I have been watching a remarkable video of a talk by Professor Henry Jenkins, head of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Department. He is the author of the book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and his talk was remarkable because it was held in the Teen Grid of Second Life and the subject was Fan Culture and how that phenomenon interacts with virtual storytelling but also with real world ethics. I found out about the video thanks to the New Worlds Notes.
The distinguished professor discussed more specifically Harry Potter. People not only read the Harry Potter books, they also elaborate on them, expand, them, recreate the stories, like the professor did dressing up as professor Dumbledore in Second Life. Music is composed, clothes are being made, stories rewritten and acted out. Fan conventions gather worldwide.
The amazing thing is, when one thinks about is, that in our consumption driven era, all those elaborations, new versions, items and performances can be problematic because of the tension between the desire and interest of the author to maintain control over the story (and I would say, over the intellectual property rights), and the desire by the audience to recreate the stories. This is somehow amazing because recreating, retelling, modifying stories is what humanity has been doing all the time.
I have read the Potter books, but I learned here that in the huge fan community there is even a kind of wizard rock music scene, vaguely punk rock and dance music. The wizard rock community makes songs against genocide, censorship etc, so there is a critical dimension. A Harry Potter Alliance says the world faces dark and difficult times and tries to mobilize people in order to do something about it.
Fans want to participate in the world, using several elements like the Sorting Hat, Flying Cars etc.
Creation can be speculation about what happens next, or creating pieces of fiction, making elaborate custumes. Hence actively shaping, but in a community context, not just individually consuming it.
In The Lord of the Rings, the Wizard of Oz and Harry Potter etc worlds are created. There are many identities to take up there. One fascinating experiment is the creation of a Hogwarts School newspaper, where kids before they can write for it have to take up identities in the school. Eventually this school newspaper is a way to discuss what makes schools good or bad in a experimental storytelling context.
What about the connections with real worls issues? One of the songs in the video asks not to believe uncritically what the newspapers are telling. There are values in the stories like standing up against abuse of authority. The fact that the stories are read all over the world gives a common platform and connection so as to facilitate communication between cultures.
Readers go sometimes much further than what the author, J.K. Rowling in this case, would like, so she is in a kind of love-hate relationship with the re-appropriation of the stories by the readers. Early on she encouraged people to elaborate on the stories. But what if the stories were substantially different? It appears Rowling wants to keep control over the story.
But Jenkins says that once the story is out, the author is no longer in control. The author, the journalist, the storyteller, becomes a facilitator of the exchange of streams of stories, texts, videos, virtual world settings and songs.
It is obvious what it means for publishing: many blogs, books, sites and videos discuss the implications for the press, which more than ever is forced to engage in a conversation with the community at large. But maybe that the education community is learning faster than the mainstream publishing community, I often think watching all the developments in education like project education, learning communities and virtual world initiatives. In the Harry Potter stories kids can help adults to understand the kids characters better and the adults can help them to understand the teacher characters. But in the end, the kids write their own stories.
A last point: I am wondering what would happen if virtual worlds would be dominated by the big entertainment groups. Would they allow that blockbuster stories would be recreated in a completely free way by the community, with all the possible subversion, irony and fundamental changes in the storylines that such a freedom could cause? Or would they try to impose some sanitized version of this creativity, allowing some of it, but only up to a certain point?
Roland Legrand
