More importantly, the film shows how sometimes the most blind forms of emulation lead, paradoxically, to the most striking instances of originality. You may start by wanting to make your own convincing "copy" of the Rambo universe, but you end up mashing up your own unique backstory and sensibility into whatever you're creating. Son of Rambow also illustrates how, before they "specialize," young people move effortlessly between media:the main character begins as a journal illustrator and sort-of graffiti artist and then quickly learns the basics of camerawork, acting, and, er, stuntwork.

Also included on the DVD are Jennings's own action-adventure short from his student days, Aron, as well as the winner of a Web contest Paramount Vantage ran for young filmmakers following the spirit of Son of Rambow. Entitled Mission Improbable, and excerpted below, it was made by a fifteen-year-old who's now in his late twenties.

"Mission Improbable"--Cocteau meets Stallone in the playground of youth media.

In fact, the only thing "missing" from Son of Rambow is a fictional critical response to the endearing finished product--unless one counts all the applause the student filmmakers receive after the first public screening...

Okay, we'll return to the power of being a fan in a moment. I promise.

In the meantime, a commercial interruption brought to you by "theory"...

For educators, the problematic nature of credibility/authority on the Web is nothing new--for how many years now have you/they/we been dealing with prewriting the standard research paper in the Age of Wikipedia?

In the broader context of Web 2.0, closely related issues have also posed a challenge for interaction designers and information architects--namely, how to keep opinion and data flows open, even crowd-sourced, but also to mark them as both credible and valuable? Do you have users rank the utility of any given answer/product review/media clip? Clearly that's an imperfect system for many reasons, but it does have the advantages of being intuitive and easy to implement, which perhaps account for its ubiquity.

At first glance, then, such a democratized "authority model" may appear so radically at odds with the classroom's traditional hierarchies of expertise--perhaps even conflicting with the notion of academia itself--that teachers would do well to shun it entirely. Or perhaps, in a more engaged approach, we should focus on developing a critical examination of such learning communities (because that's what the Web is, by virtue of its participatory aspect, whether we like it or not). In other words, we should clarify for our students that despite the rules (or lack thereof) that seem to prevail on that discursive free-for-all known as the Internet, true authority is conferred by formal education, board certification, lengthy resumes, and substantial writing samples of published work--all that stuff that calls out (and stratifies) societal and economic models of "valid" criticism.

But in taking one of these stances, I'm concerned that we're missing out on an opportunity, to put it mildly: to frame an essential question for students on what it actually takes to be a critical participant in culture, particularly in pop culture.

I'm choosing the phrase "critical participant" because I think that's a trait that all of us who work in schools ideally want to see in an educated person (including ourselves). And of course for those involved in media literacy education, it's more than an ideal--it's the raison d'etre for what we do. In these senses, then, the term "critical" obviously has nothing to do with being a professional critic per se... but how nice would it be if students developed a set of concepts and practices that allowed them to enjoy the same relation to texts/media that marks a professional mindset?

And lest we think that there's little motivation to learning about the value, and mastering the intellectual rigors, of formal criticism, all I can offer is a single word: fandom.

See? I told you we'd return to that topic.

Whether it's pop music, anime, or the latest cult TV series (these seem to spring up weekly), students are producing their own media messages in response to them as part of fandoms. Some may participate in a highly organized way, via blogs, wikis, cons, and clubs. They write and circulate save-the-show e-mail campaigns, manage listservs, and start "unofficial" sites--not to mention creating fanfic and fanart, which are also often heavily informed by a critical mentality, whether its creators would acknowledge it as such or not.

Or sometimes youth (like the rest of us) display only mildly fannish behaviors, being knowledgeable and caring, but lacking the otaku mentality that invests part of one's being in a specific group of media messages (a pretty cold way of putting it, I know). On Facebook one can self-identify as a fan of a particular creator or title, thus becoming a member of a group but not obligating one to participate in critical behaviors. But actually, even if they're simply lurkers, youth today can't help swimming in a sea of "published" opinion. In a way, it's a case of the old adage "everyone's a critic" become literal.

Back in the print-based media environment, or even during Web 1.0's reign, being a critic meant being paid for one's work because how else to distinguish the worthy from the unwashed--to crown one set of opinions as authoritative? Either you were compensated by a magazine for your work, or you self-published your own fanzine, usually at a loss. However, with the blogosphere being just one case in point, how important is the monetizing aspect of "being a critic" in today's participatory culture?

Or, more radically, what does being a critic mean today, especially when fans often possess a far richer set of background knowledge (or have easy access to repositories of it via the Web) than "Joe/Jane Syndicated Reviewer" does? (By the way, here's an interesting article bemoaning the death of professional film criticism--although I think the author really means garden variety, salaried, print-based movie reviewing--while also acknowledging that criticism itself is thriving on the Web. "Okay," I'm thinking, "and so the problem here is...?" For a nice counterpoint, read this.)

So you might want to ask your students, "What makes a paid critic more 'qualified' [e.g., the authority question again] than a layperson... or a fan? Is it only a matter of background knowledge? Or is it a matter of sheer articulation--professional critics know all the pretty words and technical nomenclature that a 'pro' should know?"

Of course there might be several factors that separate fans from critics, but I'd contend that the crux issue has something to do with their approach to media itself--and the ability of critics (good ones anyway) to examine and deconstruct their own goals and indeed their own role in pop culture--what might be called a "literacy of the self."

Moreover, I believe that the simple act of asking such questions can inspire students to think beyond the role of public participant (after all, where's the novelty in that anymore for older teens?) and engage in a deeper meta-critical conversation: "Now that virtually everyone has access to the public expression of their opinions, what's going to set your opinions apart from the pack?"

In any case, thanks to Jenna McWilliams and the rest of the team at Project New Media Literacies for allowing me to sound off here. I'll pick up these ideas again soon--in the meantime, go check out Son of Rambow.

Pop culture critic, media literacy instructor, and consultant Peter Gutierrez is a spokesperson for the National Council of Teachers of English and an incoming member of NCTE's Commission on Media. He both writes about and delivers professional development on using high-interest media in schools and libraries. Peter can be reached at fiifgutierrez_at_gmail.com.