Food for Thought

Lost vs. The Wire (part of this.)

Almost a non-sequitur, Johnson then asked, “There’s been a lot of popular focus on the success of shows like Lost and The Wire. Which is better?”

“The question is what criteria would we use to evaluate that,” Jenkins asked in return. “Television is many different things. The Wire may be the best show inside the box, and Lost may be the best show outside the box. Everything that happens on The Wire is inside the television. With Lost, most of what happens is taking place through other media – through the ARG, through fan interactions. The complexity of engagement and what the community has brought to Lost makes it a very compelling thing. The Wire may be the last gasp of old school television pushed to its limits. Whereas Lost seems to push us in a new direction in terms of what it is to engage in a television experience. “

“It’s amazing how much time people have,” Johnson added. “One person creates a map from 45 freeze frames – it must have taken 3 days – and they put it in the discussion frame, and then other people chime in with corrections and additions. But the time commitment is amazing. “

“Rather than pathologize that, and say what’s wrong with these people that they spend so much time this way, let’s ask what’s wrong with America that these incredibly intelligent people are given so few opportunities to demonstrate their intelligence in their workplace,” said Jenkins. “Right? And this is what I found looking at fans as a population. A high number of them are pink collar workers. Their jobs require a high amount of education, but their actual work uses only a small part of what they can do. And so most of their intellectually rewarding experience takes place outside of work. Why are those skills so underutilized in the workplaces we’ve constructed?”

“What can we do to harness that creativity to make a better society?” Jenkins then asked. “People are acquiring skills and competencies in their play that are almost immediately being applied to more serious undertakings. We are seeing new models emerge that push us to the next level – a culture of collective intelligence. How do we turn that back into something that enables us to transform the political culture?”