Posted by Steve Dietz on November 5, 2006 12:55 PM
Jason Mittel
The Third Kind of Heat: 30 Rock & Overcooked Synergy
In Media Res
making MediaCommons
October 24, 2006
via GrandTextAuto
MediaCommons launched recently, describing itself as "a new kind of media studies press for the digital age --" One particularly interesting aspect is the In Media Res feature of "fragments from the media stream revolved in critical conversation."
One of the early pieces for In Media Res, Holding Out For a Hiro, is by Henry Jenkins on the Hiro Nakamura character from Heroes. (Pictured is a different comment by Jason Mittel on 30 Rock.) When I brought Jenkins to the Walker Art Center in 2001 to present, brilliantly, "The Star Wars We'd Like to See," I remember talking with him afterwards about a "book" he had written that analyzed various media sources, but no publisher would touch it at the time because of copyright issues.
MediaCommons has a statement on fair use, which is an important principle I wish more institutions were willing to stand by.
MediaCommons is a strong advocate for the right of media scholars to quote from the materials they analyze, as protected by the principle of "fair use." If such quotation is necessary to a scholar's argument, if the quotation serves to support a scholar's original analysis or pedagogical purpose, and if the quotation does not harm the market value of the original text -- but rather, and on the contrary, enhances it -- we must defend the scholar's right to quote from the media texts under study.
Congrats to MediaCommons on its content, process, and consdiered attitude.
