Because the Beastie Boys – Adam Yauch (MCA), Mike Diamond (Mike D) and Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz) – have been at it longer than anyone (except maybe Weird Al) their new short film “Fight For Your Right Revisited” encapsulates all of these issues; pointing back to the Beasties’ own significant contributions to the medium, while simultaneously embodying the new convergent logic of viral videos and contemporary advertising.

The announcement of the video made its way across the official and unofficial channels of viral advertising where facebook links to this preview clip managed to garner 2.5 million views in the two weeks since it was released on youtube alone. As of this Saturday (4/23/2011), the film and an album preview were simultaneously released, reflecting a ‘full-court digital media press’ from the band, appropriately debuting their album “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two” with a live stream of a boom box at centre court of Madison Square Garden.

An oral history of the band in New York Magazine only reinforced a marketing campaign reliant on ubiquity and virality. The film simultaneously debuted on hulu.com and the Palladia Channel, the latter an HD outlet for concert videos and the site where the 30-minute length of these films actually makes a lot of sense. These short films are even more appropriate to the needs of cable TV, where they can be played as half-hour blocks of programming rather than being incorporated and subsumed into the larger flow of a VJ’s mix. Since Saturday, the band has also provided the entire album for free streaming online, as a reaction to, or against, the illegal downloading of it, stating,

…as a hostile and retaliatory measure with great hubris we are making the full explicit aka filthy dirty nasty version available for streaming on our site.

“Fight for Your Right Revisited” works slightly better in its “preview form,” promising many stars jammed into a video, as well as the shock at seeing Danny McBride, Elijah Wood, Seth Rogen as the “younger” version of the band as they face off against the “older” version played by Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly and Jack Black. It works well within the confines of the funnyordie.com genre or your average internet meme, piquing the viewer’s interest and prompting them to share with their friends accordingly.

The film, on the other hand, seems predisposed to reward insider knowledge of the band, so that their characteristic backwards tracking shots and slow-motion replays – not to mention wealth of pop-culture references that litter their videos and songs – creates a weave of familiar elements from dummies flying through the air to iconic imagery and visual style. Produced by MCA’s film company, Oscilloscope Productions, and directed by Ad-Rock, it is an example of how the Beasties’ operate as their own cultural producers, originating film and music content. All of this indicates the larger corporate structure of the band, and the convergent logic of which the video is only the tip of the iceberg.

The film is both insular and points outward. It is both a playful reflection on the band’s meaning and travels within the past 25 years, as well as a text that indicates the Beasties’ influence within a larger cultural net of references, fandoms, stars and other texts. The presence of the “Beastie Boys” in iconic garb from a long-lost era indicates the barest glimpse in this hall of mirrors, just as the presence of Will Ferrell playing the cowbell not only evokes the idea of his own famous “more cowbell” sketch as well as the Beasties’ own “Hey Ladies” video, complete with Mariarchi cowbell player.

Each of these images, stars and texts act as palimpsests throughout the piece, making the lines between original, extratextual, paratextual and hypertextual difficult to discern. In fact, the film is the sum total of all of these references as well as a hub which points outward to many more.

At the same time, it is almost impossible to view the film without watching the original video, suggesting that the film, video and its use of the many, many stars is a much larger affair than it originally appears. It not only embodies the logic of a new tendency within music and video, moving beyond the confines of the TV network, but a larger strategy which elevates the group to the role of director and producer. The music video’s transformation into film and migration to the internet is actually a stronger vehicle for artistic autonomy writ large, where the former network restrictions regarding content have eroded, and the agency of the spectator can actually engage with the material at their leisure, rather than waiting for the network to air it.

All of which is to say that the link between consumer and producer (the artists) is even more robust and that the video, or film, is very much alive and well 25 years later. The Beastie Boys continue to fight, but instead of their “rights to party,” they fight for new products controlled and distributed by them, and for new ways that we can consume them.

1. The Supreme Court will consider if the sale of violent video games to children should be outlawed, thus deciding if video games are more like movies or more like pornography. Millions of Boy Scouts await the ruling with great interest. This debate is playing out elsewhere: Rob Fahey says concern in the UK about video game effects has died down in recent years (replaced, of course, by concern over social media effects), while in Australia, gamemakers are frustrated that the highest age rating is 15+, and they feel that without the addition of an 18+ rating, they have to censor their content for adult gamers.

2. paidContent has a striking chart of the decline of music sales, but Glenn Peoples at Billboard says this is similar to a dip in the 1980s and, like then, sales will rise again with innovation. Gordon Smith says it’s the internet, not radio, at fault for music’s decline; We All Make Music considers the challenges musicians have with promoting themselves over the net; and fans debate whether the indie band Grizzly Bear writing an ad for a commercial is selling out or just doing what has to be done.

3. New York Magazine’s Logan Hill observes that the internet is taking music videos in audacious new directions, and Vulture provides a list of 14 music video directors to watch. A number of music videos grabbed attention this fortnight: Christina Aguilera released a Lady Gaga-esque video for “Not Myself Tonight”; Miley Cyrus got dirrty in “Can’t Be Tamed”, and M.I.A. got people talking and even yanked from YouTube with “Born Free”.

4. Mashable showcases a social media stats video that contains some grabbers, like that if Facebook was a country, it would be the third largest country in the world. Given what Facebook has been doing to its privacy settings in recent years (which Matt McKeon puts in a striking image form), I don’t want to live in that country. Tim Jones looks at how deceptive Facebook’s interfaces are, and while Jeff Jarvis says Facebook actually has an opportunity to turn around the privacy outrage by actually listening to it, Ryan Singel calls for the creation of an alternative to Facebook.

5. Christopher Mims says Twitter is the future of news, but it’s looking like a lot of people will go uninformed in the future, then, as a study says 87% of Americans are aware of Twitter, but only 7% use it. Teens in particular say they hate it and the celebrities who use it. 17-year-old Arya Zarifi says in the latter article, “It’s something for adults who feel like it makes them hip or something.” Arya, I use Twitter; I don’t feel like it makes me hip or something. However, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off being played out on Twitter, now that’s hip. Or something.

6. Apple didn’t come off so well this fortnight. There was the lost iPhone debacle, Apple’s shutdown of the Lala music service, which the AV Club says makes it that much more likely that iTunes “will one day control all the music in the world,” and the Ellen incident. What also got techie keyboards tapping was Steve Jobs’ dismissal of Flash. Dan Rayburn accuses Jobs of being disingenuous, while Christina Warren says it’s not Apple but HTML5 which is dooming Flash, with Scribd’s ditching of Flash for HTML5 as an example.

7. In Hollywood news, Kevin Maher explains Hollywood’s 1980s remake obsession (at least we don’t have to worry about any more Rambos); Matt Zoller Seitz stirred up a lot of dust with his anti-comic book movie position; and studios are ramping up cross-promotional efforts. In indie news, Anthony Kaufman wonders where the under-30 audience for indie cinema is, Michael Cieply looks at the process of rebuilding indie cinema, and Peter Knegt found six cases where indie documentary distribution has gone right, but Michael Moore fears for the future of documentary with a recent federal court ruling. In film criticism is dead news, Pete Hammond says theaters and studios can’t survive without critics.

8. Movie Gallery is shuttering its doors, while Bloomberg’s Tiffany Kary says it appears bond holders expect Blockbuster will go that way too, but one man thinks he can save Blockbuster. Redbox rentals are shooting up, and Chuck Tryon responds to a Redbox publicity piece about the  labor involved in keep Redboxes running.

9. Megan McArdle considers the theory that file-sharing is killing the entertainment industry, while Nate Anderson reports on a study that says file-sharers are the industry’s biggest customers and also points to India as the most consumer-friendly copyright country. The US has dropped further down on that list with the FCC ruling that lets the MPAA enforce the blockage of copying capabilities for first-run video-on-demand movies. Cory Doctorow says this is a ridiculous decision that opens to door for corporate control over all of our electronic devices in the future; David Poland is not so outraged.

10. The best News for TV Majors links of the fortnight: FCC Internet Control; Lost Ending; TV Future; CBS & CNN; Soap Lessons; Dramas Dominate; Economist Series; MSNBC Following FNC Lesson; FlowTV Conference; Gender Imbalance; Sets Statistics; Reclaiming the Multi-Cam; Sports on Cable.

On the heels of the popularity of the Rube Goldberg video for “This Too Shall Pass,” OK Go announced that it was leaving an already beleaguered EMI to establish its own label Paracadute Recordings.  Quickly a story emerged treating OK Go as the musical David fighting the evil Goliath of EMI.  This story is largely true, as EMI’s ridiculous stance on video embedding evidenced a fundamental misunderstanding of web promotion and the social value created by allowing users to spread music videos in an age where the music video as a genre of cultural production is in desperate need of reinvention.

However, OK Go is no diminutive David, having already cut its teeth producing videos such as “Here It Goes Again” and managing its own publishing, merchandising, and touring rights.  On January 18, 2010, lead singer Damian Kulash posted an open letter to OK Go’s fans, explaining the band’s fight with EMI over embedding and geoblocking.  Additionally, OK Go circumvented EMI’s backwards social media policies and obtained sponsorship from State Farm for the second video for “This Too Shall Pass.”

Perhaps part of the problem is that the members of OK Go are better videomakers than music makers.  Peter Kafka writes, “If EMI’s executives allowed themselves to speak candidly, they would likely point out that while OK Go made great videos, it didn’t seem to make music that many people wanted to buy.  Soundscan says the band has sold all of 500,000 albums in the U.S., both in physical and digital form, in its three-album tenure at EMI. That’s 488,608, to be exact. Plus another 25,000 single tracks.  That’s not awful. But it’s not the kind of sales that would inspire a big label to spend big money promoting an act. Even when the industry’s business model was still intact.”  Rachel Bailey writes, “Chicago treadmill champions OK Go are better known for their playful, viral-friendly music video for ‘Here It Goes Again’ than for creating hit singles.”  Perhaps Bailey and Kafka’s statements show that visibility, critical acclaim, and monetary success (of course, success is relative and subject to definition) are not necessarily connected in the value chain and that these connections need to be re-imagined and constructed from scratch in the new music economy.

The question of how value will be defined and the relationship of economic value to social, cultural, and participatory value remains.  If value is multifaceted, then how do creators connect the dots between its various forms in what, after all, is an industry?

1. The upside and downside of Twitter and celebrity: Conan O’Brien turned to Twitter to entertain us (thus becoming what he once mocked). He then used Twitter to turn one woman’s life upside down, and she charmed us all by channeling her sudden fame into good causes. But Twitter doesn’t always have such delightful results, as evidenced by the fact that Academy Awards ceremony co-producer Adam Shankman chose actors like Zac Efron and Miley Cyrus to present at the Oscars because Twitter followers told him to. Where’s Fail Whale when you need it?

2. The viral video of the fortnight was OK Go’s Rube Goldbergian “This Too Shall Pass.” It’s sponsored by State Farm, which dismays some (I assume Sarah Polley wouldn’t approve) who also point out that Honda and others did this first. Regardless, it looks cool, and Wired found out how they pulled it off. By the way, there was a previous video for “This Too Shall Pass” involving the Notre Dame marching band, but you likely missed it due to ridiculous embedding restrictions. There’s a very important lesson in there, internet. In fact, OK Go has since left its record label EMI over the issue. Viral video runners-up: SNL presidents, Avatar/Pocahontas mashup, Mean Disney Girls, the Russian singer, Battlestar Galactica–Sabotage video.

3. Jesse Thomas composed a fascinating “State of the Internet” video, featuring such facts as that 247 billion emails are sent each day, but 81% of them are spam. And Zaheer Ahmed Khan has a fun list of Internet firsts, like the first item sold on eBay: broken laser pointer, purchased by a collector (?) for $14.83. Who could have predicted then what sites Twitter, Facebook, Linked In would be worth now? Speaking of internet firsts and future loads of money, Business Insider’s Nicholas Carlson has the contentious story of the founding of Facebook.

4. Scholar Thomas Doherty says film criticism is dead, and (not dead) film critic Richard Schickel seems inclined to agree, having said during a recent panel discussion, “I don’t know honestly the function of reviewing anything.” Chuck Tryon disagrees with Doherty, as does Jim Emerson, and Keith Uhlich pulls no punches in depicting what he thinks of Schickel. Meanwhile, (not dead) film critic Armond White once allegedly kinda sorta said he wished filmmaker Noah Baumbach was never born, but I’m not sure whether the resulting kerfuffle qualifies as film criticism dead or film criticism alive.

5. Doherty can amend his article with the news that Variety has kicked to the curb its last remaining salaried (but not dead) film critic, Todd McCarthy, as well as its last theater critic. Former Variety columnist Anne Thompson says the trade has cut its lifeblood, (not dead) film critic Roger Ebert gives the move an impassioned thumbs down, (not dead) film critic David Edelstein remembers the way Variety used to be, and McCarthy himself offers some thoughts. Best headline, from the LA Times: Variety Lays an Egg. Variety also has a lawsuit to deal with in regard to a negative film review. Variety’s defense? Film criticism is dead.

6. Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek detailed the decline of Miramax, and in its wake, Levi Shapiro points to The Messenger as a new example for indie cinema to follow, while Paramount is trying a new approach with producing “micro-budget” films. With the studio infrastructure for indie cinema broken down otherwise, film festivals might be ever more important in taking up the slack, if they can do it right and especially properly utilize both online distribution and marketing. In that regard, Lion’s Gate is trying to take advantage of social media marketing for its April release of Kick Ass, and Break.com is succeeding with its online distribution of low-budget videos, though their indie fare is decidedly lowbrow, rather Hurt Locker territory.

7. Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panah (The Mirror, The Circle, Offside) was arrested in a government crackdown on dissidents. Countryman and international art cinema icon Abbas Kiarostami has decried this development, the LA (Not Dead) Film Critics Association has expressed its dismay, and you can too via an online petition. For more on the broader context, The Believer Magazine has a revealing report on filmgoing and filmmaking in Iran.

8. Speaking of The Hurt Locker, hooray for Kathryn Bigelow’s Best Director Oscar, which New York Times (not dead) film critic Manohla Dargis was thrilled about. However, Rachel Abramowitz offers the cold slap of reality in her LA Times piece about the ongoing challenges for women in Hollywood. The other woman everyone fell for at the Oscars was Gabourey Sidibe, and Feminista Files blogger Erika Kennedy detailed the insulting backstory of her Oscar dress saga and defended Sidibe as a role model. Howard Stern should give that a read.

9.  In DVD news, an Indiana prosecutor wants only G movies in Redbox kiosks, Blockbuster is going back to imposing late fees, and the MPAA had small win in their big fight against DVD copying software, but this chart of DVD sales struggles will make them unhappy. Disney has  shortened the Alice in Wonderland DVD release window, but speculation that Hurt Locker’s post-Best Picture difficulties with booking theaters are due to the film being out on DVD might give other studios pause (literally!).

10. My favorite News for TV Majors story links: There Will Be Retrans, CNN Fears Facebook, Flushing Measurements, TiVo News, Indecency Backlog, Cable Channel Fees, Exec Interviews, Viacom & Hulu Break Up, Old Spice Ad, and NCIS Fandom.