Henry Jenkins explains in the
chapter Searching for the Origami Unicorn,
included in the book Convergence Culture,
how and why Matrix could be considered as one of the most important cases of convergence
culture. Nevertheless, the first film was released in 1999 in the United
States, and lots of things have happened since then.
Undoubtedly, the scenario has
change. Actually, the scenario has grown and now there are a large amount of
new possibilities to create a successful and ‘multi integrated’ product. But,
do all of them take advantage of the Web 2.0, for example? Has a new film had
such a large impact in the society in the last years?
In the following, let´s try to guess
if any there is something that have left Matrix in the second position. Let´s
analyze what I consider was the biggest audiovisual phenomenon of the last 10
years: the TV series Lost.
Firstly, some introductory
information, although everybody should have heard about it before. Lost was a TV series developed by the
channel ABC, whose first season took place in September 2004. An airplane crash
in the middle of an island and the few survivors start a new life living there.
The situation becomes weird (white bears living there?) and some mysterious
events come about. I won´t spoil anything, I would have hated him if anyone had
done it to me. The thing is that the series gets more complex, and more
complex, and more complex…
But this is not really relevant. The
thing is that Lost created something
new, previously unknown, around it and became a big cult artifact. Jenkins
quotes Umberto Eco in the text in order to explain the two main things that a
cult artifact needs to become a cult artifact, and Lost had both. It of course had a completely furnished world, mainly
composed by the island, the characters and all the episodes that were emitted
every Thursday. The second factor was also fulfilled: being encyclopedic. The
devoted fans were given a huge amount of information on each episode about the
background of the characters, the relationship between them and even the territory
of the island. In fact, the "official encyclopedia” of the series was published
by the ABC channel.
Apart from the usual working of
every TV series, the success of Lost
brought the launching of thousands of products around the series, creating thus
its own universe and of course, improving the ways of exploitation. It was very
usual then to find toys of Jack, Hurley, Desmond, Kate or Sawyer. The figures,
created by Todd McFarlane, represent real scenes of Lost, are exacts copies that represent the characters in real
scenes of the series.
But what really shows the success of
an audiovisual product is its conversion to the sector of videogames. If we
talk about convergence culture, a crucial step is to “invade” other fields, and
videogames is one of the most profitable ones. Ubisoft launched in 2008 thevideogame of Lost, when the series
was still in its fourth season.
Let´s look back in this point. A
cult artifact, toys, an own videogame… What´s new comparing with Matrix or with
any other big shocking film of the nineties? Wasn´t Lost a very new thing? In the upper lines it is not shown how or
why the ABC series could be considered as an example of convergence culture of
the 21st century. What made Lost a
real breaking product?
According to some experts, Lost´s success is undoubtedly linked
with the expansion and development of the Web 2.0. The series had what any other could have: a
big number of unconditional fans sat opposite their television every Thursday waiting
to the next episode to start. But, what else? Lost created a parallel world that didn´t ended with the final of
each episode. The series didn´t take place only on Thursdays but also on the
rest of the week. On Thursday, the episode; on Friday, assimilating it, and on
Saturday all the community started the ritual. Hundreds of forums were created
and Lost fans shared their first
impressions of each episode, started debates about the meaning of each of the mysterious
things of the island, revealed what they thought was going to happen in the
next episode.
Forums, chats and virtual
communities in general such as the Spanish Lostzilla, acted as new spaces of
debate. The devoted followers also created websites to share information about
the series. They created maps of the island showing were the survivors lived
and where the Dharma stations were, they exposed their theories about the
future development of the series, they composed the background of each
character, even these fans could be divided in two groups: the Jack supporters
and the Sawyer supporters. All this information can be easily accessible now in
the virtual encyclopedia Lostpedia: the Lost Encyclopedia.
The success
of Lost was not only based on the
quality of the series but also in its capacity to create a virtual world around
itself. Lost escaped from the usual
mechanism of the TV series to originate a virtual community 24 hours warned about
the news of it. During the six years that lasted Lost, and still today, it existed a huge number of people
interconnected that made the series to be alive all the days of the week, not
only on Thursdays. The interconnectivity of course facilitated this fact. Is it
the Lost the paradigm of convergence
culture? I hope not, but for sure it represented a step further.
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