Reimagining History (the fandom at least)
January 31st, 2008 by dpupkin1While we did talk mostly about entertainment fandoms in class a few days ago, there are numerous others as discussed again in class on Thursday. One fandom which I do want to bring up is historical fandoms. This certainly encompasses the armchair general, the Civil War reenactor, and even the war gamer. These are generally pretty well known ways of participating in historical fandom. With the rise of the internet, however, and the spread of memes, fandoms have been changed at their core, even those like historical fandoms. The link below links to one such alternative depiction of historical fandom:
<a href=”http://s81.photobucket.com/albums/j228/musashi1600/Afghanis-tan/?action=view¤t=Afuganisu-Tan_cover.png” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j228/musashi1600/Afghanis-tan/Afuganisu-Tan_cover.png” border=”0″ alt=”Photobucket”></a>
((the rest at http://s81.photobucket.com/albums/j228/musashi1600/Afghanis-tan/ ) This is a manga version of the history of Central Asia, focusing on the nation of Afghanistan. What makes this so alternative is that the nations of Central Asia (the “stans”) are depicted as “cute young girls.” Not merely an elaborate work of Japanese punning (the suffix “-tan” is used for young girls in Japan and commonly used to modify anthropomorphic personifications of objects as manga-style girls (see Os-tan)), this work shows genuine love and interest for the region. This manga, not merely informative, shows the intensely unique ways that fans make the work, or the history their own. The author/artist, using his unique talents and skills, was able to make this fandom completely his own.
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That’s very interesting, David. Your post brought out an element of my fandom that I should have included in my fanifesto, namely that I am a huge history fan. I used to go through phases when I was younger, where I would, say learn as much as possible about Welsh culture and mythology, before turning to the American Civil War or World War I. To an extent these phases continue, but a few eras have remained constant, namely the American Civil War, Stalinist Russia, and the modern Middle East. As with my media fan objects, I don’t participate actively (obviously this is difficult when it comes to history) though I have seen a reenactment and visited a few sites.
I wonder what it entails to be ‘diehard’ history fan. I suppose alternative histories may be analoguous to some sort of fanfic. As for your fan artifact, my roomates play a game called Europa Universalis, an alternative history game dealing with medieval Europe that can incorporate massive changes to the actual history of events in Europe.