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Spoof trailers, hyperlinked spectators & the web

New Media & Society

Published online on

Abstract

Spoof trailers are trailers for a non-existent film that typically has a parodic tone, changing the genre of the source film or films. They may combine materials from different films in the form of mash-ups or re-order scenes or shots of a single film, altering the original title cards and voiceover narration. They may also incorporate images and sound bites from popular media artefacts. Spoof trailers have also become one of the key manners through which Internet users inscribe their creativity on the Web, defy copyright laws and re-contextualize previously existing cultural material to challenge the distinction between producers and consumers. I seek to analyse what are the aesthetic characteristics of spoof trailers, the viewing environments in which they exist and the dominant logics at work within the Internet to account for this emerging, Web-specific, form of film culture.