Cinema Fandom
Star Wars, a name so big in itself that it really needs no introduction. The series has a virtually endless fan base that frequently have gatherings in which they deck their selves in all of their paraphernalia just so they can get together and talk more Star Wars. It is a prime example of the media “cult” described by Henry Jenkins in his book Convergent Culture. On the Adult Swim television show Robot Chicken, the series creators dedicated an entire episode to parodying some of the most famous scenes from the Star Wars saga, a small portion showed in the link above. These short clips offer a free laugh to those within the “cult” of Star Wars, and are a prime example of participatory culture, a main point in Jenkins book. This is by no means the first time Star Wars has been the target of individuals tweaking the plot. Jenkins talks bout the spoof George Lucas in Love in his book as a way of showing fans displaying a comical side of Star Wars intertwined with Lucas’ real life (Jenkins 139). In fact the entire chapter, “Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?”, is full of these examples with names like Boba Fett: Bounty Trail and When Senators Attack IV.
Politics
Jenkins states, “We can see citizens starting to apply what they have learned as consumers of popular culture towards more overt forms of political activism” (Jenkins 208). Again with an act of participatory culture, some individual created the image above using a snapshot of the current president, Obama, with an overlay of the World of Warcraft interface. The creator hints at jokes that those intertwined with the Warcraft universe would understand, and get a cheap laugh out of them (I know I got one). The image incorporates the recently introduced WoW achievement system, displayed here as ‘President of the United States’, along with the quest tracking system showing that all objectives are complete and that the next ‘quest’ is to take the office. All this occurring while the then future president is in a party along with Biden. This is a perfect example of what Jenkins tries to display in his book: “I explore how collective meaning-making within popular culture is starting to change the ways religion, education, law, politics, advertising, and even the military operate” (Jenkins 4).
David Scully
I like the example of robot chicken. The show makes a living taking other media content and changing it into comedy. The makers of robot chicken are consumers of the Star Wars franchise but they are also producers of new content. Good job on this blog post.
ReplyDeleteOpening with an example from Robot Chicken was a great idea, especially because it was star wars. The second example about Obama in World of Warcraft was good example of political photoshhop, however i am not really clear of what it is getting at. Overall good job.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the Robot Chicken in your first example. It shows great fandom in the clip because of its Star Wars basing. And the World of Warcraft Barak character was pretty funny. I liked how it showed the photoshoping effect in it to where it can show the convergance.
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