Henry Jenkins Convergence Culture Where Old and New Media Collide n New York University Press • NewYork and London Skenovano pro studijni ucely NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London www.nyupress. org © 2006 by New York University A l l rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jenkins, Henry, 1958- Convergence culture : where old and new media collide / Henry Jenkins, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-4281-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8147-4281-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Mass media and culture—United States. 2. Popular culture—United States. I. Title. P94.65.U6J46 2006 302.230973—dc22 2006007358 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. Manufactured in the United States of America c 15 14 13 12 11 p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Skenovano pro studijni ucely Contents Acknowledgments v i i Introduction: "Worship at the A l t a r of Convergence": A N e w Paradigm for Understanding M e d i a Change 1 1 Spoiling Survivor: The A n a t o m y of a Kn o w l e d g e C o m m u n i t y 25 2 Bu y i n g into American Idol: H o w We are Being So l d on Reality T V 59 3 Searching for the O r i g a m i U n i c o r n : The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling 93 4 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Grassroots Creativity Meets the M e d i a Industry 131 5 W h y Heather C a n Write: M e d i a Literacy and the Harry Potter Wars 169 6 Photoshop for Democracy: The N e w Relationship between Politics and Popular Cu l tur e 206 C onclusion: Democratizing Television? The Politics of Participation 240 Notes 261 Glossary 279 Index 295 About the Author 308 V Skenovano pro studijni ucely 4 QuentinTarantino's StarWarsl Grassroots Creativity Meets the Media industry Shooting i n garages and basement rec rooms, rendering F / X o n home computers, and r i p p i n g music from C D s and M P 3 files, fans have cre- ated new versions of the Star Wars (1977) mythology. In the words of Star Wars or Bust director Jason W i shnow, "This is the future of cinema —Star Wars is the catalyst." 1 The widespread circulation of Star Wars-related commodities has placed resources into the hands of a generation of emerging filmmakers i n their teens or early twenties. They grew u p dressing as D arth Vader for Ha l l oween, sleeping on Princess Leia sheets, battling w i t h plastic light sabers, and p l ay i ng w i t h Boba Fett action figures. Star Wars has become their " l egend," and n o w they are determined to remake it o n their o w n terms. W h e n A t o m F i l m s launched an official Star Wars fan f i l m contest i n 2003, they received more than 250 submissions. A l t h o u g h the ardor has d i e d d o w n somewhat, the 2005 competition received more than 150 submissions. 2 A n d many more are spr inging up on the Web v i a unoffi- cial sites such as TheForce.net, w h i c h w o u l d fall outside the rules for the official contest. M a n y of these films come complete w i t h their o w n posters or advertising campaigns. Some Web sites provide updated i n - formation about amateur films still i n production. Fans have always been early adapters of new media technologies; their fascination w i t h fictional universes often inspires new forms of cultural production, ranging from costumes to fanzines a n d, now, d i g i - tal cinema. Fans are the most active segment of the media audience, one that refuses to s i m p l y accept what they are given, but rather insists on the right to become fu l l participants. 3 N o n e of this is new. W hat has shifted is the visib ility of fan culture. The Web provides a p o w e rfu l new distribution channel for amateur cultural production. Amateurs 131 Skenovano pro studijni ucely 132 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars'. have been m a k i n g home movies for decades; these movies are going pub lic. W h e n A m a z o n introduced D V D s of George Lucas in Love (1999), per- haps the best k n o w n of the Star Wars parodies, it outsold the D V D of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) i n its opening week. 4 Fan filmmakers, w i t h some legitimacy, see their works as "calling cards" that may help them break into the commercial industry. In spring 1998, a two-page color spread i n Entertainment Weekly profiled aspiring d i g - ital filmmaker K e v i n Rub i o, whose ten-minute, $1,200 f i l m , Troops (1998), had attracted the interests of H o l l y w o o d insiders. 5 Troops spoofs Star Wars b y offering a Cops-like profile of the stormtroopers w h o do the day- i n, day-out w o r k of po l i c i ng Tatooine, settling domestic dis- putes, r o und i n g u p space hustlers, and trying to crush the Jedi Knights. A s a result, the story reported, Rub i o was fielding offers from several studios interested i n financing his next project. Lucas admired the f i l m so m u c h that he gave Rubio a job w r i t i n g for the Star Wars comic books. Rub i o surfaced again i n 2004 as a writer and producer for Duel Masters (2004), a litt le-known series on the Cartoon N e twor k. Fan digital f i l m is to cinema what the pun k D Y I culture was to music. There, grassroots experimentation generated new sounds, new artists, new techniques, and new relations to consumers w h i c h have been p u l l e d more and more into mainstream practice. Here, fan f i l m - makers are starting to make their w a y into the mainstream industry, and we are starting to see i deas—such as the use of game engines as animation t o o l s — b u b b l i n g up fr om the amateurs and ma k i n g their w a y into commercial media. If, as some have argued, the emergence of modern mass media spelled the d o o m for the v i ta l folk culture traditions that thrived i n nineteenth-century A m e r i c a , the current moment of media change is reaffirming the right of everyday people to actively contribute to their culture. L i k e the older folk culture of qu i l t i ng bees and barn dances, this new vernacular culture encourages broad participation, grassroots creativity, and a bartering or gift economy. This is what happens w h e n consumers take media into their o w n hands. Of course, this may be altogether the w r o n g w a y to talk about it—since i n a folk culture, there is no clear d i v i s i o n between producers and consumers. W i th i n conver- gence culture, everyone's a part icipant—although participants may have different degrees of status and influence. Skenovano pro studijni ucely Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars' 133 It may be useful to draw a distinction between interactivity and participation, words that are often used interchangeably but w h i c h , i n this book, assume rather different meanings. 6 Interactivity refers to the ways that new technologies have been designed to be more responsive to consumer feedback. One can imagine differing degrees of interactiv- ity enabled by different communication technologies, ranging fr om tel- evision, w h i c h allows us only to change the channel, to video games that can a l l o w consumers to act u p o n the represented w o r l d . Such rela- tionships are of course not fixed: the introduction of TiVo can funda- mentally reshape our interactions w i t h television. The constraints on interactivity are technological. In almost every case, what y o u can do i n an interactive environment is prestructured by the designer. Participation, on the other hand, is shaped by the cultural and social protocols. So, for example, the amount of conversation possible i n a movie theater is determined more b y the tolerance of audiences i n dif- ferent subcultures or national contexts than b y any innate property of cinema itself. Participation is more open-ended, less under the control of media producers and more under the control of media consumers.