Grappling with Media Education
The following stream of ideas follows my reading of Henry Jenkins’ “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century". The purpose of these thoughts is to consider how certain technologies in Web 2.0 might facilitate learning in classrooms. By no means is this an attempt to definitively distinguish between what programs can and cannot improve my own pedagogical practice. Instead, consider this a sort of juggling of ideas.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I struggle with the idea of how participatory the most popular affiliations (social networking programs) might be (Jenkins, 3). My own interaction with MySpace and Facebook is pretty limited, but it seems to be a fairly passive experience focusing more on the presentation, or posturing of the ego. This expression of personality does not necessarily facilitate the learning of any problem solving skills, or learning to grapple with new ideas. However, the ability to “shape the flow of media" seems like a great benefit afforded by technologies such as podcasts and blogging. Jenkins also suggests that certain technologies present in Web 2.0 might shift our attitudes toward intellectual property; to this point, all I can say is, “It’s about time." The problem with this shift in attitude is the well-known argument implied in the litigation of people breaking copyright laws. I feel that people ought to be able to play with these ideas/intellectual properties without fear of breaking any laws. To what extent people ought to be allowed to profit from this culture of sharing seems to be the central question left open in the current intellectual climate.
Regarding video game players’ relations to avatars, Jenkins claims "this projected identity allows the player to strongly identify with the character and thus have an immersive experience within the game, and at the same time to use the character as a mirror to reflect on his or her own values and choices" (28). Here, Jenkins deemphasizes a central driving force of why people play games of any kind – to escape from our day-to-day experiences. People often play games to role play what they are not. Besides this, I wonder how authentic our responses to the program of a video game are. If we are only allowed a finite choice of options in a video game setting, then how might this limitation of choices affect the strengths within a diversity of cultures?
As an aside, Jenkins refers to young people’s recent interest in Asian popular culture, particularly Japanese pop culture. I wonder how much of this interest is decontextualized to the point of being an escapist sort of leisure. While I was in Japan, I often struggled with this issue. So much of Japanese popular culture (as well as American pop culture) seems so vacuous, so empty. I wondered at times whether I was just not getting it, but I began to see this sort of escape as a definite result of the great loss Japan suffered at the end of World War II. An American occupation, and the need to rebuild and modernize urban centers, forced a sort of Americanization within Japanese culture. Thankfully, much of their rich cultural heritage still remains, which is something I feel is lacking in their current pop culture artifacts (e.g., JPop, anime, and manga). With regard to how young people get swept away in popular fads and fetishes, I wish people would dig deeper than the novelty presented in so much of our pop culture, and seek out works of art that provide insight, meaning, and thought into our experiences. As an introduction to how Japanese popular culture influences our own culture, listen to this discussion on Manga, Anime, and Japanese Culture in America.
Lastly, I’ll consider Jenkins' statement that "digital remixing of media content makes visible the degree to which all cultural expression builds on what has come before" (32). This idea is essential for us to recognize as Language Arts teachers -- students need to be able to recognize the ideas/attitudes they share with characters in classical literature – these ideas might lead them to new ideas that might help to cultivate their own thinking and assess the strengths and weaknesses of our own culture. Jenkins’ idea of a "collective intelligence" present in the Web 2.0 culture – which thrives on individuals knowing pieces of the whole in order to create, or recreate the whole – reminds me of the term zeitgeist, or "spirit of the age", which captures the idea of how people share similar experiences, attitudes, and ideas during a given historical climate. In many ways the ideas of a cultural zeitgeist or a collective intelligence in American culture might be scorned by a people who largely value, or are taught to value, how each individual is so different from his or her peers. In other words, there appears to be an implied conflict between the collective intelligence of a community present in Web 2.0 and the numerous peoples who want to have the final word on an issue.