Jenkins

In Henry Jenkins article, “Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?: Digital Cinema, Media Convergence, and Participatory Culture” Jenkins discusses fan fiction as a new age media that allows fans to participate in culture. Jenkins uses Star Wars specifically as the main example in his piece, but while reading I connected a lot of this thoughts with the Twilight Saga. The Twilight Saga is almost an even better reference for Jenkins commentary because it involves his concept of “studios seeking content that can move across media channels”(552). Jenkins introduces the idea book, hooks, and looks, as being the ideal format for studio companies. The Twilight Saga was first a series of books, made into a movie with catchy/ quotable lines, and good looking leads. Twilight continued to span all media outlets because of its constant buzz in the daily media, such as magazines, gossip shows, and even newspapers. The saga than branched out into television with shows such as ‘Vampire Diaries’ and ‘True Blood’. This combination of media outlets examples Jenkins idea of media convergence. Twilight continues to personify Jenkins concepts with participatory culture. If you search youtube, you will find hundreds upon hundreds of mock Twilight trailers, movies, and videos poking fun at the famous series. People who are not in the movie industry are free to express themselves, make critiques, and create culture using websites like Youtube. Similar culture creating websites are fan fiction sites where fans can re-write or continuing book/movie/ sitcoms ect. These outlets allow everyone to participate in culture, and this participation lacks the restraints that many mass media producers face. It is a more freeing process in a sense. Websites such as these are good examples of what Mark Poster in his essay “Postmodern Virtualities” call changes in communication systems. Mark Poster relates these changes in how people can interact with one another and with the culture as a whole with the Postmodernist era.

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