Jenkins Fan Culture

I find much of Jenkins says in Get A Life to be very relevant concerning how consumers interact with their media. Jenkins' idea of textual posting where consumers add their own influence and interpretation into an already established media form seems to be a fairly accurate depiction of the way that viewers enhance their perception, consumption, and interaction with media. This is certainly the case with the Trekkies, who are of course consumers, but actually seem to get more out of their consumption by assigning it some relevance. Sure, in the long run things such as Stark Trek memorabilia don't matter, but neither does most of what we consume. We all participate in this system with an equal level of absurdity when we decide what makes us happy when we consume it.

What I don't agree with is the idea that somehow this consumers are being subversive through adding their own interpretations. It's not possible to separate their consumption from their textual poaching, and therefore there's not much to say for the usefulness of such fanaticism. Jenkins, it seems, approaches with the desire to validate his own viewpoints. For instance, consider a quote from his "about me" section on his blog.

"For now, let me just fan the deck of my media passions (Stars Trek and Wars, Battlestar Galactica, the many paneled and animated incarnations of Superman, computer games ranging from the Apple II era to id's first-person shooters) and signal that my preferred mode of engagement with these things tends toward the solitary, obsessive, and archival. I'm the guy who builds model kits and wonders who would win in a fight, the T-800 or a Cylon Centurion." - Henry Jenkins

So coming from his perspective, Jenkins needs to find a way to give the fan some kind of validation for their obsessive behaviors, and he argues that through fan fiction fans challenge the concept that a character can be a commodity. For instance, view the All-Ages Kirk/Spock Archive (don't worry its Safe for Work). To me it's impossible to view the person that hosts that website as being subversive to normal means of media consumption. At best they're altering ways in which people consume, but they still buy memorabilia, and even create and participate in more economies regarding their interest. So to say that somehow these people are reacting to the notion of a character as intellectual property fails to see that indeed they're directly endorsing the idea by continuing to consume the media. One could only imagine the home of the person that runs the Kirk/Spock archive, and how dedicated consumers they must be.

So I don't think his arguments are enough to justify this obsession. I think that this level of fandom is problematic because its an example of rampant and irrational consumption, which is a product of our world view on the value of commodities. In a lot of ways these slash writers are simply making personal connections to the media through their interactions with it, and in that light it seems unhealthy. So while Jenkins wants to defend his media obsession, I say he's missing the big picture; what have we as a culture sacrificed in creating an environment in which this level of dedication to something as irrelevant and unnecessary as Kirk and Spock love stories is acceptable?