Convergence Culture: Part Two

I think of myself as a critical utopian. As a utopian, I want to identify possibilities within our culture that might lead to a better, more just society.

Henry Jenkins says these inspiring words in one of the final chapters of Convergence Culture titled “Conclusion: Democratizing Television? The Politics of Participation” (258). Upon reading this passage, I experienced a mental paradigm shift in regard to how I perceive the man. Since I have never met Mr. Jenkins or even watched a video of him speaking, my perception of this theorist is strictly limited to the person he presents himself to be on the written page. Some of the adjectives I thus would apply to him from his representation in the print medium (of himself and according to fellow media critics) would be genius, visionary, and media magician. Until I beheld the abovementioned comment, however, I would not have considered adding utopian to the list, but, in retrospect, it now makes sense to do so…

Let me backpedal first: in the second half of Convergence Culture I read last week, starting with chapter four, “Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars? Grassroots Creativity Meets the Media Industry,” Jenkins continues his process of building an argument concerning the totalizing transformative power of what he deems to be the zeitgeist of convergence culture. In this chapter, Jenkins discusses the creative power of Star Wars fans films like Macbeth (1998), a reworking of the Shakespearian drama filtered through the lens of Star Wars in a high school setting by two amateur filmmaker students, and Revelations (2005), which depended on the efforts of hundreds of fans coordinated over the Internet. With these two examples, Jenkins’s vision of fans appropriating and adding original creative expressions to the source material has been realized.

George Lucas, in response to fan videos, has allowed for this type of expression to be legally contained within a Lucasfilm vetted and controlled web space (157), but his company ultimately retains the copyright to any original fan creations. A vivid alternative approach to Lucasfilm’s near-stranglehold on its fans culture can be found in the content of a sidebar titled “At the Mall of The Sims,” which shows how Sims fans are granted the web space to actively participate in that virtual world, creating additions to its fantasy reality without the fear of corporate lawyers threatening them with legal action. According to Jenkins, the later model serves as the type that will earn greater fan loyalty and add new creative life to a brand (173).  For me, this logic is soundproof as fans wish to be appreciated by the creators of their beloved fantasy worlds instead of being patronized, manipulated, and threatened by them.

This same caliber of logic is reflected in Jenkins’s next chapter, “Why Heather Can Write: Media Literacy and the Harry Potter Wars.” I found the most striking element of this chapter to involve the idea that kids are going online and forming Harry Potter fan communities in which they role-play characters, generate original fan fiction, and learn the mechanics of good writing from mentors. As Jenkins comments, “What’s striking about this process…is that it takes place outside the classroom and beyond and direct adult control. Kids are teaching kids what they need to become full participants in convergence culture” (185). As an educator who often blames poor parenting and too much media noise as major reasons for why the American education systems seems to be failing its young, the idea that the Internet can serve as an empowering educational tool for younger people is given some steam with the success of this fan community.

The final of six chapter discussions, “Photoshop for Democracy: The New Relationship between Politics and Popular Culture,” adds a serious layer to Convergence Culture in that Jenkins applies the theories of fan cultures to the realm of politics. Given that the theme of polices, centering mostly on the 2004 presidential election, is the centerpiece of this chapter and the afterword chapter, which focuses on the 2008 presidential election, I wonder if this material would have more resonance if it were developed in a separate division of the book under the rubric of “politics” or in a follow-up work. After all, Jenkins does confess at the beginning of the chapter, “In some senses, this book has been about ‘serious fun’” (218). Maybe it is the fact that the chapter is missing any sidebars (Yes, I love being annoyed by them at this point in my reading process!) without colorful content that casts the tone of this chapter in a sobering light. At the same time, Jenkins, a professed fan of various media creations himself, knows that all of us have to grow up once in a while and apply our passionate creativity for imaginary worlds to reality. Pointing out that knowledge cultures are adept at fixing problems, Jenkins declares that the process “empowers its members to identify problems and pose solutions” He then wisely adds, “If we learn to do this through our play, perhaps we can learn to extend those experiences into our actual political culture” (243).

In my blog last week, I began by critical dissecting Jenkins’s humble statement on how we cannot “meaningfully critique convergence until it is more fully understood” (13), doing my best to appear. Seeing how Jenkins is constantly involved with charting and analyzing new movements in convergence culture, (especially after reading his up-to-date-at-the-time afterword chapter to the paperback version of his text) I have a healthier vision of the man and a finer understanding of why he modestly refrains from offering a definitive prognosis of this new form of media culture colliding.  This is a prolific individual, as demonstrated by his continuous output of books and contributions to other theorists’ works (See my blog on YouTube – Online Video and Participatory Culture), who lives and writes about his commitment to informing students, the media in general, and, by turn, society itself about how one can either empower him or herself through participation in relatively new media such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, or be left on the sidelines as a consumer who has no say in the means of production surrounding the goods he or she purchases.

As I look for theorists to become part of my pantheon of critical influences for my forthcoming dissertation in a few years’ time, I can firmly place the genuine utopian thinker Jenkins in this personal mythology. Unlike me in my last blog, Jenkins is not the type of theorist to knock other scholars down in order to look smarter himself. All too often in academia, a terrible ethos of maligning fellow academics to appear intelligent, or intellectual, in that criticism balances itself upon criticizing others and their ideas, seems to be par for the course in the academy. In the future, for me at least, like Jenkins, I will strive to be a critic who will include the work of fellow scholars when the discussion leads itself to a positive discussion, incorporation, or building upon the fruits of their intellectual thought!