“Popular” Dolls: A Discussion of the Wicked Movie Dolls in the Context of Wizard of Oz Merchandizing Culture

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“Popular” Dolls: A Discussion of the Wicked Movie Dolls in the Context of Wizard of Oz Merchandizing Culture

In this final installment of the themed series on toys, Henry Jenkins and Lauren Sowa discuss how the many Wicked branded toys and dolls fit into the larger culture of dolls and collecting that has a long history with The Wizard of Oz transmedia property. From book, to stage, to screen, and back to book, and stage, and screen again, The Wizard of Oz has over a hundred years of cultural influence – with branded merchandising following its every step down the yellow brick road. 

This themed series on toys asked contributors to think about a toy/toys/toy company and explore how various cultures, groups, audiences, or companies find and make meaning (or money) through such play.

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Marvel on the Shelf: The Art and Play of Action Figure Display

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Marvel on the Shelf: The Art and Play of Action Figure Display

There are many ways that adults enact the practice of action figure collecting: they might be driven by completionism or nostalgia; motivated by a hunt for rarities; alter the design through customization; maintain purchase value by keeping packaging intact; participate in a toy community economy through swapping, reselling, and second-had purchasing; and/or engage in a sense of play and expression through various forms of display. It is the latter of these expressions – the art and play of display – that I want to discuss here, which draws upon my own experience as an action figure collector.

This post is part of a themed series on toys that asked contributors to think about a toy/toys/toy company and explore how various cultures, groups, audiences, or companies find and make meaning (or money) through such play.

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Telling Your Toy Story: Fans’ Storytelling Practice in Shanghai Disneyland

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Telling Your Toy Story: Fans’ Storytelling Practice in Shanghai Disneyland

It was 4AM in Shanghai, and a group of people in colorful clothing suddenly appeared. They were headed for a magical place: Shanghai Disneyland. They were up so early to wait in line for hours in order to get their hands on limited series products and to meet the characters – some, like Mulan, from major films but others, like LinaBell, solely from a toy line – in the park. This might seem extraordinary, but it’s actually an everyday occurrence—let’s talk about it.

This post is part of a themed series on toys that asked contributors to think about a toy/toys/toy company and explore how various cultures, groups, audiences, or companies find and make meaning (or money) through such play.

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Barbie in Pakistan: The Toy, the Movie, and the Cultural Ambiguities

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Barbie in Pakistan: The Toy, the Movie, and the Cultural Ambiguities

In Pakistan, Barbie the movie transcended its form as mere cinematic spectacle and metamorphosed into a tool through which the complex, unspoken, and ambiguous scales of morality can be analyzed. Farooqui's recent research on the reception of this globally successful movie examines the responses of its Pakistani viewers to show the complex national landscape of reactions that went far beyond simple movie criticism.

This post is part of a themed series on toys that asked contributors to think about a toy/toys/toy company and explore how various cultures, groups, audiences, or companies find and make meaning (or money) through such play.

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EMMYS WATCH 2024 – Curbeth Thou Enthusiasm: Is Larry David a 21st Century Shakespearean Fool?

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EMMYS WATCH 2024 – Curbeth Thou Enthusiasm: Is Larry David a 21st Century Shakespearean Fool?

This post is part of a series of critical responses to the shows nominated for Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Comedy Series at the 76th Emmy Awards. This piece frames Larry David's role in Curb Your Enthusiasm to that of the Shakespearean fool, and ponders his ability to remain positive in the court of public opinion despite his irreverent scripts.

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EMMYS WATCH 2024 – Frederik Cryns Interviewed by Henry Jenkins on ‘Shogun’

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EMMYS WATCH 2024 – Frederik Cryns Interviewed by Henry Jenkins on ‘Shogun’

This piece is part of a series of critical responses to the series nominated for Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Comedy Series at the 76th Emmy Awards. Here, Henry Jenkins interviews Frederik Cryns, historical consultant for Shogun and a professor of Japanese History at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, Japan.

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EMMYS WATCH 2024 – Fit for a Queen: The Final Season of 'The Crown' and Its Royal Fans

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EMMYS WATCH 2024 – Fit for a Queen: The Final Season of 'The Crown' and Its Royal Fans

This piece is part of a series of critical responses to the series nominated for Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Comedy Series at the 76th Emmy Awards. The final season of the Netflix series The Crown concludes a series spanning sixty years in the lives of the British royal family, the Windsors. From the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, to Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee, this season repeatedly engages with stories about how fans impact the lives of the royal family, for good or for bad. The series itself blurs the lines between history and fan fiction. Though considered prestige television, often nominated for awards and celebrated by critics, The Crown is at heart a culturally sanctioned form of royal fandom that contributes to the ongoing fascination with the British monarchy.

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Visitors are Coming: Fan Tourism in Northern Ireland

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Visitors are Coming: Fan Tourism in Northern Ireland

In the first of a series of blog posts on screen tourism, Bethan Jones reflects on the impact fan tourism has had in Northern Ireland thanks to Game of Thrones – not only for fans or the tourism industry, but for film and television production and perceptions of the country itself.

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WrestleMania XL: The Greatest Story Ever Told (Part Three)

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WrestleMania XL: The Greatest Story Ever Told (Part Three)

This is the third of three parts on the recent WrestleMania XL and the current revival of WWE. It reviews the interconnected and multistrand storytelling that unfolded over two years leading into the recent event and highlights opportunities for further appraisal. This part explores the blurring of reality and fiction that drives pro wrestling storytelling and the role it played in the lead up to WrestleMania XL. Readers who might be interested in this piece include those new to pro wrestling within the context of popular culture and entertainment studies and those curious about WWE’s revival.

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WrestleMania XL: The Greatest Story Ever Told (Part Two)

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WrestleMania XL: The Greatest Story Ever Told (Part Two)

This is the second of three parts on the recent WrestleMania XL and the current revival of WWE. It reviews the interconnected and multistrand storytelling that unfolded over two years leading into the recent event and highlights opportunities for further appraisal. This part introduces the story of Cody Rhodes and reflects on long form serialized storytelling in WWE leading into WrestleMania XL. Readers who might be interested in this piece include those new to pro wrestling within the context of popular culture and entertainment studies and those curious about WWE’s revival.

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WrestleMania XL: The Greatest Story Ever Told (Part One)

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WrestleMania XL: The Greatest Story Ever Told (Part One)

This is the first of three parts on the recent WrestleMania XL and the current revival of WWE. It reviews the interconnected and multistrand storytelling that unfolded over two years leading into the recent event and highlights opportunities for further appraisal. This part establishes the important role of audience and character in pro wrestling, and overviews key moments for Roman Reigns leading into WrestleMania XL. Readers who might be interested in this piece include those new to pro wrestling within the context of popular culture and entertainment studies and those curious about WWE’s revival.

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Moving Between World(views) with Database Narratives

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Moving Between World(views) with Database Narratives

This post is part of a series written by contributors to Imagining Transmedia, a new book of essays published by the MIT Press. The book explores how transmedia techniques are being used in a wide range of settings, from entertainment and education to health care, journalism, politics, urban planning, and more. In this post, Zoyander Street discusses their chapter “Cis Penance: Transmedia Database Narratives,” which explores their own interactive documentary work about transgender people in terms of concepts that come from Japanese media studies scholarship: database narratives and sekaikan (worldview).

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It’s All Transmedia Now

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It’s All Transmedia Now

This post is part of a series written by contributors to Imagining Transmedia, a new book of essays published by the MIT Press. The book explores how transmedia techniques are being used in a wide range of settings, from entertainment and education to health care, journalism, politics, urban planning, and more.

How do we think about stories and what it means to imagine a world together when the pathways for telling, sharing, and reacting to those stories are constantly shifting and bleeding into one another? When that shared narrative universe is massively distributed, debated, and collectively infused with the energy and attention of thousands or millions of people? These are the questions at the heart of our new book Imagining Transmedia, the culmination of over a decade of intensive mucking about in transmedia storytelling at the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. I’d like to tell you a story about how we got here.

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“Girl Crush” K-pop Idols: A Conversation between Korean, Chinese, and US Aca-fans Part II

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“Girl Crush” K-pop Idols: A Conversation between Korean, Chinese, and US Aca-fans Part II

Beyond K-pop, female talents’ careers and “strong,” “independent” women personae are becoming more recognized and celebrated in the broader South Korean media industry. Kim Sook, has gained nicknames like “Sook-crush (drawing on “Girl Crush”),” “Furiosook (parody of Mad Max’s Furiosa)” and “Matriarch-sook” from her famous gender role-flipped humor and non-subservient image that she built over ~25 years of her career, became the second woman to ever win Korea’s national broadcasting station’s (KBS) Grand Prize in Entertainment in 2020 since Lee Young-ja’s first win in 2018. Female street dancer crew reality competition series Street Women Fighter (Mnet; 2021-2023) and many of the featured dancers have become sensational hits. As the series’ name suggests, the “Girl Crush” dancers boasted “strong” physiques, personalities, and styles but with comradery and professionalism that matched their (formerly underrecognized) diverse and impressive career backgrounds, rather than one-dimensional “catty” competitiveness.

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“Girl Crush” K-pop Idols: A Conversation between Korean, Chinese, and US Aca-fans: Part I

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“Girl Crush” K-pop Idols: A Conversation between Korean, Chinese, and US Aca-fans: Part I

Beyond K-pop, female talents’ careers and “strong,” “independent” women personae are becoming more recognized and celebrated in the broader South Korean media industry. Kim Sook, has gained nicknames like “Sook-crush (drawing on “Girl Crush”),” “Furiosook (parody of Mad Max’s Furiosa)” and “Matriarch-sook” from her famous gender role-flipped humor and non-subservient image that she built over ~25 years of her career, became the second woman to ever win Korea’s national broadcasting station’s (KBS) Grand Prize in Entertainment in 2020 since Lee Young-ja’s first win in 2018. Female street dancer crew reality competition series Street Women Fighter (Mnet; 2021-2023) and many of the featured dancers have become sensational hits. As the series’ name suggests, the “Girl Crush” dancers boasted “strong” physiques, personalities, and styles but with comradery and professionalism that matched their (formerly underrecognized) diverse and impressive career backgrounds, rather than one-dimensional “catty” competitiveness.

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OSCAR WATCH 2024 — Video Essay Reflections on Character in ‘Oppenheimer’ (2023)

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OSCAR WATCH 2024 — Video Essay Reflections on Character in ‘Oppenheimer’ (2023)

This piece is part of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 96th Academy Awards. This post features two video essays responding to Oppenheimer, one by Kai after Kai and one by Ella Wright. Both focus in on the film's depiction of character, asking how we are meant to understand them in moral terms. I encourage you to pay particular attention to the sound in each piece, the careful dichotomies between loudness and silence in “Fission, Fusion, and Character in Oppeneheimer” and the menacing yet also space age-y melodies of Kai after Kai’s original music in “The Guilt of Oppenheimer.” Both essays use sound to reinforce their critical points, rather than simply to ground their audiovisual timelines--an example of the sophisticated analysis going on in the world of video essays and videographic criticism.

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