Fan Culture @ Swarthmore

So, there were a couple of things that I wanted to discuss today that came up in class and in Julie Levin Russo’s talk. They aren’t really related, but I thought it would be obnoxious of me to create two blog posts, so I’ve created one obnoxiously long post. Here goes.

1. In the discussion of fan economy v. mainstream economy, there has been a fair amount of objection to the ways the producers have run their economy, i.e., for profit. This has been contrasted to the fan “gift economy,” which I think in our discussions has been cast as somehow a little more pure, worthy, creatively inspired (the assumption that if you’re not doing something for the money, your artistic vision becomes the primary focus of a reading), etc. One of the things that I’ve think we’ve lost track of is that fandom, ultimately, is a hobby. It may be an extremely consuming, engaging, important, totally all-consuming hobby, but it is not a person’s job (mostly–for a very few it is). Presumably, fans are participating in capitalist forms of commodity/labor production and exchange–just not in fandom. But they have jobs that give them the capital that allows them to work within the fan gift economy. Going back to Bizzy’s point from last week about exclusionary issues in fandom, I think that you could make an argument that the gift economy is not necessarily lowering the barriers to fandom, but raising them–people who would perhaps like to produce for fandom may not be able to afford to enter this world if they cannot turn their significant time and effort investments into money. Poorer people may need to spend their time on a profitable venture–it’s only those with a financial cushion who can afford this gift economy.

On the flip side, I do think we need to recognize that producers create their texts and expect to live off of them. To me, it is therefore not the same to ask them to participate in an economy of free exchange the way fans ask other fans to. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t problems when producers attempt to turn fan work into a profit-venture or attack fans for violating copyright (and therefore their profit margins). There’s a huge power imbalance that Julie Russo brought up with YouTube taking down videos when producers ask, but fans basically can’t appeal. Also, many make the argument that producers are making truly ludicrous amounts of money off of their work, and therefore the fact that fans have cut very narrowly into that is negligible. I’m more in tune with the first argument than the second; I just don’t think it’s up to fans to decide what a reasonable salary is.

2. I’ve been thinking a lot about the point that Julie Russo made about how fandom should, in some ways, be a protected space for queer and feminist expression, and that’s part of the reason why certain voices in the mainstream should not be able to co-opt vids (to give one example from the lecture–people laughing at the Brokeback Mountain parodies out of homophobia). Ultimately, I think I still disagree. I’m simply not prepared to say that being a fan is the same thing as being queer, or being a woman, or being a person of color, or any other kind of deeply marginalized group in our society.

To explain, I want to reference where I come down on a similar issue–the recent controversy over the Campus Republicans’ use of queer slogans like “coming out.” (I know many people are sick of this discussion, so I’ll try to keep it short.) I really support the people who objected to the Republicans’ posters, because I think that a) Being queer is not something that is/should be negotiable–society has no right to question the legitimacy of someone’s sexual orientation; b) Queer people are very silenced in society; c) Republicans are doing a lot of the silencing; d) Republicans appropriating queer slogans is therefore doubly silencing, problemmatic (though indirect) mockery, and a totally illegitimate comparison of what it means to be a conservative in a liberal environment v. what it means to be queer in a straight society. (Note: I really don’t mean to piss off any Republicans in the class, I’m trying to make a point about fandom, I promise.)

Now, right off the bat, I don’t think that fans as fans (not as queer people, women, etc.) can simply claim an unquestionable perspective because they are a minority. I think that there are legitimate ways to look at fan production and disagree with it–maybe even laugh at it. I understand that this may be hurtful to the producer, but I don’t think that it is necessarily oppressive. Being a fan means taking a certain perspective on a text; it is not an inherent, unchangeable part of an identity (like sex, race, sexuality). Questioning it is therefore not the same as questioning other marginalized identites. I could laugh at a Kirk/Spock slash vid not out of homophobia, but because I see these characters as so obviously straight that this pairing is amusing. My interpretation of that text should not be less privileged. Similarly, I could also laugh if a vid took a character that in the show canon I interpreted as obviously queer (say, Jack from Will and Grace) and paired him with a woman–that would be amusing to me, even if the vidder was completely sincere (and maybe trying to make some kind of feminist statement about editing women out of fan texts).

Because fan identity is a choice, the fan community is so diverse, and fan production has so many available meanings, I think it’s simply impossible to take most of fandom and say, “This is subversive minority speech. Because it protests The Man (the mainstream), it is silencing for The Man to comment unfavorably upon it/co-opt it/trivialize it.” This isn’t to say I think it’s okay that people laugh at Brokeback Mountain parodies out of homophobia; it is to say that I think that fan production should not be sequestered away and viewed by limited communities, and given the openness with which I think it should be displayed and discussed, I have to accept the fact that a few idiots will comment on the conversation.