Post-No Class 10/14

This week we did not have class but I'm going to riff a little bit on what we would have talked about had we had our usual lesson time. I think we would have spent the bulk of time talking about the JEnkins article and participatory culture. The notion in Jenkins of participatory culture directly ties to our Zizek readings. Zizek covered the 9/11 media coverage although he did not mention the fact that this coverage, the footage shown of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center was shot by bystanders and was thus participatory culture. The fact that technology is so widespread nowadays that the average person can film anything and send it to media powerhouses for widespread consumption is what JEnkins discusses in his article. This relates to Zizek as the handheld footage by an ordinary citizen of the plane crashes was participatory culture. Likewise the media has made a number of television shows, radio shows and so on focused entirely on participatory culture. Shows like America's Funniest Home Videos and radio talk shows that require consumers to call in to discuss topics are evidence of participatory culture. America's Funniest Home Videos premise is paticipatory culture as is requires families to film their everyday life and send it in to compete with other families footage to win prizes. The participation is rewarded in this case with a 15-minutes of fame scenario where that family is shown on television. Shows like this as well as websites such as Youtube have created an epidemic of people publishing hand-shot footage of things trying to get people to watch and become famous. Kids like the Numa Numa guy who lipsynched the Numa Numa song and danced are examples of participatory culture geting widespread attention from posting home-made videos to youtube.