My Analysis

McKinna Meeuwsen

09/21/2010

Rhetorical Analysis FINAL

The Ballad of Magellan: An Analysis

 The Ballad of Magellan can probably be recognized by anyone who watched cartoons in the 1990s.  It is a comedic song about the voyage of Magellan and his crew, and it comes from a popular cartoon called Animaniacs; and now, it has moved out of the television and onto the internet, at youtube.com, where it has become a digital video and a throwback to the 90s.  But what makes it such a significant example of digital media?

There are two ways in which this video is significant in the digital world.  First of all, it demonstrates the usefulness of today’s technology—that something can be transferred from a television to the internet, where it becomes more available to a wide array of users, is truly invaluable.  Not only that, but instead of being available only for a certain time, a popular cartoon clip is now available on demand; you no longer have to wait until 3:30 pm to watch it, when it can now be viewed whenever you please. The second way in which this particular video is significant is that not only is it an entertaining song, but also a useful educational tool.  This information can be taken from the viewer comments that follow every YouTube video, and these details will be discussed later.

For now, what needs to be established is, does this video qualify as a form of digital media?  There are several sources that can be found that provide criteria for qualifying as digital media:  BusinessDictionary.com states that digital media is defined as being “Digitized content (text, graphics, audio, and video) that can be transmitted over internet or computer networks.”  The Ballad of Magellan, being a video uploaded by an internet user onto a website, fits this rule perfectly.  A second definition provided by The Free Dictionary (Encyclopedia2.com) reads off 3 different descriptions, two of which follow the video’s characteristics: “Any type of information stored in the computer, including data, voice and video,” is one such definition.  The other reads: “The news from a TV network, newspaper or magazine that is presented on a Web site or blog.”  All of these factors describe the video very well.

 There are other traits that make it similar to other forms of digital media—Andrew Sullivan once described the traits of blogging, calling them “spontaneous expression[s] of instant thought,” and describing the fundamental trait of a blog as being susceptible to review and criticism by anyone.  The YouTube video shares these traits as well: not only are internet videos spontaneous postings and instantly available upon the clicking of a button, but they are subject also to criticism from millions of users.  Like blogs, internet videos play in an open field—so The Ballad of Magellan fits Sullivan’s example as well.  The video also has a lot of the traits that were discussed in class—it does, in fact, consist of digitized code, and the viewer must utilize computer technology (in this case, the internet) in order to access it.  Accessibility is through a PC, and availability is virtually global. All these factors can qualify this video as digital media.

Now that I’ve established that The Ballad of Magellan is, in fact, digital media (its YouTube form, at least), I am now in a better position to discuss the video content itself, and why it has uses both as a form of entertainment as well as a form of education.  The song is sung by three characters known as the Animaniacs, and the music narrates the tale of how Magellan sailed with a small fleet of ships and circumnavigated the globe as he searched for a western passage to the East Indies.  Poking fun at the story, it describes how Magellan and his crew constantly arrive at new lands, only to experience disappointment as they turn out to be Argentina, Chile, and Guam…but never the East Indies. In the end, Magellan himself is slain by Philippine natives (off-camera), and his crew point out to his ghost where the East Indies were located.  The manner in which all of this is done is highly comedic, and the musical factor (particularly the lyrics) adds to what becomes a very humorous retelling of the famous voyage (although the story here ends at Magellan’s death).  

Entertainment aside, there is also an educational angle to this video…and this educational value can actually be confirmed by the many viewer comments that follow the video at the bottom of the page.  After scrolling through several pages of comments, I found that there were a large number of people who wrote that this video was played in their history class—some were grade school, some were middle school, and one was even in high school.  It can be speculated from this that teachers see the educational value of using a humorous song to teach children something important. This video is also an important teaching tool because, as digital media, it is widely accessible to teachers with today’s current school technology making it that much more valuable. 

As a YouTube video, The Ballad of Magellan has a huge audience available to it, but the majority of the audience likely consists of people who watched a lot of cartoons in the 90s—without a description or a detailed title, most users browsing YouTube would only click on it if they were familiar with Animaniacs.  I myself came across this video while I was searching different clips of my favorite cartoons.  It is likely that most of the video’s audience was doing the same thing.  For this reason, the range of audience itself is limited—it will not become a “viral video,” or an internet sensation…but it will remain, to its viewers, a tribute to what cartoons used to be nearly two decades ago. 

What still remains a mystery is why the YouTube member who posted it decided to upload it in the first place.  Not only is the content known to a relatively small group of viewers, but uploading an existing cartoon clip owned by a company is not permitted by YouTube and can be risky to the uploader—often, copyrighted videos are removed and the users banned if a company makes a claim.  YouTube is home to millions of videos, and while many are homemade, many others are clips of copyrighted television shows or films…you can find Scrubs clips, Samurai Jack clips, and even a ten minute clip from the movie Iron Man, all on YouTube, and this has given rise to a host of copyright issues and lawsuits.   This has become a growing issue as digital media’s influence continues to spread, and The Ballad of Magellan is no exception; there is no telling if it will stay on YouTube. The fact that it is subject to the same copyright laws as any other example of digital media is further proof of its qualification.

With all these details given, I think I can safely say I’ve managed to prove how significant a piece this video truly is.  Not only in the sense of the digital world, but also in the entertainment world and in the educational world.  As something that is both funny and educational to viewers of any age, it is a marvel that such a piece can be digitized and made available and accessible to millions of people worldwide, and on a whim.  It is truly an example of how valuable digital technology has become to our increasingly-wired world.  We can only guess how digital media and its role in this world will evolve.

REFERENCES

"Copyright Infringment Notification." YouTube.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Sep 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/t/dmca_policy>.

"Digital Media Definition." BusinessDictionary.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Sep 2010. <http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/digital-media.html>.

"Digital Media Definition." The Free Dictionary. The Computer Language Company Inc., 2009. Web. <http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/digital+media>.

Sullivan, Andrew. "Why I Blog." Atlantic Magazine (2008): 1. Web. 21 Sep 2010. <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/why-i-blog/7060/>.

"YouTube law fight 'threatens net'." BBC News (2008): 1. Web. 21 Sep 2010. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7420955.stm>.