Fan Culture @ Swarthmore

Going off our discussion in class today, I’ve been thinking about fandom of inanimate objects. Ariel’s point about the importance of narrative in fandom is well-taken but still, what about food? This sounds ridiculous but can someone be considered a “fan” or food or a particular type of food? The knowledge of some wine “connoisseurs” about the intimate details of French vineyards rivals that an X-men fans knowledge of different characters and backstories. Plenty of people devote considerable amounts of time and energy learning about differences that completely escape the causual wine drinker. People will travel from vineyard to vineyard tasting different wines in the company of other wine connoisseurs (indeed there are trips you can take that tour several vineyards in a day in Napa Valley, CA). Is this comraderie based on wine that different from the conventions of Harry Potter fans? I would argue that there is no real difference between a “fan” and a “connoisseur” beyond the mental connatation attached to the different words. Both have an extensive knowledge of a subject, beyond what in necessary for basic enjoyment, and a group of people and culture that supports and shares their interests. Any thoughts?

That’s freaky. Although the goatee makes a big difference — I didn’t think John Hurt looked like Sir Ian at all in V for Vendetta, for example.

So, this is the most absurd fannish thing I’ve seen on YouTube lately…

Yes, that hobo does go "zzz...b-ball...zzz".

For the record, the way I embedded the video was to click "media" under the "code" tab when writing the post and input the URL.

hey guys-

just wanted to let you know that i reserved the mccabe family room. (i’m pretty sure that the room is on the third floor, but i don’t remember where it is exactly.)

we can meet downstairs in the library and walk up together at 8:00. or if you may be running a few minutes late then just come on up – i’ll try to start the film by 8:10.

- lo.

Passing this along …

In Media Res is envisioned as an experiment in just one sort of collaborative, multi-modal scholarship that MediaCommons will aim to foster. Its primary goal is to provide a forum for more immediate critical engagement with media in a manner closer to how we typically experience mediated texts.

Each day, a different media scholar will present a 30-second to 3-minute clip accompanied by a 300-350-word impressionistic response. The goal is to promote an online dialogue amongst media scholars and the public about contemporary media scholarship through clips chosen for either their typicality or a-typicality in demonstrating narrative strategies, genre formulations, aesthetic choices, representational practices, institutional approaches, fan engagements, etc.

This week’s In Media Res line-up:

• Monday, January 14, 2008 – Francesca Coppa (Muhlenberg College) presents: “Pressure” – a metavid by the California Crew
• Tuesday, January 15, 2008 – Tisha Turk (University of Minnesota, Morris) presents: “Not Only Human” – an X-Files vid by Killa and Laura Shapiro
• Wednesday, January 16, 2008 – Jacqueline Kjono (independent scholar) presents: “A Day in the Life” – a Dead Zone vid by Shalott and Speranza
• Thursday, January 17, 2008 – Louisa Stein (San Diego State University) presents: “Bricks” – a Supernatural vid by Luminosity
• Friday, January 18, 2008 – Kristina Busse (independent scholar) presents: “Us” – a multivid by Lim

In Media Res Fannish Vidders-themed week

My friends and I came upon this site and I thought it was particularly (yet kind of far-fetched-ly) pertinent to this class. It’s tvcarnage.com, but some of their highlight clips can be found on youtube. I thought it was interesting to look at in regard to this class because it’s a mashup. It takes stuff you’re familiar and unfamiliar with and creates something new. It reminded me of Jenkins’ description of the fan as a producer. While these are decidedly ironic, I think they are valuable to at least look at. What’s perhaps more interesting to us is the use of new spaces (alternative publics) like youtube and the fact that it is so easy to mash up both known and unknown footage to create new narratives for all to see. To me, it’s like a digital video zine that can reach billions of people. These videos parse different pieces from different people’s lives and stick them together in this meta text of pop and sub culture references. While people have been doing mashup in music for a while (think of sampling), it’s recently become much more huge with artists that exclusively do mashup work (like Girl Talk or The Hood Internet). Why is it that mashup is becoming such an important part of pop culture? I guess you could argue that this is happening everywhere (Pullman taking from Paradise Lost as well as Biblical elements… isn’t that a mashup?), but I feel that it has never been as overt as it is now. The creation of hypermedia meta texts (oh man so many intertextual spaces!) is a new phenomenon, related to many things, obviously the creation of the Internet and other fast forms of communication and tied to that globalization and transnational flows of information. What do you all think about mashup as a metatext/fabric in an intertextual space?

by the way, the photo is of Cyndi Lauper and Dizzee Rascal, taken from the Hood Internet website, where they did a mashup of the songs “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” (Lauper) and “Fix Up, Look Sharp” (Dizzee Rascal) into a song entitled “Girls Just Want to Fix Up.”

When high-speed internet became common, illegal trading of television shows became very popular. Sites like YouTube and TVLinks had popular clips and episodes of most contemporary and even classic television programs. The ability to see TV shows on the web acted as a sort of free TiVo, allowing a user to decide which programs to watch, when to watch them, and often commercials were removed.  It was convenient, but completely unsanctioned, and, the studios would initially argue, unprofitable.

 Eventually studios experimented with a pay-per-episode plan on Apple’s iTunes service. For $2 you could buy an episode of a popular TV show, and for a discount, you could purchase the whole season. 

But websites like YouTube and services like BitTorrent only gained popularity for television downloading. They had a greater selection and were free. Pundits claimed that TV studios would need free downloads to compete with piracy. The studios fought TV downloading with a strong anti-piracy campaign and lawsuits. They frequently sent take-down notices to sites like YouTube. 

But to this day illegal downloading of television shows is still popular. The TV studios have finally decided to experiment with free television episode downloads with a new website called Hulu. Users can watch many entire series and movies for free with only 15 second ads. The selection and quality are very good, the ads unobtrusive. 

 It will be interesting for this class to discuss how this changes the landscape of television and media participation. What does this service say for the fate of traditional television and cable? Will the large media companies be able to more easily tap into fan and viral marketing if shows are online? Perhaps most importantly, what does this “surrender” by the studios say about the power of a non-sanctioned community that exists around a show? Can “fan” actions of posting clips to YouTube really change an industry? 

 http://www.hulu.com 

   Check this article out.    If you know me at all, you probably know that I am a diehard fan of Friday Night Lights on NBC (Fridays at 9 o’clock).      This New York Times article about the show brings up some very compelling points about the current trend of branding and marketing of television shows and how fandom has come to be a necessity of a product’s success.   Basically she argues that the show is a stand alone product and without the sort of active fanbase most runaway hit shows possess, it is doomed and inevitably headed for cancellation.  Interesting read.      Don’t know how disappointed I am that their won’t be any Slash fan fiction of a romance between Smash Williams and Tim Riggins.  That would throw off my whole world.     In response to this article, stand up comedian Aziz Ansari from the MTV2 sketch comedy show ”Human Giant” wrote a blog post called “Friday Night Lights: The Smash Williams Chronicles” with a hilarious premise of the show’s star running back being recruited by the CIA.  Who cares if it is intended to be ironic?  Any active fan activity for this diamond in the rough of a show is fine by me. 

Comment on this post with your fanifesto. The deadline for this is Monday, Jan 28, at noon, so we all have a chance to read each others’ fanifestos in advance of Tuesday’s class.

Thanks to quick responses from Ariel and Liz Evans, we’ve already identified and (in theory) resolved some of the confusion around your ability to modify this blog. Every FMST 85 student should now be now able to create and edit pages, add links to the blogroll, create new categories, etc. — all the features available to a site administrator.

I expect you to use these powers for good and not for evil. A few ground rules:

• Never change or delete a post or comment that someone else has written; if you have questions, reactions, or corrections to make, do it by adding your own comments.
• For Pages, which stand alone and are communally authored, modify or edit with care and respect. Better to add to a definition than rewrite what’s there; if there’s a dispute, e.g. you disagree with how someone has defined a term in the Lexicon, express your POV in some way that doesn’t simply overwrite what’s there — a parenthetical addition, like [This term is also defined by some as meaning ...]

In the hopes of heading off big controversies (and in the spirit of open conversation), I’m adding a Discussion page which we can use as a kind of scratchpad for bringing up questions and issues about the blog. You can consider this the space where we collectively work out the “Canon” of the Fan Culture course generally, and the blog specifically. I’ve already posted something there for you to add your thoughts to … check it out.

Another thing: it’s been pointed out to me that Page creation and editing are a little tricky in WordPress. Here’s how it works: in the Dashboard, go to Write. As I showed you in class, you have two options there for creating new content, Write Post and Write Page. But to modify an existing page, go to Manage, then underneath that select Pages. You’ll see a list of existing pages, and can select any of them to Edit. (One more ground rule: do not Delete any pages!)

Finally, remember that you can explore the mysteries of WordPress to your heart’s content by consulting the documentation.