Fan Culture @ Swarthmore

I love Lord of the Rings and reread the novel every December. That said, I will say that Tolkien can be a fairly dry writer. Still, he makes some interesting points in this article about challenging the assumptions connecting fantasy literature with children. I happen to enjoy reading fantasy a great deal and am drawn, like Kathy, almost exclusively to series that I can become invested in and that have fleshed out worlds to explore. I think Tolkien’s assessments about the value of fantasy stories in general are compelling and certainly describe my engagement with fantasy literature.

At the same time, when it comes to his works in particular, I was drawn to them at a very young age and return to the stories yearly not only to explore the world one more time, but also because of nostalgic associations reading Lord of the Rings brings. The direction the class went in today with regard to using vaguely intellectual reasons to justify enjoyment of certain texts, especially fan texts, is also relevant to my own experience. Whenever I mention LotR to someone I don’t really know, I first bring up my respect for Tolkien as a philologist and his work in devising the languages and cultural history of his world before I mention liking the story itself. Because of that childhood nostalgia and that noticeable shame about my LotR fandom, I wonder to what extent I have absorbed the pervasive assumptions of a link between childhood and fantasy. What other activities and texts (particularly ones with large fan followings) are similarly associated with childishness? I mean childishness in particular and not just fringe and strange…

hey…. so i’m certain (and hope) people will feel free to talk about whatever they please here – including questions raised at the end about the commercial aspect of porn, and the fine line between accepted forms of pornography and slash… etc. etc.

but i have  a few questions that were sparked by today’s conversation that i guess have been simmering under the surface for some time that i’d like to spew here – and i’d love to hear your thoghts.

first, to build on the point of anthropological representation that bizzy brought up… I know that more frequently today throughout the field of anthropology, scholars are struggling with the “right”/”best” process of representing the Other to minimalize objectification/exotification/etc. – to the point that few scholars have taken the extreme stance that they cannot/should not be allowed to produce works about anyone outside of the group that the anthropologist identifies with… (I can’t remember for the life of me which theorists argue which points but both Jay Ruby (ch 8!) and Terence Turner add compelling insight to the discourse surrounding representation.) ANYWAY – applying this crucial debate to fan productions and slash has raised a series of interesting questions for me:

- do slashers (specifically heterosexual women) even have the right to create this politically charged, self-serving portrayal of homosexuality/homoeroticism (even when readers understand that it is taking place in a fictional realm) when they themselves do not identify with the identities being objectified?

- if so, then do slashers need to be actively engaging in the  political discourse surrounding their practices instead of maybe shying away from them by keeping the mass media and public away?

- do slashers have a political/social responsibility to their queer subject matter? (this reminds me of some of the discussion we had when considering the subversive nature of subcultures… and if fan production isn’t actually a political statement but just pure enjoyment and so on…)

i also worry that by even asking these questions i’m perpetuating something similar to what ariel mentioned when comparing how lesbian porn and men’s consumption of it is not analyzed with critical vigor as slash… but is instead socially acceptable (to a degree) and financially lucrative to boot.

but alas, i am left with this unnerving sense of the denial/ignorance of the potential power of slash if we just leave this paradoxical debate with: “it’s just hott.”

One of the most intriguing things brought up in class today, to me, was Abby’s question of why fans feel like they get to prefer meanings and control access when they take that very ability away from producers. I came up with three answers:

1. Fandom is dangerous. Maybe the obscenity suit was a bit of an exaggeration (^^;;;), but imagine if the people who made Closer were kindergarten teachers. Now imagine if their principals, or parents in their communities saw this video. There would be hell to pay, not only for this but for a lot of slash and explicit fic. There are a lot of jobs and positions in society where saying “I write/draw/edit gay and/or fetish porn about fictional characters/actors/musicians/newscasters” will get you ostracized if not fired (see, this isn’t an exaggeration; note that this website about Internet crime has articles about fic on LJ). One of the primary uses of the fan community really is self-protection, at the very least from people thinking you’re weird, but on a very real level, to protect people who write Snarry from being perceived as people who would actually tie children up in dungeons and molest them. Within fandom, you get to label things with proper warnings, both to protect the producer of the fan text and to protect anyone who might not want to read it (anyone from people like Jamison, experienced fans who don’t want their souls tarnished, to actual honest-to-god innocent children). Especially concerning slash, one of the major things that slashers learn is that we’re doing things with characters that might really upset other fans, who are very invested in a different view of the text (not that they’re not doing the same to us sometimes). And, hearkening back to my fanifesto, fandom is in some sense about caring and emotional investment: we don’t want to harsh on other people’s squee by letting them accidentally read something that they don’t want to see, and we don’t want them to harsh on our squee in response.

2. Texts are produced in a capitalistic system and fan texts are not, by and large. We pay for books and movies and we watch commercials during TV, which means that we’re giving something in fair exchange for a text. In some sense, viewers “own” the text, then. If you buy a painting, the painter has no place to say that you can’t scribble all over it in crayon, because you own it, it’s your property. I think a similar thing happens with fan texts: once we invest our time and money, the text is fair game (I’m saying nothing about the actual legal definition of fair use, though). Fan texts, however, are not paid for, they are shared. You wouldn’t scribble all over a painting in someone else’s house that they’re letting you see, so why would you mess with the meaning of something shared with you (rather than bought by you)? I’m not trying to make this argument necessarily the most logical thing, but more to explain and perhaps justify a feeling of violation on the part of creators of fan works.

3. This is more an exception than an explanation, really: there are times when fans are totally okay with people re-interpreting their works. For example, there’s a practice known as “remixing” in which authors write a missing scene or a different perspective or just generally a re-interpretation of others’ fic. However, remixing is entirely consensual, as it were: authors agree to have their fic remixed. There are conventions for this sort of thing. This, to me, is a huge trend in fandom: anyone is perfectly welcome, as long as they play by the rules (for example, these LJ etiquette rules, all of which were familiar to me but had never been spoken to me at all).

I know a lot of people have been sort of tossing around the topic of Beatles fandom for a while without us ever really addressing it, and I just watched Across the Universe this weekend, so the topic’s been on my mind.  It seems to me that music fandom can take two slightly different shapes: fan activity centering on the musical artists and fan activity centering on the music itself.  The former is like any kind of celebrity culture: you can engage with singers the same way you can engage with actors, mostly (in my opinion, anyway).  But engaging with music is totally different from engaging with movies or TV.  Covers and remixes, for example, are clearly fannish activities.

But what about the Beatles, specifically?  How would we classify Across the Universe, a musical with all Beatles songs (similar to Mamma Mia and…that one with Billy Joel songs, only far more awesome)?  What about Love, a Cirque du Soleil show with an entirely Beatles soundtrack?  If we’re looking at fandom as a subculture (as suggested, perhaps, by the Hebdige article), how do we deal with the fact that the Beatles are so universally canonized (in both the canon/fanon sense and the made-a-saint sense)?  As far as I know, it’s often seen as weird to *not* like the Beatles, which is a little counterintuitive as far as fandom goes.  I think this also ties in very closely with the distinction between fandom and…inspiration or influence.  We can’t say that everyone who’s been influenced by Orson Welles or Francis Ford Coppola is necessarily a fan of theirs.  So what of all the people who started bands because of the Beatles (or REM, or Nirvana, or Pearl Jam, or Green Day, or whoever)?  If you’re writing an original song in the style of the Beatles, is it fannish or just inspired-by?  Or both?  Rufus Wainwright did a concert a few months ago that was all Judy Garland songs, because he idolizes her so much, but that was called a tribute concert, not a fan concert.  Is there a difference?

There’s also the question of concerts — personally, I’ve had some of the most communal experiences of my life at concerts, and if an integral part of fandom is community then that definitely counts as fandom.  I’d posit that music festivals are in some sense analogous to conventions, but having never been to one, it’s hard to say.