Convergence Culture Week 2

I've always had an interest in the marketing profession, especially in this era of technology, and after reading Henry Jenkins book, I'm beginning to rethink my chosen profession.


When I taught school in New Jersey, my wife was the capitol budget manager for all filled candy bars and M&M's® for ©Mars, Incorporated including Snickers®. One of my favorite perks from being married to her, besides free candy, was meeting the Marketing team for launch of The StarWars Mpire which preluded Star Wars Episode III. I remember getting caught up in the hype of the movie being a huge George Lucas fan but I was more interested in how so much was being done about the M&M characters poses as major characters from the movie. Comics books, internet videos, newspaper articles, and so on fed into the hype of characters. I was teaching language arts and I tried to have a creative writing lesson using the fictional characters, but nothing ever came about. I'm reminded of all of this while reading this week. in 1977 as a 4 yr old boy seeing his first movie, I could have never imagined today's digital world surrounding Star Wars. Sure, I lived the movies out, I had all the action figures, but honestly, I never became as fanatic as today's fan culture. However, now realizing that I lived on the underexposed side of the planet, taking advantage of the popularity of something as huge as Star Wars makes some powerful noise. When my students find out that Star Wars is my favorite movie, I'm amazed at their knowledge of the movie to the point to where they put me to shame.. and they were not alive in 77'. However, because the media mayhem caused by "true fans" it's easy to go into the depths of the movie and become engulfed. Reading this week made me feel like I missed out on something.


If I missed out with Star Wars, I truly felt I missed the collaborative media cruise ship after being put to shame by Heather Lawver and her passion not only to create a phenomenal following based a novel that at the time was banned from my school library initially; but for developing the PotterWars to fight the jealousy of a major corporation that was ensued by her following. Every generation has the power to change our world, media savvy people like Heather are leading the way. "Corporations imagine participation as something they can start and stop, channel and reroute, commodify and market. The prohibitionists are trying to shut down unauthorized participation; the collaborationists are trying to win grassroots creators over to their side. Consumers, on the other side, are asserting a right to participate in the culture on their own terms, when and where they wish. This empowered consumer faces a series of struggles to preserve and broaden this perceived right to participate" (p175) Funny how Heather wins in the end. What she did was take her passion, expound upon it in a way that drew other passionate people in and gave them a voice. Ultimately their voice rang aloud and push Harry Potter to a new level. But instead of embracing the notion, the big wigs got greedy; hence the reason our country is in the state it is in... (I'll leave that for another blog)