Fan Culture @ Swarthmore

I found something interesting the other day.  I was flipping through my roommate’s issue of GQ when I found a small article describing popular slash texts.  It was entitled “Lord of the Cock Rings” and gave the title, author, a brief synopsis, and a quote from each of the four texts (my favorite is “You’re a nice kid, but if it gets around that Tony Soprano swings both ways…you’re dead.  Capeesh?”).  This article interests me because it serves as an example of Dick Hebdige’s concept of the incorporation of subculture.  Historically, slash has been very much an underground fan community.  Due to its (homo)sexually graphic and fantasy-based content, it’s usually met with shock and disapproval when encountered in the mainstream.  But here we see it as the subject of an article in a mainstream magazine.  Like the television station that ran a story about “punk families”, this magazine makes money by covering innovative cultural phenomena.  But by running an article about slash, GQ brings this type of fan production into the mainstream, and perhaps robs it of the exclusivity that has historically characterized it.

  Going off of what Bob was saying today, and also what Jenkins talks about, it got me thinking a little more about fandom in relation to series.  On the bottom of page 98 and top of 99, Jenkins talks about how Star Trek  “remains self-contained.”  In each episode a particular problem is usually resolved by the end of that episode.  The next episode will be a new adventure.  Of course there may be allusions to early episodes, or permanent story changes among episodes, but for the most part they seem to be their own unit.  For example, “Amok Time” was my first Trek episode, and I did not have much trouble following everything.  I did keep bugging Diana with questions, but mostly out of curiosity.

When reading this part of Jenkins, I immediately compared it to another fandom potent genre, anime.  This “self-contained” aspect does not characterize anime at all.  For all the Dragon Ball Z fans out there, I have felt the pain all too often of watching a character just charge up and talk the whole episode without throwing a punch.  Bob was saying today how TV encourages watching more TV, and anime is completely guilty of that.  How can you justify watching two hours of characters talking about how great the fight is going to be and not watch the actual fight?  So I guess my first point is that this difference in genres is really interesting.  They each use their own type of hook or cliff-hanger.

My second idea is about actual fandom for these genres.  On the surface to me, it seems anime would have a lot more room for extended fandom because of the continuity between episodes.  It is one long narrative, and rich with information.  But Jenkins convinced me otherwise.  Because of the seemingly long gaps in between Trek episodes, it invites speculation among fans.  The fans have more power because less information is given.  There is now more interpretation.  What happened between episodes?  What happened to those aliens saved a few episodes back?  And so on and so forth.  I think that is part of the fun of fandom and why it has become so big.  This power given to fans is quickly grabbed and put to use.