I can’t stop watching this. Perhaps you have had the same affliction–it has over 63 Million hits. It makes me feel oddly happy. Not only is the guy funny and the reactions to his very low-fi comedic performance funny, but the parts when people are singing along actually get me teary. I love that it captures what pop songs actually can do beyond the hype and money—they can infuse you with exuberant joy and connection.
It also does a public service: It lets out the frantic air surrounding all things Miley Cyrus. Thank you, Steve Kardynal!
I got this from Lynda Barry’s tumblr. She’s been teaching comics making at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for the last couple of years and often posts things to her students about the subjects of comics. She asked the question: Is this video a comic? Why or why not?
I have been invited to teach a comics making workshop at West Point this spring and have been thinking about what kinds of things I can talk about at that workshop. One of the things I would like to talk about is how more than any other time, the medium of comics is BLOWN WIDE OPEN and can be almost anything. You can add the term “graphic” to any mode of literature (memoir, poetry, journalism, etc.) and have it mean comics. Another term that is being used is “sequential art”–which sounds sort of cold and experimental, but really just means a work of art that is expressed in sequential images, like comics, or even hieroglyphs–or multi-panel videos like this one.
It’s another reason I think I love this video–it sort of continues to blow open a beloved medium to me and expand its possibilities.
Once again, Thank you Steve K!
Paper Pencil Life 
