I wonder if I can fit the following story into Jenkin's "can't we all just get along" theory of participatory-convergence culture.
I have a friend who almost lost her job for making fun of American Idol (or the fans of American Idol, it's hard to tell which, and it may not even matter).
It all started when the brother (who worked with my friend) of American Idol contestant Ace Young had a viewing party at a hotel bar in Denver. The party was attended by family, friends, and co-workers, who were encouraged to wear Ace Young promotional t-shirts and scream his name for the Fox News cameras that showed up to report on this important news event.
Apparently, my friend was outed (by an unknown informant) to be souring the whole spirit of the event when she parodied the enthusiasm of the party attendees by screaming in an apparently mocking tone, "I love you Ace. I want to have your babies." Things like that. This got back to a Vice-President of the company (a fan of the show), who wasn't there at the time.
In the following weeks, an email was sent to employees informing them that Ace would be showing up at the office to express his thanks for the support he received. My friend didn't get this, but the VP sent her a cryptic email that said she didn't want "trouble" from her. Then she was told to come into the VP's office, where she was reprimanded for what she had done at the (non-company sponsored) party. She was also informed that she would be in further trouble if she got up to any more "shenanigans" when Ace showed up. The VP actually used the word shenanigans.
Word got around the office about this meeting, and many co-workers were upset about the VP's actions. However, the Idol fans would constantly strike up conversations with my friend, wanting her to make witty and critical comments about the show and Ace. She had to tell them that she was not allowed to talk about the show, apparently, or to engage in shenanigans of any sort in relation to the show.
How would Jenkins interpret this? Inspirational consumerism comes to mind, and clearly there is some emotional capital attached to this moral imperative to police the actions of non-fans. But this is not quite in the direction that Jenkins sees as the important functions of participatory culture. It's quite clear that he wants to set up an antagonism between producers and consumers that tilts the scales toward the latter with the weight of participation. In this story, the power of the consumer is clearly not directed toward the program.
Power is clearly underdeveloped in Jenkins' work, and this degrades his ideas at every turn. Collective intelligence as an alternative source of media power is the hinge on which "the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact" (p. 2). I think this view of power is a reductive Foucaultian response (in the vein of some of Fiske's more non-critical cultural studies) to a reductive Marxism. Media have power quite above the fray of producers and consumers -- a symbolic power that legitimates, calls shots, orders logic, defines categories of thought and social existence, sets rules, etc.
1 comment:
I don't disagree that he has an underdeveloped notion of power; however, I think there is an ambivalence to these competing powers that might prove to be productive in thinking about how Jenkins talks about power. He always points out the double-edged sword of convergence: as a producer, the knowledge community is migratory and the participatory audience can pull a Frankenstein's monster and turn against you; as a consumer, being marketed to means increased visibility as well as exploitation/commodification.
"Corporate convergence coexists with grassroots convergence…Sometimes, corporate and grassroots convergence reinforce each other, creating closer, more rewarding relations between media producers and consumers. Sometimes, these two forces are at war and those struggles will redefine the face of American popular culture" (18).
I don't know if this is helpful, especially because I think Jenkins would want the former and not the latter, but I think that the fact that particpatory culture has this ambivalence is in itsef something, Jenkins would say, that evinces the 'newfound' power of the consumer.
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