Jenkins 2007 - The Wow Climax - Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture

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Book Review: THE WOW CLIMAX: TRACING THE EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF POPULAR CULTURE Henry Jenkins New York: New York .... Article  in  Journal of Sociology · September 2008 DOI: 10.1177/14407833080440030605

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Book Review: THE WOW CLIMAX: TRACING THE EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF POPULAR CULTURE Henry Jenkins New York: New York University Press, 2007, 284 pp. $39.95 (paperback) Suzie Gibson Journal of Sociology 2008 44: 307 DOI: 10.1177/14407833080440030605

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Book Reviews 307

whereby they ease the customer out of the role of unfamiliar spectator, convincing them of an intimate connection. Alison Munch’s account of the interactions and relationships of fans watching amateur softball in Chapter 6 offers some solid data to further extend Putman’s theorizing about the weakening of ‘community’. In tension with Putman’s proposition that the passive watching of sport does little to build community, Munch shows how spectating afforded individuals the time and opportunity to develop meaningful personal relationships with other spectators. Without over-romanticizing this dynamic, she shows how these relationships can produce a type of ‘community’. These significant contributions notwithstanding, the volume’s overall comprehensiveness is undermined by its distinctive Anglo-American focus. Relationships, the use of public places and even what is considered public or private for cultural groups other then Anglo-Americans are rarely considered. In fact, Beattie et al., in Chapter 3, seem to suggest that the lack of trouble or conflict they observed could be explained by virtue of the fact that their mostly Anglo sample contained few Latino or African Americans (p. 59). Similarly, the nine studies are drawn exclusively from places within the Midwest of the United States, with no consideration as to their transference or relevance outside of this narrow context. Moreover, the places are not sufficiently analysed in terms of how they shape, or at least influence, personal relationships. The authors do not demonstrate how closely place and relationship are integrated. Perceived intrusion, and thus the ethics of the ethnographies, is a further question that could reasonably be raised. None of the contributing authors details how their determination of public place may be perceived differently by those engaging in personal relationships within it.

Together Alone: Personal Relationships in Public Places empirically explores a ubiquitous aspect of social life that is otherwise under-theorized in the social sciences. This volume’s contribution lies in demonstrating how a range of personal relationships in public places, from what are considered fleeting to primary relationships, have both direct importance to interactants, and importance as a component in the functioning of social order. Most of the nine studies offer interesting and engaging examples. The editors’ opening and concluding chapters add considerable depth, locating them within broader theoretical discussions. This is an important work for students of relationships, a lesser one for social geographers. Cameron Parsell University of Queensland

THE WOW CLIMAX: TRACING THE EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF POPULAR CULTURE Henry Jenkins New York: New York University Press, 2007, 284 pp. $39.95 (paperback).

The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture by Henry Jenkins analyses a variety of media in the course of discussing the affective quality and cultural power of popular aesthetic forms. His motley selection of essays covers a range of topics and issues, from computer games to comic books, WWF wrestling to 1970s sexploitation films, children’s play and television programmes to the off-screen life of Lupe Velez (a 1930s Hollywood sex siren). These disconnected areas of enquiry are all drawn together on the premise that each and every form produces a requisite ‘wowness’ that goes beyond the textual

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308 Journal of Sociology 44(3)

limits of the subject matter and the contexts of their initial reception. In this way, Jenkins’ book is largely about the role of memory and nostalgia in generating the emotional force of popular entertainment forms. But, more precisely, it is about his personal engagement with, consumption of, and mnemonic connection to the subject matter. As he openly admits in the introduction, ‘The essays in The Wow Climax are about the things that make me go “wow”’ (p. 2). We also learn that ‘the book’s title comes from an old vaudeville term’ where the ‘moment of spectacle and maximum emotional impact became known as the “wow climax,” the “wow finish,” or simply the “big wow”’ (p. 4). The decision to draw from this vaudevillian concept is telling because Jenkins’ method of analysis follows a recognizable pattern of interpreting new media forms and genres through old media forms and genres. For example, WWF wrestling is compared to the narrative formulas of 19th-century melodramas, where the action is built upon and driven by two morally opposing forces that battle it out for supremacy. Jenkins argues that it is always the straight and the virtuous who triumph over the sneaky and the wicked in order to restore peace and order. However, such a moment of victory must also be short-lived in order to produce another competitor, another villain and another fight. Jenkins goes on to claim that WWF wrestling has a lot in common with the open serial format of soap operas, in that both dramatize repetitive and familiar patterns of conflict and resolution that are designed to encourage audience identification and involvement. However, where soap operas elicit a passive response from viewers, wrestling solicits an angry and aggressive response from audience members in the form of ‘shouts, cheers, and boos’ (p. 80). Jenkins also discusses the theme of class in dictating the outcome of each and every contest in that it is always the ‘down-to-earth’

(p. 80) working-class heroes who succeed over their shrewd, middle-class foils. The obvious homosocial dimension of wrestling is also examined. As Jenkins rightly points out, the extreme spectacle of powerful masculinity enables straight men to become physically involved with one another without the fear of being ‘gay’ bashed (p. 95). In general, Jenkins’ essays are thought-provoking and at times quite insightful, but his chapter on children’s television and children’s viewing habits provides the weakest discussion. For instance, the claim that children are not passive consumers of television but free agents who actively engage with the audio-visual material on-screen is neither new nor particularly interesting. For over 30 years now, cultural critics have effectively debunked the idea that television has a negative and pacifying effect on audiences. Why Jenkins dedicates an entire chapter to proving this point is uncertain. However, perhaps reason enough can be found close to home. Jenkins conducts his own empirical study of children’s viewing habits by enlisting the help of his young son Henry. Under the supervision of his father, Henry organises his friends to watch the popular US television program, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Suffice to say, Henry comes across as one of the more astute readers in the group. In Jenkins’ own words, ‘this all seems too embarrassingly personal’ (p. 242). Underpinning Jenkins’ analysis of popular cultural forms is the need to justify them. This is done through a close and sustained comparative study of old and new media forms and genres that are in the end contrasted in order to show how recent developments in game design technologies push aesthetics beyond the conventional boundaries of video, film and television production, creating new spatial environments that challenge the way we think. Suzie Gibson University of New England

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