11-15: Convergence Culture

I particularly enjoyed this week's readings, and found the themes of transmedia storytelling and literacy particularly interesting. Both of these issues are bound up with authority in New Media. Chapter 3 and chapter 5 highlight a juxtaposition in how authority is conceived by different producers and creators of media content. For example, in the discussion of the Matrix in chapter 3, Jenkins spends a good deal of time discussing the Wachowski brothers' decision to play out major parts of the Matrix story across different mediums, including film, comics, and video games. By choosing not to spoon-feed their audience, the Wachowski brothers demonstrate not only that they have faith in the ability of the audience member to figure things out, but also that their story is not so simple and mainstream that it needs to play out in one medium for economic reasons. For example, as Jennings writes on page 131 in response to Richard Corliss's questions about this transmedia storytelling, "Joe Popcorn can pool his knowledge with other fans and build a collective concordance on the Internet." Since this is what Matrix fans have done, readers of this chapter--and viewers of the franchise--are privy to a different perspective of authority in storytelling on film.

Chapter 5 of this week's reading deals with literacy and discusses Harry Potter and the controversy it created in, as Jenkins states, two of the most influential spheres for children: education and religion. The story of a 13-year old and her successful management of a Harry Potter fan site and newsletter (as editor, no less) challenges and redefines notions of authority through a discussion of literacy. Jenkins writes, "Here, literacy is understood to include not simply what we can do with printed matter but also what we can do with media. Just as we would not traditionally assume that someone is literate if they can read but not write, we should not assume that someone possesses media literacy if they can consume but not express themselves" (176). This chapter raises many interesting points--not the least of which is that a 13-year old is creating course content and lesson plans for teachers--and, for me, Jenkins point here is well taken. In fact, this last quotation represents an idea that I think speaks to Wyosocki's call for materiality in writing New Media, which is what is at stake when we ask students to engage with New Media texts in composition classrooms but not produce these texts themselves. This notion of literacy further challenges composition instructors to think beyond the five-paragraph essay and ask ourselves how we are preparing and educating students for their real lives and what messages about authority we send in our daily teaching practices.