{"id":1585,"date":"2008-01-20T10:42:16","date_gmt":"2008-01-20T10:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/?p=1585"},"modified":"2008-01-20T10:42:16","modified_gmt":"2008-01-20T10:42:16","slug":"nyt-on-friday-night-lights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/archives\/1585","title":{"rendered":"NYT on Friday Night Lights."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s <i>New York Times Magazine<\/i> features a brilliant essay by Virginia Heffernan on <i>Friday Night Lights<\/i> and <a title=\"Virginia Heffernan - The Medium - Television - Internet Video - Media - Sports - Football - New York Times\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/01\/20\/magazine\/20wwln-medium-t.html\">Art in the Age of Franchising<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The fault of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Friday Night Lights\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is extrinsic: the program has steadfastly refused to become a franchise. It is not and will never be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Heroes,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Project Runway,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Hills\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or Harry Potter. It generates no tabloid features, cartoons, trading cards, board games, action figures or vibrating brooms. There will be no \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Friday Night Lights: Origins,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and no \u00e2\u20ac\u0153FNL Touchdown\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for PlayStation.<br \/>\nThis may sound like a blessing, but in a digital age a show cannot succeed without franchising. An author\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work can no longer exist in a vacuum, independent of hardy online extensions; indeed, a vascular system that pervades the Internet. Artists must now embrace the cultural theorists\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 beloved model of the rhizome and think of their work as a horizontal stem for numberless roots and shoots \u00e2\u20ac\u201d as many entry and exit points as fans can devise.<br \/>\nThis is an enormous social shift that coincides with the changeover from analog to digital modes of communication, the rise of the Internet and the new raucousness of fans. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a mistake to see this imperative to branch out as a simple coarsening of culture. In fact, rhizome art is both lower-brow (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153American Idol,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Derek Waters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Drunk History\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) and more avant-garde (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Battlestar Galactica,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ryan Trecartin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I-Be Area\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) than linear, author-controlled narrative, which takes its cues from the middle-class form of the novel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is CMS through-and-through.  Excellent, insightful stuff and a good introduction to the type of thing we&#8217;ve been researching in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.convergenceculture.org\">C3<\/a> for the last two years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s New York Times Magazine features a brilliant essay by Virginia Heffernan on Friday Night Lights and Art in the Age of Franchising: The fault of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Friday Night Lights\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is extrinsic: the program has steadfastly refused to become a franchise. It is not and will never be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Heroes,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Project Runway,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Hills\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or Harry Potter. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4e5QR-pz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}