Convergence Culture

Jenkins book Convergence Culture ­­– where old and new media collide is about American media today, which has over taken the media across the western world. The book is about media producers and media consumers, it takes a closer look at the power of media consumer participation with the media products. Jenkins writes about the changes in communication and storytelling with clear voice. Because he demonstrates through examples, the book is easy to read, even thought you would not be a fan of reality television shows or other media segments he proposes in his book. I am familiar with most of the examples in the book, but I must mention not to be a great fan with none of them. The book challenges the reader to think further about the changing media and I would say it was a catching book in my point of view.

I will concentrate closer how new media programmes, such as American Idol and Survivor are changing our media reality. Reality television shows are stealing time from quality programmes, such as documentary. Contemporary television culture in Finland is taken over by reality television shows, which I would like to call rubbish television programmes. The producers have created a brilliant idea how to get people addicted to these programmes and I must admit having followed for some of them, such as Idols, too. Comparing the quality of television programmes in the 80´s and 90´s with the offer today, the culture of the programmes is getting really poor now days. Spoiling survivors is an example how these programmes are affecting in part of the audience so strongly, that they can be called hardcore fans. They try to get information about the next episode before it is officially revealed. The producers and consumers, or spoilers how they call themselves, are playing sort of a catch me if you can game, where producers release hints (true or false) of the next episode and the spoilers are trying to solve the problem.

I was a fan of Star Wars trilogy in the 80´s, when the movie was hot stuff in Finland. I was just a small child then, but got a change to watch the trilogy with my older brother. I have seen the trilogy a dozen of times. It was a great disappointment for me to see the trilogy filmed all over again. Reshaping the mythology by fan gamers and filmmakers is absolutely awful, they are all spoiling the original movie! When it comes to Matrix I found the first movie magnificent, in my opinion it can be called a classic, but the following sequels were too much for me. Jenkins calls The Matrix franchise transmedia storytelling, ´the art of world making´. He also demonstrates that some might argue the Matrix has gone too far from most of the audience members. It must be true to say that just a small part of the audience is willing to track down bits of the story across the media channels. I think this kind of fan culture goes far away from real life to be understood.