If you want a successful product, you need a fan following. This is pretty much the accepted law in mainstream media. But in this situation I think "successful" is directly related to lucrative. So let's rephrase that: If you want a lucrative product, you need a fan following. This is what most large corporations think about now when coming up with new media. But what about the fan's side of things? Are they going to the book store thinking "I really want to contribute to J. K. Rowling's business venture." No, I think we are safe to say that this is not the case. Harry Potter became hugely popular because of the vast and creative environment that was created in the book. This environment was conducive to many other creative ideas. We Are Wizards showed several examples of bands, publications, and fan groups that were all inspired and brought together by a popular media. Yet corporations are able to calculate and produce media and merchandise that will hook the audiences and in essence create fans. The question that comes to my mind is: are these popular media, fan-based creative works positive influences in society, or are they simply feeding the large corporations who always intended to make you their fanboy?
The reading suggests that there are indeed a great many reasons why media collectively created by fans of popular media can be a positive experience. Jenkins suggests that popular media can create an excitement that other "classic" media cannot. For example, my high school English class was not very excited about the thought of reading Moby Dick, especially when the several chapters that talked about nothing but the classification of whale came around. But image their reactions had the teacher announced we would be reading Harry Potter to the class. I guarantee there would be far less use of cliff notes and much more reading going on in that class. Why? Because it is much easier to get excited about reading something all of your friends are reading. Parents around the world would rejoice to hear their child come home and say, "Mom! can I do the dishes in an hour, I just really want to finish this chapter from the reading assignment."
But the mothers would not be the only people rejoicing. Book publishers, merchandise makers, and film companies would also be jumping in their seats. This is exactly what they want to hear. Sure! Make our product a mandatory part of your curriculum! This is why I think it's important to bring up another point from Jenkins' article. Not only does popular media encourage consumption of media, but also the creation of it. We Are Wizards showed people who not only enjoyed the Harry Potter series, but also loved making their own media. The problem I had with We Are Wizards is that I was not particularly impressed with the quality of the created media. The majority of the bands that played I could hardly classify as music. This was not the case for all the presented artists, but by the end of the documentary I had a much lower opinion of fan-based media than I did before viewing it. Does this sort of popular media based creation encourage mediocracy? I thought about that family in the documentary who encouraged their children to make songs for their punk rock Harry Potter related band. The kids have little to no musical talent, and yet they have a large crowd cheering them on. Is this productive? Are they cheering the little boy on, or is it all for the love of Harry Potter. I couldn't see him drawing in a crowd if he wrote his own music (unrelated to Harry Potter) This may seem like a very critical and cynical thing to say, but one problem I saw in that documentary is people so completely obsessed with ideas that were not their own that it was stunting their own creative progression. Is this the positively influential work we discussed above, or that Jenkins wrote about? Or is this just the silly antics of fan boys and girls, who devoted years of their creativity to a fad that has come and gone, left them stunted, and given the corporations exactly what they wanted; your attention, energy, and money.
Heather, the girl who started The Daily Prophet argued that she made a stand against Warner Bros. and won the battle, but in reality what really happened. WB initially wanted to stop these creative endeavors based off of their copyrighted material, but after seeing the power of fan groups they decided to let them go ahead and created. Who won then? The girl who was allowed to continue writing about Harry Potter, or the company that let her do so and is still reaping the rewards of that fan base? Are the positive influences coming out of fan-based media enough to justify the devotion we give to corporate monopolies? It's still up in the air for me.
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