Fan Culture @ Swarthmore

So, for those of you wondering what Bob was doing with his Thursday off, I present to you a conference (and here it is on Bob’s blog). I’m sure all of you who already follow his blog knew this, but I figured it was worth posting in the class blog too.

Bob’s going to be heading a follow up panel about gender and fandom in Santa Barbara that continues a discussion about Gender and Fan Studies (link goes to the initial post, here’s part the first) that Henry Jenkins hosted last summer. Bob’s going to be talking about how Blueprint Culture is gendered, touching on the recent Harry Potter Lexicon legal dispute. It seems like a lot of cool people (including Julie Levin Russo) will also be giving interesting talks about gender, fandom, vidding, soap opera, wresting, wizard rock (which, in a very simplified condensed explanation, means rock songs about Harry Potter), and the fanboy/fangirl terminology, all of which on the website. I’m excited, and I hope Bob’ll report back to us when the conference is over.

Also, we apparently made Bob comfortable with threaded comments. Go team us!

So I thought that the screening on Tuesday was really interesting. It struck me as very different from Trekkies, although that might be because I’ve never been a Star Trek fan. The film blurred the boundaries between the fans and the producers in a much more obvious way, where you had interviews with people who were almost professional fans, who were also producers of books about Tolkien and about the LOTR movies. Having Dominic Monaghan (who played Merry in the films) do the narration also created a really strong link in my mind between the officially sanctioned movie and the fan produced Ringers. Many of the interviews with the actors strongly reminded me of the interview extras on the DVDs to the extent that I almost felt during the movie that I *was* watching an extra. Also, if I remember correctly the company that distributed Ringers is also somehow linked to one of the companies involved in LOTR?

However, the film clearly also had roots in online fandoms and places outside the official domain of the film. It was produced by the TORN people, and had a detailed section on The Very Secret Diaries, which was a huge internet phenomenon. There was talk about Lord of the Peeps (also in the reading), and many of the fans interviewed mentioned the importance of the internet to their fannish activity. I personally spent a lot of the film looking at the watercolor art work, being sure that I recognized it from somewhere, and tracked it down to Anke Katrin Eissmann. The mild, though surprising, criticism of the materialism surrounding the LOTR films is not something that I think would have appeared in the actual films.

I wonder if part of the differences between the two movies can be traced to the emergence of the large internet fandoms between Trekkies (1997) and Ringers (2005). Do we think that the two movies would have looked more alike if they were made closer together? Or is it simply that they were investigating different fan bases? Is there even a significant difference between the two fandoms (remember that one guy dressed up in Trek costume, and I’m pretty sure one costume was supposed to be Obi-Wan Kenobi)? Does anyone else feel like there’s an important differences between the two films? Random other things about Ringers that I should have talked about but didn’t?

As requested, a link to the stream of the ep:

http://stnv.dragonfly.com/STNV-WEAT.html

And from the New Voyages site so you have the option of torrenting it:

http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/episode_weat.html

Enjoy!

Slate has a great article on the popular “democratic” websites, like Wikipedia, Digg, and Slashdot. The article looks into the myth that these sites are democratic, equal-opportunity, and created by a large number of people. It shows research that indicates that sites like Wikipedia and Digg are actually run by a very small number of people: 1% of Wikipedia users and about 100 Digg users. These people not only write most of the content, but hold controlling administrative positions with the power to control who submits, edits, and can post to the front page.  

Additionally, the article mentions that these sites have a very hierarchical structure, especially wikipedia, with its many levels of administrators. This isn’t necessarily a harsh criticism, but its something we must take into account.We must be wary of describing any “democratic” culture, including fan cultures and movements. We have to question how many people were actually at the core of the culture. When we talk about trekkies and reference the documentary we saw, are we really talking about “trekkies”, or are we talking about a small subset that’s holding all the sway in how this culture is ideologically interpreted? We have to question how we’re defining fans based on the fan groups we examine, and whether or not we’re excluding a more silent majority. 

The FreeCulture convention I was talking about in class is called ROFLCon. It’s run by FreeCulture Harvard. Their goal is to bring every famous internet celebrity they can. The catch is that the person must only be famous because of the internet. For example, the LOLCat Bible guy is coming.

I’m going to try to get funding to go. If you’re interested, get in touch with me at bmazer1 or in class.

Hey folks,

I don’t know if anyone here used to watch the old cartoon Freakazoid, but there was a character named “Fanboy” who was pretty much exactly what you would expect from a character named Fanboy. Here is Fanboy’s Ode to Leonard Nimoy (courtesy of YouTube). There are probably other Fanboy vids out there if you search for “Fanboy” and “Freakazoid” on YouTube.

I think this is a great example of fan representation in the media, not to mention its relevance for the stuff about fan culture and gender we’ve been talking about. Personally, I’m also interested in the relationship between fans and the people on who they attach their fandom, and in this video is one, um, point of view that I don’t really ascribe to. Anyways, it’s not as deep as some of the other stuff going on in the blog, but I rememered it from probably 10 years ago, so maybe it’ll stick in an interesting way with other people, too.

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.

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

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 

That site I mentioned in class, www.superdickery.com, is hilarious — but, be forewarned, NWS.

Also, for context’s sake, Boing Boing.

Aaaaand the problematic nature of my dashboard page at the moment — is this how everyone else’s looks? Note how I don’t have links to edit the blogroll or pages, etc.

fanculturedashboard.JPG (<– click)