It’s August. It’s Monday. Delay it for 6:20.
Later on if you want to get all philosophical around the water cooler, segue from here into a discussion of sampling, appropriation of pop culture reference points, and what defines art and culture in 2010. Then take it to licensing and legal complexities if you’re nasty.
You ask what defines art and culture is in the 21st century. I think the now viral “Bed Intruder Song†is an interesting example. An intruder in Huntsville, Alabama tried to rape a young woman in her home. Her brother, Antoine Dodson, spoke about the violence on a local newscast. The Gregory Brothers auto-tuned his impassioned words to create a song. It went viral and received 15 million hits on YouTube in the last month, thus creating an important message about sexual violence. You can read about the song here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed_Intruder_Song
And listen to and watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKsVSBhSwJg&feature=channel
Antoine has now more or less created a franchise around the song and is even selling T-shirts. It might seem to exploit the violence his sister experienced, but in reality, he is taking his own Internet meme and using it to make an important statement.