Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 133

Q) 4 .&: .... 0 w Q) .... "'C Q)= QuentinTarantino's Star Wars? Q)- ~~ Grassroots Creativrty Meets the Media Industry ~o2 '- "'C .~ Q) .... ~ ~ L.B Q) \J w z """'C o s: -0oo fa .... Shooting in garages and basement rec rooms, rendering FIX on home V) "'C , V) - .... aO~ computers, and ripping music from CDs and MP3 files, fans have cre­ L. .... CJ) Q) • ated new versions of the Star Wars (1977) mythology. In the words of L. Q. C". Q) Q. Star Wars or Bust director Jason Wishnow, 'This is the future of cinema ~.&: • -Star Wars is the catalyst."] a~-O ~Q)g The widespread circulation of Star Wars-related commodities has L. L. N placed resources into the hands of a generation of emerging filmmakers C:S::l • ...... Vi in their teens or early twenties. They grew up dressing as Darth Vader V') -V) ::I Q) for Halloween, sleeping on Princess Leia sheets, battling with plastic V) \J L. -0 Q) Q. light sabers, and playing with Boba Fett action figures. Star Wars has .~ g ~ become their "legend," and now they are determined to remake it on +- Q) '­ s: 0\ V) their own terms. c:s L. L. L. a\ Q) When AtomFilms launched an official Star Wars fan film contest in L::.a"'>> o_ r- s: s: 2003, they received more than 250 submissions. Although the ardor has s: 0 :::> +:\J.x died down somewhat, the 2005 competition received more than 150 2 s: s: L. submissions. And many more are springing up on the Web via unoffi7 Q) H 0 ::111 >- cial sites such as TheForce.net, which would fall outside the rules" for ? ~ ~ the official contest. Many of these films come complete with their own o +- Q) ~~z posters or advertising campaigns. Some Web sites provide updated in­ s: "'C .. formation about amateur films still in production. Q)s:.::J:. ::I:H5 Fans have always been early adapters of new media technologies; w• .-a >- their fascination with fictional universes often inspires new forms of s: "'C ~ '- Q) Q) cultural production, ranging from costumes to fanzines and, now, digi­ ~~Z Q) tal cinema. Fans are the most active segment of the media audience, ,.., one that refuses to simply accept what they are given, but rather insists on the right to become full participants.3 None of this is new. What has shifted is the visibility of fan culture. The Web provides a powerful new distribution channel for amateur cultural production. Amateurs Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 133

have been making home movies for decades; these movies are going It may be useful to draw a distinction between interactivity and public. participation, words that are often used interchangeably but which, in When Amazon introduced DVDs of George Lucas in Love (1999), per­ this book, assume rather different meanings.6 Interactivity refers to the haps the best known of the Star Wars parodies, it outsold the DVD of ways that new technologies have been designed to be more responsive Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) in its opening week.4 Fan to consumer feedback. One can imagine differing degrees of interactiv­ filmmakers, with some legitimacy, see their works as "calling cards" ity enabled by different communication technologies, ranging from tel­ that may help them break into the commercial industry. In spring 1998, evision, which allows us only to change the channel, to video games a two-page color spread in Entertainment Weekly profiled aspiring dig­ that can allow consumers to act upon the represented world. Such rela­ ital filmmaker Kevin Rubio, whose ten-minute, $1,200 film, Troops tionships are of course not fixed: the introduction of TiVo can funda­ (1998), had attracted the interests of Hollywood insiders.s Troops spoofs mentally reshape our interactions with television. The constraints on Star Wars by offering a Cops-like profile of the stormtroopers who do interactivity are technological. In almost every case, what you can do in the day-in, day-out work of policing Tatooine, settling domestic dis­ an interactive environment is prestructured by the designer. putes, rounding up space hustlers, and trying to crush the Jedi Knights. Participation, on the other hand, is shaped by the cultural and social As a result, the story reported, Rubio was fielding offers from several protocols. So, for example, the amount of conversation possible in a studios interested in financing his next project. Lucas admired the film movie theater is determined more by the tolerance of audiences in dif­ so much that he gave Rubio a job writing for the Star Wars comic ferent subcultures or national contexts than by any innate property of books. Rubio surfaced again in 2004 as a writer and producer for Duel cinema itself. Participation is more open-ended, less under the control Masters (2004), a little-known series on the Cartoon Network. of media producers and more under the control of media consumers. Fan digital film is to cinema what the punk DYI culture was to Initially, the computer offered expanded opportunities for interact­ music. There, grassroots experimentation generated new sounds, new ing with media content and as long as it operated on that level, it was artists, new techniques, and new relations to consumers which have relatively easy for media companies to commodify and control what been pulled more and more into mainstream practice. Here, fan film­ took place. Increasingly, though, the Web has become a site of con­ makers are starting to make their way into the mainstream industry, sumer participation that includes many unauthorized and unantici­ and we are starting to see ideas-such as the use of game engines as pated ways of relating to media content. Though this new participatory animation tools-bubbling up from the amateurs and making their culture has its roots in practices that have occurred just below the radar way into commercial media. of the media industry throughout the twentieth century, the Web has If, as some have argued, the emergence of modem mass media pushed that hidden layer of cultural activity into the foreground, forc­ spelled the doom for the vital folk culture traditions that thrived in ing the media industries to confront its implications for their commer­ nineteenth-century America, the current moment of media change is cial interests. Allowing consumers to interact with media under con­ reaffirming the right of everyday people to actively contribute to their trolled circumstances is one thing; allowing them to participate in the culture. Like the older folk culture of quilting bees and bam dances, production and distribution of cultural goods-on their own terms-is this new vernacular culture encourages broad participation, grassroots something else altogether. creativity, and a bartering or gift economy. This is what happens when Grant McCracken, the cultural anthropologist and industry consult­ consumers take media into their own hands. Of course, this may be ant, suggests that in the future, media producers must accommodate altogether the wrong way to talk about it-since in a folk culture, there consumer demands to participate or they will run the risk of losing the is no clear division between producers and consumers. Within conver­ most active and passionate consumers to some other media interest gence culture, everyone's a participant-although participants may that is more tolerant: "Corporations must decide whether they are, lit­ have different degrees of status and influence. erally, in or out. Will they make themselves an island or will they enter Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 135

the mix? Making themselves an island may have certain short-term fi­ Folk Culture, Mass Culture, Convergence Culture nancial benefits, but the long-term costs can be substantial."7 As we have seen, the media industry is increasingly dependent on active and At the risks of painting with broad strokes, the story of American arts committed consumers to spread the word about valued properties in in the nineteenth century might be told in terms of the mixing, match­ an overcrowded media marketplace, and in some cases they are seek­ ing, and merging of folk traditions taken from various indigenous and ing ways to channel the creative output of media fans to lower their immigrant populations. Cultural production occurred mostly on the production costs. At the same time, they are terrified of what happens grassroots level; creative skills and artistic traditions were passed down if this consumer power gets out of control, as they claim occurred fol­ mother to daughter, father to son. Stories and songs circulated broadly, lowing the introduction of Napster and other file-sharing services. As well beyond their points of origin, with little or no expectation of eco­ fan productivity goes public, it can no longer be ignored by the media nomic compensation; many of the best ballads or folktales come to us industries, but it can not be fully contained or channeled by them, today with no clear marks of individual authorship. While new com­ either. mercialized forms of entertainment-the minstrel shows, the circuses, One can trace two characteristic responses of media industries to the showboats-emerged in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, these this grassroots expression: starting with the legal battles over Napster, professional entertainments competed with thriving local traditions of the media industries have increasingly adopted a scorched-earth pol­ bam dances, church sings, quilting bees, and campfire stories. There icy toward their consumers, seeking to regulate and criminalize many was no pure boundary between the emergent commercial culture and forms of fan participation that once fell below their radar. Let's call the residual folk culture: the commercial culture raided folk culture and them the prohibitionists. To date, the prohibitionist stance has been folk culture raided commercial culture. dominant within old media companies (film, television, the recording The story of American arts in the twentieth century might be told in industry), though these groups are to varying degrees starting to reex­ terms of the displacement of folk culture by mass media. Initially, the amine some of these assumptions. So far, the prohibitionists get most of emerging entertainment industry made its peace with folk practices, the press-with law suits directed against teens who download music seeing the availability of grassroots singers and musicians as a poten­ or against fan Webmasters getting more and more coverage in the pop­ tial talent pool, incorporating community sing-a-longs into film exhibi­ ular media. At the same time, on the fringes, new media companies tion practices, and broadcasting amateur-hour talent competitions. The (Internet, games, and to a lesser degree, the mobile phone companies) new industrialized arts required huge investments and thus demanded are experimenting with new approaches that see fans as important col­ a mass audience. The commercial entertainment industry set standards laborators in the production of content and as grassroots intermedi­ of technical perfection and professional accomplishment few grassroots aries helping to promote the franchise. We will call them the collabo­ performers could match. The commercial industries developed power­ rationists. ful infrastructures that ensured that their messages reached everyone The Star Wars franchise has been pulled between these two extremes in America who wasn't living under a rock. Increasingly, the commer­ both over time (as it responds to shifting consumer tactics and techno­ cial culture generated the stories, images, and sounds that mattered logical resources) and across media (as its content straddles between most to the public. old and new media). Within the Star Wars franchise, Hollywood has Folk culture practices were pushed underground-people still com­ sought to shut down fan fiction, later, to assert ownership over it and posed and sang songs, amateur writers still scribbled verse, week­ finally to ignore its existence; they have promoted the works of fan end painters still dabbled, people still told stories, and some local video makers but also limited what kinds of movies they can make; communities still held square dances. At the same time, grassroots fan and they have sought to collaborate with gamers to shape a massively communities emerged in response to mass media content. Some me­ multiplayer game so that it better satisfies player fantasies. dia scholars hold on to the useful distinction between mass culture :6 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 137

(a category of production) and popular culture (a category of consump­ Given this history, it should be no surprise that much of what the tion), arguing that popular culture is what happens to the materials of public creates models itself after, exists in dialogue with, reacts to or mass culture when they get into the hands of consumers, when a song against, and/or otherwise repurposes materials drawn from commer­ played on the radio becomes so associated with a particularly romantic cial culture. Grassroots convergence is embodied, for example, in the evening that two young lovers decide to call it "our song," or when a work of the game modders, who build on code and design tools cre­ fan becomes so fascinated with a particular television series that it in~ ated for commercial games as a foundation for amateur game produc­ spires her to write original stories about its characters. In other words, tion, or in digital filmmaking, which often directly samples material popular culture is what happens as mass culture gets pulled back into from commercial media, or adbusting, which borrows iconography folk culture. The culture industries never really had to confront the from Madison Avenue to deliver an anticorporate or anticonsumerist existence of this alternative cultural economy because, for the most message. Having buried the old folk culture, this commercial culture part, it existed behind closed doors and its products circulated only becomes the common culture. The older American folk culture was among a small circle of friends and neighbors. Home movies never built on borrowings from various mother countries; the modem mass threatened Hollywood, as long as they remained in the home. media builds upon borrowings from folk culture; the new convergence The story of American arts in the twenty-first century might be told culture will be built on borrowings from various media conglomerates. in terms of the public reemergence of grassroots creativity as every­ The Web has made visible the hidden compromises that enabled day people take advantage of new technologies that enable them to participatory culture and commercial culture to coexist throughout archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content. It proba­ much of the twentieth century. Nobody minded, really, if you photo­ bly started with the photocopier and desktop publishing; perhaps it copied a few stories and circulated them within your fan club. Nobody started with the videocassette revolution, which gave the public access minded, really, if you copied a few songs and shared the dub tape with to movie-making tools and enabled every home to have its own film a friend. Corporations might know, abstractly, that such transactions library. But this creative revolution has so far culminated with the Web. were occurring all around them, every day, but they didn't know, con­ To create is much more fun and meaningful if you can share what you cretely, who was doing it. And even if they did, they weren't going to can create with others and the Web, built for collaboration within the come bursting into people's homes at night. But, as those transactions scientific community, provides an infrastructure for sharing the things came out from behind closed doors, they represented a visible, public average Americans are making in their rec rooms. Once you have a reli­ threat to the absolute control the culture industries asserted over their able system of distribution, folk culture production begins to flourish intellectual property. again overnight. Most of what the amateurs create is gosh-awful bad, With the consolidation of power represented by the Digital Millen­ yet a thriving culture needs spaces where people can do bad art, get nium Copyright Act of 1998, American intellectual property law has feedback, and get better. After all, much of what circulates through been rewritten to reflect the demands of mass media producers-away mass media is also bad by almost any criteria, but the expectations of from providing economic incentives for individual artists and toward professional polish make it a less hospitable environment for new­ protecting the enormous economic investments media companies made comers to learn and grow. Some of what amateurs create will be sur­ in branded entertainment; away from a limited duration protection that prisingly good, and the best artists will be recruited into commercial allows ideas to enter general circulation while they still benefited the entertainment or the art world. Much of it will be good enough to common good and toward the notion that copyright should last for­ engage the interest of some modest public, to inspire someone else to ever; away from the ideal of a cultural commons and toward the ideal create, to provide new content which, when polished through many of intellectual property. As Lawrence Lessig notes, the law has been re­ hands, may tum into something more valuable down the line. That's written so that fIno one can do to the Disney Corporation what Walt g the way the folk process works and grassroots convergence represents Disney did to the Brothers Grimm." One of the ways that the studios the folk process accelerated and expanded for the digital age. have propped up these expanded claims of copyright protection is Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 139

through the issuing of cease and desist letters intended to intimidate official Star Wars film competition at AtomFilms, or Raph Koster, the amateur cultural creators into removing their works from the Web. former mudder who has helped shape the Star Wars Galaxies (2002) Chapter 5 describes what happened when Warner Bros. studio sent out game-come out of these grassroots communities and have a healthy cease and desist letters to young Harry Potter (1998) fans. In such situa­ respect for their value. They see fans as potentially revitalizing stag­ tions, the studios often assert much broader control than they could nant franchises and providing a low-cost means of generating new me­ legally defend: someone who stands to lose their home or their kid's dia content. Often, such people are locked into power struggles with­ college funds by going head-to-head with studio attorneys is apt to in their own companies with others who would prohibit grassroots fold. After three decades of such disputes, there is still no case law that creativity. would help determine to what degree fan fiction is protected under fair use law. Efforts to shut down fan communities run in the face of what we "Dude,We're Gonna Be Jedi'" have learned so far about the new kinds of affective relationships ad­ vertisers and entertainment companies want to form with their con­ George Lucas in Love depicts the future media mastermind as a singu­ sumers. Over the past several decades, corporations have sought to larly clueless USC film student who can't quite come up with a good market branded content so that consumers become the bearers of their idea for his production assignment, despite the fact that he inhabits a marketing messages. Marketers have turned our children into walking, realm rich with narrative possibilities. His stoner roommate emerges talking billboards who wear logos on their T-shirts, sew patches on from behind the hood of his dressing gown and lectures Lucas on "this their backpacks, plaster stkkers on their lockers, hang posters On their giant cosmic force, an energy field created by all living things." His sin­ walls, but they must not, under penalty of law, post them on their ister next-door-neighbor, an archrival, dresses all in black and breathes home pages. Somehow, once consumers choose when and where to dis­ with an asthmatic wheeze as he proclaims, "My script is complete. play those images, their active participation in the circulation of brands Soon I will rule the entertainment universe." As Lucas races to class, he suddenly becomes a moral outrage and a threat to the industry's eco­ encounters a brash young friend who brags about his souped-Up sports nomic well-being. car and his furry-faced sidekick who growls when he hits his head on Today's teens-the so-called Napster generation-aren't the only the hood while trying to do some basic repairs. His professor, a small­ ones who are confused about where to draw the lines here; media com­ ish man, babbles cryptic advice, but all of this adds up to little until panies are giving out profoundly mixed signals because they really Lucas meets and falls madly for a beautiful young woman with buns can't decide what kind of relationships they want to have with this new on both sides of her head. Alas, the romance leads to naught as he kind of consumer. They want us to look at but not touch, buy but not eventually discovers that she is his long-lost sister. use, media content. This contradiction is felt perhaps most acutely George Lucas in Love is, of course, a spoof of Shakespeare in Love (1998) when it comes to cult media content. A cult media success depends on and of Star Wars itself. It is also a tribute from one generation of USC courting fan constituencies and niche markets; a mainstream success is film students to another. As co-creator Joseph Levy, a twenty-four-year­ seen by the media producers as depending on distancing themselves old recent graduate from Lucas's alma mater, explained, "Lucas is defi­ from them. The system depends on covert relationships between pro­ nitely the god of USC.... We shot our screening-room scene in the ducers and consumers. The fans' labor in enhancing the value of an George Lucas Instructional Building. Lucas is incredibly supportive of intellectual property can never be publicly recognized if the studio is student filmmakers and developing their careers and providing facili­ going to maintain that the studio alone is the source of all value in that ties for them to be caught up to technology."9 Yet what makes this film property. The Internet, though, has blown their cover, since those fan so endearing is the way it pulls Lucas down to the same level as count­ sites are now visible to anyone who knows how to Google. less other amateur filmmakers, and, in so doing, helps to blur the line Some industry insiders-for example, Chris Albrecht/who runs the between the fantastical realm of space opera ("A long, long time ago in 140 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 141

a galaxy far, far away") and the familiar realm of everyday life (the world of stoner roommates, snotty neighbors, and incomprehensible professors). Its protagonist is hapless in love, clueless at filmmaking, yet somehow he manages to pull it all together and produce one of the Fig. 4.1. Fan filmmaker Evan top-grossing motion pictures of all time. George Lucas in Love offers us a Mather's Les Pantless Menace portrait of the artist as a young geek. creates anarchic comedy One might contrast this rather down-to-earth representation of Lucas through creative use of Star -the auteur as amateur-with the way fan filmmaker Evan Mather's Wars action figures. (Reprinted Web site (http://www.evanmather.com/) constructs the amateur as an with the permission of the emergent auteur. lO Along one column of the site can be found a filmog­ artist.) raphy, listing all of Mather's productions going back to high school, as well as a listing of the various newspapers, magazines, Web sites, tele­ vision and radio stations that have covered his work-La Republica, design of his Web site is anything but. His Web site illustrates what Le Monde, the New York Times, Wired, Entertainment Weekly, CNN, NPR, happens as this new amateur culture gets directed toward larger and and so forth. Another sidebar provides up-to-the-moment information larger publics. about his works in progress. Elsewhere, you can see news of the vari­ TheForce.net's Fan Theater, for example, allows amateur directors to ous film festival screenings of his films and whatever awards they have offer their own commentary. The creators of When Senators Attack IV won. More than nineteen digital films are featured with photographs, (1999), for example, give "comprehensive scene-by-scene commentary" descriptions, and links for downloading them in multiple formats. on their film: HOver the next 90 pages or so, you'll receive an insight Another link allows you to call up a glossy full-color, professionally into what we were thinking when we made a particular shot, what designed brochure documenting the making of Les Pantless Menace methods we used, explanations to some of the more puzzling scenes, (1999), which includes close-ups of various props and settings, repro­ and anything else that comes to mind."l! Such materials mirror the ten­ ductions of stills, score sheets, and storyboards, and detailed explana­ dency of recent DVD releases to include alternative scenes, cut foot­ tions of how he was able to do the special effects, soundtrack, and edit­ age, storyboards, and director's commentary. Many of the Web sites ing for the film (fig. 4.1). We learn, for example, that some of the dia­ proVide information about fan films under production, including pre­ logue was taken directly from Commtech chips that were embedded liminary footage, storyboards, and trailers for films that may never be within Hasbro Star Wars toys. A biography provides some background: completed. Almost all of the amateur filmmakers create posters and advertising images, taking advantage of Adobe PageMaker and Adobe Evan Mather spent much of his childhood running around south Lou­ Photoshop. In many cases, the fan filmmakers produce elaborate trail­ isiana with an eight-millimeter silent camera staging hitchhikings and ers. These materials facilitate amateur film culture. The making-of ar­ assorted buggery.... As a landscape architect, Mr. Mather spends his ticles share technical advice; such information helps to improve the days designing a variety of urban and park environments in the Seattle overall quality of work within the community. The trailers also respond area. By night, Mr. Mather explores the realm of digital cinema and is the to the specific challenges of the Web as a distribution channel: it can renown creator of short films which fuse traditional hand drawn and take hours to download relatively long digital movies, and the shorter, stop motion animation techniques with the flexibility and realism of com­ lower resolution trailers (often distributed in a streaming video format) puter generated special effects. allow would-be viewers to sample the work. All of this publicity surrounding the Star Wars parodies serves as a Though his background and production techniques are fairly unique, reminder of what is the most distinctive quality of these amateur films the incredibly elaborate, self-conscious, and determinedly professional -the fact that they are so public. The idea that amateur filmmakers Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's StarWarsl 143

could develop such a global following runs counter to the historical sic markers of amateur film production have disappeared. No longer marginalization of grassroots media production. In her book, Reel Fami­ home movies, these films are public movies-public in that, from the lies: A Social History of Amateur Film (1995), film historian Patricia R. start, they are intended for audiences beyond the filmmaker's immedi­ Zimmermann offers a compelling history of amateur filmmaking in the ate circle of friends and acquaintances; public in their content, which United States, examining the intersection between nonprofessional film involves the reworking of popular mythologies; and public in their dia­ production and the Hollywood entertainment system. While amateur logue with the commercial cinema. filmmaking has existed since the advent of cinema, and while periodi­ Digital filmmakers tackled the challenge of making Star Wars movies cally critics have promoted it as a grassroots alternative to commer­ for many different reasons. As George Lucas in Love co-creator Joseph cial production, the amateur film has remained, first and foremost, the Levy has explained, "Our only intention ... was to do something that "home movie" in several senses of the term: first, amateur films were would get the agents and producers to put the tapes into their VCRs exhibited primarily in private (and most often, domestic) spaces lack­ instead of throwing them away."13 Kid Wars (2000) director Dana Smith ing any viable channel of public distribution; second, amateur films is a fourteen-year-old who had recently acquired a camcorder and de­ were most often documentaries of domestic and family life; and third, cided to stage scenes from Star Wars involving his younger brother and amateur films were perceived to be technically flawed and of marginal his friends, who armed themselves for battle with squirt guns and Nerf interest beyond the immediate family. Critics stressed the artlessness weapons. The ]edi Who Loved Me (2000) was shot by the members of a and spontaneity of amateur film in contrast with the technical polish wedding party and intended as a tribute to the bride and groom, who and aesthetic sophistication of commercial films. Zimmerman con­ were Star Wars fans. Some films-such as Macbeth (1998)-were school cludes, "[Amateur film] was gradually squeezed into the nuclear fam­ projects. Two high school students-Bienvenido Concepcion and Don ily. Technical standards, aesthetic norms, socialization pressures and Fitz-Roy-shot the film, which creatively blurred the lines between Lu­ political goals derailed its cultural construction into a privatized, al­ cas and Shakespeare, for their high school advanced-placement English most silly, hobby."12 Writing in the early 1990s, Zimmermann saw little class. They staged light-saber battles down the school hallway, though reason to believe that the camcorder and the VCR would significantly the principal was concerned about potential damage to lockers; the alter this situation. The medium's technical limitations made it difficult Millennium Falcon lifted off from the gym, though they had to com­ for amateurs to edit their films, and the only public means of exhibition posite it over the cheerleaders who were rehearsing the day they shot were controlled by commercial media makers (as in programs such as that particular sequence. Still other films emerged as collective projects America's Funniest Home Videos, 1990). for various Star Wars fan clubs. Boba FeU: Bounty Trail (2002), for exam­ Digital filmmaking alters many of the conditions that led to the mar­ ple, was filmed for a competition hosted by a Melbourne, Australia, ginalization of previous amateur filmmaking efforts-the Web provides Lucasfilm convention. Each cast member made his or her own cos­ an exhibition outlet moving amateur filmmaking from private into tumes, building on previous experience with science fiction masquer­ public space; digital editing is far simpler than editing Super-8 or video ades and costume contests. Their personal motives for making such and thus opens up a space for amateur artists to reshape their material films are of secondary interest, however, once they are distributed on more directly; the home PC has even enabled the amateur filmmaker the Web. If such films are attracting worldwide interest, it is not be­ to mimic the special effects associated with Hollywood blockbusters cause we all care whether Bienvenido Concepcion and Don Fitz-Roy like Star Wars. Digital cinema is a new chapter in the complex history of got a good grade on their Shakespeare assignment. Rather, what moti­ interactions between amateur filmmakers and the commercial media. vated faraway viewers to watch such films is their shared investment These films remain amateur, in the sense that they are made on low in the Star Wars universe. budgets, produced and distributed in noncommercial contexts, and Amateur filmmakers are producing commercial- or near-commer­ generated by nonprofessional filmmakers (albeit often by people who cial-quality content on minuscule budgets. They remain amateur in the want entry into the professional sphere). Yet, many of 'the other clas- sense that they do not earn their revenue through their work (much the 144 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 145

way we might call Olympic athletes amateur), but they are duplicating special effects that had cost a small fortune to generate only a decade earlier. Amateur filmmakers can make pod racers skim along the sur­ face of the ocean or land speeders scatter dust as they zoom across the desert. They can make laser beams shoot out of ships and explode Fig. 4.2. Publicity materials things before our eyes. Several fans tried their hands at duplicating Jar­ created for Star Wars: Revela­ Jar's character animation and inserting him into their own movies with tions, a forty-minute opus varying degrees of success. The light-saber battle, however, has become made through the combined the gold standard of amateur filmmaking, with almost every filmmaker efforts of hundreds of fan compelled to demonstrate his or her ability to achieve this particular filmmakers worldwide. effect. Many of the Star Wars shorts, in fact, consist of little more than light-saber battles staged in suburban dens and basements, in empty lots, in the hallways of local schools, inside shopping malls, or more movie studio. There's nothing to stop you from doing something exotically against the backdrop of medieval ruins (shot during vaca­ provocative and significant in that medium."ls Lucas's rhetoric about tions). Shane Faleux used an open source approach to completing his the potentials of digital filmmaking has captured the imagination of forty-minute opus, Star Wars: Revelations (2005), one of the most ac­ amateur filmmakers and they are taking on the master on his own claimed recent works in the movement (fig. 4.2). As Faleux explained, ground. "Revelations was created to give artisans and craftsmen the chance As Clay Kronke, a Texas A&M University undergraduate who made to showcase their work, allow all those involved a chance to live the' The New World (1999), explained: "This film has been a labor of love. A dream, and maybe-just maybe-open the eyes in the industry as to venture into a new medium.... I've always loved light sabers and the what can be done with a small budget, dedicated people, and undis­ mythos of the Jedi and after getting my hands on some software that covered talent."14 Hundreds of people around the world contributed to would allow me to actually become what I had once only admired at a the project, including more than thirty different computer-graphics distance, a vague idea soon started becoming a r~ality.... Dude, we're artists, ranging from folks within special effects companies to talented gonna be Jedi."16 Kronke openly celebrates the fact that he made the teenagers. When the film was released via the Web, more than a million film on a $26.79 budget with most of the props and costumes part of people downloaded it. their preexisting collections of Star Wars paraphernalia, that the big­ As amateur filmmakers are quick to note, Lucas and Steven Spiel­ gest problem they faced on the set was that their plastic light sabers berg both made Super-8 fiction films as teenagers and saw this experi­ kept shattering, and that its sound effects included "the sound of a coat ence as a major influence on their subsequent work. Although these hanger against a metal flashlight, my microwave door, and myself fall­ films are not publicly available, some of them have been discussed in ing on the floor several times." detail in various biographies and magazine profiles. These "movie The mass marketing of Star Wars inadvertently provided many of the brat" filmmakers have been quick to embrace the potentials of digital resources needed to support these productions. Star Wars is, in many filmmaking, not simply as a means of lowering production costs for ways, the prime example of media convergence at work. Lucas's deci­ their own films, but also as a training ground for new talent. Lucas, for sion to defer salary for the first Star Wars film in favor of maintaining a example, told Wired magazine: "Some of the special effects that we share of ancillary profits has been widely cited as a turning point in the redid for Star Wars were done on a Macintosh, on a laptop, in a couple emergence of this new strategy of media production and distribution. of hours I could have very easily shot the Young Indy TV series on Lucas made a ton of money, and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corpora­ Hi-8 So you can get a Hi-8 camera for a few thousand bucks, more tion learned a valuable lesson. Kenner's Star Wars action figures are for the software and the computer for less than $l(}',OOO you have a thought to have been the key in reestablishing the value of media tie-in Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars! 147 146 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars! role of a Jedi Knight or an intergalactic bounty hunter, enabling them to products in the toy industry, and John Williams's score helped to revi­ physically manipulate the characters to construct their own stories. talize the market for soundtrack albums. The rich narrative universe of Not surpriSingly, a significant number of filmmakers in their late the Star Wars saga provided countless images, icons, and artifacts that teens and early twenties have turned toward those action figures as re­ could be reproduced in a wide variety of forms. Despite the lengthy sources for their first production efforts. Toy Wars (2002) producers gap between the release dates for Return of the Jedi (1983) and The Phan­ Aaron Halon and Jason VandenBerghe launched an ambitious plan to tom Menace (1999), Lucasfilm continued to generate profits from its Star produce a shot-by-shot remake of Star Wars: A New Hope cast entirely Wars franchise through the production of original novels and comic with action figures. These action figure movies require constant re­ books, the distribution of video tapes and audio tapes, the continued sourcefulness on the part of the amateur filmmakers. Damon Wellner marketing of Star Wars toys and merchandise, and the maintenance of and Sebastian O'Brien, two self-proclaimed 11 action figure nerds" from an elaborate publicity apparatus, including a monthly glossy newslet- Cambridge, Massachusetts, formed Probot Productions with the goal of ter for Star Wars fans. "making toys as alive as they seemed in childhood." The Probot Web Many of these toys and trinkets were trivial when read in relation to site (www.probotproductions.com) offers this explanation of their pro­ the kinds of transmedia storytelling described in the previous chapter: duction process: they add little new information to the expanding franchise. Yet they took on deeper meanings as they became resources for children's play The first thing you need to know about Probot Productions is that we're or for digital filmmaking. The amateur filmmakers often make use of broke. We spend all our $$$ on toys. This leaves a very small budget for commercially available costumes and props, sample music from the special effects, so we literally have to work with what we can find in the soundtrack album and sounds of Star Wars videos or computer games, garbage.... For sets we used a breadbox, a ventilation tube from a dryer, and draw advice on special effects techniques from television docu­ cardboard boxes, a discarded piece from a vending machine, and milk mentaries and mass market magazines. For example, the makers of crates. Large Styrofoam pieces from stereo component boxes work very Duel described the sources for their soundtrack: "We sampled most well to create spaceship-like environments!19 of the light saber sounds from The Empire Strikes Back Special Edition laserdisc, and a few from A New Hope. Jedi was mostly useless to us, as No digital filmmaker has pushed the aesthetics of action figure cin­ the light saber battles in the film are always accompanied by music. ema as far as Evan Mather. Mather's films, such as Godzilla versus Disco The kicking sounds are really punch sounds from Raiders ofthe Lost Ark, Lando, Kung Fu Kenobi's Big Adventure, and Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars, and there's one sound-Hideous running across the sand-that we represent a no-holds-barred romp through contemporary popUlar cul­ got from Lawrence of Arabia. Music, of course, comes from The Phantom ture. The rock-'em sock-'em action of Kung Fu Kenobi's Big Adventure Menace soundtrack."17 The availability of these various ancillary prod­ takes place against the backdrop of settings sampled from the film, ucts has encouraged these filmmakers, since childhood, to construct drawn by hand, or built from LEGO blocks, with the eclectic and evoc­ their own fantasies within the Star Wars universe. One fan critic ex­ ative soundtrack borrowed from Neil Diamond, Mission Impossible plained: "Odds are if you were a kid in the seventies, you probably (1996), Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985), and A Charlie Brown Christmas fought in schoolyards over who would play Han, lost a Wookiee action (1965). Disco Lando puts the moves on everyone from Admiral Ackbar figure in your backyard and dreamed of firing that last shot on the to Jabba's blue-skinned dancing girl, and all of his pick-up-lines come Death Star. And probably your daydreams and conversations weren't from the soundtrack of The Empire Strikes Back. Mace Windu "gets me­ about William Wallace, Robin Hood or Odysseus, but, instead, light dieval" on the Jedi Council, delivering Samuel L. Jackson's lines from saber battles, frozen men and forgotten fathers. ln other words, we Pulp Fiction (1994) before shooting up the place. The camera focuses on talked about our legend."18 The action figures provided this generation the bald-head of a dying Darth Vader as he gasps "rosebud." Apart with some of their earliest avatars, encouraging them to assume the , - 148 QuentinTarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 149

from their anarchic humor and rapid-fire pace, Mather's films stand competition is the fact that Lucas personally selects the winner from out because of their visual sophistication. Mather's own frenetic style finalists identified by AtornFilm's Chris Albrecht and vetted by staffers has become increasingly distinguished across the body of his works, at LucasArts. There is no doubt that Lucas personally likes at least constantly experimenting with different forms of animation, flashing or some form of fan creativity. As Albrecht explains, "Hats off to Lucas for masked images, and dynamic camera movements. recognizing that this is happening and giving the public a chance to Yet, if the action figure filmmakers have developed an aesthetic participate in a universe they know and love. There's nothing else like based on their appropriation of materials from the mainstream media, this out there. No other producer has gone this far."20 On other levels, then the mainstream media has been quick to imitate that aesthetic. the company-and perhaps Lucas himself-has wanted to control Nickelodeon's short-lived Action League Now!!! (1994), for example, had what fans produced and circulated. Jim Ward, vice president of market­ a regular cast of characters consisting of mismatched dolls and muti­ ing for Lucasfilm, told New York Times reporter Amy Harmon in 2002: lated action figures. In some cases, their faces had been melted or man­ "We've been very clear all along on where we draw the line. We love gled through inappropriate play. One protagonist had no clothes. They our fans. We want them to have fun. But if in fact somebody is using came in various size scales, suggesting the collision of different narra­ our characters to create a story unto itself, that's not in the spirit of tive universes that characterizes children's action figure play. MTV's what we think fandom is about. Fandom is about celebrating the story Celebrity Deathmatch (1998) created its action figures using claymation, the way it is."21 Lucas wants to be "celebrated" but not appropriated. staging World Wrestling Federation-style bouts between various ce­ Lucas has opened up a space for fans to create and share what they lebrities, some likely (Monica Lewinsky against Hillary Clinton), some create with others but only on his terms. The franchise has struggled Simply bizarre (the rock star formerly known as Prince against Prince with these issues from the 1970s to the Charles). present, desiring some zone of tolerance Pixelvision and Machinema The Web represents a site of experimentation and innovation, where within which fans can operate while as­ The hazy images of Kyle Cassidy's Toy amateurs test the waters, developing new practices, themes, and gen­ serting some control over what happens Soldiers ( I996) evoke faint childhood erating materials that may well attract cult follOWings on their own to his story. In that history, there have memories.This short film expresses the terms. The most commercially viable of those practices are then ab­ been some periods when the company hopes and anxieties of a small boy as he sorbed into the mainstream media, either directly through the hiring of was highly tolerant and others when it awaits the next news from his father new talent or the development of television, video, or big-screen works who is serving in Vietnam.Adult con­ was pretty aggressive about trying to cerns shape his everyday rituafs and based on those materials, or indirectly, through a second-order imita­ close off all or some forms of fan fiction. practices as he plays with his green tion of the same aesthetic and thematic qualities. In return, the main­ At the same time, the different divisions plastic army guys in the backyard and stream media materials may provide inspiration for subsequent ama­ of the samecompany havedeveloped dif­ reflects on the fate of those who have teur efforts, which push popular culture in new directions. In such a ferent approaches to dealing with fans; been run over by the lawnmower, as he watches the flickering television news­ world, fan works can no longer be understood as simply derivative of the games division has thought of fans mainstream materials but must be understood as themselves open to cast with his mother, and as he awaits in ways consistent with how other game the next letter. Toy Soldiers has the inti­ appropriation and reworking by the media industries. companies think about fans (and is prob­ macy of a home movie, even though it is ably on the more permissive end of the re-created decades later from the direc­ spectrum), and the film division has tend­ tor's own memories. Cassidy made the "The SOO-Pound Wookiee" ed to think like a motion picture company critically acclaimed film with his Pixel­ vision 2000 camera,which has a plastic and has been a bit less comfortable with case and plastic lens, runs on six AA bat­ Fans take reassurance that Lucas and his cronies, at least sometimes, fan participation. I make this point not to teries, and records its images on a regu­ take a look at what fans have made and send them his blessing. In fact, say LucasArts is bad to fans-in many lar audiocassette tape.The Pixelvision part of the allure of participating in the official Stal' Wars fan cinema ways, the company seems more forward camera, marketed from 1987 to 1989 for $J00 by Fi~her-Price, is the cheapest self-contained 'camcorder ever made. 150 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 151

thinking and responsive to the fan com­ can youcontrol it? As we look at it, weap­ The Pixelvision camera has a fixed festivals (such as PXLTHIS), all in the focus lens which,like a pinhole camera, munity than most Hollywood companies preciate the fans, and what would we do face of total neglect, and at times open theoretically has absolute focus from -but to illustrate the ways the media in­ without them? If we anger them, what's disdain, from Fishe.... Price.As filmmaker zero to infinity, but in practice does best dustry is trying to figure out its response the point?"2S Eric Sacks writes,"Pixelvision is an when what is being filmed remains a to fan creativity. Media scholar Will Brooker cites a 1996 aberrant art form, underscored by the few feet from the camera.The camera In the beginning, Lucasfilm actively corporate notice that explains: "Since the fact that since the cameras wear out can shoot well in very low light settings quickly, and are no longer being manu­ but almost everything has a shadowy encouraged fan fiction, establishing a no­ internet is growing so fast, we are in the factured, it holds within itself aut:hor­ and washed-out look. It was originally fee licensing bureau in 1977 that would process of developing guidelines for how ized obsolescence. Each time an artist intended for children, but kids never review material and offer advice about we can enhance the ability of Star Wars uses a PXL 2000, the whole form edges really were wild about it because their potential copyright infringement,22 By fans to communicate with each other closer to extinction.'" movies didn't look anything like what the early 1980s, these arrangementsbroke without infringing on Star Wars copy­ Many of the best Pixelvision movies they were seeing on television.The down, allegedly because Lucas had stum­ rights and trademarks."26 The early law­ reveal a fascination with the processes Pixelvision image has 2,000 black-and­ and artifacts of everyday life: the white dots, making it far coarser than bled onto some examples of fan erot­ less days of the Internet were giving way camera has spawned a genre of confes­ a standardTV image with its 200,000 ica that shocked his sensibilities. By 1981, to a period of heightened corporate scru­ sional films, with ghostly faces speaking pixels. Lucasfilrn was issuing warnings to fans tiny and expanding control. Even during directly into the camera with surprising But the Pixelvision camera has found who published zines containing sexually what might be seen as a "honeymoon" frankness. Sadie Benning, the adolescent its way into the hearts and hands ofa explicit stories, while implicitly giving period, some fans felt that Lucasfilm was daughter of an established experimen­ growing number ofamateur and avant­ tal filmmaker, went on to fame in the garde filmmakers who like it for many permission to publish nonerotic stories actinglikea "SOD-pound Wookiee," throw­ art world with her simple and direct ofthe reasons the device disappointed about the characters as long as they were ing its weight around and making threat­ shorts, filmed in her bedroom, about its target market.The Pixelvision's not sold for profit: "Since all of the Star ening noises.27 coming of age as a lesbian.At nineteen, murky, grainy, and unstable image has Wars saga is PC-rated, any story those Lucasfilm's perspective seemed rel­ Benning was the youngest person ever become the marker of alternative publishers print should also be PC. Lu­ atively enlightened, even welcoming, to win a Rockefeller grant. media authenticity. Pixelvision enthusi­ Andrea McCarty, a graduate student casfilm does not produce any X-rated when compared with how other media asts love the "point and shoot" quality in MIT's Comparative Media Studies of the camera, which they say allows Star Wars episodes, so why should we be producers responded to their fans. In the program, is studying the Pixelvision neophytes to start doing creative work placed in a light where people think we late 1990s, Viacom experimented with a movement to better understand how right away. Budding artists can put their do?"23 Most fan erotica was pushed un­ strong arm approach to fan culture­ grassroots creativity works. She told energies into communicating ideas derground by this policy, though it con­ starting in Australia. A representative of me:"Pixelvision's endurance and rather than learning to control the tinued to circulate informally. The issue the corporation called together leaders popularity prove that it was not a failed technology.A once expensive toy has technology.•••The fascination with all become an incredibly cheap tool. resurfaced in the 1990s: fan fiction of of fan clubs from across the country and Pixelvision belies its obsolescence­ The Pixelvision movement is the variety thrived on the "electronic fron­ laid down new guidelines for their activ­ collectors are seeking the cameras, artistic equivalent of a cargo cult: a tier." One Web site, for example, pro­ ities.28 These guidelines prohibited the artists are creating with them, technol­ junked technology, abandoned by vided regularly updated links to fan and showing of series episodes at club meet­ ogy fans are modifying them and fans its manufacturer, found its way into fan fiction Web sites for more than 153 ings unless those episodes had previ­ are watching the films at the PXLTHIS unanticipated but highly dedicated films, books, and television shows, rang­ ously been made commercially available festival."l The best Pixelvision films have hands, and we can now see two decades been embraced by the art world, and ofelaboration as its worshippers have ing from Airwolf (1984) to Zarro (1975).24 in that market. (This policy has serious the camera even has fans among com­ managed to turn its "bugs" into desir­ Star Wars zine editors poked their heads consequences for Australian fans because mercial filmmakers. Director Michael able features and have developed a new above ground, cautiously testing the wa­ they often get series episodes a year or mode of expression around its unique ters. Jeanne Cole, a spokesman for Lucas­ two after they air in the United States I Erik Saks."Big Pixel Theory:' http://www.thek­ properties. Pixelvision fans have created film, explained, "What tan you do? How and the underground circulation and itchen.orgiMovieCatalogITidesiBigPixeITheory.html. their own Web sites, spawned their own 1 Andrea McCarty, personal correspondence, criticism, and developed their own film November 2004. 152 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 153

exhibition of video tapes had enabled web space-it lets them both look amaz­ Almereyda has incorporated Pixelvision generation Of animators (amateur and images into his big-screen releases, them to participate actively on on-line, ingly generous and be even more control­ professional). Najia (1994) and Hamlet (2000), to discussions.) Similarly, Viacom cracked ling than before.... Lucasfilm doesn't Subsequent games offered ever more much critical praise. down on the publication and distribution hate fans, and they don't hate fan web­ sophisticated tools that allowed players This is what some had claimed would of fanzines and prohibited the use of Star sites. They can indeed see how they ben­ to create their own digital assets, or put be the inevitable consequences of the Trek (1966) trademarked names in con­ their own "skins" over the characters digital revolution: the technology would efit from the free publicity they represent vention publicity. Their explicitly stated and features of the game world. Soon, put low-cost, easy-to-use tools for -and who doesn't like being adored? people were playing the games with an creative expression into the hands of goal was to push fans toward participa­ This move underscores that as much as eye toward recording the actions they average people. Lower the barriers of tion in a corporately controlled fan club. anything. But they're also scared, and wanted for their movies and even participation and provide new channels In 2000, Lucasfilrn offered Star Wars that makes them hurt the people who redesigning the games to create the for publicity and distribution, and fans free Web space (www.starwars.com) love them.//30 Durack argued that fan fic­ characters and settings they needed to people will create remarkable things. stage their own stories.These game and unique content for their sites, but tion does indeed pay respect to Lucas as Think ofthese subcultures as aesthetic engines would allow artists to dramati­ only under the condition that whatever petri dishes. Seed them and see what the creator of Star Wars, yet the fans also cally lower the costs and decrease the grows. In most, nothing really interest­ they created would become the studio's wanted to hold onto their right to partici­ production time of digital animation. ing will happen.We can pretty much intellectual property. As the official no­ pate in the production and circulation of Picture complex animation with count on Sturgeon's law holding for tice launching this new "Homestead" the Star Wars saga that had become so the spontaneity of improvisational amateur cultural creation: 90 percent of explained, "To encourage the on-going performancel everything is crap. But if you expand the much a part of their lives: "It has been excitement, creativity, and interaction of Most Machinima films remain deeply number of people participating in the observed by many writers that Star Wars rooted in gamer culture-MyTril> to making of art, you may expand the our dedicated fans in the online Star (based purposely on the recurring themes Liberty City is a travelogue ofthe world amount of really interesting works that Wars community, Lucas Online (http:/ / of mythology by creator George Lucas) represented in Grand Theft Auto 3 emerge.You can pretty much count on www.lucasfilm.com/divisions/online/) and other popular media creations take (200 I); Halo Boys involves boy bands in our creative impulses to overcome a lot is pleased to offer for the first time an offi­ the place in modem America that culture the Halo (200 I) universe; someone of technical limitations and obstacles. restaged classic moments from Monty cial horne for fans to celebrate their love myths like those of the Greeks or Native Amateur artists do best when they Python and the Holy Grail (1975) using of Star Wars on the World Wide Web.//29 operate within supportive communities, Americans did for earlier peoples. Hold­ Darlc Ages ofCamelot (200 I). But not all. struggling with the same creative Historically, fan fiction had proven to be ing modem myths hostage by wayofcor­ Some people have taken up the techni­ problems and building on one another's a point of entry into commercial publi­ porate legal wrangling seems somehow cal challenge of reproducing classic successes. cation for at least some amateurs, who contrary to nature.// action films-everything from The Let's consider a second powerful were able to sell their novels to the pro­ Matrix to the Omaha Beach sequence example ofthat process at work: Today, relations between Lucas Arts fessional book series centering on the var­ in SaVing Private Ryan (1998). More polit­ Machinima.lts name, a hybrid of and the fan fiction community have ical filmmakers have taken this farther, machine and cinema, Machinima refers ious franchises. If Lucasfilrn Ltd. claimed thawed somewhat. Though I haven't using game engines to comment on the to ]-0 digital animation created in real to own such rights, they could publish been able to find any official statement war on terrorism or to restage the siege time using game engines.The Machin­ them without compensation, and they signaling a shift in policy, Star Wars fan ofthe Branch Davidians atWaco. Hugh ima movement started in 199] when could also remove them without permis­ fiction is all over the Web, including on Hancock and Gordon McDonald's Ozy­ Doom was released with a program that mandias adopts a poem by Percy Shel­ sion or warning. several of the most visible and main­ supported the recording and playback ley, and Fountainhead's Anna depicts the of in-game actions.The idea was that Elizabeth Durack was one of the more streamfan sites. The Webmasters of those life story of a f1ower.As with Pixelvision, people might want to watch their own outspoken leaders of an campaign urging sites say that they deal with the official the Machinima movement has launched game-play experiences as mini action her fellow Star Wars fans not to partici­ production company all the time on a its own Web community, critics, training movies.There is little evidence that this pate in these new arrangements: "That's range of different matters, but they have programs, and film festivals. controversial first-person shooter the genius of Lucasfilrn's offering fans never been asked to remove what once If Pixelvision has been embraced generated school shooters, but there's by the art world, Machinima's great­ plenty of evidence that it inspired a est impact so far has been on the 154 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 155

might have been read as infringing mate­ with fan-produced materials that mimicked the dramatic structure of commercial culture.The History Channel, for example, has launched a rials. Yet, what Lucas giveth, he can also the film franchise should anything in any official Star Wars material successful series, Decisive Banles (2004), take away. Many fan writers have told me make use of similar characters or situations. For another, Albrecht sug­ which restages events such as the Battle that they remain nervous about how the gested, there was a growing risk of consumer confusion about what of Marathon usin', Creative Assembly's "Powers That Be" are apt to respond to constituted an official Star Wars product. Speaking about Revelations, Rome:Total War (2004) as its basic particularly controversial stories. Albrecht suggested, "Up until the moment the actors spoke, you animation tool. MTV 2's Video Mods wouldn't be able to tell whether that was a real Star Wars film or a fan program features music videos by Lucas and his movie brat cronies clear­ groups such as Black Eyed Peas and ly identified more closely with the young creation because the special effects are so gOOd.... As the tools get bet­ Fountains ofWayne that are produced digital filmmakers who were making ter, there is bound to be confusion in the marketplace." In any case, using look-alike skins of the performers "calling card" movies to try to break into Lucasfilm would have had much less legal standing in shutting down inserted in the world of games as the film industry than they did with fe­ parody, which enjoys broad protections under current case law, or doc­ diverse as Tomb Raider, Leisure Suit male fan writers sharing their erotic fan­ umentaries about the phenomenon itself, which would fall ~learly into Larry, The Sims 2, and SSX3. the category of journalistic and critical commentary. Lucasfilm was, in Pixelvision was largely abandoned tasies. By the end of the decade, however, by Fishe".Price. But Machinima-and Lucas's tolerance of fan filmmaking has effect, tolerating what it legally must accept in return for shutting game mods more generally-have been given way to a similar strategy of incor­ down what it might otherwise be unable to control. embraced by the games industry. Lion­ poration and containment. In November These rules are anything but gender neutral: though the gender head's new release, The Movies (2005), 2000, Lucasfilm designated the commer­ lines are starting to blur in recent years, the overwhelming majority of takes the Machinima movement a step fan parody is produced by men, while "fan fiction" is almost entirely further: the game allows you to run cial digital cinema site, Atomfilms.com, your own studio, produce your own as the official host for Star Wars fan films. produced by women. In the female fan community, fans have long movies using its characters and back­ The site would provide a library of offi­ produced "song videos" that are edited together from found footage lots, and then share them online with cial sound effects and run periodic con­ drawn from film or television shows and set to pop music. These fan your friends. tests to recognize outstanding amateur vids often function as a form of fan fiction to draw out aspects of the accomplishment. In return, participating emotional lives of the characters or otherwise get inside their heads. filmmakers would agree to certain constraints on content: "Films must They sometimes explore underdeveloped subtexts of the original film, parody the existing Star Wars universe, or be a documentary of the Star offer original interpretations of the story, or suggest plotlines that go Wars fan experience. No 'fan fiction'-which attempts to expand on the beyond the work itself. The emotional tone of these works could not be Star Wars universe-will be accepted. Films must not make use of copy­ more different from the tone of the parodies featured in the official con­ righted Star Wars music or video, but may use action figures and the tests-films such as Silh Apprentice, where the Emperor takes some audio clips provided in the production kit section of this site. Films must would be stormtroopers back to the board room; Anakin Dynamite, not make unauthorized use of copyrighted property from any other film, where a young Jedi must confront "idiots" much like his counterpart in song, or composition."31 Here, we see the copyright regimes of mass cul­ the cult success, Napoleon Dynamite (2004); or Intergalactic Idol (2003), ture being applied to the folk culture process. where audiences get to decide which contestant really has the force. A work like Star Wars: Revelations would be prohibited from entering By contrast, Diane Williams's Come What May (2001), a typical song­ the official Star Wars competition because it sets its own original dra­ vid, uses images from The Phantom Menace to explore the relationship matic story in the interstices between the third and fourth Star Wars between Obi-Wan Kenobi and his mentor, Qui-Gon Jinn. The images films and thus constitutes "fan fiction." Albrecht, the man who over­ show the passionate friendship between the two men and culminate sees the competition, offered several explanations for the prohibition. in the repeated images of Obi-Wan cradling the crumbled body of For one thing, Lucas saw himself and his company as being at risk for his murdered comrade follOWing his battle with Darth Maul. The im­ being sued for plagiarism if he allowed himself to cbme into contact ages are accompanied by the song, "Come What May," taken from the 156 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars1 Quentin Tarantino's StarWars1 157

were not for everyone to do with what soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! (2001) and performed by most successful children's series, from Ewan McGregor, the actor who also plays the part of Qui-Gon Jinn in they would. These commons were never Pokemon (1998) to Yu-Gi-Oh! ( 1998), Phantom Menace, very common."32 For the record, my coming directly from japanese produc­ Whether Atomfilms would define such a work to be a parody would claims here are altogether more particu­ tion houses.The shift occurred not be a matter of interpretation: while playful at places, it lacks the broad larized than the sweeping analogies to through some concerted push by japan­ Greek myths that provoked McCracken's ese media companies, but rather in comedy of most of the male-produced Star Wars movies, involves a response to the pull ofAmerican fans much closer identification with the characters, and hints at aspects of ire. He is almost certainly right that who who used every technology at their their relationshir that have not explicitly been represented on screen. could tell those stories, under what cir­ disposal to expand the community that Come What May (would be read by most fans as falling within the slash cumstances, and for what purposes re­ knew and loved this content. Subse­ subgenre, constiucting erotic relations between same-sex characters, flected hierarchies operating within clas­ quent commercial efforts built on the infrastructure these fans developed and would be read melodramatically rather than satirically. Of course, sical culture. My analogy, on the other over the intervening years. Grassroots hand, refers to a specific moment in the from a legal standpoint, Come What May may represent parody, which convergence paved the way for new doesn't require that the work be comical but simply that it be appropri­ emergence of American popular culture, corporate convergence strategies. ate and transform the original for the purposes of critical commentary. where songs often circulated wellbeyond japanese animation was exported It would be hard to argue that a video that depicts Obi-Wan and Qui­ their points of origin, lost any acknowl­ into theWestern market as early as the Gon as lovers does not transform the original in a way that expands its edgment of their original authorship, 1960s, when Astro Boy ( 1963), Speed were repurposed and reused to serve a Racer (1967), and Gigantor (1965) made potential meanings. Most likely, this and other female-produced song it into local syndication. By the late videos would be regarded as fan fiction; Come What May would also range of different interests, and were very I960s, however, reform efforts, such as run afoul of AtomFilm's rules against appropriating content from the much part of the texture of everyday life Action for Children'sTelevision, had films or from other media properties. for a wide array of nonprofessional par­ used threats of boycott and federal These rules create a two-tier system: some works can be rendered ticipants. This is how folk culture oper­ regulation to reign in content they saw more public because they conform to what the rights holder sees as ated in an emergent democracy. as inappropriate for American children. japanese content targeted adults in its I don't want to tum back the clock to an acceptable appropriation of their intellectual property, while others country of origin, often dealt with more remain hidden from view (or at least dis­ some mythic golden age. Rather, I want mature themes, and was a particular When Piracy Becomes Promotion tributed through less official channels). us to recognize the challenges posed by target of the backlash. Discouraged The global sales ofjapanese animation In this case, these works have been so the coexistence of these two kinds of japanese distributors retreated from and character goods, an astonishing 9 cut off from public visibility that when I cultural logic. The kinds of production theAmerican market, dumping their cartoons on japanese-language cable trillion yen (U.S. $80 billion) is ten times ask Star Wars digital filmmakers about practices we are discussing here were a what it was a decade ago. Much of that channels in cities with largeAsian the invisibility of these mostly female­ normal part of American life over this growth has occurred in North America populations. period. They are simply more visible now and western Europe.japanese anime produced works, most of them had no With the rise of videotape recorders, has won worldwide success in part idea that women were even making Star because of the shift in distribution chan­ American fans could dub shows offthe because japanese media companies Wars movies. nels for amateur cultural productions. If japanese-language channels and share were tolerant ofthe kinds of grassroots Anthropologist and marketing con­ the corporate media couldn't crush this them with their friends in other regions. Soon, fans were seeking contacts in activities thatAmerican media compa­ vernacular culture during the age when sultant Grant McCracken has expressed japan-both local youth and American nies seem so determined to shut down. mass media power went largely unchal­ Much ofthe risks of enteringWestern some skepticism about the parallels fans GIs with access to newer series. Both markets and many ofthe costs ofexper­ draw between their grassroots cultural lenged, it is hard to believe that legal japan and the United States used the imentation and promotion were borne production and traditional folk culture: threats are going to be an adequate re­ same NTSC format, easing the flow of by dedicated consumers.Two decades "Ancient heroes did not belong to every­ sponse to a moment when new digital content across national borders.Ameri­ can fan clubs emerged to support the ago, the American market was totally one, they did not serve' everyone, they tools and new networks of distribution closed to these japanese imports.Today, archiving and circulation ofjapanese the sky is the limit, with many of the animation. On college campuses, 158 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 159

of the media marketplace.34 Of course, student organizations built extensive have expanded the power of ordinary subtitle and tapping a broader com­ libraries of both legal and pirated mate­ people to participate in their culture. this model depends on fans and audi­ munity for would-be translators. rials and hosted screenings designed to Having felt that power, fans and other ence members acting collectively in their Beginning in the early I990s, large­ educate the public about anime artists, subcultural groups are not going to re­ owninterest against companies who may scale anime conventions brought artists styles, and genres.The MIT Anime Club, turn to docility and invisibility. They will tempt them with entertainment that is and distributors from japan, who were for example, hosts weekly screenings astonished to see a thriving culture go farther underground otherwise tailored to their needs. The from a library of more than fifteen if they have to surrounding content they had never hundred films and videos. Since 1994, -they've been there before-but they production companies are centralized actually marketed overseas.They went the club has provided a Web site aren't going to stop creating. and can act in a unified manner; fans are back home motivated to try to tap this designed to educateAmericans about This is where McCracken's argument decentralized and have no ability to en­ interest commercially. Some key players anime and anime fan culture. In most rejoins my own. McCracken argues that sure conformity within their rights. And in the Japanese animation industry had cases, the club would show content there is ultimately no schism between so far, the media companies have shown been among those who had aided and without translation. Much like listening abetted American grassroots distribu­ to an opera on the radio, someone the public interest in expanding opportu­ a remarkable willingness to antagonize tion a decade earlier. would stand up at the beginning and tell nities for grassroots creativity and the their consumers by taking legal actions The first niche companies to the plot, often drawing on what they corporate interest in protecting its in­ against them in the face of all economic distribute anime on DVD and video­ remembered when they heard someone tellectual property: "Corporations will rationality. This is going to be an uphill tape emerged as fan clubs went pro, else recite the plot at another screen­ allow the public to participate in the fight under the best of circumstances. The acquiring the distribution rights from ing.japanese distributors winked at reengaged japanese media companies. construction and representation of its most likely way for it to come about, these screenings.They didn't have The first material to be distributed permission from their mother compa­ creations or they will, eventtf.illy, com­ however, maybe to create some successes already had an enthusiastic fan follow­ nies to charge these fans or provide the promise the commercial valJe of their that demonstrate the economic value of ing.lnterested in exposing their mem­ material, but they wanted to see how properties. The new consumer wi,ll help engaging the participatory audience. bers to the full range ofcontent much interest the shows attracted. create value or they will refuse it. ... available in japan,the fan clubs often The late 1980s and early 1990s saw Corporations have a right to keep copy­ took risks that no commercial distribu­ the emergence of"fansubbing," the tor would have confronted, testing the amateur translation and subtitling of right but they have an interest in releas­ Design Your Own Galaxy market for new genres, producers, and Japanese anime.Time synchronizedVHS ing it. The economics of scarcity may series and commercial companies to and S-VHS systems supported dubbing dictate the first. The economics of plenti­ Adopting a collaborationist logic, the follow their path wherever they found ofthe tapes so that they retained tude dictate the second."33 The expand­ creators of massively multiplayer online popularity.The fansubbed videos often accurate alignment oftext and image. ing range of media options, what Mc­ role-playing games (MMORPGs) have ran an advisory urging users to "cease As MIT Anime Club president Sean distribution when licensed," The clubs Cracken calls the "economics of plenti­ already built a more open-ended and Leonard explains,"Fansubbing has been were not trying to profit from anime critical to the growth ofanime fandom tude," will push companies to open more collaborative relationship with their con­ distribution but rather to expand the in the West. If it weren't for fans show­ space for grassroots participation and sumer base. Game designers acknowl­ market; they pulled back from circulat­ ing this stuffto others in the late 70s­ affiliation-starting perhaps with niche edge that their craft has less to do with ing any title that had found a com­ early 90s, there would be no interest in companies and fringe audiences, but prestructured stories than with creating mercial distributor. In any case, the intelligent,'high-brow' japanese anima­ eventually moving toward the commer­ the preconditions for spontaneous com­ commercial copies were higher quality tion like there is today."The high costs than their multigeneration dubs. of the earliest machines meant that cial and cultural mainstream. McCracken munity activities. Raph Koster, the man The first commercially available fansubbing would remain a collective argues that those companies that loosen LucasArts placed in charge of developing copies were often dubbed and reedited effort: clubs pooled time and resources their copyright control will attract the Star Wars Galaxies, built his professional as part of an effort to expand their to ensure their favorite series reached a most active and committed consumers, reputation as one of the prime architects potential interest to casual consumers. wider viewership.As costs lowered, and those who ruthlessly set limits will of Ultima Online (1997). He was the au­ japanese cultural critic Koichi Iwabuchi fansubbing spread outward, with clubs used the term "de-odorizing" to refer find themselves with' a dwindling share thor of animportant statement of players' using the Internet to coordinate their to the ways that japanese"soft goods" activities, divvying up what series to are stripped of signs of their national 160 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 161

rights before he entered the games in­ "Self expression is another way to pro­ origins to open them for global circula­ largest advertising and marketing firm, tion.1 In this context, the grassroots fan dustry, and he has developed a strong mote immersion. By giving players free­ has argued,Japanese corporations have community still plays an important role, design philosophy focused on empow­ form ways to communicate themselves, sought to collaborate with fan clubs, educatingAmerican viewers to the ering players to shape their own expe­ designers can draw them more deeply subcultures, and other consumption cultural references and genre traditions riences and build their own communi­ into the world-they feel more of a part communities,seeing them as important defining these products through their allies in developing compelling new ties. Asked to describe the nature of the of it. "39 Web sites and newsletters.The fan clubs content or broadening markets.] In MMORPG, Koster famously explained, continue to explore potential niche Koster is known as a strong advocate courting such fans, the companies products that over time can emerge "It's not just a game. It's a service, it's a of the idea of giving players room to ex­ helped to construct a "mo.rat economy" as mainstream successes. world, it's a community."35 Koster also press themselves within the game world: that aligned their interests in reaching Many U.S. media companies might refers to managing an online community, a market with theAmerican fans' desire have regarded all ofthis underground whether a noncommercial mud or a com­ Making things of any sort does gener­ to access more content. circulation as piracy and shut it down Today,American companies are mercial MMORPG, as an act of gov;er­ ally require training. It is rare in any before it reached critical mass.The licensing content almost as rapidly as Japanese media company's tolerance of nance: "Just like it is not a good idea medium that the nail succeeds in mak­ the Japanese are generating it.The gap these fan efforts is consistent with their for a government to make radical legal ing somthing really awesome or popu­ between airing in Japan and in the similar treatment of fan communities in changes without a period of public com­ lar, By and large it is people who have North American market grows shorter, their local market.AsTemple University ment, it is often not wise for an operator taught themselves the craftand are mak­ making it harder for fans to mount the large-scale efforts to familiarize School of Law professor Salil K. Mehra of an online world to do the same."36 ing conscious choices. But I absolutely notes, the underground sale of fan­ themselves with and publicize this new ~s made manga, often highly derivative of Players, he argues, must feel a. nse of favor empowering people to engage in content. Even many fan-started the commercial product, occurs on a "ownership" over the imaginary world these acts of creation because not only companies are adopting American massive scale in Japan, with some if they are going to put in the time and does talent bubble up but also econ­ corporate logic, shutting down unautho­ comics markets attracting 150,000 effort needed to make it come alive for omies of scale apply. If you get a large rized fan copies from the moment they visitors per day; such markets are held themselves and for other players, Koster enough sample size, you will eventually acquire a license.The fans worry that almost every week in some parts ofthe these companies may be underestimat­ argues, "You can't possibly mandate a create something good, country.2 Rarely taking legal action, the ing the value ofthe grassroots publicity commercial producers sponsor such fictionally involving universe with thou­ and that such aggressive copyright events, using them to publicize their sands of other people. The best you can As Koster turned his attention to devel­ patrolling will result in a less educated releases, to recruit potential new talent, hope for is a world that is vibrant enough oping Star Wars Galaxies, he realized that consumer base that may be less willing 4 and to monitor shifts in audience tastes. that people act in manners consistent he was working with a franchise known to experiment with unfamiliar content. In any case, they fear the wrath oftheir with the fictional tenets."37 For players to in all of its details by hard-core fans who 'Yuichi Washida, "Collaborative Structures consumers if they take action against participate, they must feel that what they had grown up playing these characters between japanese High-Tech Manufacturers and such a well-entrenched cultural practice Consumers," paper presented at MIT, Cambridge, bring to the game makes a difference, not and the Japanese legal structure would with action figures or in their backyard Mass.,january 2004. provide for fairly small legal penalties only in terms of their own experiences, and who wanted to see those same fan­ • This account of the history of anime in North if they did pursue infringers. More but also the experiences of other play­ tasies rendered in the digital realm. In an America was informed throughout by Sean Leonard, generally, asYuichi Washida, a research ers. Writing about the challenges of meet­ open letter to the Star Wars fan commu­ "CelebratingTwo Decades of Unlawful Progress: Fan director at Hakuhodo,Japan's second Distribution, Proselytization Commons. and the Ex· ing community expectations on Ultima nity, Koster described what he hoped to plosive Growth ofjapaneseAnimation," UCLA Enter­ Online, Koster explains, "They want to bring to the project: tainment Law Review, Spring 2005, pp. 191-265. I Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (Durham, N,C.: shape their space, and leave a lasting Duke Universicy Press, 2002), pp. 25-27. mark. You must provide some means Star Wars is a universe beloved by many. And I think many of you are 2 Sam K, Mehra, "Copyright and Comics in japan: for them to do SO."38 Richard Bartle, an­ like me. You want to be there. You want to feel what it is like. Even be­ Does Law Explain WhyAll the Cartoons My Kid Watches Are japanese Imports?" Rutgers Law Review, other game designer and theorist, agrees: fore we think about skill trees and about Jedi advancement, before'we forthcoming, accessed at hnp:/Ipapers.ssrn.com/soI3/ papers/cfm?abstract_id=347620. Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 163 162 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars?

consider the stats on a weapon or the distance to Mos Eisley and where hard to imagine Lucas setting up a forum all ofthose enthusiastic modders into you have to go to pick up power converters--you want to just be there. site to preview plot twists and character evangelists for the originating company. Inhale the sharp air off the desert. Watch a few Jawas haggle over a designs with his audience. Ifhe had done Earlier in this chapter,l drew a distinction between interactivity droid. Feel the sun beat down on a body that isn't your own, in a world so, he would never have included Jar Jar (which emerged from the properties of that is strange to you. You don't want to know about the stagecraft in Binks or devoted so much screen time to the childhood and adolescence of Anakin media technologies) and participation those first few moments. You want to feel like you are offered a passport (which emerged from the protocols and to a universe of limitless possibility.... My job is to try to capture that Skywalker, decisions that alienated his social practices around media). It might magic for you, so you have that experience."40 core audience. Koster wanted Star Wars be productive to think about this dis­ fans to feel that they had, in effect, de­ tinction alongside a somewhat more famous one made by Lawrence Lessig Satisfying fan interests in the franchise proved challenging. Koster told signed their own galaxy. Games scholars Kurt Squire and Con­ between law and code. Law is social me: "There's no denying it-the fans know Star Wars better than the dicta: one is free to break the law stance Steinkuehler have studied the in­ developers do. They live and breathe it. They know itin an intimate way. though one may suffer penalties if one On the other hand, with something as large and broad as the Star Wars teractions between Koster and his fan does so. Code is technical data: the universe, there's ample scope for divergent opinions about things. These community. Koster allowed fans to act as programming makes it impossible to are the things that lead to religious wars "content generators creating quests, mis­ violate its restrictions on use (even if those restrictions in practice exceed At the Mall of The Sims among fans and all of a sudden you have sions, and social relationships that consti­ tute the Star Wars world," but more im­ any reasonable legal demand).We Many games companies are releasing to take a side because you are going to be might see modding as a special case their design tools and game engines establishing how it works in thfS game." '. portantly, fan feedback "set the tone" for where participatory culture seeks to alongside their games. Such tools are To ensure thatfans bought0tohis ver­ the Star Wars culture: reprogram the code so as to enable new available for amateur modders to try sion of the Star Wars universe, Koster es­ kinds of interactions with the game. their hand at designing additional levels Yet, it is also a special case where the sentially treated the fan community as his These players would establish commu­ or worlds that can extend their game­ nity norms for civility and role play­ commercial producer continues to play experiences. Some even developed client team, posting regular reports about exert constraints on use even as the ing, giving the designers an opportu­ elaborate tutorials designed to train many different elements of the game's work gets appropriated by the grass­ amateurs in the use ofthese tools and design on the Web, creating an online nity to effectively create the seeds of the roots community. I can change the may run contests to sponsor and recog­ forum where potential players could re­ Star Wars Galaxies world months before fundamental code of the game if I mod nize the modding community's accom­ spond and make suggestions, ensuring the game ever hit the shelves.... The it, but at the same time, nobody can plishments. Not every game player will game that the designers promised and play my transformed version ofthe take the time to develop original game that his staff regularly monitored the on­ game unless they become a consumer the community expected was largely content and share it with other players. line discussion and posted back their ofthe original work. But, as Bioware's Ray Muzyka explained, own reactions to the community's rec­ player-driven. The in-game economy Bioware and other games companies "Ifonly one percent ofa million user ommendations. By comparison, the pro­ would consist of items (e.g. clothing, see the release of their mod tools as base makes content, then you have a lot duction of a Star Wars film is shrouded armor, houses, weapons) created by consumer research; they monitor the of module designers.And that's enough by secrecy. Koster compares what he did players with its prices also set by play­ amateur mods to see what game fea­ to make a game self-sustaining for a ers through auctions and player-run tures are popular and try to provide long time.'" To play the amateur games, with the test screening or focus group more professionally polished versions shops. Cities and towns would be de­ you must buy the commercial game process many Hollywood films endure, when they upgrade their franchises. upon which they are based, which turns but the difference ,is that much of that signed by players, and cities' may­ In some cases, they buy the rights to testing goes on behind closed doors, ors and council leaders would devise amateu....produced games and market I Ray Muzyka. "TheAudienceTakes Charge: Game among select groups of consumers, and is missions and quests for other players. them directly to consumers or recruit Engines as Creative Tools," Entertainment in the the most gifted amateurs. Counter­ Interactive Age conference. University of Southern not open to the participation by anyone The Galactic Civil War (the struggle Strike (2002), a mod on Half-Life (1998), California.January 29-30.2001. accessed at between rebels and imperials) would who wants to join the conversation. It is is the most often cited example of a http://www.annenberg.edu/interaetive-age/assets/ commercial success that emerged from transcripts/atc.hunl. 164 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 165

frame the game play, but players would reward on capturing a Jedi which might the modding community, but a number modders to expand the play experience. of amateur mods have been included on create their own missions as they en­ produce covert action on the part of The analogy toTom Sawyer whitewash­ the expansion packs Bioware has acted the Star Wars saga. In short, the Jedis)."42 ing the fence lies close to the surface marketed around Neverwinter Nights system was to be driven by player inter­ Coming full circle, a growing number here: the games companies have been (2002). Other fan communities have action, with the world being created less of garners are using the sets, props, and able to convince their consumers to historically functioned as training by designers and more by players them­ characters generated for the Star Wars generate a significant amount of free grounds for entry into the commercial labor by treating game design as an selves.41 Galaxies game as resources to produce media sector: most comic book artists extension ofthe game'play experience. and science fiction writers, for example, their own fan films. In some cases, they At the same time, the modding got their start through fan publishing. Players can adopt the identities of are using them to do their own dramatic community may come as close to an Yet, the modding community may be many different alien races, from Jawas reenactments of scenes from the movie or experimental or independent games unique in having amateur-produced to Wookiees, repreJented in the Star Wars to create, gasp, their own "fan fiction." movement as currently exists, with works taken up directly by commercial universe, assum(many different profes­ Perhaps the most intriguing new form large number ofamateurs producing companies for distribution.At the same games that are only loosely affiliated time, the line between amateur and sional classes-frompod racers to bounty of fan cinema to emerge from the game with the commercial industry, at a time 43 professional production is blurring as hunters-and play out many different, world are the so-called Cantina Crawls. when the consolidation of control over smaller start-up companies may build individual and shared fantasies. What In the spirit of the cantina sequence in the games production falls more and more their games through the use ofthese they cannot do is adopt the identity of original Star Wars feature film, the game into the hands of a small number of same tools and subsequently license any of the primary characters of the Star created a class of characters whose func­ major publishers who are risk-averse with the original company to enable and driven toward blockbuster-scale Wars movies, and they have to earn the tion in the game world is to entertain the their distribution.2 profits} Such practices lower the risks of status of Jedi Knight by completing a other players. They were given special Hods represents the most extreme innovation, allowing the amateurs to series of different in-game missions. Oth­ moves that allow them to dance and version of more widespread practices experiment with possible new direc­ erwise, the fiction of the game world writhe erotically if the players hit com­ through which game players customize tions and developments and the would break down as thousands of Han plex combinations of keys. Teams of more their characters,their environments, or company to commodify those that hit Solos tried to avoid capture by thou­ than three dozen dancers and musicians their play experiences.WillWright, the pay dirt.At the same time, the modding creator of SimCity (1989) and The Sims process may prol~ng the shelf life of the sands of Boba Fetts. For the world to feel plan, rehearse and execute elaborate syn­ (2000), argues that the games industry product, with the modding community coherent, players had to give up their chronized musical numbers: for exam­ maintains much lower walls between keeping alive the public interest in a childhood fantasies of being the star ple, The Gypsies' Christmas Crawl 1 fea­ creators and consumers than most property that is no longer necessarily and instead become a bit player, interact­ tured such numbers as "Santa Claus Is other sectors ofthe entertainment state-of-the-art technologically. Such ing with countless otherbit players, with­ Coming to Town" and "Have Yourself a industry, in part because most of the practices also increase consumer people in the industry remember when in a mutually constructed fantasy. What Merry Little Christmas"; blue-skinned loyalty: the most hard-core fans are people designed games out oftheir most apt to be drawn toward compa­ made it possible for such negotiations and tentacle-haired dance girls shake garages.' nies and products that support and collaborations to occur was the fact their bootie, lizard-like aliens in Santa With The Sims, Wright created the modding because they know that they that they shared a common background caps play the sax, and guys with gills do world's most spectacular dollhouse, can get free content that extends the in the already well-established Star Wars boy-band moves while twinkly snow­ convinced the public to pay to come life of the purchased games. In some mythology. As Squire and Steinkuehler flakes fall all around them (fig. 4.3). Imag­ cases, game companies are even cutting , He<:tor Postigo."From Pong to Planet Quake: back on the material contained in the note, "Designers cannot require Jedis to ine what Star Wars would have looked Post-Industrial Transitions from Leisure to Work," Information, Communication &Society, December initial product they ship, counting on behave consistently within the Star Wars like if it had been directed by Lawrence 2oo3.julian Kucklich,"Precarious Playbour: Modders universe, but they can design game struc­ Welk! Whatever aesthetic abuse is taking and the Digital Games Industry;' presented at the

2 David B. Nieborg,"Am I Mod or Not? An Analysis tures (such as bounties) that elicit Jedi­ place here, one has to admire the techni­ Creative Garners Conference, University of of First Person Shooter Modification Culture," pre­ like behavior (such as pl'licing a high cal accomplishment and social coordina- Tampiere.Tampiere, Finland, january 2oos. sented at the Creative Garners Conference. Univer­ 4 Unless otherwise noted. references toWill sity ofTampiere,Tampiere, Finland,january 2005. Wright reflect interview with author,June 2003. 166 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? 167

inside and play and encouraged them to tain what rules should govern their inter­ community because the most popular modify it to their own specifications. actions, yet both sides seem determined sites needed to pay massive bills Wright and his team tapped the to hold the other accountable for their for the bandwidths they consumed, preexisting fan base for his SimCity choices. The difference is that the fan until the company rewrote their terms franchise, offering keyWebmasters the community must negotiate from a posi­ of agreement so that the fans could right to participate in ongoing discus­ charge modest fees to recover the tion of relative powerlessness and must sions around the game's design and costs ofmaintaining their distribution development, giving them advanced rely solely on its collective moral author­ centers. Everything in the shops is access to mod tools they could use to ity, while the corporations, for the mo­ produced by other players, and once design their own skins or produce their you've paid your dues, you can down­ Fig. 4.3. Each character in this musica) num­ ment, act as ifthey had the force of law on own furnishings, and allowed them to load anything you want for free. ber from The Gypsies' Christmas Crawl 1, their side. seeWebcasts and download thousands Ultimately, the prohibitionist position Perhaps most importantly, all of this of images as the game was being devel­ made using the Star Wars Galaxies game, is bears the approval ofWill Wright and oped. By the time the first Sims game controlled by a separate player. is not going to be effective on anything Maxis, the company he works for. shipped, there were already more than / other than the most local level unless He didn't build the Mall; he doesn't fifty fan Web sites devoted to The Sims. ! the media companies can win back pop­ police copyright infringers, nor does Today, there are thousands.Wright tion that goes into producing these films. ular consent; whatever lines they draw he assert ownership over what the fans estimates that in the end, more than 60 Once you put creative tools in the hands are going to have to respect the growing had made.Wright just let it happen. percent ofthe content for The Sims will As he explains, of everyday people, there's no telling public consensus about what constitutes have been developed by its fans. Fans We see such benefit from interacting are designing clothes, building houses, what they are going to make with them­ fair use of media content and must allow with our fans.They are not just people manufacturing furniture, programming and that's a large part of the fun. the public to participate meaningfully in who buy our stuff. In a very real sense, behaviors, and writing their own stories, their own culture. To achieve this bal­ they are people who helped to create amply illustrated by screen shots from ance, the studios are going to have to our stuff....We are competing with the games. He modestly notes,"We accept (and actively promote) some basic other properties for these creative were probably responsible for the first Where Do We Go from Here? individuals. All of these different games million or so units sold but it was the distinctions: between commercial com­ are competing for communities, which community which really brought it to It is too soon to tell whether these ex­ petition and amateur appropriation, be­ in the long run are what will drive our the next level!', periments in consumer-generated con­ tween for-profit use and the barter econ­ sales....Whichever game attracts the To distribute all of this content, tent will have an influence on the mass omy of the Web, between creative repur­ best community will enjoy the most fans have created a range of online media companies. In the end, it depends posing and piracy. success.What you can do to make the sites. Perhaps the most elaborate and game more successful is not to make on how seriously, if at all, we should take Each of these concessions will be hard best known of these is "The Mall of the game better but to make the The Sims."Visitors can browse at more their rhetoric about enfranchising and for the studios to swallow but necessary community better. than fifty different shops that offer empowering consumers as a means of if they are going to exert sufficient moral Here,Wright's image of game everything from the most up-to-date building strong brand loyalties. For the authority to reign in the kinds of piracy companies competing for the most electronics to vintage antiques,from moment, the evidence is contradictory: that threaten their economic livelihood. creative consumers harkens back to medieval tapestries to clothes for for every franchise which has reached out On bad days, I don't believe the studios McCracken's prediction that the smart companies ofthe future would hard-to-fit sizes-and skins that look to court its fan base, there are others who like Britney Spears Or Sarah Michelle will voluntarily give up their strangle­ empower rather than constrain Gellar or, for that matter, characters have fired out cease and desist letters. As hold on intellectual property. What gives consumer participation, and those from StarWars.The Mall has its own we confront the intersection between cor­ me some hope, however, is the degree who did not build stronger relations newspaper and television service. porate and grassroots modes of conver­ to which a collaborationist approach is with consumers would be unable to At present, the Mall boasts more gence, we shouldn't be surprised that beginning to gain some toehold within compete.As a result ofWright's than 10,000 subscribers.Wright notes enlightened perspective, The Sims has neither producers nor consumers are cer- the media industries. These experiments that the success ofthe franchise just become perhaps the most successful about led to the extinction of the fan game franchise of all time. 168 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars?

suggest that media producers can gamer greater loyalty and more com­ pliance to legitimate concerns if they court the allegiance of fans; the best way to do this turns out to be giving them some stake in the sur­ vival of the franchise, ensuring that the provided content more fully reflects their interests, creating a space where they can make their own creative contributions, and recognizing the best work that emerges. In a world of ever-expanding media options, there is going to be a struggle for viewers the likes of which corporate media has never seen before. Many of the smartest folks in the media industry know this: some are trembling, and others are scrambling to renegotiate their relationships with consumers. In the end, the media producers need fans just as much as fans need them.

(

"