Someone You Should Know: Henry Jenkins, the Guru of Convergence Culture

The L.A. Times calls him the Guru of Convergence Culture and he says things like this:

Never underestimate the desire of parents to see their children as dumb. We see our children at their worst moments in the course of their lives ... it’s very easy to imagine our children as failures -- and because they go into worlds that are unfamiliar from our own childhood, we see them in some ways as threatened.

That creates a context where as a parent you’re looking at young peoples' engagement with this technology and there’s a sense of fear ... because as a parent you fall back on -- in these moments of crisis -- the things you were taught and the world you grew up in. And that sense of a conservative reaction to things that were alien to your experience is a very real-world one. It only takes one instance — a Columbine or a Virginia Tech shooting -- and what comes out of that is the beginnings of a moral panic. A moral panic is what happens when you stop asking questions because you assume you know the answers.

There are new literacies that are emerging in this generation that are so powerful, but that parents don't understand.

So...just who is Henry Jenkins?

Henry Jenkins is the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of nine books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1), Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. His newest books include Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture.

About himself he writes:

One of my proudest accomplishments so far in life has been the creation of the Comparative Media Studies (CMS) graduate program at MIT. At its core, this program encourages students to think across media, across historical periods, across national borders, across academic disciplines, across the divide between theory and practice, and across the divides between the academy and the rest of society. Our goal is simply to train the next generation of leaders for industry, government, education, the arts, journalism, and academia to think in more imaginative ways about the process of media change...my own sense is that the academic disciplines which emerged around the problems of the industrial age have outlived their usefulness in a networked culture and that we need to reconfigure the ways we organize and communicate knowledge to our students.

Central to the vision of CMS is the idea of "applied humanism." MIT has applied math, applied physics, and applied chemistry so it made sense to me that there should be an applied branch of the humanities. Our goal is to take what we are teaching in our classrooms and give students a chance to apply it more pragmatically to think through some of the core challenges being faced out in the field as core institutions confront media change.

I recommend that geeks, gamers and cultural thinkers take a look at his blog: Confessions of an Aca-Fan (AKA Acadamic Fan) and by all means, check out his books. Even I can grok the books.

Enjoy,

Sia

Hat tip to Neil Gaiman, who mentioned Jenkin's blog in his own blog.

Convergence of Culture (Publisher's Weekly Review)

Henry Jenkins, founder and director of MIT's comparative media studies program, debunks outdated ideas of the digital revolution in this remarkable book, proving that new media will not simply replace old media, but rather will learn to interact with it in a complex relationship he calls "convergence culture." The book's goal is to explain how convergence is currently impacting the relationship among media audiences, producers and content, a far from easy undertaking. As Jenkins says, "there will be no magical black box that puts everything in order again." Jenkins takes pains to prove that the notion of convergence culture is not primarily a technological revolution; through a number of well-chosen examples, Jenkins shows that it is more a cultural shift, dependent on the active participation of the consumers working in a social dynamic. He references recent media franchises like Survivor, The Matrix, and American Idol to show how the new participatory culture of consumers can be utilized for popular success and increased exposure. Jenkins' insights are gripping and his prose is surprisingly entertaining and lucid for a book that is, at its core, intellectually rigorous. Though wordy at times, Jenkins' impressive ability to break down complex concepts into readable prose makes this study vital and engaging.

Textual Poachers: (Review from the Journal of Popular Culture)

Drawing on a rich theoretical background with sources ranging from feminist literary criticism to cultural anthropology, [Jenkins] applies and adapts Michel de Certeau's model of poaching, in which an audience appropriates a text for itself. Taking a stand against the stereotypical portrayal of fans as obsessive nerds who are out of touch with reality, he demonstrates that fans are pro-active constructiors of an alternative culture using elements poached and reworked from the popular media.

A Pagan Testament and Talking About the Elephant

Is there such a thing as a Pagan Testament? (1) Author Brendon Myers thinks so. Here are some notes about his book:

Pagans often claim that their spiritual inspiration comes not from a written scripture but from personal experience and original creativity. While this is true, there are also many written works which constitute its "testament", or its central literary expressions of spiritual identity. Some of them are thousands of years old, such as the Descent of Ishtar, and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Others are more recent, such as the Charge of the Goddess. These written works have not been brought together, in the same book, since the movement began.

"A Pagan Testament" collects these original works, along with the poetry and prose that inspired the founders of Wicca when it all began. It also includes the largest collection of circle songs and wisdom teachings ever published. These together form something like the Pagan equivalent of the Biblical books of Psalms and Proverbs. They show that Paganism is continually growing and being contributed to. Finally, the book includes an original and valuable philosophical commentary and interpretation.

This book includes the results of the Pagan Chant-Song Project: over 100 wisdom-teachings and 130 circle songs, contributed by almost two thousand people, from twelve different countries around the world.

Talking About the Elephant - edited by Lupa:

You might also care to read a recent review of Talking About The Elephant over at the Wild Hunt Blog.

It is safe to say that the issue of cultural appropriation is one that often generates more heat than light when brought up in various forums. From Goddess worshippers trying to negotiate a manner in which to properly honor indigenous voices, to polytheistic reconstructionists balancing historical and cultural fidelity with “UPG” (unverified personal gnosis) and syncretic urges, many of these discussions can end up as bitter flame-wars with both sides hurling brickbats at the other. “Talking About the Elephant” bravely steps into the midst of these simmering debates and attempts to both discuss the various forms of appropriation existing within modern Paganism (everything from Vedic Druids to Christo-Pagans), whether appropriations can or cannot be done respectfully, and the somewhat murky issue of authenticity. While there are a variety of perspectives on display in the collection, there is an overwhelming message here that modern Pagans do need to be more careful in spiritual seeking and how they present themselves.

May we all find what we (respectfully and consciously) seek. As a wise man once said, "You can't always get what you want, but you get what you need."

Sia

Video:
Women and Spirituality by Alive Mind at youtube
This is taken from the Women and Spirituality series of DVD's. There is some good information (some of which is still debated among Pagan scholars) along with stunning imagery and some great conversations in this series, which was made in 1993. The video is dated and a great deal of new information has come forward in women's history since it was made, but if you are new to Women's Spirituality this is an inspiring place to start. As with any historical issue, I recommend doing a wide range of reading on these subjects from a variety of sources, keeping each person's credentials and intent in mind.

(1) A small point: Use of the world "testament" with it's Christian/patriarchal overtones is not a word I would have used in a feminist/Pagan context, even though it is common usage. World Wide Words notes that many people believe "testament" is related to the biblical practice of swearing an oath on one's testicles and adds that:

The Latin word for a witness was testis, which derives from an Indo-European word for the number three. That was because the Romans regarded a witness as what we would call a trusted third party, one who stands aside from the dispute and can tell it how it really was. The Romans did also use the word testis in a figurative way to mean testicle. The idea seems to have been that a testicle was a witness to a man’s virility.

When is a Kiss Not Just a Kiss?

You must remember this,
a kiss is just a kiss,
a sigh, is just a sigh.
The fundamental things apply
as time goes by

Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss and sometimes it is much, much more. Take the case of the young married couple in India who were recently brought up on charges for allegedly kissing in public. A number of Bollywood starlets as well as Richard Gere have also been severely criticized for kissing publically. Even Nelson Mandala caused offense by chastely kissing actress Shabana Azmi when he came visiting in the '90's.

The BBC story titled No Kissing Please, notes that

Vedic Sanskrit texts, dating back to 1500 BC, apparently contain the first mention of a kiss in writing. (A caveat from a researcher: "This does not mean that nobody kissed before then, and it doesn't mean that Indians were first to kiss.")

India's famous epic poem and one of the world's oldest literary works, The Mahabharata, composed sometime between 3000 BC and 1500 BC, mentions kissing.

The Radhika Santwanam, an collection of erotic poetry from a courtesan in a court in southern India, from the mid-18th century, describes a kiss in fairly graphic detail...And in Kama Sutra, the definitive epic of amour, the scholar Vatsayana, devotes a chapter on the art of kissing. He painstakingly details some 30 types of kisses...

So why does India have this tortured and twisted relationship with the kiss?

Some people play it down, saying those who protest belong to a "loony fringe" of moral fundamentalists. Others say it is a hangover from tradition in an ancient civilisation. Still others say many Indians long for traditional mores as Western consumerist values swamp the country.

...Or is the rage against the kiss born out of a hypocritical morality that equates sex with sin and desire with guilt? As sociologist Shiv Vishwanathan tells me, "India is the only country which has a body police and not a thought police"...So, torn between tradition and seductive imported values, Indians will continue to grapple with the Big Question - to kiss or not to kiss? And, as a friend quips, "When we do kiss, we don't tell".

Living as I do in a violent culture obsessed with sex I can understand the desire for some sense of decorum. On the other hand, I do love, love to kiss my partner in public, and I support the right of my gay and lesbian friends to do the same. How sad would it be to feel that you could not kiss your loved one in public when the spirit moved you to do so.

So where do we draw the line? Are we any better off for our sexualized imagery, sleazy reality shows and public displays of (sometimes over the top) affection by jaded celebrities? I, for one, am tired of watching love stories on TV and in movies that contain all the sexual wisdom, subtle technique, and erotic experience of the average 14 year old male. The erotic, as adults know, is not always explicit. Personally, I love old movies, where the passionate kiss was an art form. For my money, it is often much sexier than many of the bedroom scenes we see in most American-made films which can usually be summed up with the famous phrase, "Slam, bam and 'thank you' ma'am".

Above is a photo of a famous temple carving in India. Seems to me they're having a good time. I love much of the ancient temple art from that part of the world; it's sexy, mutual, loving, and passionate. What would our culture be like if these images of mutual pleasure and mature sexual awareness were carved on our temples and churches? The next time we debate religious icons in public places, perhaps we should consider adding some of these?

I will leave you with thoughts of another most memorable kiss:

Jenny kissed me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in.

Time, you thief! who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in.

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad;

Say that health and wealth have missed me;

Say I'm growing old, but add-

Jenny kissed me!

Sia

Photo: Ancient temple art, India

Related Articles:

What Kissing James Bond Means To India

A Witch Takes Responsibility

Stonehenge, Sex and The Simpsons

The BBC is reporting today that there may be a breakthrough at the Stonehenge dig, one that gives credence to the theory that Stonehenge was a place of healing.

Meanwhile, Venezuala has banned the Simpsons on the grounds that they are inappropriate viewing for children (or simply perhaps, too subversive?). They have replaced it with a much more wholesome and healthy show for children, Baywatch.

Turnoffyourtv.com says this about the show:

To the surprise of no one, Great Britain's Broadcast magazine voted Baywatch as the worst American TV show in history. "The appeal to a certain demographic of a series about a muscular lifeguard and his crew of pneumatic young helpers with raging hormones was enough to sustain this show through 12 years, despite a script of mind-numbing predictability: beachgoer is saved from drowning," Broadcast said in November 2004. Though dumb, the show has been seen by an estimated one billion viewers in 140 countries across the globe.

No wonder they hate us.

This month's issue of the Portland Monthly (seriously?) has a long article on Polyamory in it's April issue. A blogger named Jayne Dough liked it better than I did and she has quoted several excerpts at her blog. I thought that, overall, the writer took the attitude of a tourist. As for me, I have met some of the "Elders" in this scene at various Pagan festivals and events, and they are not people who's word I would take at face value. Nor would I wish to be involved in any circle, family or group in which they played a part. But they are only a small part of this movement. Having lived most of my life in Los Angeles and the Bay Area of California, I have had many chances to view such living arrangements up close because some of my friends and colleagues lived in polyamorous households. Some used this term and some of them did not, but all of them fit the general definition. Polamory (unlike polygamy a patriarchal system which preys on and abuses young women) is an equal arrangement between adult partners. In other words, we gals get to choose new partners as often as the men do. (1) Whether the adults be straight, gay or bi makes no difference and a combination of these folks can sometimes be found in one household.

We did not have the term when I was young, we simply called it the 70's. (2) I've often teased these friends by saying that the polyamorous arrangements I've observed seemed to involve far too much housework and not enough sex. They agree that this can sometimes be the case. The truth is, a lot depends on the household arrangements and the people in it. For example, I knew one household in the Bay Area which was composed of intelligent, well educated, and charming people. They had agreed on intricate timetables that made clear who was sleeping with whom that week but had no understanding of who's turn it was to clean the cat box and who was to cook or buy groceries. As a result, the tensions and resentments in the household were never about jealousy or possessiveness but were instead about finances and family chores. (And this is different from a common marriage how?)

On the other hand, I have seen more mature poly households that were run smoothly and supportively and with a great deal of humor, grace and love. Much depends on the emotional stability of those involved. At it's best, polyamory can be a way for multiple partners to share finances, childcare and love in ways that work well for all concerned. But it does involve a great deal of communication, strong boundaries and, yes, I mean this, commitment. (3) At worst, it is simply a way for one person to sleep around as much as they want without regard to the feelings of their other partner(s). Like all relationships, a poly relationship takes a bit of work (and a lot of attention to safe sex). If all someone wants are simple sexual encounters, then it might be better for them to go clubbing or try a swingers group.

Sia

Related Articles:

It's A Mystery: Dysfunctional Behavior and the Pagan Scene

Healthy Pagan Groups and Individuals

Endnotes:

(1) If you want to make the dominate culture crazy introduce a way of loving that involves a) happy, healthy sex b) multiple partners and c) has no negative judgements related to whether these partners are gay or straight or bisexual.

(2) My older friends remind me that the 60's generation did this sort of thing all the time. They called it communal living. My younger friends seem to enjoy the same situation, albeit on a much more casual level, one that (being assumed rather than thoughtfully examined and chosen) can cause hurt feelings (and a host of other problems). They simply call it "going to college and hooking up". Of course, having "friends with benefits" fits in there somewhere, as well, but among those I know this is what one usually does between serious relationships, and not during same.

(3) And if you have children, you are going to need some creative legal protection.

Image: Cats at Stonehenge greeting card can be purchased here.

Dance, Drum, Sing: Can Ancient Pursuits Help Heal Depression?

It's Spring. Go have some fun. Real fun, not the enforced, fake jollity that passes for fun these days. Not the Oh Gods, I've have/done/taken/drunk way too much and now I'll really pay for this fun. Real fun.

Yes, times are hard. But fun doesn't have to be expensive. Grab some friends and go outside . Dance, drum, sing. Cook some food. Tell stories. Try something new. Oh, go ahead; dare to look a little silly. It's Spring and the hares are dancing, what better time could there be?

The alternative? Depression. Apathy. Inertia. Anxiety. All the ills of our modern, guilt ridden world.

Below you'll find an excerpt from an article on Dancing In the Streets: A History of Collective Joy by Barbara Enrich (It's a very long article but it is well worth your time. I've quoted several paragraphs here which I think are especially relevant)

Four hundred - even 200 - years ago, most people would have interpreted their feelings of isolation and anxiety through the medium of religion, translating self as "soul"; the ever-watchful judgmental gaze of others as "God"; and melancholy as "the gnawing fear of eternal damnation". Catholicism offered various palliatives to the disturbed and afflicted, in the form of rituals designed to win divine forgiveness or at least diminished disapproval; and even Lutheranism, while rejecting most of the rituals, posited an approachable and ultimately loving God.

Not so with the Calvinist version of Protestantism. Instead of offering relief, Calvinism provided a metaphysical framework for depression: if you felt isolated, persecuted and possibly damned, this was because you actually were.

John Bunyan seems to have been a jolly enough fellow in his youth, much given to dancing and sports in the village green, but with the onset of his religious crisis these pleasures had to be put aside. Dancing was the hardest to relinquish - "I was a full year before I could quite leave it" - but he eventually managed to achieve a fun-free life. In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, carnival is the portal to Hell, just as pleasure in any form - sexual, gustatory, convivial - is the devil's snare. Nothing speaks more clearly of the darkening mood, the declining possibilities for joy, than the fact that, while the medieval peasant created festivities as an escape from work, the Puritan embraced work as an escape from terror.

......So if we are looking for a common source of depression on the one hand, and the suppression of festivities on the other, it is not hard to find. Urbanisation and the rise of a competitive, market-based economy favoured a more anxious and isolated sort of person - potentially both prone to depression and distrustful of communal pleasures. Calvinism provided a transcendent rationale for this shift, intensifying the isolation and practically institutionalising depression as a stage in the quest for salvation. At the level of "deep, underlying psychological change", both depression and the destruction of festivities could be described as seemingly inevitable consequences of the broad process known as modernisation. But could there also be a more straightforward link, a way in which the death of carnival contributed directly to the epidemic of depression?

It may be that in abandoning their traditional festivities, people lost a potentially effective cure for it. Burton suggested many cures for melancholy - study and exercise, for example - but he returned again and again to the same prescription: "Let them use hunting, sports, plays, jests, merry company ... a cup of good drink now and then, hear musick, and have such companions with whom they are especially delighted; merry tales or toys, drinking, singing, dancing, and whatsoever else may procure mirth." He acknowledged the ongoing attack on "Dancing, Singing, Masking, Mumming, Stage-plays" by "some severe Gatos," referring to the Calvinists, but heartily endorsed the traditional forms of festivity: "Let them freely feast, sing and dance, have their Puppet-plays, Hobby-horses, Tabers, Crowds, Bagpipes, &c, play at Ball, and Barley-breaks, and what sports and recreations they like best." In his ideal world, "none shall be over-tired, but have their set times of recreations and holidays, to indulge their humour, feasts and merry meetings ..." His views accorded with treatments of melancholy already in use in the 16th century. While the disruptively "mad" were confined and cruelly treated, melancholics were, at least in theory, to be "refreshed & comforted" and "gladded with instruments of musick".

.....We cannot be absolutely sure in any of these cases...that festivities and danced rituals actually cured the disease we know as depression. But there are reasons to think that they might have. First, because such rituals serve to break down the sufferer's sense of isolation and reconnect him or her with the human community. Second, because they encourage the experience of self-loss - that is, a release, however temporary, from the prison of the self, or at least from the anxious business of evaluating how one stands in the group or in the eyes of an ever-critical God. Friedrich Nietzsche, as lonely and tormented an individual as the 19th century produced, understood the therapeutics of ecstasy perhaps better than anyone else. At a time of almost universal celebration of the "self", he alone dared speak of the "horror of individual existence", and glimpsed relief in the ancient Dionysian rituals that he knew of only from reading classics - rituals in which, he imagined, "each individual becomes not only reconciled to his fellow but actually at one with him".

The immense tragedy for Europeans, and most acutely for the northern Protestants among them, was that the same social forces that disposed them to depression also swept away a traditional cure. They could congratulate themselves for brilliant achievements in the areas of science, exploration and industry, and even convince themselves that they had not, like Faust, had to sell their souls to the devil in exchange for these accomplishments. But with the suppression of festivities that accompanied modern European "progress", they had done something perhaps far more damaging: they had completed the demonisation of Dionysus begun by Christians centuries ago, and thereby rejected one of the most ancient sources of help - the mind-preserving, life-saving techniques of ecstasy.

To read more of the article above, go to: The Guardian and read: How We Learned To Stop Having Fun

In a way it's a shame that we've hidden our gravestones away. They remind us that we're all going to die and that we should enjoy our lives while we have them. Carpe Diem, as the man said, Harvest the day.

Some of us have more fun on our way to the other side. Why not be one of those?This planet is a gift. Protect Her. Life is a gift. Celebrate yours. Joy is our birthright. Share some.

Sia

Related Articles:

If I Can't Dance In Your Revolution

Review of Dancing In The Streets By Rick the Librarian

Happy Holi

My thanks to Kyle at Beautiful People of the Future for the link to this article.

Photos: The first photo is titled Richard, January 22 1717 Aged 47 by frscspd in England. Click here to see her photostream. The second photo is by WitsEnd Photos and is titled Green Fairy.

The Daily Show Writers Explain The Strike To Us

From the Raven Series - Copyright held by The Ink Witch

Issues surrounding the Hollywood writers strike are many, varied and complex. Thank goodness we have the Daily Show folks to explain it all.

Speaking of writers and writing, you might also wish to read Anne Hill's post titled Women Publishing.

Update 11/6:

The Daily Show Archive - How It's Changing The Way We Watch TV
Excerpt from Salon.com article:

"A five-year-old episode of The Daily Show is pure gold...a fact made plain by the launch of the show's new Web site last month. Before, seekers of already-aired TDS material had to make do with the limited clips available on the cluttered Comedy Central home page, or try their luck among user posts on YouTube. At the new site, they can search the past nine years of episodes in their entirety—more than 13,000 clips, with tools that allow you to sort by air date, content, number of page views, or viewer rating. It's a library of the show, organized with an archivist's attention to detail and a fan's affection for signature moments.

...Playing around on the Daily Show site, I saw for the first time how the Web might really change TV—not by streaming a promotional teaser here and there or allowing users to post random screen grabs on YouTube, but by providing searchable online databases of years' worth of content that are updated to include current episodes. When The Daily Show does come back... I may well start watching even new episodes this way: at my desk in the morning, instead of on the couch at 11 o'clock at night. Multiply that defection by the size of the show's fan base and the subsequent migration of advertising dollars from screen to Web, and the writers' demand for a piece of the online action starts to make plenty of sense."

Jon Stewart's Greatest Gay Moments

Enjoy,

Sia

Art: A print I purchased some years ago at PantheaCon from the lovely Ink Witch