Many of you will remember the hilarious WAZZZUUUP Budweiser TV commercials. For those of you who don’t, here it is.

60 Frames found the original actors and has rewritten it so the characters find themselves struggling to deal with a controversial war, a lack of medical insurance, and a crumbing economy.

Despite the polititcal context of the ad (Change is coming at the end of the ad) this kind of rewriting (or recontextualizing or rehistoricizing) of established texts has a long history. Think Wide Sargaso Sea, The Hours, and, more recently, The Jew’s Daughter and RedRidingHood.

As I am getting ready to begin a video project next semester, I find videos like the one above interesting because they can show students the flexibility of video texts. Most of the students in my Writing, Research, and Technology course will understand the malleability of written text (that is, if they have taken the major courses in the recommended order). I suspect their ideas on video will be quite different.

h/t americablog