Maybe the movie Be Kind, Rewind didn’t make much of a dent at the box office, but it’s had at least one cultural impact: “Sweded” has become part of the international vocabulary. In the film, Jack Black’s character lies that all his homemade movie remakes are from Sweden—hence, once he’s finished making a cardboard homage, the feature film have been sweded. Now, even though few people saw the flick in the theatres, the term is all over the internet—and soon, all over Irish TV, too, when TV network RTÉ 2 airs Sweded TV, which is about to go into production.
Basically, kids between 11 and 18 send in ideas to the Sweded TV website for one-minute parodies of TV shows; the best ones get picked, and then the show both helps them make the parody and shoots reality footage of the production. The result will be a one-off special that will air a few times in September.
The idea is a natural, of course, so they’re already thinking of a version for the 18-30 crowd. While the aim was to create a show with a lot of potential online crossover to it, an article on the show notes that there’s another goal of “getting kids interested in creating digital content in a positive manner and not just have it negatively associated with happy slapping [a moronic overseas craze where people ambush complete strangers with a slap and post it on the net].” Let’s hear it for altruism.
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