Toying with Transmedia: The Future of Entertainment is Child’s Play

In what could be the ultimate twist on Toy Story, Henry Jenkins suggests that action figures — those Star Wars and Masters of the Universe dolls from a few decades ago -- had the power to spark human creativity and transcend their original function. Jenkins argues such toys served children and young adults as “authoring tools” in stories that grew increasingly elaborate and technologically sophisticated over the years, spawning new kinds of play in our own time. In a lecture spiced with stills and video, Jenkins demonstrates that early generations of action figures, such as movie, cartoon, and cereal box characters, inspired a cohort of player “creators,” and helped shape the emergent phenomenon of transmedia. This, describes Jenkins, is a storytelling process “where integral elements of a fiction are dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.” Transmedia is not about “dumbing down popular culture,” Jenkins says. It involves complex mythologies that kids and adults can throw themselves into, with large casts of vivid characters in complex plots rivaling those in Russian novels. Transmedia storytelling also encourages children to “play out different fantasies,” try out roles, and begin to construct their own identities. Storm trooper marshmallows in Star Wars cereal do not qualify, he warns, since branding alone does not unleash storytelling juices or encourage user immersion. Jenkins claims that contemporary transmedia are “produced by the generation that grew up playing He-Man for the generation that is growing up playing Pokémon.” But this popular culture phenomenon owes much to a rich history of children’s literature with offshoots, he notes. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland triggered a series of book variations soon after its publication. L. Frank Baum wrote not one but many books about Oz, produced stage plays and movies, and lectured widely as...

Channel: MIT World Video Length: 0s Date Found: Tue, Sep 14 2010 2:48 PM Category: Science Date Produced: Tue, Sep 14 2010 12:00 AM View Count: 0