Remix Project
In my digital culture class I was tasked with remixing a comic in order explore the world of convergence culture and remix culture. I was excited at the fact that we have a creative assignment but worried that it might be difficult considering how many comics are out there and how open ended this assignment was. I finally decided to remix Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2011) issue 76. I remixed a part from the comic the turtles aren’t even in. I remixed a part where a race of triceratops dinosaurs land on Earth after they were taken away from Earth long ago to be used as slaves. They are seeking to resettle on their home planet after escaping the wrath of the people who took them. They are initially feared by the citizens but welcomed by an agency know as the Earth Protection Force. However they were deceived by the agency and the two groups start fighting. One ideology I noticed in the text was a large sense of xenophobia. Instead of welcoming the dinosaurs, who came in peace, to Earth, everyone feared them or fought them. Because of this unacceptable idea, I can sense that the audience for this specific comic is anyone that was born in the U.S. and is OK with this idea of kicking out everyone who a different race. This comic specifically privileges white U.S. born citizens who’s families have lived in the U.S. for many decades. These families resemble the agency in the comic as they don’t not like any foreign races on their planet, even though these dinosaurs first inhabited the Earth before the humans. This comic even promotes taking violence against these foreign people as in the comic the agency fights the triceratops even thought they came with no intention of harming anyone. So I decided to completely flip the story. Instead of turning away the triceratops and fighting them I decided to make the two sides come together and accept each other for who they are. Instead of fighting I remixed the comic so that each side would live in harmony. The audience I remixed my comic is for anyone who wasn’t born in the U.S. and is trying to move to the U.S. and is having trouble fitting in. This can really apply to any country that has xenophobia with people trying to migrate to said country. My remix is completely resistant to the original comic. Everyone deserves a chance to be able to move to country without the fear of being kicked out or degraded by some people who have been before them. This is completely unfair and that’s why I wanted to remix this comic. I wanted to emphasize that xenophobia is immoral and should be ended. However does my comic fit into convergence and remix culture? According to Mark Deuze and Henry Jenkins. “Over the past several decades, the expansion of new media resources has led to what Yochai Benkler has described as a ‘hybrid media ecology’ within which commercial, amateur, governmental, nonprofit, educational, activist and other players interact with each other in ever more complex ways”(5). Essentially convergence culture is the combination of old media and new media to create a new form of media. My remix is part of convergent culture as it is a combination of the old media comics and it is combined with the power of the new computer technology to create a new product which is my remix.
Citations:
Jenkins & Deuze “Convergence Culture” retrieved from http://s3.amazonaws.com/ academia.edu.documents/42571573/JenkinsDeuzeConv2008.pdf? AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1471667015&Signature=YPuC01F8WWb22 OM3%2FQqs9b1xHJ8%3D&response-contentdisposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DConvergence_culture.pdf
