"Ghost Ride It!" by Mistah Fab
Thesis:
The best way to show off a new car is to ghost ride it down the street and at sideshows, where you can show off the rest of your hyphy studs.
Triune Brain
The video uses the limbic and reptilian brain to plunge you into the hyphy culture of sideshows and ghost-ridin'. It sucks you in with the familiar groove of the "Ghostbusters" soundtrack. Not only does it pull you in to the car with Mistah Fab and his homies as they bounce and groove to the beat but it appeals to memories of watching the classic film, especially when Mistah Fab asks "Who's that driving?" and its response "Patrick Swayze." Your emotional brian is helpless to resist--you want to join in on all the fun they're having and you can't help but laugh at the corny Ghostbusters references.
It uses sexy girls and the freedom of flight from authority to appeal to the reptilian brain. Ghost-riding attracts hot girls and gives you the status and confidence to flee from the ghostbusters (police).
Three Shifts
This video takes advantage of the technological shift from analogue to digital by sampling the
Ghost-busters theme song and mimicking the Ghostbusters symbol. The loop of the infamous Ghostbuster's riff is the background melody for Mistah Fab's fabulous verses. On the mock police car is a "Ghostbuster's" symbol, digitally manipulated to portray the late MacDre (kind of the "king" of the Hyphy movement) as the Xed out ghost. Only in a digital world could Mistah Fab weave these symbols into this music video.
There is a hidden aspect of political shift in this video. MTV banned this video when fatalities and serious injuries due to ghost-riding started to pile up. Colombia Records took issue with it because it used the Ghost-buster theme song without
due copyright licensing. Both MTV and Columbia took regulating action, but Mistah Fab’s
ghost riding presence remains on the deregulated YouTube.
The fact that this video is on YouTube means people can
comment on it. You can see how people feel about the video—from claiming
ghost riding is an idiotic act that will get you killed to a glorification of
the thizz culture, with comments like “I’m commenting while ghost-riding!” to
questions and answers on how to ghost ride. In this way, the video is an
example of an aesthetic shift from
discretion to convergence. Ghost-riding spread across the country, as evidenced by any youtube search of "ghost-ride the whip."
FIVE FACTS
1. A good way to show off a new car is by dancing on the hood
of the car or next to it while it’s in neutral.
2. Ghost Riding is not hard to do.
3. If you come to the Bay Area, you’ll need to know how to ghost ride and you’ll
want to graduate from Hyphy 101.
4. The police don’t pull Mistah Fab over.
5, Even if
you can’t get into the club, you can still get a girl from the parking lot with a tricked out whip, even a school bus.
THREE PRINCIPLES
Mistah Fab’s “Ghost Ride It” constructs a reality in which ghost-riding is an appropriate and
fun way of expressing the novelty and excitement that comes with having a new
car. It’s not hard to rationally conclude that ghost-riding is an illegal act
reserved for the foolhardy on country roads, in parking lots, and at
sideshows—not while driving down city streets. The video does not show the
viewers the injuries and even deaths that ghost-riding can lead to. In Mistah
Fab’s world, however, rolling down Oakland streets dancing on the hood of your
car is totally appropriate.
Defintely don't do it on the highway:
There is a value
message that ghost-riding is cool because it’s dangerous and illegal. This
video taps into the mischievous thrill of living outside the law (ghostriding
at sideshows) and the thrill of doing something fun and dangerous. It seems to
say—“look, everybody’s doing it and learning how to do it so you should do it,
too"
This controversial video results in an array of different individual meanings. To some, this is
just a silly song about an interesting subculture. Others identify with it as their way of life. Some write it off as idiotic. Still, others may be offended by the song, perhaps
having been severely injured while ghost-riding.
PERSUASIVE TECHNIQUES
Mistah Fab is known for riding a yellow bus, a symbol that is prominent in this video
and in his introduction as “the yellow bus ridah.” Not only is he riding a bus
in several shots, but he has bus-shaped jewelry Several other symbols of the
Hyphy movement appear in this video as well: images of MacDre, dreads, stunna
shades, thizz signs, sideshows, gasbreak dipping, and the act of ghost-riding itself.
The video also uses the Big
Lie technique. Obviously, you can’t just put your car in neutral and dance
on top of or next your car on a city street, even in Oakland. Not only is it
dangerous, but you’re most definitely going to get ghost-busted.
Similar to its use of the big lie, the video also uses diversion in portraying police and
authoritative activity on the street. The “police” are in fact Mistah Fab and his
friends ghost-riding in a white car with sirens and a ghost-busters symbol
striking through an image of MacDre.
Believe it or not, but many of the people dancing on the car
with Mistah Fab are well known celebrities in the Bay Area's Hyphy culture. The video features
Keak the Sneak, Messy Marv and Lil B rapping, dancing, and participating in the
sideshow. The video uses these testimonials
to convey that ghost-riding is the cool thing to do if you want to get hyphy.
Last but not least, Mistah Fab beautifully uses repetition.
Ghost-riding is repeated many times throughout the video, and the viewer sees
people ghost-riding almost constantly. The repetitive call-and-response mimics the Ghostbusters theme--
"When you get a new car...uh huh uh huh...and you're feeling like a star...okay...okay...What you gonna do?...GHOST RIDE IT!...Ghost ride the whip!"
Three SEPRITE themes
According to Seiler, citing Barbara Klinger, in Republic of Drivers many felt that the
open road represented the ultimate, idealized, nonracial freedom where
“individual renewal, property relations, and industry can be achieved within a
democratic framework.” (107). Seiler then argues, however, that “the open road,
like the contours of citizenship, was established under specific regimes of
racialized inequality and limited access whose codes it reproduces.” Although
there is an idealized freedom that claims to go beyond race, the structure of
the open road actually limits the mobility of non-white, non-male, and lower
class drivers. In this video, we see a subculture responding to the limited
freedom, by defying that authority and taking the freedom of mobility into
their own hands. The video shows Mistah Fab and his friends ghost-riding,
hanging out the doors of their cars, and encouraging sideshows. Mistah even
brags about how the “Ghostbusters” never pull him over for “his piece,”
implying that he has transcended racial profiling.
The Hyphy Movement is very proud of its strange nuances that
make it a very unique culture. Lutz and Fernandez explore the idea that
“Americans want their cars to say who they are to others,” but in the end, the
individual and unique identities we express through the car and consumption are
predictable and conformist. While the Hyphy movement is focused on creating
this unique image, almost everybody in the video is flashing the same kind of
jewelry and clothing, many have dreads, and their cars are tricked out in
similar ways. Mistah fab even lists off
a select few cars that have give their drivers status in the bay “chevys,
buicks, and regals.” Showing off and portraying oneself as unique but cool in
this subculture is expressed through material objects, like necklaces and
sunglasses, and cars.
Lutz and Fernandez discuss the
affect that cars have had in inner city locations—starting with White Flight to
the suburbs that left minority populations behind in the cities, taking jobs
with it to the tragedies of Katrina, where “the disparity in car ownership
between white residents of the Gulf Coast and their African American counterparts
was made painfully clear” (114). This video, taking place in the center of
downtown Oakland, highlights the value of having a car as an African American
in that environment. The video often cuts to scenes of a sideshow, where there
is a large group of people dancing around two different cars that take the
focus of the shot. Even though there is only one driver, the amount of people
watching and riding far outweighs the amount of cars. Throughout the video, we
see Mistah Fab driving, and his car or school bus is always full of people. In
this inner-city environment, where cars are scarce, means that cars become the
focus of parties.
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