Fan Culture @ Swarthmore

Don’t Look Back (1967) was a film by D.A. Pennebaker that followed Bob Dylan’s life at the height of his celebrity in 1964. It portrayed him as an arrogant, elusive, cool character, and contributed to his image as a socially conscious poet. Despite the documentary-like shooting style, the authenticity of the performance is put into question.As the Sconce article claims, celebrity blurs the line between reality and performance. It claims that a celebrity used to be famous because he was talented in some way. Today, Sconce claims, celebrities act as entertainment by being famous — it is their job to be obnoxious, vacuous, and talentless. This is entertaining and lets consumers both envy and admonish the celebrity. A celebrity is now meta/meta-famous. In this Don’t Look Back clip (at the bottom of the post), it is unclear whether Dylan is posing and being especially angry just because he knows he’s being filmed. To what extent is Dylan’s fame due to his talent (music) and to what extent his caustic personality?

Sconce, furthering Baudrillard’s work, claims the Real has collapsed to be replaced by a self-referential Symbolic order. This basically means that no longer does the media refer to some “real” world, but that all media refers only to other media in a symbolic network, and that an Imaginary order (fantasy, culture, etc.) is created only from this network.

The difficulty of distinguishing between the Real and the Symbolic in celebrity fandoms is illustrated in another Bob Dylan film, I’m Not There (2007). It attempts to portray Dylan as a fragmented character, assigning each facet its own actor, many of whom are not actually similar to Dylan. The film combines rumor, story, and fact to create six different representations of Dylan. In doing this, the film acknowledges that the celebrity of Dylan is not solely located in Dylan himself. Rather, he is the idol on which fans’ experiences, subjectivities, and cultural perceptions are projected.

The film explains Dylan in terms of both how he “really” is in a biographical sense, but also “who” he is based on the mythos and media portrayals around him — both are given equal time in the film.

Which model of celebrity fandom (Don’t Look Back’s direct-cinema approach or I’m Not There’s hyper-reality approach) is most applicable to other celebrities? Do fans use cults of celebrity as modes of escapism, or are the dynamics more nuanced? Is this concern with celebrity as problematic as Sconce implies? He claims, for example, that California is culturally attempting to become the celebrities it houses. Are these sweeping criticisms valid? Have symbolic media orders taken over for reality? Do Californians really view the rest of the country as cold and bitter? Has celebrity gossip really replaced the news?

With regard to Bob Dylan, is it really a good approach to view him as a media creation (as in I’m Not There), or try to portray him in an unmediated (direct-cinema) way?

I’m Not There
Don’t Look Back

This week’s viewing is “Who the Hell is Pete Doherty”, a BBC documentary about an extremely popular musician in England. He was a lead singer/songwriter for bands The Libertines and Babyshambles. He is often a feature of the tabloids due to drug use, band conflicts, criminal charges, and his dating supermodel Kate Moss.

In the documentary, Pete is given ample time to “defend” himself. Questions to think about are:
1. What does Pete have to say about the celebrity culture surrounding him? Is he accurate? Is it as harmful as he thinks it is?
2. How “honest” is Pete being? Are we finally seeing the “true” Pete, or is he playing yet another role, despite the film’s advertisement as a documentary.
3. What role does Pete play in the lives of English music fans?

These four articles touch on the possibilities of fandom in a global context. What does being a fan mean in different contexts? What are different fan objects around the world? How do fandoms operate around that object? What larger issues are implicated in the fandoms? All of the articles talk about media fandom, particularly film and television stars, and the overlap those stars have in the commercial realm. Punathambekar touches on the overlap between Tamil film stars and politics, but shies away from it because he wishes to place fandom on a continuum that does not highlight the political action of stars in India. However, I would like to go into the political potential of fandom and stardom in a global context. Cieko & Lee’s article highlights the parallels between different kinds of star capital and the political situation in South Korea, and I think this idea is interesting to explore in the Chinese context. They also point out the growing fluidity of gender in Korean film and television, which is also applicable in the Chinese context. All of the articles touch on the possibility of information flow, a flow that does not just go from West to East, but in all directions.

Super Girl was a hugely popular television show in China. It was a three-hour singing show based on American Idol, which is based on the British show Pop Idol. The official name of the show is “Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest” because of the primary sponsor, a yogurt company. In each episode, there are multiple times when the people of China voted for their favorite star. This does not sound unusual, considering that many Americans do the same when watching American Idol. However, the three hour block of voting per week is different, because people in China don’t vote in political elections. The grand finale of the 2005 show drew 400 million viewers, which is roughly the population of the United States and Great Britain combined. About 8 million sent “text messages of support” (the actual term vote was not used). This contest marked the first time that a true Chinese pop star has emerged since the rise of Communism in 1949. According to a Christian Science Monitor article on Super Girl, the show is popular because of its “raw authenticity” and how it indirectly gives individuals in China a voice through the “text messages of support.” The show did not emerge from Beijing, the political and cultural capital of China, but rather from Hunan, a province in the Southwest of China. However, the show became a national phenomenon.

The winners of Super Girl (there were three seasons before the show was taken off the air) were tomboyish, and the one who has gained the most attention is the second season’s winner, Li Yuchun. On BBS websites and blogs, people argued about whether she was pretty or ugly, a boy or a girl, gay or straight, cool or weird. She is the most famous Super Girl and an interesting object of fandom. Her androgynous appearance and the fact that her English name is Chris have led to a lot of speculation about her sexuality and gender. As Ciecko & Lee pointed out in their article, there is a potential for the creation of a newer female gender role through popular depictions of women and men, and if Li Yuchun’s popularity is any indication, gender may be becoming more fluid. As quoted on a blog about the growing industrialization of China, one blogger said “Why is she so popular in China? I guess it reflects the confrontation between male and female in Mainland China. Most of her fans are women, and men prefer Zhang Liang Ying. Her victory is women’s victory and voting for her is voting for our own dream of being ourselves.” Others say that the popularity of this show is due to its unprecedented format and one of China’s most famous sociologists Li Yinhe called Super Girl a “victory of the grassroots over the elite culture.”

Although this is not distinct to Asia, the winners of Super Girl become spokespeople for various brands. Ciecko & Lee discuss the decrease in star capital if a star puts does not produce anything new but appears in commercials. Li Yuchun actually uses the brands that she endorses in her music videos, thus combining the commercial necessity of stardom with production. Amazingly, there is also a Li Yuchun stamp in China, something that normally only happens to important politicians.

One of Li Yuchun’s most popular songs is called “N+1,” and it is a mixture of classical Chinese music and hip-hop. A lot of songs performed on the Super Girl show are standard pop hits from America, such as Zombie by the Cranberries, Don’t Cry for Me Argentina from Evita, and Wherever, Whenever by Shakira. I chose to focus on Super Girl as my fan artifact presentation because I think it elucidates some points brought up in the readings on global fandom. Super Girl is an excellent example of Mainland China’s entrance into the global capitalist economy. The show’s title explicitly says the name of the sponsoring product, the songs performed are often in English, the winners receive product sponsorship with global companies, and when the videos are posted on YouTube, people’s comments, in English and other languages are shown. Americans now have access to Super Girl and can comment in their own right. Li Yuchun has performed in Las Vegas in the Fusion concert and has performed with Kenny G as well, singing Everything I Do by Bryan Adams. As quotes from fan of Super Girl demonstrate, there is also the potential for autonomy.

Here are links to videos:
1. Li Yuchun singing in Las Vegas (“N+1”)
2. Li Yuchun dancing (fan vid mashup!)
3. Li Yuchun “Happy Wakeup” music video (notice the product placement)
4. Li Yuchun and Kenny G (not very good quality; also, not good because Kenny G is involved, but I can tell you, he’s super popular in China)

Link to blog about China’s visibility in the global capitalist economy, with many posts about Super Girl

Questions:
1. Is there such a thing as global fandom? What does it look like?
2. How is/not Li Yuchun an example of fandom in a global context?
3. What do you think of the portrayal of fans in Otaku No Video?
4. Is there political potential in fandom? Why/why not?

Fan Artifact Presentation: Week 11

The Sports Anti-Fan, Rivalries and YouTube

Steve Wolf and Loretta Gary

Red Sox Suck!

Red Sox vs. Yankees Lean Back Parody

Sports in general are filled with different rivalries. As Theodoropoulou points out in her essay, these rivalries can stem from various sources, but the most important factors in a rivalry are that the two teams are “opposing threats” and that the fans of each team share mutual feelings of “fear, admiration, respect, and envy” of each other. Right now, one of the longest lasting and most discussed rivalries is between the baseball teams the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. This particular rivalry is interesting because the dominating side of the rivalry has shifted recently. The New York Yankees have been the most historically successful team in Major League Baseball while the Red Sox were historically inept teams. However, during the past few years, the Red Sox have won two championships in 2004 and 2007, while the Yankees have struggled, by their standards, and have had an 8 year title drought. While Yankees fans used to patronize Red Sox fans with chants such as “1918!” (the last year before 2004 that the Red Sox won the World Series) now, Red Sox fans have the upper hand in terms of recent success.

Another aspect of sports rivalries that Theodoropoulou discusses is the “game” of mocking each other’s teams. Similar to her example of Tom and Aspa’s argument (322), ESPN columnist Bill Simmons an avid Red Sox fan has a running gag in his podcast where he calls up his friend, who is a Yankees fan, and asks “Are you worried yet?” The openness about his fandom has varying results. First, there are similarities between the Red Sox-Yankees and the Olympiakos-Panathinaikos rivalries mentioned in Theodorpoulou’s essay. But also, as a columnist for one of the most popular sports websites (ESPN.com), Simmons garners a national audience, and his writing style, which clearly reveals his Red Sox fan status, leads to his ability to blur the line between being a media producer and being a fan. As a sports fan, Steve had some background knowledge of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, such as the curse of the Bambino, but a large part of his knowledge of the rivalry is derived from Simmons’ columns. Because of his national following, Simmons has developed some anti-fans of his own which then causes his anti-fans to become anti-fans of Simmons’ cherished fan objects. For example, during the last Super Bowl, the New York Giants played the New England Patriots. Although the Giants are one of the rivals of our favorite football team, the Philadelphia Eagles, Steve found himself cheering for the Giants. The biggest reason was because the Patriots were undefeated and heavily favored, but partly because Simmons’s article would be more interesting if his team lost rather than if they won.

The clips we’re focusing on showcase the role of YouTube as a venue for anti-fans to broadcast their opinions and participate in discussions with other fans, which Theodoropoulou describes as “antagonistic but also playful and teasing” (323). There are hundreds of videos not only about why a certain sport team sucks but there are also many response videos and comments from the rival fans explaining why the opposing team is worse. Two of the videos we selected support opposing teams the Red Sox and the Yankees. Both videos use image montages and mock the other team and their fans while bolstering support of their own team. This “game” of YouTube anti-fan postings is just another example of how the fans are aware of and perform their anti-fan identity. The “Lean Back Parody” video is especially interesting because it showcases the tradition of creating songs and chants that mock the other team and fans.

Finally, we’ve included a few other videos as well to highlight the wide variety of anti-fan activity through YouTube. Both videos come from YouTube users who have made multiple videos supporting their team while attacking others creating numerous anti-fans of themselves. The first is a short animation highlighting the Eagles dominance over the Cowboys. The other is a video blog entry in which the anti-fan explains why he hates Dallas Cowboys fans.

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On a different note, we also thought the following dialog between Howard Stern’s boss, Pig Vomit, and a media consumer researcher adds another perspective on the role of the anti-fan in other fandoms. Quote from Private Parts (Betty Thomas, 1997):

Researcher: The average radio listener listens for eighteen minutes a day. The average Howard Stern fan listens for – are you ready for this? – an hour and twenty minutes.
Pig Vomit: How could this be?
Researcher: Answer most commonly given: “I want to see what he’ll say next.”
Pig Vomit: All right, fine. But what about the people who hate Stern?
Researcher: Good point. The average Stern hater listens for two and a half hours a day.
Pig Vomit: But… if they hate him, why do they listen?
Researcher: Most common answer: “I want to see what he’ll say next.”

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More thoughts and questions:

1.)In what other realms of fandom are there prominent anti-fans?

2.) What are the distinctions between the consumption of an anti-fan and a “true fan” in non binary situations?

3.) If there is no clear opposition, is it possible to become an anti-fan that acts similar to an actual fan (i.e. someone who still consumes the fan object)? (such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Howard Stern, etc.)

4.) In one sided rivalries, what side is the “rival” and where does the loyalty lie?

5.) Are the gender dynamics and stereotypes that are explicitly seen in sports fandom an example of the fanboy/fangirl identities? Does sports fandom support the argument for the reality of the fanboy/fangirl structure or negatively perpetuate the concept?

6.) What role do commentators play on influencing (anti)fan identities?

By Illy Quintano and Abby Graber

Fan Artifact: Christopher Walken

His IMDB page.

In their essays on the camp and cultish, Susan Sontag and Umberto Eco respectively focus much of their analysis on the idea of form over content. Sontag’s definition of camp is explicitly “neutral with respect to content” (Sontag, 277); it is basically an aesthetic concept. Similarly Eco’s exposition on the cultish aspect of Casablanca focuses on the construction of the film itself: what is important is that the film is composed entirely of tried and true archetypes. The actual content of those archetypes is relatively irrelevant. Both Sontag and Eco mention communities surrounding camp and cult objects, but ultimately they emphasize the location of campiness and cultishness within the objects themselves.

Our fan object, Christopher Walken, both exemplifies Sontag and Eco’s concept of camp and cult and points to where their theories might be underdeveloped. Walken is in many ways similar to Greta Garbo, Sontag’s quintessential camp actor. Like Garbo, Walken does not play characters, he plays himself. The direction of fan adoration is focused on Walken, not on the contact of the character he plays. Thus it is easier to respond to Walken on the screen as an “instant character” (Sontag, 286), and one expects no further development. Because audiences are responding to Walken and not the character, they often make the leap to his past roles. Watching Christopher Walken, one can often get the pleasurable sense of déjà vu that Eco attributes to cultish viewing. Christopher Walken is an archetype of himself. Finally, Christopher Walken fans often disaggregate Walken films into the parts Walken is in and everything else. For example, the way the famous “Watch-in-my-Ass” monologue has been extricated from Pulp Fiction. This exemplifies Eco’s “Unhinging” theory: Walken causes films to become unhinged.

However, although Sontag and Eco briefly mention the community aspect of the cult and the camp, most of their writing seems to view these aspects as being located in the object. We think that the community surrounding the cult or the camp deserves more attention. Urban Dictionary’s definition of “cult”, for example, says a “film or book that has a large non mainstream following over a long period of time”. Here, the emphasis is on the following, not on the film or book. This could also certainly be said of the cultishness or campiness of Christopher Walken. Part of fans’ pleasures comes from their membership in an exclusive community of people who “understand” and are intelligent and devoted enough to recognize his sardonic and dry humor as a type of genius. Liking Christopher Walken is like sharing an inside joke among friends. There’s clearly a dialectic between who Christopher Walken is and the fan response to him that creates him as an object of camp and cult fandom.

Here are some questions we think come out of our fan artifact presentation and Tuesday’s readings:

1) Are campiness and cultishness the same thing?

2) How arbitrary are these definitions?

3) What is the relationship between the size of the object’s audience and its cult/camp status?

4) Does camp/cult mean “unskilled”, or does it require a certain aesthetic sensibility as Sontag claims?

5) Is there a difference between a cult object, a camp object, and a fan object?

a fan artifact presentation by Diana Pozo and David Pupkin

Easy Version:

Read the Jenkins Articles.

Watch “HuckChuckFacts.”

Scroll to the bottom and read the Important Questions to Consider.

Hard Version (not for the faint of heart):

In his article, “The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence,” Henry Jenkins discusses new trends in Internet publication such as blogging as they apply to politics, saying, “popular culture becomes the venue through which key social and political issues get debated. What models of democracy will take roots in a culture where the lines between consumption and citizenship are blurring?” Certainly, independent Internet commentators influence the way politics are run in the U.S. today from political blogs all the way through the CNN YouTube debates run for both the Democratic and Republican primaries. However, with convergence culture, the influences are never only one-way. Though “grassroots” Internet political activism may influence politics, politicians are also likely to use Internet culture to further their own goals.

2008 Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee uses convergence culture to appeal to a more diverse constituency than his traditionally conservative base by adopting the celebrity of Chuck Norris, a television actor and martial artist featured in Walker, Texas Ranger. Chuck Norris had, since 2005, been canonized over Internet messageboards and in the MMORPG World of Warcraft through a phenomenon named “Chuck Norris Facts.” Each “fact” credits Norris with one of an array of improbable superpowers and special abilities, such as “Chuck Norris can sneeze with his eyes open,” and “Chuck Norris does not sleep, he waits.” Though Chuck Norris’ television celebrity has led him to even create his own style of martial arts, and his well-publicized conservative politics were what led him to endorse Mike Huckabee’s candidature, Huckabee uses Norris’ Internet celebrity, and not his television celebrity to back up his campaign through an ad called “HuckChuckFacts.” In the ad, footage of Huckabee reciting “Chuck Norris Facts” is juxtaposed with Chuck Norris reciting facts of his own about Mike Huckabee’s policies. This ad gained so much publicity that Mitt Romney responded with his own Chuck Norris-themed video, criticizing what he claims to be Huckabee’s weak stance on crime, and claiming Norris’ attitudes as his own. However, this video received far less publicity (Romney’s ad received under 100, 000 views on YouTube, as opposed to the over 1 million views of just one posting of Huckabee’s Chuck Norris video).

Huckabee makes several important claims in “HuckChuckFacts.” First, his use of Chuck Norris to endorse his political campaign appeals to fans of Walker,Texas Ranger, a show beloved by social conservatives due to its appeal to a sense of “moral values,” its genre (the Western), and its glorification of traditional individualistic modes of heroism, as well as of the justice system. Second, Huckabee also draws on Chuck Norris and Walker, Texas Ranger’s campy appeal, through the use of his final frame, “Chuck Norris Approved,” in which a freeze frame of Norris’ face is combined with over-the-top “western” motifs, including a fist-shaped burn hole where Norris has punched the screen. Third, Huckabee lays claim to a sort of Internet panache through his use of popular Chuck Norris Facts familiar to many technologically-inclined Americans. Though contemporary Internet front-runners would say that a 2005 phenomenon such as Chuck Norris Facts is remarkably out-of-date, the large majority of Internet-savvy Americans would most likely recognize Huckabee’s appeal to a sense of being “in touch” with modern technology and younger constituents.

Jenkins’ theories about convergence culture center mainly around what he sees as an upcoming struggle between producers and consumers over rights to the use of major media products. In his chapter, “Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars,” he seems to advise commercial producers that it would be in their best interest to allow fan producers almost free reign over media products, since their efforts often do more to promote the product in question than to challenge its validity or diminish its appeal. Jenkins also touches on the ways in which medial conglomerates try to harness and control the flow of fan productivity so that fan producers’ work becomes their property (Lucasfilm’s Star Wars web space, ex.), or so that they can police what content is allowed to be published (J.K. Rowling’s struggle with Harry Potter Lexicon author Steve Vander Ark, ex.). However, he spends much less time elaborating the ways in which major media producers can create their own products in traditionally fan-dominated media, such as digital video, using references derived from Internet popular culture, such as Huckabee’s reference to Chuck Norris Facts. Jenkins discusses how aspiring filmmakers such as George Lucas In Love co-creator Joseph Levy use the aura of a large media franchise like Star Wars to draw attention to their films, but he does not mention that big fish like Huckabee may be drawn to Internet culture icons like Chuck Norris in order to establish themselves as relevant to the everyday lives of a certain group of media users.

However, it is important to note that the Internet media that becomes profitable both for large media conglomerates and for grassroots producers themselves comes from a relatively small fraction of the overall Internet “population.” Jenkins’ chapter on Star Wars videos mentions the often gender-based disparity between producers of Lucasfilm-sanctioned “parody” videos, and Lucasfilm-condemned “fanfiction” videos. Similarly, the Chuck Norris Facts phenomenon was largely perpetuated by what Henry Jenkins calls “early adapters,” the members of the population most likely to respond to technological advancement. These early adapters are among the most privileged members of American society, since their financial resources and digital education allow them access to the latest hardware and software, as well as the know-how to use them in creative ways. It was these “early adapters” that moved Chuck Norris Facts from Conan O’ Brian Show segment, to messageboard joke to World of Warcraft application, and then rejected the phenomenon as out-of date. Jenkins may be arguing for more power to be placed in the hands of “consumers,” but which consumers will receive that power? Would this be a substantive change from the patterns of power and weakness observable more generally in American society?

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Important Questions to Consider:

1. Is Huckabee’s use of Chuck Norris Facts an expropriation by conservatives of a movement that was originally designed to poke fun at traditional ideals of heroism? If so, does media convergence actually undermine the revolutionary potential of oppositional (fan) readings?
2. Among the Republican candidates for the presidency, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney appealed to Chuck Norris’ Internet following, while Rudy Giuliani and John McCain did not. Is there something about a candidate that would make him/her more likely to publish ads on YouTube and make reference to Internet culture than others?
3. We mentioned the CNN YouTube debates above as another example of how politics and Internet media collide. In what ways have you experienced the influence of Internet media or Internet culture on the world of politics? Do you believe the Internet is making significant changes to the way politics is reported to or received by the public?

by Nicole Boyle and Lauren Smith

Our fan artifact is more of a whole fan infrastructure. The Organization of Transformative Works is an ongoing fan movement that began in 2007 as a response to a corporation’s attempt to set up a profitable online archive– called FanLib– for writers to post their fanfiction. Many fans reacted with outrage: Why should an organization of outsiders try to make a profit out of them? As we’ve discussed in class, fandom has historically resisted the idea of fans making a profit from their fannish writing; partially because of fear of legal prosecution, the tradition of fandom as a gift economy works as a self-policing moral imperative. Fans who attempt to charge for their fanfiction are almost universally condemned by their peers. FanLib’s attempt to profit from its “user-generated content”, therefore, was seen as an ultimate violation: a corporate organization in the realm of passionate amateurs, a board comprised of men in a traditionally female space, disregarding fandom’s pre-existing mores in– for the cherry on the cake– a condescending manner. (A BusinessWeek article notes: “The genius of FanLib is realizing that fans can be happy just being recognized“).

In reaction, a collection of fanfiction writers on LiveJournal (an enormous hub for media fandom on the internet) began to envision an “Archive of One’s Own“. This multifandom repository for fanfic was envisioned as a non-profit endeavor, run for fans by fans. As the fans’ plans coalesced, and a board for the nonprofit organization formed, their ambitions expanded. Under the new name The Organization of Transformative Works (OTW), they also started to plan for a wiki of fannish history and an academic journal about transformative works. Finally, the OTW took the unprecedented step of planning for a system of legal help for fans whose works come under attack for copyright violations. This is significant, because a large contribution to keeping fans and media fandom underground has been the fannish fear of legal action by the holders of copyrighted material.

To show that they were serious about this new organization, the board members attached their real names to the organization. (Note that Rebecca Tushnet, who we will be reading later on in the semester, is on the board). Also, to ensure that OTW never profited or became too controlled by a single fan, the board decided to apply for non-profit organizational status.

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The OTW’s incorporation has inspired many ripples of reaction around media fandom. Some fans’ reasons for joining/supporting the OTW (gathered from the OTW’s online newsletter) include:

Naomi Novik describes her reason for dedicating herself: I also care about this community that has welcomed me and given me a place to play and grow. I care about and value the creative work I have done here myself and that’s been made by others that I’ve enjoyed. So I am willing to be serious once in a while too, and to buckle down and do some real and not immediately fun work.

Kristina Busse argues from an acafan’s perspective: Context always matters, but rarely as much as it does in fan fiction, created within and meant for a specific community. If we can create an infrastructure that allows such contextualization of individual stories, we might be a long step toward not everyone trying to find the most ridiculous out there example for a story in order to mock both it and fandom through it.

Dafna Greer cares about the public record:I’m tired of journalists getting everything about fandom wrong. I don’t just mean the simple stuff, like what slash is, or that we’re not all 12 (or 45, or whatever the narrative is that week), I mean the whole context of fandom. You have journalists writing about mash-ups as if vidding never existed and about user-generated content as if it was something invented 2 years ago. It’s just embarrassing. Not as a fan, mind you. It’s embarrassing as a journalist.

Speranza wants autonomy for fans, not free content for outsider corporations: The OTW is created on the model of public television or public radio–Channel 13, as we have it in New York. It’s free. There are no ads. Anyone can watch it or listen to it. And a few people who care about public television and who can afford it become ‘members’–you remember the slogan: ‘this is member-supported NPR, this is member-supported Channel 13.’ And so I’m happy to contribute my time, money, and energy to help fans buy servers and write software and keep our ’social network’ a real community. And I hope you will, too.

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Of course, not all fans champion the OTW. The long history of fandom being an underground subculture made some fans wary of change: for example, ethrosdemon relishes the subcultural aspect of media fandom, along a model like Dick Hebdige’s: “Anyway, I didn’t make the choice to bring fandom to the blinding light of day, but in the same breath, I’m not ashamed of it. Yes, we are a subculture obsessed with buttsex, incest, noncon, bestiality, and inside jokes. That’s the appeal, frankly. The SUBcultural aspect is what unites us,” she writes.

Some fans criticized the narrow focus of the OTW:

Purplepopple complains that the OTW will pay too much attention to certain parts of fandom: “Fannish works predate the 1970s. They did not all grow out from the same cultural shared heritage. They were not all tied in to English speaking, Anglo-centric fandom. The concept of fandom predates Star Trek and Harry Potter was not the second biggest most influential fandom after Star Trek.”

Boogieshoes takes issue with OTW’s focus on feminism: “1) i really *don’t* value fandom as a female dominated space – i’d be doing this if there were no girls here tomorrow, and i’d be happy and 2) frankly, *i’d* rather be valued for *what i contribute* than for a genetic quirk i can’t actually control.”

spare_change and Rat Creature points out the problems they have with being represented by acafans: “I don’t think that acafen are the only ones dragging fandom into the public eye. I think that the way they are doing so, however, is just as lame, unrepresentative, and self-serving as FanLib or any ‘look at those wackos’ article on a mainstream news site, though, so I don’t see why I should support them any more than any of the other ways fandom gets publicized.”

For some fans, the OTW’s visibility actives the real fear that fannish activities could hold repercussions for one’s personal life. (In Ethan Zuckerman’s post introducing the OTW, he mentions The Church of Subgenius Custody Case, a similar circumstance in which a woman’s online activities impacted her child custody case).

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Finally, sympathetic outsiders to media fandom also reacted to the formation of the new organization:

Ethan Zuckerman, mentioned above, thought it was a good idea: “It’s a fascinating new proto-nonprofit determined to defend media fandom from the excesses of copyright and to help fanfic writers and vidders maintain control of their remixed works.”

BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow also came out in favor of the organization: “This is such a good idea. When Naomi [Novik] described it at the WorldCon at a panel that we were on together, I wrote her a check on the spot for $500 to fund the org. I hope she cashes it now that they’ve formally announced.”

The Institute for the Future of the Book agreed: “All looks very promising.”

Bob Rehak himself is on the board of the academic journal: “The editors, Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson, have kindly invited me to participate on the editorial review board; I accepted with pleasure.”

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We consider the OTW’s incorporation significant because it represents an unprecedented move in media fandom. We’ve talked in class about capitalistic mainstream forces absorbing fan culture– in the manner Dick Hebdige mentioned mainstream fashion absorbing, and taming, punk style– but the OTW came about because a team of fans refused to let themselves become fodder for a FanLib, capitalist organization. Instead, they organized for their own purposes. The OTW is part of the rising visibility of media fandom, just as is the fact that Swarthmore College is offering this class. Sounds cool? Maybe you should write a paper about it and submit it to the journal!

For our fan artifact, we found two pieces of media that we felt exemplified this week’s reading, both related to Beauty and the Beast.

The first is a video from an online fan documentary entitled Beauty and the Beast: 20 Years of Remembering, which explores Beauty and the Beast fandom as it exists presently. Specifically, we were struck by the second chapter: the second chapter (link is to a 63 Mb .mp4, just to warn you), Blame it on the Beast, described thusly:

“He was looking for his Catherine. She was looking for her Vincent. Despite the three thousand miles that first separated them, Nicholas and Jennifer Thalasinos of Colton, California managed to find the loves of their lives thanks to Beauty and the beast and an Internet bulletin board.”

We noticed the connections that these two fans chose to draw between a television show and their real lives. Jenkins on page 107 explores the concept of “emotional realism” and the need for fan texts to be emotionally applicable to the lives of fans. Especially interesting was the inclusion of imagery from September 11th as an analogous danger to that which Catherine faces in the pilot episode and from which she is rescued and comforted by Vincent. Jennifer describes Nicholas as a comforting presence, who “really took care of her”, during this time of “emotional trauma”. The two were in L.A. at the time — Nicholas did not in fact rescue Jennifer from the WTC, but the two apply the narrative to their relationship regardless, fitting with Jenkins’ theory. Furthermore, Nicholas proposed to Jennifer at tunnel entrance similar to the Tunnel World where Vincent and his ilk dwell.

Secondly, we found a piece of fanfiction called Of Love and Magic, a crossover between Beauty and the Beast, Labyrinth (the David Bowie one), Gargoyles (the mid-90s animated series that has a bizarre number of parallels with BatB), The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Misérables, and Phantom of the Opera. This fic elevates three cult fan texts that the academy might situate as being lower on the hierarchy of taste by juxtaposing them with three classical works of literature. Furthermore, its premise of a happily-ever-after ending changes and indeed challenges the meanings found in both the text itself and the explicit wishes of the producers (especially of BatB). In five of these six texts, the romances are tragically unfulfilled: the romantic heroines (Catherine, Sarah, Elisa, Esmeralda, and Christine) are separated forever from their outcast romantic heroes (respectively Vincent, Jareth, Goliath, Quasimodo, and the Phantom). Les Mis is the only exception to the rule. In Chapter 4 of Textual Poachers, Jenkins discusses the idea of reading generically and the expectations on the part of fan readers that that entails. In this example, Lady Rosesong and her readers have interpreted these texts as part of the fairy tale tradition and therefore expect the conventions thereof to be represented. They choose to fix producers’ “errors” by constructing alternate narratives of the texts; in some cases these “correct” fan readings replace the producers’ intended meanings. This model of generic reading and “correction” can be seen in both fanfiction and the application of fan narratives to the fans’ own lives.

The first thing that one notices when watching the “Get A Life” Saturday Night Live skit with William Shatner is its disparaging portrayal of Star Trek fans. In the first part of the sketch—which unfortunately we were unable to locate—“one man laughs maliciously about a young fan he has just met who doesn’t know Yeoman Rand’s cabin number” (Jenkins, 9). We thus see fans portrayed as collectors of trivial and obscure bits of knowledge from the canon, who establish a social hierarchy within the fan community based on the mastery of this knowledge. The implication is of course that the fans are “losers” in real life and therefore turn to fandom for an opportunity to be “winners”, in this case to secure a high rank within this social hierarchy. The other implication is that this knowledge is of little use aside from being an indicator of fan status and that these people are wasting their time focusing on it.

As Henry Jenkins notes, William Shatner’s tirade in this skit expresses and enforces common stereotypes about fans, particularly Trekkers. Shatner describes Star Trek fans as immature and socially inept beings who instead of leading productive lives in the real world, live vicariously in a fantasy one structured around a particular text. But the scathing portrayal of Trekkers doesn’t end with this rant; when Shatner returns and tells the crowd that everything they just witnessed was actually a “recreation of the evil Captain Kirk from episode 37, ‘The Enemy Within’”, they accept this all too willingly. The implication is that the Star Trek fans are gullible and eager to crawl back into their fantasy world and escape the truths of reality once again.

At a second glance, Saturday Night Live’s “Get A Life” sketch may appear to be fannish, even as its most obvious message is anti-fan. It is using a popular text (Star Trek, and Shatner’s portrayal of Captain Kirk) to craft its own meanings, and is somewhat subversive in the process; consider Shatner’s exasperated return to the podium at the insistence of the booking agent. The joke, in the end, was not only on the fans, but on Shatner (whose message in the sketch is that of the dominant culture). This pro-fan reading does not so much contradict Jenkins’ reading as it does expand the reading by altering the focus of analysis, a fan tactic in itself.

Despite the fannish character of the sketch’s ideology, SNL’s methodology shows it to be operating on a level that is more strategic than tactical. The studio had the funds to secure Shatner as a performer and had the airtime on a broadcast medium that reached thousands. Either of these would have been out of reach for a fan community of the time. The Trekkers of today are equipped with such a broadcast medium, so it makes sense that they would use it to reinvent the “Get A Life” sketch (see the b/w recut below posted below), to defend their reputations. That a self-proclaimed “hard fan of the Star Trek series” (see “About This Video” here) would post this video is a mystery to me—indeed, without this fan, the “Get A Life” sketch in its original (if pared-down) form would not be easy to find. Is the posting of this video an acknowledgment of existing stereotypes? An instance of pointing out “extreme otherness” to justify one’s own “relative normality” (Jenkins 19)? Maybe even ironic fandom of the very thing that is othering fans?

The sketch:

The fan rewrite: