"Was Being Moved?" A Hybrid Text: Where Mixed Genre Meets Sublime

Bawarshi begins by extending Foucalt's idea of author-function to help us understand genre. He argues author-function is a subgroup of genre function. Genre function, according to Bawarshi, "constitutes all discourses' and all writers' mode of existence, circulation, and functioning within a society"(22). We see genres coming together in poets, Ye Mimi's "Was Being Moved?" video. She uses the power of hybrid text, as defined by Katherine Hayles, and mixes two mediums and, in that way, two genres into one cohesive text. In Ye Mimi's "Was Being Moved?", she mixes vignettes from film with the poetry genre to "erase the border", as mentioned by the producer on Vimeo -- Rhizome, between the individual genres and create one single genre.  Without a border between the different genres, the hybrid text genre that she molds through this film, becomes its own singular genre: one "that does not simply regulate a pre-existing social activity", but instead "constitutes the activity by making it possible by way of it's ideological and discursive conventions"(Bawarshi 24).

Ye Mimi does more than comment on the reality of her text: she goes way beyond that. She takes real moments, caught by film and literally edits them by changing the images, overlapping them at moments, blurry-ing the images, and putting it into a negative setting that completely changes the image that would have been seen in reality using the power of film as a genre that can be molded, unlike the perceptive reality that the viewer saw at the actual event and occasion. Ye Mimi's hybrid text may be seen as a criticism of reality, but also creates it's own reality within the film that she herself creates. She mixes genres to create a completely new genre and style of poetry mixed with imagery, that while both genres have constraints, when the genres mix together they defy some of these constraints. It's important to note the text's symbolic erasure of the border between between the genres as the images of the film begin very clear, but before the credits, the images slowly blur more and the images are more contorted to the purposefulness of the text. The blurry of the images could very well represent the erasure of the lines between genres. In this way, Ye Mimi's text is subtlety meta as she takes notice of her own author-function of the genre-building process she is involved in.

"Was Being Moved?" combines imagery with poetry, but also with letter-writing. The letter-writing is in the form of postcards written to "Mr. Parade". Mr. Parade is certainly meaningful as many of the moving images are of parades of a sort from different parts of the world. She uses the epistle style more as a poetic tool than a true letter-writing form, but it goes even further in mixing more genres together. And this new hybrid genres flows smoothly together with thanks to the postcards as transitional to create smooth connections between the moving images. By doing this, the text is amplified, a quality of a sublime text (as according to Longinus): amplification is "found when the facts or the issues at stake allow many starts and pauses in each section. You wheel up one impressive unit after another to give a series of increasing importance"(Longinus 354). The text is amplified by the starts and pauses between each moving image and the words that are spoken or written for each one (including optional lack of words/silence). And the aforementioned gradual move from clear images to blurry or edited imagery is a form of amplification as the imagery is literally amplified by editing tools. However, amplification alone does not constitute a sublime text.

Longinues defines sublimity as a "kind of eminence or excellence of discourse. It is the source of the distinction of the very greatest poets...For grandeur produces ecstasy rather than persuasion in the hearer; and the combination of wonder and astonishment always proves superior to the merely persuasive and pleasant"(347). "Was Being Moved?" is moving beyond words and statements into a realm of poetry that is not clearly defined or easily understood. Instead, as a viewer of Ye Mimi's text, especially on the first time watching it, we are astonished, confused, and in awe. Her hybrid texts has a lot to offer in very short time with little to no explanation. I watched it with a few friends of mine and we were all left in wonder. This sense of wonderment is grand, because for hours after watching it, I was still considering all the meanings that may have been involved in this poem. Even now, I am still considering them, and therefore am thankful to be speaking about Ye Mimi's genre usage rather than the direct meaning of the text.

How is "Was Being Moved?" so grand and thought-provoking? It is inspired by great emotion, "there is nothing so productive of grandeur as noble emotion in the right place. It inspires and possesses our words with a kind of madness and divine spirit"(350).  Ye Mimi amplifies her emotion over the time span of the film, as it blurs, and as she introduces a song she wrote and wants to give to Mr. Parade. The song is actually sung and invokes emotion almost alone through the sound of the song itself. And the words have strong thought-provoking poetic characteristics: "My fantasy is to trade with someone else for an elephant or perhaps a spacious icon of Plato"("Was Being Moved?"). Ye Mimi's text could be further inspected as to how it is sublime through Longinus' 5 sources of sublimity introduced on page 350 of his text. He would even consider the epilogue as an important feature of the film toward sublimity by including extended knowledge to the topic, so that Ye Mimi is not creating empty grandeur, but a very thought-out knowledgeable idea of it.