About | Contact | Contributors | Sample Page | Subscribe
Hacktivision
A Smart Look at the Future of Television // In Collaboration With Quinnipiac University's School of Communications
Whitney Houston, the Nation and the TV Archive Feb 12, 2012
Some of us are too young to remember watching Whitney Houston’s iconic rendition of
“The Star-Spangled Banner” live. But now we can see it! Thanks to YouTube, the privately owned public archive.
It’s been lamented that television’s function as a vessel for national consciousness has died in the wake of digital convergence, that, aside from a few media events like the Super Bowl, we no longer come together as a country through the screen. But the presence of an easily accesible archive of television programming, available not through the Library of Congress but Google, allows for other forms of collective witnessing.
In the wake of Houston’s death thousands are reposting the clip above, a spectacular document of post-Cold War America that reminds us not only of Houston — I heard this rendition every Friday in elementary school — but also of our bombastic sense of supremacy at the end of the 20th century. A YouTube commenter had a compelling take:
Only Whitney Houston could do justice to a war-worshiping anthem on a war-worshiping ‘grid-iron’ as fighter jets fly overheard, in celebration of the most boring, tactically convoluted, vulgar game ever invented. Her pipes were the biggest! the best! the most overblown pieces of vocal equipment around – a classic American icon.
I happen to find football a fine sport, if only once a year, but yes: through YouTube, I can witness Houston and America in their supposed primes, while mourning and remembering along with everyone else.
-Contributed by Aymar Jean Christian, -
This entry was posted in Alternative Distribution, Visual and tagged archive, history, YouTube. Bookmark the permalink.
Pingback: Witnessing Whitney on YouTube (and Vintage Television) | Televisual