And oh yeah, Mead was a lesbian. Plus, a feminist.

The “Machine” owes her a big thanks. That’s why I’m featuring her today, as a tribal rite on my little cyber cog.