Surviving the Logic of Capital

Jenkins brings attention to some of the relationships between producer and consumer that we previously talked about earlier in the semester, although something tells me for him it is unintentional. Jenkins seems to be concerned with the constitution of a knowledge community or collective intelligence, but his discussion, in a few ways, is reminiscent of prior ones concerning free labor and (the ever-present) logic of capital.

I wouldn’t say that Jenkins is commending people like Wezzie and Dan’s abilities to hunt down info to spoil – for Jenkins it still isn’t the spoilage that is the focus but rather the communal effort that must grow around this common enterprise. However, he does seem remiss for not acknowledging how capital is operating here – it’s free labor to its fullest! Dan and Wezzie “have built up contacts with travel agencies, government officials, film bureaus, tourism directors, and resort operators,” along with cultivating a relationship with the owner of a satellite communications company. On the one hand there is the argument, although it’s a weak one, that this isn’t labor at all and participants in this type of scavenger hunt derive entertainment value out of it, which I’m sure they do. It must be seen as free labor though because the difficulty in obtaining information about Survivor directly increases the mystique that Mark Burnett acknowledges is one of the factors that make his show popular. The workers are maintaining the (social) factory.

Jenkins also seems to fail to turn a more critical eye to the fact that producers of survivor admit that these spoiler discussion boards serve as “the best marketing research you can get.” The practices of consumers that are documented in Jenkins’ book are consistent with the argument that there is a logic of capital and that it does have the ability to not just push aside resistance but subsume and use it. “Liberating” technologies such as TiVo and even the Internet in general are shown to be used for and not against capital. Whereas once TiVo’s ability to skip commercials was touted as a function of autonomy and choice, it is now a tool used to play the clue-games built into some shows. Whereas the internet is still, by some, touted as a tool for building communities, capital co-opts these communities for market research.