Chapter 2: Extratextual World-Building
In
November 2004, Albin Johnson’s young daughter, Katie, was diagnosed with cancer
(Figure 7). Johnson is the founder of the 501st Legion, a worldwide group of Star Wars
fans who build their own stormtrooper armour and make charity appearances. They are also frequently called in to help at
official Star Wars events. Johnson, reflecting on a scene in Episode II where the droid R2-D2 watches
over Senator Amidala at night (Figure 8), wanted Katie to have an R2 unit, too – a pink
one – to watch over her while she was ill.
Johnson’s
wish came to the attention of the R2 Builder’s Club, another group of fans who
build R2-D2 replicas from scratch – a time-consuming project. Member Jerry Greene called for donations of
parts to build an R2 unit especially for Katie, but as it was felt that Katie’s
time was limited, another member, Andy Schwartz, repainted his blue R2-D2 unit
pink and shipped it to Katie to have while her own was built.
Figure 7: Katie Johnson after her cancer
diagnosis.
Figure
8: R2-D2 watches over Senator
Amidala at night.
The
501st Legion also rallied around Katie; the Japanese garrison even
arranged a ‘get well’ video message from George Lucas and Hayden Christensen
(who played Anakin Skywalker).
Katie
died on 9 August, 2005, and her R2 unit, christened R2-KT, was finished in July
2006 and presented to her family. R2-KT
is used for charity work, paying visits to other sick children (Figure 9). She is also now an official part of the Star Wars world, having made appearances
in The Clone Wars (Figure 10) and Lego Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles[1]. She has her own, official action figure that
raises proceeds for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.[2]
Figure 9: R2-KT visiting a children’s
hospital in-patient.
Figure 10: R2-D2 and R2-KT finally meet.
In
this example, the extratextual world of the fan community is connected to the
textual world of Star Wars by the
activities of fans. Fans appropriated an
aspect of the textual world and repurposed it for the benefit of sick
children. Although R2-KT is used for
charity, her appearances and action figure bring attention (free advertising,
effectively) to the textual world.
Additionally, the textual world was expanded by her animated form. R2-KT’s story will likely foster loyalty to
both the textual and extratextual worlds in those who are emotionally affected
by it.
Fans
help to build the textual world, extend it and advertise it. World-building is a collaborative process
between producers and produsers, and respect for fans and their views is
therefore vital. Hence, the title of
this paper is We Are Groot – a
reference to a moment in Guardians of the
Galaxy where the character Groot affirms that he and the other Guardians
are finally ‘one’ – working as a team.
Jenkins
has noted that, historically, media producers were dismissive of fans’
opinions, viewing them as ‘unrepresentative of general public sentiment.’[3] However, recent marketing and
advertising manuals, he writes, ‘point to a world where the most valued
customer may be the one who is most passionate, dedicated and actively
engaged.’[4] Produsage is increasingly viewed as important
to the value of the world as an intellectual property (‘IP’). Grant McCracken, an anthropologist and
marketing consultant, says,
Corporations will allow the public to participate in the construction
and representation of its creations or they will, eventually, compromise the
commercial value of their properties.
The new consumer will help create value or they will refuse it.[5]
Eleanor
Baird Stribling lists four categories of fan activities that ‘contribute
economic value’:
1.
Watching, listening, or attending
2.
Purchasing primary and secondary products
3.
Endorsing
4. Sharing
and recommending.[6]
Categories
1 and 2 contribute economic value in direct and more readily quantifiable ways
– product or ticket sales, for example.
Categories 3 and 4 give a more
indirect ‘payoff’ to producers, as these types of activities recruit new fans,
‘enhancing both the short- and long-term value, and thus the sustainability, of
their projects.’[7]
In
many ways, activities in categories 1 and 2 lead directly to activities in
categories 3 and 4. Operating within fan
communities is what Sarah Thornton calls ‘subcultural capital’[8]. Value is placed on ‘being there’ or
‘liveness’ (‘I was there when…’).[9] ‘Insider’ knowledge of production processes
accords power within the community. Fans
derive pleasure from the participation and enthusiasm of their fellow fans at
group viewings. Therefore, making
production and casting announcements, providing glimpses ‘behind the scenes’,
and exclusively screening film footage at events like Comic-Con in San Diego
serves two purposes. Firstly, it rewards
fans for their loyalty with advanced knowledge; secondly, fans will share
knowledge with other fans and, with increasing frequency due to social media,
non-fans. This advertises the IP on
behalf of producers and increases anticipation for new releases – important to
studios reliant on strong openings at the box office. (Likewise, merchandise gives opportunities to
fans to recreate and extend the world through play while they simultaneously
market the IP, particularly when using objects of conspicuous consumption such
as t-shirts or bumper stickers.) ‘Exciting your fans makes them contagious,’
writes transmedia writer Andrea Phillips.[10]
This
potential was not always recognised by the media industries. In 1976, when marketing director Charley
Lippincott took Star Wars to a small
convention called San Diego Comic-Con, he marched into a valuable new
territory. Lippincott’s strategy was to
get the science-fiction and fantasy community talking about Star Wars well before its release. Accordingly, he visited conferences and
conventions, speaking about the film and its characters, showing the costumes
and attempting to sell posters. At one
conference, he was heckled for promoting a film. However, he persisted, making deals for
Marvel and science-fiction publisher Ballantine Books to publish comics and a
novel based on the film. The novel,
ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster, was released six months before Episode IV, in December 1976. It became a best-seller, was sold out by
February and was serialized in the Los
Angeles Times.[11] Jenkins, Ford and Green note that, in the
early days of Comic-Con, attendees were asked not to share their exclusive
knowledge.[12] Post-Lippincott, Comic-Con is an important
point of call for marketers. ‘It is
widely accepted that the convention’s early adopter audience can make or break
a franchise,’ writes Taylor.[13]
The
popularity of social media makes ‘evangelism’ by fans particularly effective. Fans will attend events like early screenings
and post their opinions on platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. These posts have the potential to be seen by
millions, and ‘suddenly the
importance of recommendations from “the average person” have become a renewed
priority, and word of mouth, the original form of marketing, is treated as a
new phenomenon….’[14]
Of
course, this makes it imperative that producers maintain positive, transparent
relationships with fans, as negative experiences or instances of disrespect for
fans may be spread just as visibly.
Jenkins writes that in December 2005, LucasArts announced that
significant changes were to be made to its massively multiplayer online
role-playing game (‘MMORPG’), Star Wars
Galaxies. The game had been designed
by Raph Koster with the involvement of the fan community and it incorporated
extensive user-generated content.
Koster’s view was: ‘It’s not just
a game. It’s a service, it’s a world,
it’s a community.’[15] However, when Nancy MacIntyre, senior
director of the game, announced the changes, she was dismissive of fans’ skills
and creative contributions. ‘Thanks to
the social networks that fans have constructed around the game,’ notes Jenkins,
‘soon every gamer on the planet knew that MacIntyre had called her players
idiots in the New York Times, and
many of them departed for other virtual worlds….’[16]
Social
media is an effective tool for producers to keep aware of the fan community’s
tastes and demands. Marvel has to date
shown itself adroit at discovering and responding to fans’ wishes.
The
power of social media was exemplified when, on 12 May 2014, Sophie Caldecott
blogged about her father Stratford, an MCU fan who was dying of prostate
cancer.[17] Stratford had been too ill to see Captain America: The Winter
Soldier in the cinema. Doctors had
given him only 12 weeks to live, and the DVD release wasn’t until the
August. Sophie wrote that she would like
to contact Marvel to arrange a screening of the film at Stratford’s home, and
hoped to get the stars of the MCU to send messages of support via Twitter. Mark Ruffulo (The Hulk), was the first to
Tweet a message, directing Marvel’s attention to the cause. His colleagues soon followed suit, as did
many fans. Within 48 hours, Marvel had
contacted Sophie Caldecott to arrange the screening.
Differences
of opinion within the fan community make it impossible for producers to meet
every wish and demand, but it is important for them to maintain a dialogue
which demonstrates transparency and respect.
Engaging with fans through social media is one method of realising this.
Producers
are also beginning to utilise the social networks created by gaming for
world-building and promotion, employing user-generated content such as
characters, logos and ship designs.
When
fans share the use of licensed content and add value to an IP through their
labour (which is usually framed as play or competition), Johnson argues that
they are placed in similar positions to professional producers, and they become
stakeholders, albeit ones without economic claim. They are, he claims,
‘enfranchised’.[18] He therefore proposes a new understanding of
franchising: ‘[T]hat which industrially structures, organizes, and
imagines shared, networked use of culture, not in opposition to but inclusive
of produsage and other new creative patterns.’[19]
As
previously discussed, the lines between producers and audiences are steadily
being blurred, creating what producer Caitlin Burns calls the ‘final frontier
keeping entertainment lawyers up at night’[20]. Jenkins[21] records an incident
wherein Universal Pictures sent cease-and-desist letters to Firefly[22] fans (‘Browncoats’) who
had successfully lobbied for a feature film and marketed both the series and
the film at a grassroots level.
Universal demanded retroactive licensing fees for images the Browncoats
had reproduced on t-shirts and posters.
Browncoats collaborated to send Universal an invoice for over $2 million
(28,000 ‘billable’ hours), detailing ‘all of the time and labor (not to mention
their own money) put into supporting the film’s release.’[23] The Browncoats recognised, even if the studio
did not, the value they had added to the franchise.
The
difficulties with trademark laws and the protection of IP appear on both sides
of the equation. Fan-fiction writers
have long feared prosecution for their use of trademarks; now producers are
beginning to use fans’ creative ideas, calling into question these enfranchised
fans’ rights to compensation. For
example, after the season two finale of Sherlock[24], writer Mark Gatiss
looked at fans’ theories as to how Holmes had survived falling from a tall
building. He then wrote characters into
the first episode of season three who presented some of those theories as
possible explanations. The television
series Defiance[25] runs concurrently with
an MMORPG set within the same world but a different city. Gamers create their own characters, which may
be appropriated by the producers and written into the television series. Results of gameplay also affect the direction
of the series.[26]
LucasArts’
policies on produsage have fluctuated between collaboration and prohibition,
enablement and constraint.[27] When the company found it could not shut down
the sharing of fan fiction, it provided space at fan.StarWars.com for fans to
post stories, but imposed strict guidelines regarding content (no slash
fiction, for example). Subsequently, it provided a similar space on www.AtomFilms.com
for fan films, but stated that those films must either ‘parody the existing
Star Wars universe, or be a documentary of the Star Wars fan experience.’[28] In other words, any ‘fan-fiction films’ were banned. In both cases, fans who posted their work
signed over any IP rights they may have had to Lucasfilm[29], which meant that
Lucasfilm could, if it were so inclined, use fan’s ideas or characters in
future ‘official’ texts, without giving compensation or recognition.
Behind
all of these difficulties lurks the issue of ownership. Once an IP enters into popular culture, once
fans are emotionally invested in it or enfranchised, they feel a sense of
ownership that is not reflected by IP law and is often disregarded by
producers. As Brooker states, older Star Wars fans feel an ‘unhappy
conflict’ in their loyalties: they
admire Lucas for creating their beloved world but feel betrayed by him for
‘despoiling the myth they grew up with’[30]. Their
distaste for the SEs and the prequels caused them to lose faith in Lucas, to
the point of reducing, in their eyes, his authority over the canon. (Although Brooker claims that works written
by the original creator trump all[31],
there are fans who would consider the Heir
to the Empire trilogy ‘more canon’ than, for example, the elements added to
the SEs.) One questionnaire respondent
wrote, ‘George is like a mean father[.]
I appreciate the work but we’re better off not maintaining a
relationship.’[32]
Of
course, there are also fans who consider that, as the creator of the world,
Lucas was entitled to do what he liked with it, regardless of fans’ feelings or
wishes.
Figure 12: older
fans’ loyalties are challenged by their dislike of the changes Lucas has made.
The
positions of the author and the auteur
carry weight. Just as each fan will make
a different meaning from his or her own reading of a text, an author/auteur can also be ‘read’ in different
ways and may affect a fan’s reading of a text.
A
label of genre attached to a text communicates information about the context
and tone of that text. Likewise, the
name of an author/auteur ‘work[s] as
a shorthand, a tag, an abstract, and a primer for any item of media.’[33] Joss Whedon’s name attached to a text, for
example, communicates to potential audiences or readers that the text will have
a feminist slant and will therefore contain ‘strong’ female characters. It will also contain humour and intertextual
references.
Fans
will be drawn to a text by their favourite author/auteur simply because it is written/directed by him or her. Hence, for media with cult potential, the
author’s/auteur’s name will be made
prominent in the marketing campaign, particularly if he or she has already
gained a loyal fanbase through previous work.
Hills writes of the auteur’s
‘extratextual “presence”’, which is partly produced by the fans themselves, but
initiated by the creation of this extratextual narrative in marketing.[34]
The
notion of the author/auteur also
connotes quality and ‘authenticity’, as opposed to ‘unauthored’ and ‘formulaic’[35] works perceived as ‘corporate
hackery written by committee just to make a fast buck’[36]. In a media industry that now relies on
franchising, there is always a risk that works not directly created by the
author/auteur will be rejected by
fans, or will be ranked lower in their ‘personal canon’.
Despite
this, many Star Wars fans feel that
the problems associated with the SEs and the prequels were rooted in the level
of control granted to Lucas as auteur,
and that his best works (Episode V is
a common example given) were made through collaboration with other
creatives. During the filming of Episodes IV-VI, dialogue scripted by
Lucas (never the strongest point of his writing) was often changed by the main
actors, particularly Harrison Ford (Han Solo).
By the time of the prequels, however, any instances of ad-libbing or
creative collaboration were extinguished by Lucas’s complete creative control,
made possible by the latest technology and his position of power. ‘“Now he’s so exalted,” Mark Hamill [Luke
Skywalker] lamented in 2005, “that no one tells him anything.”’[37]
Nevertheless,
Jenkins writes, Marvel has successfully employed a narrative of ‘centralized
control and authorship against the multiple authorship of franchising’[38], and this narrative
is often merged with what may be termed a ‘fanboy creator’[39] rhetoric. Marvel executives have claimed quality and
‘authenticity’ for their productions by aligning themselves with the comic-book
fan community.[40] That community, Johnson points out, is only a
small part of Marvel’s audience, but the fanboy-creator rhetoric gives them a
niche identity among film producers.[41]
Accordingly,
Marvel has also brought in creatives, particularly directors, who identify
themselves as members of the fan community.
Joss Whedon is perhaps the most prolific example, having directed The Avengers and Age of Ultron[42]. He has long professed his own fandom in
interviews, and his run of X-Men comics for Marvel was generally well
received. An obvious advantage of hiring
a writer/director like Whedon is that he had a faithful fanbase of his own,
many of whom presumably ‘followed’ him to the MCU. However, fans also have a greater level of
trust in fanboy creators to ‘get it right’ because they feel they are ‘one of
us’ and therefore will understand what fans desire. There is also, of course, an element of ‘that
could be me’ fantasy in fans’ appreciation of fanboy creators.
Notably,
for the new Star Wars films in
production, Lucasfilm has followed Marvel’s example and hired directors J.J.
Abrams and Gareth Edwards, both of whom have historically used the fanboy-creator
rhetoric, particularly in relation to Star
Wars.
For
producers, collaborating with produsers and hiring fanboy creators can simply
make good financial sense. Taylor gives
one such example: upon meeting Lucas at
a convention, when he was given a tour of their display, members of the R2
Builders Club informed him that each R2 unit built cost $10,000. Lucas was reportedly shocked, as ILM had
charged $80,000. He and producer Rick
McCallum joked that they were hired for the next film, if it were ever
made. In 2013, Kathleen Kennedy, the
current president of Lucasfilm, was given a similar tour and immediately hired
two British members of the Club to work on Episode
VII.[43]
Bringing
together various studies on participatory fan cultures, convergence, transmedia
storytelling, world-building and franchising, this paper has explored how certain
world-building techniques engage fans, and the ways in which producers and fan
communities work together to build mutually beneficial worlds. There are, however, additional important
techniques that have had to be omitted – utilising branding and nostalgia, for
example.
Effective
collaboration between producers and fans is advantageous and achievable, despite
difficulties that may hinder the process, such as attaining a balance between
supplying new stories and bringing the world to a saturation point; appropriately
apportioning ownership and control; reconciling differing creative visions; negotiating
complications in relation to licensing, distribution and fans’ use of
trademarks; and resolving any conflicting interests of producers and fan
communities.
This
paper has shown the importance of produsage to the continuation, extension (or
evolution) and long-term financial and creative success of franchises. It is therefore increasingly important for the
media industries to work to encourage produsage, engage with fans through
platforms such as social media, remain transparent about their intentions and
strategies, and consider the opinions of the fan community when making
decisions about world-building.
However,
discerning and catering to a majority of the fan’s wishes can be problematic,
as fan communities may be splintered due to the variety of ways in which each
fan makes his or her initial emotional investment in a world. It is therefore advantageous to work to
prevent community splits such as the division between lovers and detractors of Star Wars Episodes I-III. This goal is facilitated when producers
endeavour to recognise which elements of a world are important to its existing fans
and in which they are emotionally invested, and attempt to maintain consistency
in relation to those elements.
Research
conducted for this dissertation indicates that the aesthetic, the canon and the
characters are particularly important in this respect; however, further
research is required into the aspects of transmedia worlds that engender the
deepest fan engagement, attachment and loyalty.
It
would also be advantageous to examine worlds in an effort to understand where
their ‘saturation points’ may be, at which point fan engagement and produsage are
shut down.
Other
areas for research include examining ways to manage licensing and distribution
problems (for example, the difficulty of securing simultaneous world-wide
releases, to combat piracy and meet fans’ demands); addressing legal problems
arising from producers use of fans’ produsage; and finding ways to effectively
and meaningfully enfranchise fans, to the benefit of both producers and
produsers.
(C) Danica Issell, 2015
[1] Lego Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles (The Cartoon Network, 2013).
[2] Many thanks to Chris Taylor for
drawing the author’s attention to this story in his book How Star Wars Conquered the
Universe (New York: Basic
Books, 2014).
[3] Jenkins, Textual Poachers, op. cit., p.
279.
[4] Jenkins, Convergence Culture, op. cit.,
p. 73.
[5] Grant McCracken cited in Jenkins, Convergence Culture, ibid., p.
163.
[6] Eleanor Baird Stribling, ‘Valuing
Fans’, Spreadable Media: Web
Exclusive Essays, http://spreadablemedia.org/essays/stribling/#.VFaE3fnkcqc
(accessed 14 October 2014).
[7] Ibid.
[8] Sarah Thornton cited by Hills in Ian
Conrich (ed.), Horror Zone (New York and London: I. B. Tauris
& Co, Ltd., 2010). See also Fiske in Lisa A. Lewis (ed.), The Adoring Audience (London and New York: Routledge,
1992), pp. 30-49.
[9] Hills in Conrich, ibid., pp. 87, 92.
[10] Andrea Phillips, A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia
Storytelling (New York:
McGraw Hill, 2012), p. 112.
[11] Taylor, op. cit., pp. 169-162.
[12] Jenkins, Ford and Green, op. cit., pp.
145-6.
[13] Taylor, op. cit., p. 161.
[14] Jenkins, Ford and Green, op. cit., p.
75.
[15] Raph Koster cited in Jenkins, Convergence Culture, op. cit.,
p. 164.
[16] Jenkins, Convergence Culture, op. cit.,
p. 172.
[17] Sophie Caldecott, ‘Avengers
Assemble!‘, Something for a
Rainy Day,
https://sophiecaldecott.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/avengers-assemble/ (accessed 3
January 2015).
[18] Johnson, Media Franchising, op. cit.,
pp. 199-201, 230.
[19] Ibid., p. 230.
[20] Caitlin Burns cited in Phillips, op.
cit., p. 116.
[21] Henry Jenkins, ‘Joss Whedon, The Browncoats, and Dr. Horrible’, Spreadable Media: Web Exclusive Essays, http://spreadablemedia.org/essays/jenkins1/ (accessed 14 October 2014).
[21] Henry Jenkins, ‘Joss Whedon, The Browncoats, and Dr. Horrible’, Spreadable Media: Web Exclusive Essays, http://spreadablemedia.org/essays/jenkins1/ (accessed 14 October 2014).
[22] Firefly (Fox Film Corporation, 2002-2003).
[23] Henry Jenkins,
‘Joss Whedon, The Browncoats, and Dr. Horrible’, op. cit.
[24] Sherlock (BBC, 2010—).
[25] Defiance (Syfy, 2013—).
[26] Wolf cited in
Henry Jenkins, ‘Building Imaginary Worlds: An Interview with Mark J. P. Wolf
(Part Four)’, Confessions of
an Aca-Fan (9 September
2013), http://henryjenkins.org/ (accessed 27 October 2014).
[27] Jenkins, Convergence Culture, op. cit.,
p. 138.
[29] www.AtomFilms.com
cited in Jenkins, Convergence
Culture, op. cit., p. 159.
[29] Brooker, Using the Force, op. cit., p.
169; and
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, op. cit., p. 157.
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, op. cit., p. 157.
[30] Brooker, Using the Force, op. cit., p.
xvi.
[31] Brooker
in Annette Kuhn (ed.), Alien
Zone II: The Spaces of Science Fiction (London
and New York: Verso, 1999), p. 53.
[32] Questionnaire,
Respondent 1.
[33] Jonathan
Gray, ‘The Use Value of Authors’, Spreadable
Media: Web Exclusive Essays,
http://spreadablemedia.org/essays/gray/#.VFaEd_nkcqc (accessed 27 October 2014).
[34] Hills,
op. cit., p. 133.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Gray,
op. cit.
[37] Taylor,
op. cit., p. 321.
[38] Henry
Jenkins, ‘Rethinking the Value of Entertainment Franchises: An Interview with
Derek Johnson (Part Two)’, Confessions
of an Aca-Fan (16 January
2014), http://henryjenkins.org/ (accessed 30 September 2014).
[39] Jennifer
Stoy cited in Roz Kaveney, Superheroes!
Capes and Crusaders in Comics and Films (New
York and London: I. B. Tauris & Co, Ltd., 2008), p. 202.
[40] Johnson,
‘Cinematic Destiny’, op. cit., p. 19.
[41] Ibid.,
p. 20.
[42] Avengers:
Age of Ultron (Joss
Whedon, 2015).
[43] Taylor,
op. cit., p. 354.
Figure 7: Katie Johnson (2006). Available at: http://www.r2kt.com/. Accessed 25 January 2015.
Figure 8: Star Wars: Episode II –
Attack of the Clones (George Lucas, 2002) screenshot (2015).
Figure 9: R2-KT’s visit to the
Hemby Children's Hospital in Charlotte, NC (April 2013). Available at: http://www.r2t.com/.
Accessed 25 January 2015.
Figure 10: Star Wars, R2-DT and R2-KT in the Clone
Wars feature film (2014). Available
at: http://www.starwars.com/news/the-power-of-the-pink-side. Accessed 25
January 2015.
Figure 11: #CapForStrat – various images (2014). Available at: //twitter.com/search?q=capforstrat&src=typd.
Accessed 31 March 2015.
Figure 12: Artist unknown (2012). Available
at: http://mattgoldammer.com/2012/11/07/disney-made-star-wars-might-not-be-the-worst-thing-ever/.
Accessed 27 January 2015.