Hell yea. Star Wars chapter, and only two weeks after Lucasfilm was sold to Disney. How timely. This week’s readings act as a natural extension of our readings from last week and our discussion, particularly concerning the Beyonce fan video which feeds directly into Jenkins’ consideration of “grassroots” contributions to culture. The notion that fan culture is suddenly highly visible due to technology has forced corporations to mull over what it means for their business to have a bunch of consumers contributing content. The big question asked by all three articles this week is whether this helps or hurts the situation. Does this result in exploitation or innovation? I’m inclined to support the innovation standpoint myself. Jenkins defines “interactivity” as controlled by a designer and “participation” as controlled by the consumers. Companies can either be “prohibitionists” (against) or “collaborationists” (supportive) toward the notion of consumer participation. By mentioning a bunch of Star Wars fan videos that I need to view immediately, Jenkins brings up the notion of “folk culture” and how, as filmmakers like Lucas borrowed from mythology and Walt Disney borrowed from the Brothers Grimm, creators of fan content borrow from mass culture as a wellspring shareable stories and anecdotes.

Then come limitations. Reading about the restrictions by Lucasfilm on fan fiction are humorous: no erotica or story deviations from the already established PG universe. I am curious what kind of compromising situations these fans had my beloved characters in?! But the most interesting response to restrictions arose concerning the Star Wars Galaxies game. When the company changed the rules of the game and ignored the contributions of fans, the fans became disenchanted and many left. A similar negative response was charted in the Banks and Humphreys article concerning Auran Trainz. When fan content creators, who were essential participants and co-creators of a gaming community, began to feel the increasingly rigid, deadline oriented structure of work, the community vibe soured. The question of exploitation comes up in Andrejevic article as he discusses the method of trolling Facebook for employees because, ya know, people with a lot of friends have a huge network to access. The social network as a privatized “social factory” is an interesting (and depressing) way of viewing the website, I must say. But in the end, I still think that despite our efforts as co-creators in the online spaces we inhabit, there is more benefit in being connected, accessible and potentially exploited to a degree. Even if consumers end up laboring in a certain sense for little or no immediate reward, there is the point made by Banks and Humphreys that skills learned while contributing to websites, gaming forums and fan zones can serve individuals for future work and involvement in technological innovations. Then there is the purified joy of sharing humorous versions of our favorite mass media culture. Bring on the remixes.