In “Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars,” Henry Jenkins looks closely at how the Star Wars phenomenon has influenced thousands of fans to create their own music videos, movies, spoofs, and other forms of altering the original films. The well-known spoofs showed that these recreations were not restricted to the fans, but became ingrained into popular culture. Jenkins considers these fans not as people who have too much time on their hands, but as “participants within the current media revolution and their cultural products as an important aspect of the digital cinema movement.” Star Wars was key in bringing about these amateur works, which represented media convergence through a participatory culture.
Media convergence refers to the technological integration of various forms of media into an ownership of only one or a few conglomerates. This works for media democratization because it enables more accessible information, and allows studios to focus more on audience interests. By foregoing a director’s salary for a claim on merchandising profits, George Lucas became the prime example of media convergence, since taking money from the latter has allowed him to build his own empire. Participatory culture allows consumers to interact more with the media in question, and through technology like computers, not only alters the ways that media are produced and consumed, but also bring it into the market.
The most obvious example of participatory culture is fandom, which allows anyone to take an original story and use its characters, locations, themes, etc. to tell their own. Fans “explore and question the ideologies of mass culture,” and reject the idea that there can only be one version of a product. Whether it’s written fan fiction that continues the stories of the Star Wars characters or the video “Troops,” fans can participate in the Star Wars phenomenon that they hold so dear. It seems to go right back to aura – fans can change anything about Star Wars they want and give it new meaning, such as this Photoshop contest that puts notable public figures’ faces onto Star Wars characters: http://www.worth1000.com/cache/contest/contestcache.asp?contest_id=17338&display=photoshop
Looking at these two terms and their examples, I do see increased democratization in popular culture. Fans can do almost anything they want, and no matter what Lucasfilm shuts down over copyright issues, fans will always be able to make those pictures and write those stories, or insert references into movies like Clerks. Fans even use things that originated from the movies themselves in their creation, such as costumes and music. In this case, Lucasfilm and the studios are the elite that Varnelis refers to in “Architecture After Couture.” They can have the final say in how Star Wars is used, but fans can mostly without trouble mold it into their own creation for the enjoyment of themselves and others.
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I found this article to be extremely interesting in the points made about participatory culture in the media. The new technological advancements we have made allow more and more fan involvement. The amateur filmmaking as seen as fandom allow for the onset of the media convergance.
I believe that there has been an incresed level of democratization in the media. Though media convergence has somewhat allowed for monopolies, it has also has given rise to the participatory culture, or perhaps even a result of it. The new media technologies that make things so accesible to consumers allow for us fans to participate, engage, alter, record, or immitate what we see in the media.
I found this article to be quite interesting on its take of participatory culture. It's interesting to see people become web famous and see how they go through the regular celebrity motions, and all it takes to make it now is popularity. If you are popular enough and enough people view a website of yours, you can make money. Since myspace came around everyone has found ways to get advertising deals off of free services. Youtube is one of the best examples. You can put anything you create up for the entire world to see, it's like a free advertising deal. Take Chris Crocker, one of the most viewed video blogs on youtube. He was pretty web famous before the Brittany thing, but once that happened, his view rate soared, and the cycle began a new. People began participating in his participation. He created a video that spoke about his views of Brittany Spears and her "situation", after many tears and much runny makeup, people began spoofing his video, making fun of the temper tantrum he threw, the most famous of which being Seth Green's response. Youtube is such a powerful device that celebrities now participate on regular peoples actions.
I love that our ever advancing technology in todays society enables people to be involved in the culture and media like never before. Participatory culture allows fans to take their appreciation of a piece of media to a new level. The YouTube phenomenon has sprung such popular videos as Star Wars spoofs, and the Chris Crocker webcam diaries, along with their spoofs, big enough to have such celebrities as Seth Green remaking them. It deconstructs the 'aura' high production movies contain, allowing them to become an artform all may enjoy and partake in.
Democratization has certainly increased. Due to media converence people are able to access information very easily. Not only can people get this information, but they are a participatory culture. Fans are able to "explore and question the ideologies of mass culture." They completely reject the idea that there can only be one version of a product.
Due to the technological advances people are more able to create things more realistically and afterwards they can post it on the internet where anyone and everyone can view it. So I totally think democratization has increased.
-michelle fetky
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