Attacking and Dethroning Cinema with Racer Trash

"Is the whole movie like this?"

I remember typing this at my first screening. My honest question was met with some repeating it in the Twitch chat and others replying with cryptic rephrasings: "Is the whole this like movie?" "Is the movie whole like this?" "Is this whole movie like the?". In another context, this could be interpreted as mockery of the uninitiated, but these statements, in proximity with what I saw streaming, assured me that this was all a part of the evening's entertainment. Remix culture, the utilization of pre-existing media to recreate, recontextualize, and reveal new interpretations of well-known pieces, had found its way to cinema and it was called Racer Trash.

Racer Trash, the radical film editing collective at the heart of these screenings, creates an environment where anything can happen. A team of video editors, each with their own unique taste and set of tools, are assigned sections of a film and given free reign, or an interpretable theme, to recreate this segment however they desire. Their source material: unique examples of Hollywood fare that, for reasons obvious or unfathomable, have stood the test of time and occupied odd corners of our contemporary cinematic history (Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Babadook, You’ve Got Mail). The result: a wild cinematic tour through pop culture and an honest, often hilarious, attempt at decoding what we love about these films (rebranded through a theme or tech/film in-jokes: blairwitch.prproj, Draculol, Abbadook, You Got Nails). What was once an exceptional piece of American pop cinema has been remixed: filled with new soundtrack needle drops, chopped up sequencing, and a wide variety of tangentially-related audio-visual media. The film has been cut loose from the constraints of narrative and has been reimagined to figure out why it resonates with the editors and the audience. In broader terms, Racer Trash dissects films to find their inner vibe.

[BigYearForPullman.jpeg] (Credit: Racer Trash, "Big Year For Pullman" Segment in id4.mp4

"hwg"

In a time of shuttered cinemas and imposed isolation, the role that moviegoing played in my life had become apparent: this obsession was my social life and my social life is over. In an age of limitless options with digital streaming and physical releases via curbside or delivery, the lack of community, and the appointment viewing that brought it together, seemed impossible to manifest. Racer Trash was a solution to this problem.

An RT screening feels less like a feature-length movie with a pre-show and more like a multi-hour curated experience, shared by the audience and the creators themselves. Feature presentations are surrounded by other RT projects: remixed shorts and commercials, original music videos, and even hidden features, surprising the audience by premiering after, or even before, the advertised film. Simultaneously, the Twitch chatroom is buzzing with catchphrases, riffs on jokes, and immediate, frequently positive, responses to the work of the collective, many of them present and supporting each other's work. The HWG energy ("here we go", a common refrain at the start of new films or segments) exuding from the community creates an environment for anything to become the highlight of the night, no matter how short or how simple. This leads to screenings that last a long time, pushing the feature presentation hours into the evening's schedule. What exactly is Racer Trash recreating in their streams: a cinema or a nightclub? Maybe a little bit of both.

These streams, and the official Discord channel filled with sub-groups for a wide variety of interests, created a community that addressed the moment: one where we could share our art, appreciate each other's art, and enjoy new company. On top of that, with a perceived stasis on the industry as a whole, the collective and the audience had an opportunity to ask questions about the work and the world around it: "What spaces could support screenings in a world without movie theaters?" "What limits were we putting on our output so we could call it cinema?" "Who gets to define a label like cinema and why do we hold these cultural gatekeepers with such high regard?". It was here that Racer Trash coined their mission statement: to attack and dethrone cinema.

[Dinosaurs.jpeg] (Credit: Racer Trash, “Dinosaurs” segment in Vapor Mario)

"To Attack and Dethrone Cinema"

In an era of streaming services, efforts to blend all things film and television into a digestible content model, and the shuttering of theaters across the country, the work of Racer Trash carries a unique presence in the world of "things to see". It exists under the umbrella of streaming culture via Twitch.TV, but it ceases to exist outside of the advertised hours of the stream, lacking VOD options and only allowing certain shorts and segments to live on their website and social media platforms. You don't purchase a ticket for the stream, instead opting for a "suggested donation" approach to benefit organizations and mutual aids doing work that the collective supports. Following the evening of remix films and collected works, the whole thing disappears, existing only in shared memory. It's streaming without the accessibility, appointment exhibition without the profit model, and the beauty of cinematic art without the hierarchy of value of films vs shorts vs trailers. Racer Trash isn't trying to sell you on their next project or suggest that their next film will be anything similar to what has come before it. They're actively attacking the idea of what all definitions of "cinema" can be.

Racer Trash immerses their projects in a mixture of culture and memory. The layered multimedia of an RT segment contains almost any broadcastable media: behind-the-scenes footage, analogous references to video games or television, or a commercial that has been living in the editor's brain since the 90s. Through this process, Racer Trash illustrates something that gatekeepers of cinema and authorial intent tend to ignore: that our love of a film is an ever-changing relationship, informed by nostalgia, our experience with related and unrelated media as we grow older, and our personal beliefs about the role of cinema in our lives. Why include modern hip-hop tracks in the remix of Romeo + Juliet? Why score their version of Obayashi's House with Beach House? Why draw a connection between The Blair Witch Project and a horror game from the original Playstation? In the internet age, where history, memes, and media are permanently accessible, this is how we engage with culture. Nothing is made in a cultural vacuum and nothing is viewed in a cultural vacuum either. When we engage with cinema, especially a nostalgic cult classic, we think about where we were at the time of release, who we grew up to be, what culture we engaged in, and how we could possibly process all of this information. Racer Trash doesn't create cinema that puts the medium on a pedestal above all other media. They introduce cinema to the multimedia culture that grew up alongside it, creating a cosmic gumbo of audio-visual history and audience experience. They take these films that we love, find every possible synaptic response to it, and put these visually in the remixed project. By orienting the focus of cinema to the relationship the audience has with any given film, the collective takes the power away from gatekeepers, pop cinema academics, and Hollywood studios in determining how and when we choose to celebrate these films. In a way, Racer Trash dethrones cinema.

[LMBIH.jpeg] (Credit: Racer Trash, “LMBIH” segment in CTHD)

This month, Racer Trash moves from an online experience to public screenings across the country, including one with Hyperreal Film Club on August 14th. How will this experience translate offline? After recreating a theater experience with the tools of the internet, what direction does the collective take with exhibition in the real world? Will we sit during the whole film? Will we dance during sick needle drops? Will the audience be encouraged to take in the project silently, or to engage with neighbors as the wave of remixed cinema comes crashing in? All I know is when someone new to the Racer Trash experience comes to the screening this month, there's only one thing I can tell them for certain: "yes, the whole movie is like this".

Art by Ivan Alvarado