Residual Media, Star Wars, and just a dash of Haunted Dolls

Matthew DeLeon, using footage from My Brother, My Brother, and Me

How do you know when something uncool (like a trend, or a story, or a character, or whatever) becomes old enough that it circles right back around to being cool again? How do you know if something is worth bringing back, or if it should stay in obscurity where it belongs? Can anything really stay "dead?" Could it be that it just hasn't been long enough for all the formerly cool stuff to have worked their way back again? Who are those three nerdy looking white guys?

I can't answer any of these. Scratch that. I can answer those last three. Yes, things can definitely stay dead, especially if they weren't documented, if they were documented poorly, or if they were documented but those documents were somehow destroyed or made inaccessible. Oh. And those are the McElroy brothers.

Let's talk about haunted dolls.

This is Where the Fun Begins...

ImgFlp.com

It is no secret that the reason this blog exists is because I have a deep-seeded fear of failure. Perhaps I should clarify. Because of this fear, I like to get good grades at my university, so when my professor says "git 'urself a blog, young'un" I do so.

Maybe I should have just said that I made this blog for a class...

Because it's academic, my blog posts should in some way address what we've been talking about in said class (i.e. Dolls what got themselves possessed).

We recently studied the work of Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green who help us students to understand our digital culture in their book, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. In that book they introduce four key terms that help us to wrap our minds around the various phases of popularity in which any single piece of media must reside. These terms also help provide language to what would otherwise be amorphous, ill-defined ideas. And no one wants that.

The terms are as follows: Dominant (whatever's most popular), Emergent (whatever's newest [literally hasn't had enough time to be popular]), Residual (whatever isn't super popular but isn't quite dead yet), and Archaic (whatever is culturally dead [no one is even trying to keep it alive]).

I'll tell you right now that the most interesting are the Dominant and Residual categories. To me anyway.

Rose Lilah

For an example, Star Wars as a concept is culturally Dominant right now, because Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker was just released, and The Mandalorian is also pretty huge. Really a good time to be a Star Wars fan right now, if you're simply measuring by the amount of content being produced. But if we take a look at the various aspects of the franchise, we can see how different variations fit into the four categories. Those were the popular ones. For other examples, look to that image. You see it. That one. Right there. That one. On the right. →

The most Emergent one I can think of would have to be the return of The Clone Wars, that's about to air soon. This is a bit of a weird one though, and doesn't fit the definition super well. Yes, it hasn't even been released yet, so it has to be the "newest" but because of its attachment to Star Wars as a franchise, and the previous seasons of LITERALLY THE EXACT SAME SHOW, I'm not sure you can even call this "new" per say. But it is the closest thing Star Wars has to Emergent media in my opinion. Maybe I should rethink this whole Star Wars metaphor.


And don't worry, I'm going to work my way back to Haunted Dolls soon enough!

Acid Pix Some Rights Reserved

In terms of what's Residual, I'm going to say the prequels are an obvious choice. When they first came out, there were mixed reviews. There are still mixed reviews. But from my own experience (maybe I'll get someone to back me up after I've written the rest of this post), more people are willing to declare their undying love for, and loyalty towards the prequels today, than there were when they came out. Some of this love might derive from irony, but I believe that most of the people who create prequel memes today do so out of a pure and passionate love for them. Some of them even think that it has been long enough that it is now safe to say that they enjoy the prequels over the original trilogy itself. Blasphemy to be sure, but I don't really care enough to make my opinion about it into a whole thing.

And lastly, the Archaic. What part of Star Wars has been forgotten? Does such a thing exist? And even if it did, how could I, a plucky youth with nary a thought for any kind of deep research, possibly find it? Well, I may not be able to find it directly, but I'll bet you that I can reference it and you'll be surprised by what it is about Star Wars that is archaic. Are you ready for me to tell you?

...

Star Wars itself.

The original version of Episode IV: A New Hope, back when it was just one movie that was literally called Star Wars. You remember how I said that one of the conditions for a piece of media being "culturally dead" is if it was documented poorly, or whatever documentation that exists has been made inaccessible? That's exactly what happened with Star Wars. Because George Lucas (and I'm sure a team of other executives and creative partners) were so keen on updating and "improving" the original movie so much, they have prevented anyone from seeing the one "true" copy of the movie. You can read all about it in this New York Times Opinion piece: "We Can't See 'Star Wars' Anymore".

Doo doo do doo dodoo dooo... Haunted Doll Watch

So, we're talking about all that stuff in class right? But then, as part of the same lesson, we were told to read this article and this one about the wild and wacky world of haunted dolls. You don't have to read them, but I feel that if I didn't explain how I got to this point you might be confused.

So, this old wild form of "media" that used to be super popular (Dolls), has now drastically changed itself by appealing to a new kind of curious audience: believers in the paranormal. Maybe it's because on an inherent level, all dolls are somewhat creepy. "He had black eyes. Like a doll's eyes..." I don't know what that's from, but the context is not good, I assure you. Is it Jaws? I'd bet it's probably Jaws.

There are a million different reasons as to why people would wish to sell "haunted" dolls, but there are a million more reasons as to why people would be morbidly curious in buying a "haunted" doll.

I don't mean to spark a discussion about if ghosts are real or not, or if they are, discuss all the reasons as to why they would possess a doll. I'd like to discuss the monetary transaction of what for all intents and purposes, both the buyer and seller agree are haunted (usually evil) dolls. I was always told to stay away from evil, but hey, maybe I'm the exception.

Alyssa L. Miller

Believe it or not, reading those articles was not my first trek into the weirdly expensive economy of Haunted Dolls that exists on Ebay.

The first time I discovered that this was a thing, was through my beloved podcast, My Brother, My Brother, and Me.

Those are the three brothers that I put into a small collage at the beginning of this post. It's advertised as a Comedy Advice Podcast, where listeners can write in and ask for advice, and the brothers will give them some ludicrous answer that supposed to be funny. But they've been doing it for over ten years now, and as a way to keep the show fresh and exciting, they've turned to doing small segments in the middle of an episode, that don't need to be connected to advice at all. One of these segments is called Haunted Doll Watch, where one of the brothers (the oldest, Justin) gets to introduce the others (and the audience) to one particular listing of a haunted doll on Ebay. They laugh and make fun of the situation and style of writing involved in most of these listings. It is very fun, and only a little bit like bullying.

I don't know if my professor is a fan of the podcast or not, but I guess we'll see after he reads this post, huh?

Personally, I could understand wanting to buy a nice haunted doll, or a haunted doll that wouldn't leave scratch marks on my door at night, that wouldn't whisper temptations into my child's ear during playtime. I could certainly understand why I would want to get rid of what I believe to be an evil haunted doll.

But this entire sub-genre, this little economy, showcases perfectly the potential of the Residual as a category. The Dominant category is always going to be incredibly important, because that is what largely determines what views we as a culture tend to hold and believe. As technology and techniques for documentation become more advanced however, as a category, the Residual is starting to grow and so too is its importance in culture.

Star Wars would never have been able to be forgotten if it were to be released for the first time today. Even bad things, even Archaic things, will continue to exist, even if no human on the planet wants to keep it around due to some false belief in its intrinsic value. For instance if I say some string of nonsense like....

w,aksjLWIOE84KJIDSMSlsksksm nw'slwlsa[a[wkw]w[w[w [kksksisnaa;a;aof jf

There is absolutely no reason to have documented and saved that particular sequence of characters in that order, but now, the internet will remember it forever so that I don't have to.

Roy Blumenthal

Haunted Dolls are just one category of newly discovered mutual interest that some humans have with each other, and the advance of technology is the only thing to have given them their "new life." As a testament to this fact, whenever the podcast that I listen to includes this segment onto the show (something that happens somewhat infrequently), the listing in question is immediately bought up by one of their listeners as soon as the podcast episode is released. In making fun of this economy, these podcasters are directly contributing to its continued success! Wild, right?

But of course, just because the internet will remember something forever doesn't mean that it will all of a sudden become culturally significant (I doubt my random keystrokes will inspire an entirely new mini-economy). But now, there is a potential outcome (however small) that that exact string of text will become culturally significant, specifically due to its having been recorded a thousand years ago in the past by a soon to be discovered genius named Matthw DLon(in the future, the letter "E" won't exist).

In any case, I'm glad that technology can give us these new possibilities. Maybe the Dominant won't be so domineering anymore, and we can actually start to choose what media we want to see and what beliefs we want to hold. That's probably never gonna happen, but if it were, I'd say the continual growth of the Residual is how we get there.