Reading Response – Derek

It would seem that a real-life implementation of Jenkins’s comments on literacy depends on an interpretation of media that incorporates all three of Meyrowitz’s levels; examining any one of these levels in a vacuum opens up criticisms, some more valid than others, to media as a tool of social education and participation. For example, Jenkins’s media literacy “skill” of play, which he defines as “the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem solving (24),” necessitates a definition of media similar to Meyrowitz’s “Media as environment” level, since the context in which one plays is quite important if the goal is to encourage participation (as shown, a teenager might become engaged with ancient Rome much more readily through a computer game than through written text). However, the expression that comes with the experimenting of play requires some sort of coherent grammar that the “player” can understand. Without this grammar, there might simply be too much abstraction for the average person to be able to, again, enjoy participating in it. The grammar of a computer game like Civilization–the layout of a world map, the sounds and animations associated with in-game game units, and the expressive meaning of building a city–is infinitely more interesting and engaging than an abstract reading of the game’s source code. If we were simply to think of a computer game in the context of Meyrowitz’s level of the conduit–the level that most people see first and never see past–we would be severely restricted in terms of how we thought of the game and of “play” as a skill. Because the discourse of “education” does not operate in most computer games at the level of the conduit, they are often dismissed as mindless diversions. (When I was a child, my mother always made me play a “learning game” like Reader Rabbit or Outnumbered before I could play Monkey Island…yet the grammar, the particular form of Monkey Island was much more engaging (the player has to solve logic puzzles in a kind of narrative form) than simply solving math or vocabulary problems in a designated period, as most of the educational games of the early and mid-90s did. This is not to denigrate those games–I enjoyed playing them, if not as much as Monkey Island–but to speculate on how the levels of grammar and environment can drastically enhance their participatory power.