“Grassroots appropriation and transformation of Star Wars has not, however been restricted to media fandom per se but has spread across many other sectors of the new DYI culture” (558) In the Jenkins reading, he talked about Star Wars and how because of those companies who are making products, talk shows making fun of Star Wars, music, online web pages, this has become great for advertising for Star Wars. Although these types of propaganda are not always solely about Star wars and some of them even mimic the movie (Austin Powers’s example) they draw in huge amounts of consumers and from very age group. Although they do not want these media consumers to become too involved with producing and advertising process of consumerism and Jenkins states “ The first and foremost demand consumers make is the right to participate in the creation and distribution of media narratives. Media consumers want to become media producers, while media producers want to maintain their traditional dominance over media content”(554). This would become a problem and these types of propaganda would ruin the value of the film.
I also thought it was really interesting on the second page of the reading figure (32.1), “A Star Wars poster, modified after the Lewinsky scandal”. This is a perfect example of how even negative portrayals and mimics of the move can add publicity. The poster was politically insulting, yet brought a type of acceptable humor. It was interesting to see political figures who symbolize the heroic characters in the film, “This grassroots appropriation of Star Wars became part of the huge media phenomenon that surrounded the first release of the digitally enhanced original Star Wars trilogy in 1997…..”(551). This reading really connects with the Poster reading we discussed on Tuesday. With all these products and media producers that are trying to replica parts of Star Wars we one day could forget the real story and original aspects of Star Wars, its identity could be taken away or stand for something else. This is a negative thing and technology has the power to do this in our society, so we must be careful of our cultural production.
Also when Jenkins talks about media convergence and participatory culture (on page (559)it was interesting to see the difference between the two and I related this knowledge to CMC 200 when talking about the Harry Potter industry and it’s consumers. Jenkins talks about how the “culture industry” tries to attract active fans in production and consumption. Media producers are constantly looking for what pleases people, what will be introduced next, and they are always looking for collaboration from the fans. This reminded me of Harry Potter because the cultural industry of Harry Potter has grown immensely because of the media producers and the products, amusement parks, posters, clothes they have produced and the fans act on this by consuming all of its created artifacts. Although this is taking away from the value of Harry Potter, the industry is becoming too big and although these new productions of products are being introduced, the authentic story and meaning of Harry Potter could be drowned away by the mass consumption our society is obsessed with. This in a way could happen to Star Wars as well.
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1 comment:
Good post. You have discussed some very important quotes from the reading, as well as made a good connection to Poster and your CMC 200 class.
-Starfish
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