We couldn’t have planned a more timely reading of Jenkins’s article on grassroots versus Lucasfilm. Now that Princess Leia is the newest Disney Princess, I can now buy my bun earmuffs and my Tinkerbell wings together at the Disney store. What makes the Star Wars franchise so successful, other than its complete understanding and implementation of merchandising (see attached clip from Mel Brooks’s Spaceballs), is its ability to inspire fans. This inspiration has spurred fans to create extensions of Lucas’s world, and not always to Lucas’s liking. The internet, for its part, has brought forth these creations into the light. What once existed under the radar for only a few friends and family members can now be distributed to a mass audience by uploading your creation. As Jenkins points out, our modern system of industrial arts requires the financial support of a wider audience, but from my view, we must learn to balance this with the large number of artists and creators that exist outside of those being bankrolled by the industry (Jenkins, 2012). It is those artists that aren’t being bankrolled that are bringing this full circle. From their Star Wars inspired works, they are the folk culture re-emerging.

Then comes the inevitable discussion of labor and economics. Oh why couldn’t we just continue reading about culture? Because someone has to pay the bills. So the internet has changed labor and production. Shock! I’m glad that Banks and Humphreys are not going overboard in the way that Marxists look at voluntarily produced work as exploitive. I appreciate that they are attempting to look at this type of user production in economic terms. While encouraging us to think of user feedback and production as more than “a refined form of focus-group testing”, the authors give us the applicable example of a group of users currently providing constructive criticism and content to the market, gamers (Banks and Humphreys, 2008). Since the advent of the Atari brought gaming into the homes of middle class families, gaming has become a staple of home entertainment for many. By providing constructive feedback to game companies and engaging in content creation, the gamer is also getting something for their labor, a better gaming experience. This is not to say that those contributions are not worthy of monetary reward, but it does merit pointing out that there is already value returned to the consumer. Even the authors point out that gamers are aware that their contributions have value, and that perhaps they are willing participants in their unpaid contributions. I also appreciate that the authors recognize that companies must find a balance is their use of paid versus unpaid labor, quoting from Fox, “without making non-money feel like a sucker” (Fox, 2007:33).