Peripheral Post #5 - Sebastian

    In his essay, “The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence,” Henry Jenkins makes an interesting point about the film The Truman Show. As he observes, the film is all about “media exploitation”; Truman Burbank’s entire life is broadcast as an elaborate reality television show without his knowledge or consent (Jenkins 37). Yet Jenkins expresses frustration with the film’s conclusion, wherein Truman insists on leaving the show so that he can finally enter “the real world.” Jenkins posits that it might actually be more productive and optimistic for Truman to “stay on the air, generating his own content and delivering his own message, exploiting the media for his own purposes” (37). As far as metaphors go, I understand where Jenkins is coming from here. Rather than merely rejecting media when we learn it is controlled by neoliberal capitalism, he contends that we should enact resistance within these structures by finding ways in which we can make that media serve our own (presumably anti-capitalist) interests. Indeed, Jenkins’ formulation even seems to subtly imply that the path of complete rejection is also often the path of apathy.

    While I appreciate the desire to enact resistance not just from without but also from within, I wish that Jenkins more thoroughly explored how this internal form of resistance would work. The previous Jenkins essay that we read for this class, “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten,” seemed to point towards fandom as more akin to resistance from without; fans take the texts that fuel the fandom, “remaking them in their own image, forcing them to respond to their needs and to gratify their desires” (490). This isn’t entirely dissimilar to what I think Jenkins is getting at with his Truman Show metaphor, but the experiences of the Stark Trek fans seem to be predicated on a more private and personal process that exists outside of the main corridors of media and communication in contrast to the active counterprogramming that he wants Truman to enact. Yet this seems to ignore the fact that not everyone can counterprogram with equal ease. While the rise of digital media has undoubtedly made filmmaking a cheaper and less unwieldy enterprise than it was a few decades ago, you still need to have a phone and a stable internet connection to upload your film to YouTube, for example. The ability to engage with the dominant modes of media and communication already entails a degree of privilege. Again, I want to be cautious here because I don’t wish to encourage the sort of apathy that Jenkins is trying to move beyond. But for those of us who are potentially in a comparable position to Truman, it seems worthwhile to ponder: What are our responsibilities? Given the role of privilege that I've just outlined, it seems to me that the mere act of “stay[ing] on the air, generating [our] own content and delivering [our] own message” is itself not inherently useful (Jenkins 37). Rather, how we achieve this and what message we transmit seems to warrant a great deal of further consideration.