Henry Jenkins's Blog, page 38

Man Without Fear: David Mack, Daredevil, and the Bounds of Difference (Part Two)

This is part two of a four part series exploring how David Mack's visual style challenges the conventions of the superhero comic.

Mack helped to introduce Echo (Maya Lopez) as a character in Parts of a Hole. Her backstory is classic superhero comics stuff. Here's how her backstory gets described in the Marvel Universe Character Wiki:

When she was a small girl, Maya Lopez's father, a Cheyenne gangster, was killed by his partner in crime, the Kingpin. The last wish of her father was that...

The Night Of a Thousand Wizards

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It's 1:15 AM and the natives are getting restless. Young lasses dressed as British school girls are bumping and grinding to "Let's Do the Time Warp Again!" in front of the Three Broomsticks pub. Us older folks have taken to the benches outside the Owl Post, watching the festivities with wistful eyes. Harry and Voldermort have locked arms together and are skipping through the streets of Hogsmeade. And the Buttertbeer is flowing freely tonight!

This is the Night of a Thousand Wizards -...

Reinventing Cinema: An Interview with Chuck Tryon (Part Two)

Below is the second installment of my interview with Chuck Tryon, author of em> Reinventing Cinema: Movies in the Age of Media Convergence

Your chapter on digital distribution has much to say about Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films, especially about their model of organizing house parties around viewing of their progressive documentaries. What does digital distribution offer such filmmakers? Greenwald is increasingly moving from the distribution of full length documentaries to the much...

Reinventing Cinema: An Interview with Chuck Tryon (Part One)

I first discovered the gifted film and digital media scholar, Chuck Tryon, through his blog, The Chutry Experiment. Tyron was an early adapter of blogs as a vehicle for academics to comment on contemporary developments in media and has made the relationship of digital technologies and film production a particular area of emphasis in his work. As I am writing this header, his blog is engaging actively with the debates about the artistic merits of computer games, sparked by the latest set of...

Reinventing Cinema: An Interview with Chuck Tyron (Part One)

I first discovered the gifted film and digital media scholar, Chuck Tyron, through his blog, The Chutry Experiment. Tyron was an early adapter of blogs as a vehicle for academics to comment on contemporary developments in media and has made the relationship of digital technologies and film production a particular area of emphasis in his work. As I am writing this header, his blog is engaging actively with the debates about the artistic merits of computer games, sparked by the latest set of...

Girls, Gaming, and Gender: An Interview with Game Designer and Researcher Jennifer Jenson (Part Two)

Below is the second installment of my interview with York University's Jennifer Jenson, a designer who has been doing significant research on gender and children's play with video games.

You suggest that much research on gender and games seeks to identify static "preferences" while gender is being "performed" in specific contexts. Yet the search for preferences seems calculated to identify design principles which seek to mediate inequalities in production and access to games. How might the...

Girls, Gaming, and Gender: An Interview with Game Designer and Researcher Jennifer Jenson (Part One)

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Mindy Faber, the co-organizer of The 3G Summit: The Future of Girls, Gaming and Gender which she described to me as "a visionary 4-day initiative that brings 50 urban teenage girls together with five leading women game designers and scholars for intensive dialogue, inquiry, game-play, and mentorship. It is organized by Open Youth Networks, Interactive Arts and Media and The Institute for Study of Women and Gender in Arts and Media at Columbia...

Girls, Gaming, and Gender: An Interview with Game Designer and Researcher Jennifer Jenson (Part One)

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Mindy Farber, the co-organizer of The 3G Summit: The Future of Girls, Gaming and Gender which she described to me as "a visionary 4-day initiative that brings 50 urban teenage girls together with five leading women game designers and scholars for intensive dialogue, inquiry, game-play, and mentorship. It is organized by Open Youth Networks, Interactive Arts and Media and The Institute for Study of Women and Gender in Arts and Media at Columbia...

ARG 2.0 (Part Two)

[Studio:] execs are mired in next-quarter earnings, and ARGs and other transmedia extensions require time to take root and build active, invested communities. It is decidedly a long-term investment, the fruits of which [may:] not be fully realized until a significant period of time post-launch. As such, most studios aren't willing to make the investment needed to bake those components in from the beginning or allocate the funds/resource necessary to ensure their ongoing...

ARG 2.0 (Part Two)

V. New Directions

[Studio:] execs are mired in next-quarter earnings, and ARGs and other transmedia extensions require time to take root and build active, invested communities. It is decidedly a long-term investment, the fruits of which [may:] not be fully realized until a significant period of time post-launch. As such, most studios aren't willing to make the investment needed to bake those components in from the beginning or allocate the funds/resource necessary to ensure their ongoing...