A look at the impact of blogs, YouTube and Myspace on the arts.

By Michael Kearns

“With new technologies, there are always new pioneers. Artists have always worked with[in] the limitations of technology until a better medium was invented or discovered,” says filmmaker Michel Horvat. “Science and art are intricately connected. There are no paintings without extraction of pigments from rare minerals and plant sources; there are no metallic sculptures without the knowledge of how to smelt and handle metals.”

Second-guessing the future of consumer-generated product—from bloggers to MySpace, from Web sites to YouTube—triggers more questions than answers. Technology has dramatically spurred myriad modes of expression, including content that decidedly teases gay sensibility, but the artistic merit, political influence and historical context bear discussion.

In a Jan. 23 Los Angeles Times article (“Hollywood is seeing fans pull a power play”), Jordan Levin, former WB network chief who now helps run Generate, a production and management firm active in Internet projects, says, “This is an industry that, for its entire history, has imposed its model on consumers, but that’s fundamentally changing. The whole structure of people who control content is being supplanted by the content users themselves.”

It’s unlikely that the cross-dressed and defiantly homo band, Discount Cruise To Hell, would get many bites from mainstream venues. However, according to group member Ian MacKinnon, Discount Cruise has “received some local press attention and has been able to reach out to new audience members” through YouTube.

While MacKinnon acknowledges that YouTube is presently characterized by “production value that is crude,” he is hopeful that “the bar for quality of work on the site will be raised.”

Actor-writer Hunter Lee Hughes sees it differently. “The benefit of YouTube is that it shows people that they can pick up the camera and create something. I loved those Chinese guys imitating the Backstreet Boys. Such pure fun. There are plenty of big budget Hollywood features that don't have as many laughs. And sometimes there's a real sense of sharing something enjoyable that happens on YouTube. If you want to be a sketch comedy artist on Saturday Night Live or host a reality television prank show, I imagine it's useful to you.”

Indie character actor and Hollywood bon vivant Mickey Cottrell likens the explosion of YouTube with “video’s conquest of film.” He says, “Those who hop onto it can’t help but learn something if there is an audience reacting.

“I think we are yet to see the real impact of that video revolution, even though it does often look like the monkeys got a hold of the cameras. Same with these first experiments on YouTube that seem like amateur hour.”

Says writer-director David Quantic, “It’s hard to be transported when there are annoying comments and advertisements jumping out at you on a Web page.”

He adds, “A movie is [like] a marriage. A good one can make you feel a rush of emotion that makes you want to come back. You start to form an emotional attachment to it that makes you want to see it and experience it, again and again. I could see Altman's Nashville a million times. I defy anyone to watch that movie and not feel some kind of rush of emotion. It's the best kind of drug. Same goes for Andrew Wyeth's painting, Christina's World; Gustav Holst's The Planets; Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City; and Joni Mitchell's Hejira. These are deep works that require an attention paid only by a committed viewer or listener and, if paid attention to, they give back 10 times what you give them.”

Hughes agrees, “I don’t see YouTube being a venue for deeply felt work that requires an investment of time and thought by the audience.”

The actor-writer has another valid concern. Hughes says that MySpace and blogs might encourage gay kids to “cultivate their audience and their image even before they cultivate their heart, their talent, their passion, their skills. You can pretend to be what you want to be on MySpace, but if you haven't developed enough to back it up, you're going to shoot yourself in the foot.”

There is also the inherent danger of dumbing down your art in order to cater to a niche that presently seems light on substance. “It’s set up for people to get a quick hit of laughter while they’re bored at an office job,” Hughes asserts. “As an artist, you want to set the tone for your audience, not the other way around.”

Then there’s the question of making money, always a concern for artists who opt to defy convention by marching to a gay drummer. Quantic says, “My YouTube clips, together, have been viewed over 70,000 times, but ain't no one askin' me to make a movie for them.”

Of blogs, however, activist-writer David Mixner says, “I don't know this from experience since I have just started mine, but there is no question that some blogs already are making significant sums of money.”

Beyond the financial, there is the aspect of community and, if you will, spirituality.

While the City of West Hollywood creatively utilized YouTube to increase voter turn-out in their recent election, performance artist MacKinnon sought clips of those drag divas who preceded him in life and death, including Warhol superstar Jackie Curtis (rehearsing Vain Victory in 1968), the Cockettes and female impersonator Craig Russell.

Sadly, if an artist is deceased, the task of thrusting them into the YouTube spotlight becomes the domain of their heirs or, more likely, a devoted fan. There’s nothing on National Book Award winner Paul Monette and nothing on legendary “male actress” Charles Pierce.

A significant representation of Pierce’s archives, including videotapes that could be transferred to YouTube, has been entrusted to the local ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives. While ONE has made enormous strides over the past several years, the organization, according to Executive Director Joseph Hawkins, doesn’t have the funding or person power to immediately create a presence on YouTube. However, ONE is engaged with the Legacy Project, Outfest and UCLA's Film Archive in a shared preservation effort for ONE's moving images which might, with time and funding, create intimate, international access to those who MacKinnon refers to as “our gay artist forefathers.”

A community that hungers for representation to capture its spectacular diversity, has been swept into a new horizon of self-expression. How we choose to interact with the technology that is at our fingertips—literally, in this case—remains, as it always has, our multi-layered challenge.

Michael Kearns can be reached at www.michaelkearns.net.