​Participatory Culture

 

Participatory culture is the way in which consumers use popular media to participate in the culture. By remixing, reworking, mashing-up and re-creating the original works into something of their own creation. Essentially disassembling the original content and remaking it in their own perspective, helping make sense of the world around them. This practice, often referred to as 'poaching' has been described as 'the ways in which media fans reappropriate the content of popular media culture to serve their own needs, build communities, and develop their own practices of reading and systems of meaning through these media texts' (Flew, 2008, 63).

 

The TMNT are a fantastic example of participatory culture as they are in fact, a result, of this culture. Eastman and Laird created the TMNT to pay homage and to parody popular comic titles of that era, such as, Frank Miller's work on both Daredevil and Ronin, which were both heavily ninja orientated and featured very dark and gritty imagery. Daredevil in particular played a very important role in the creation of the Turtles. In the first issue of the TMNT comic, upon explaining the origin of how the Turtles came to be, we see a blind man walking across a road into the oncoming path of a truck containing radioactive waste, only to be pushed aside at the last minute by a bystander who in turn gets hit in the eyes with radioactive waste. This is Daredevil's origin story. What follows is what happens to the radioactive waste after it hits the bystander (Matt Murdoch aka Daredevil), as it happens the waste canister smashes into a boy holding a bowl of four baby turtles and then proceeds to fall down into a man hole along with the turtles. We can draw other references from Daredevil in relation to the TMNT. For instance, in Daredevil his ninja enemies are called the Hand Clan, the Turtles enemies are called the Foot Clan. Even the Turtles sensei, Splinter, is a direct parody of Daredevils sensei, Stick. Fans of the TMNT series have even gone so far as to parody the parody with comics such as The Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters.

 

There are also many fan creations dedicated to the TMNT available on the internet. Fan art is in abundance on popular social media networks such as Flickr, Deviantart, Facebook and many more. TMNT fan fiction is also rife on the internet with many websites dedicated to categorising and storing fan fiction (Shellshock: TMNT Fan Fiction Archive and fanfiction.net). Another form of participatory artistic expression is the remixing, remaking and mashing-up of TMNT video and audio content. This content is widely available on YouTube and features: videos starring amateur singers remixing the theme song in alternative music genres, amateur film makers remaking the opening credits with either friends dressed up as makeshift turtles or using stop motion animation with TMNT merchandise widely available in the commercial market and also video mash-ups; one such mash-up features video clips from the TMNT movies compiled with audio clips from Reservoir Dogs, the result, Reservoir Turtles. When looking at 'old media' we see that 'mass media has been built on the model of a few large producers creating content to be consumed by a mass audience' however 'new technologies are enabling more people to become media producers, rather than merely consumers' (Devereux, 2007, 51).

 

Adding to this participatory culture is the ability for other users to comment on such fan works on these popular sites and provide feedback to the 're-creators'. Users also have the ability to 'post' these works as 'links' on their other social media sites, in order to share the content with other users. In referring to large media firms, Turow has noted that media is posted on these social media sites 'in the hope that people who like them will point them out to those on their networks' (2009, 221).

 

With the advent of 'new media' the copyright issue has come to widespread attention thanks to the ease in which amateurs and fans can reach a mass audience with their fan creations. Largely ignored in the time of 'old media', due to the inability to reach a large audience, fan contributions has now become a major problem for big media conglomerates and fans alike. There is a lot of confusion surrounding the current copyright issues as 'nobody is sure whether fan fiction falls under current fair-use protections' (Jenkins 2006, 189). However, one thing is certain 'the old rules are open to change and companies may be forced to renegotiate their relationship to consumers' (Jenkins 2006, 243).



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