Educational Media Reviews Online

Fearless media/music/art collective Negativland has been “culture jamming”—deftly borrowing, reconfiguring, sampling, looping, re-mixing and riffing on popular culture and its themes—for well over twenty years. No topic is off-limits, nothing is sacred; as the group’s bio puts it: “Foregoing ideological preaching, but interested in side effects, Negativland is like a subliminal cultural sampling service concerned with making art about everything we aren’t supposed to notice.”

Like a greatest hits DVD, Our Favorite Things packages 20 Negativland videos from over the years (with 6 more thrown in as bonus features) alongside a further bonus 13-track music CD—180 D’Gs To The Future-The Music Of Negativland As Performed By The 180 Gs. This is one prolific bunch.

Get ready for a gigantic dose of Negativland’s “mad love” for: the Disney empire, the world of advertising, Pepsi & Coca-Cola, guns, U2 (the band), Christianity, torture, Casey Kasem and yes, even The Sound of Music. It’s worth the price of admission for just the DVD and CD cover artwork and blurbs alone.

Negativland’s style and philosophy are probably best illustrated by the recent The Mashin of the Christ video included here. Made up of numerous crucifixion scenes from Hollywood biblical epics cut together with vintage newsreel footage of several 20th century tyrants, the audio and video were literally “ripped from DVDs rented from Netflix and Blockbuster, "found" 16mm film footage, original CGI, films obtained from peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, the "found" vocals of the Rev. Estus W. Pirkle, and original music composed and played by Negativland.” The resulting mash-up is one Passion that won’t be screened at your local multiplex any time soon.

Brilliant, funny, innovative, though-provoking, subversive and disturbing in equal measure, Negativland’s creations might just leave you wondering “Who are these guys?” and “How did they get away with it?” (The group has been sued over copyright infringement twice). Our Favorite Things may not be for the fainthearted—and probably not for children either. You can find out more online at negativland.com, as well as video hosting sites like YouTube.

Unrated, this DVD is recommended for all libraries.