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. There were a number of stories this fortnight about online media and corporate commerce: Ann Taylor responded proactively to Facebook comments, Nike and Pepsi have hijacked World Cup marketing, product placement on blogs is increasing, Gatorade has a command center called Mission Control to oversee social media marketing, Disney/Pixar bought into Twitter trending, and Fox News has started a social media site (related: a Pew Center study finds a huge gap between social web news and traditional news news). Meanwhile, Henry Jenkins wants us to consider the difference between viral and spreadable, and even if they know the definitions, no one is really sure if Bros Icing Bros originated via viral or spreadable means.

2. A Nielsen study says about 22% of the world’s time online is consumed with social networking. We’ve also spent a lot of time looking up World Cup stuff, posting ruthless comments on articles anonymously, and checking out the latest I Can Has Cheezburger entries (seriously, tell me this isn’t awesome), while the Chinese apparently spend a lot of time just waiting for websites to load up. The Japanese are spending increasingly more time Twittering (the Japanese word for “tweet” translates back as “mumble,” which is perfect), but Iranians might not be Twittering as much as we would hope.

3. Hollywood is looking toward the international box office to help cover early summer losses, though the World Cup could slow things down a bit for non-Sex and the City-type films. Avatar is the gift that keeps on giving (though watch out for those glasses), while theaters are drawing more revenue from advertising. Great.

4. With even Pixar falling prey to it, many are lamenting Hollywood’s sequel and remake obsession: Anne Thompson, A.O. Scott, top producers, some guy in Austin who organized a protest. Claude Brodesser-Akner claims Hollywood is responding to some of the reboot bombs by seeking more originals, but Thompson is doubtful and points to the marketing challenge of originals like Knight and Day as a reason why Hollywood will continue turning to pre-sold ideas.

5. Carl Icahn appears even closer to Lions Gate Entertainment control thanks to Mark Cuban, but there’s still an ugly fight ahead. Cuban also suggests that studios should be buying up theater chains (like he’s done with Magnolia Pictures and Landmark Theaters), which sounds like a resurrection of classical-era Hollywood, but it’s for a digital-era reason: to exploit simultaneous VOD and theatrical releases. Of course, theater owners will certainly object, while R. Thomas Umstead says the viability of the day-and-date release is more complicated than many think, and the travails of the film Unthinkable show that piracy makes distribution plans even more complicated.

6. States are increasingly requiring filmmakers to showcase their regions in a favorable light if they want to receive valuable tax credits and subsidies (in response, the NYT had a little fun with the idea of cleaning up the cinematic image of New York), though this is probably more a requirement of independent productions, not major studio films. Similarly worried about negative depictions, conservative factions in Japan oppose the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove and have prevented domestic theatrical screenings of the film, but it will be streamed online via a Japanese video sharing site.

7. Redbox is going Blu-ray; Paramount is going rogue with Redbox, giving the service its new release DVDs right away rather than after a month window like most of the other studios, a decision that MG Siegler supports but David Poland says is a terrible mistake; and Netflix’s stock is going down thanks to a analyst’s claim that Hulu is a future threat, but Dan Rayburn says that projection is a terrible mistake.

8. The annual video game expo E3 took place last week: Bitmob fills us in on the best and worst of the major presentations – Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, EA, Konami, Ubisoft – Stephen C. Webster has more bests and worsts, and Dan Ackerman says hardware trumped software at the show, while Daniel Felt says no matter who won at E3, consumers lose in the end. Win or lose, consumers can look forward to the motion control war, more 3D games, and Rock Banding with the keytar.

9. Sasha Frere-Jones assesses some current online music listening options. One of them, the European subscription service Spotify, is being blocked from an American arrival by US labels due to its free music component. No matter the service, there’s a big challenge in convincing smartphone users to actually pay to listen to music on their handsets. Further, Jeremy Helligar points out that while singles are selling well, that’s not translating into album sales, which doesn’t bode well long-term for artists. Then there’s the web service that actually pays you for sharing music.

10. One thing you likely missed this fortnight was my birthday, but you can give me a belated gift by hitting one of my favorite News for TV Majors posts from the last two weeks: Gender in Televised Sport, Changing TV Culture, Cord Cutting Trends, ESPN Screens, TV Twitterers, DVR Boost, Nevins Profile, Actors Not Shows, Three Screen Report, Inside the Writers Room, The Genius of NewsRadio.

1. The US Justice Department okayed the merger between Live Nation (the world’s largest ticket promoter) and Ticketmaster (the world’s largest ticket sales company). Will this benefit the concertgoer? The DOJ and No Doubt think so; the Wall Street Journal is skeptical.

2. AMC ordered the pilot for Walking Dead, which Frank Darabont will produce, write, and direct. Adapting the zombie apocalypse comic of the same name, the channel, it seems, hopes to combine two of its most popular draws: horror and prestige drama.

3. After only 37 days in theatres, Cameron’s love-it-or-hate-it Avatar surpassed Cameron’s love-it-or-hate-it Titanic as the highest grossing film of all time. It’s catching up to Titanic quickly in terms of domestic sales as well, but things look very different when adjusted for admissions instead of dollars—currently, it’s #25 in the US.

4. As you get ready for Lost, a series of great links to amusing preparatory material can be found at Ramblings of a TV Whore.

5. In “Getting Past Viral,” Ivan Askwith offers a provocative call to disarm, and to move beyond sloppy notions of “viral marketing,” in a post at Big Spaceship’s site

6. In case you didn’t know already, a committee of non-humanist boneheads at University of Iowa are planning to kill the Film Studies and Comp Lit PhDs (well, the program, not the individuals … though maybe that’s next). Read more, and a nice testimonial to the program via Henry Jenkins’s blog.

7. If you have a problem, and no one else can help you …. The A-Team trailer is out, for all those 80s renegades and would-be 80s renegades. But we’re forced to ask, is there a statute of limitations on iconic father figures played that Liam Neeson is rapidly approaching (Obi-Wan’s master, Aslan, Ducard (a.k.a. the dude who trained Batman), now Hannibal, and soon to be Zeus in Clash of the Titans)?

8.  Oft-injured Portland Trail Blazers center and generally large human being Greg Oden became the latest professional athlete to have his NSFW cellphone pics circulated on the innernette (Google at your own risk).  The real story here is the wave of bizarre commentary from the sports writing community provoked by the pics.

9. Critically acclaimed 2009 horror film The House of the Devil receives a VHS release this week. (Granted, the VHS comes bundled with a DVD, somewhat like the trend of vinyl LPs coming with free digital downloads.) Is the videotape about to experience a revival? Or is this just nostalgia? Or merely a marketing gimmick?

10. Are digital music downloads too expensive? The music industry had a record-breaking year for digital music sales in 2009, suggesting that consumers are more than willing to fork over cash for “legal” downloads. However, a recent study from UPenn’s Wharton School suggests that the iTunes 99-cents per song model is overpriced and the industry would actually profit more from charging less. The industry, though, doesn’t seem convinced; Billboard has been quick to try and marginalize the research as, among other things, “strictly an academic exercise.”