Fan Culture @ Swarthmore

To get the ball rolling for our discussion tomorrow, I’ve created this post for you to talk about the TV series and episodes you watched this week. What show did you choose? What drew you to it? Which episodes did you watch, and how did you like them? What connections can you draw between the activities of “fan critics” described in Jenkins and your own take on the texts?

First, a note about tonight’s screening: due to rotten weather, I handed projection duties over to Natan, whose own schedule will make it necessary to screen Trekkies before “Amok Time.” (I had planned to show them the other way around, but I want to respect Natan’s needs.) You won’t be watching the slash vid “Closer” at tonight’s screening, so please view it on your own before Thursday’s class. Lauren has posted an immensely valuable guide to the “Closer” debate and provided a number of resources on fan vids, so please check out her post before you watch the vid.

As usual, feel free to respond to any of the prompts below with your comments, or raise other questions / share other perceptions about the week’s screening and articles.

• Trekkies sets out to document the Star Trek fan community. What are some of the strengths and weaknesses of its approach? How would you characterize its overall take on media fandom? And what similarities and differences do you see between Trekkies and other “portraits” we’ve been exposed to, from Shatner’s “Get a Life” sketch and Jenkins’s recuperation of it to the more “objective” accounts offered by Radway and Seiter?
• Can you place Trekkies (which was released in 1997) on the time scale of fan studies offered in the introduction to Fandom (“fandom is beautiful” and so on)? How does the documentary’s rhetorical position reflect a particular moment of mainstream culture’s reaction to media fans?
• How are the fans featured in Trekkies creative? What kinds of material practices characterize their fandom?
• Picking up on our discussion of authority, how are various kinds of authority invoked in the film? What role do Trek’s professionals (writers, actors, etc) play in establishing this authority?
• Once you have watched both “Amok Time” and “Closer” (and followed some of the links provided by Lauren), can you evaluate the vid as an instance of what Jenkins calls “poaching”? How does it differ from the kinds of fan activity described in Chapters 1 & 2 of Textual Poachers?
• Given your experience of fandom (as participant or observer), where do you see poaching happening today? Does the poaching model still hold up? How could we revise/improve it?
• Chapter 2 of Textual Poachers identifies a number of reading traits associated with “excessive” fandom: the collapse of critical distance; the in-depth study of a show; the recording and remixing of media; gossip. Do you see these behaviors reflected in contemporary fandom? How have they been transformed in the years since 1992? Do the technologies available to fans play a role?
• Finally, what did you think of the Star Trek episode? (I’m particularly interested to hear reactions from people who have never seen the 1960s series!) Can you imagine yourself in the various interpretive and affective positions of the historical fan? Does the show “scan” for you as a fan object?

Below are some questions you might write about in relation to Nurse Betty and/or the week’s readings. Feel free to respond to any of them here, or to raise other questions / share other perceptions about the film and articles.

• As I suggested in class on Tuesday, Nurse Betty has some similarities to Love and Death on Long Island: both seem to address the phenomenon of fandom, yet both do unexpected (and problematic) things with the idea of attachment and immersion in media texts and characters. Where do you see the two films “agreeing” and “disagreeing” in their conception of fandom? To what degree do these portrayals ring true for you, and where do they break down?
• Betty’s quest is triggered by trauma, suggesting that her “mission” is about escape into fantasy as much as in pursuit of a new life. What is the film saying about the psychology of fandom? Is Betty’s journey ultimately a positive and healthy one?
• Gender is very much on the table in Nurse Betty, as are — to a lesser degree — race and class. Where do you see the film addressing difference and identity, and when/where does it choose not to address them?
• What light do the Radway and Seiter articles shed on Nurse Betty? How closely do the readers of romance novels studied by Radway and the soap opera audiences studied by Seiter et al match up with what the film presents? What might account for the differences?

I’ve taken the feedback you gave me during the first week of class — questions and areas of interest for the study of fandom — and turned them into a new page, accessible from the “Questions” tab above. In transcribing your responses, I made a few small adjustments for clarity, and arranged everything in clusters of shared themes. I invite you to edit the page and adjust these categories as you see fit, adding new ones and focusing others; in addition, you can always modify the questions themselves. My hope is that the class’s questions will provide a framework for our ongoing discussions, especially as we get more deeply into the semester and trends start to emerge.

I thought I’d extend our discussion of the aesthetic/sexual desire dichotomy in Love and Death On Long Island a little bit. I brought up Death in Venice, a story that revolves around a writer’s lusting after a young boy because of his “Greek” beauty, but perhaps his desire is more sexual (if we can even claim a difference).

Love and Death on Long Island actually extends these questions in a more subtle way than the classic novel because of the support characters it adds to the “original” story. We haven’t addressed the question of Ronnie’s girlfriend. One could claim that she was infatuated with Giles (and is it sexual or the aesthetic “he is really British”?). Later she seems angry with him or jealous. What is her relationship with Giles like, and how aware of it is he? He is perhaps taking advantage of it.

Additionally, what about the diner owner? Is there a homoerotic element in his relationship with Giles? Most of the relationships in this film are ambiguous (Greg and I discussed the film after viewing and decided that, indeed, it’s all pretty ambiguous. I like our interpretation). Feel free to comment on this post to continue the discussion related to any of the desire questions.

But is this just “meaning building” about the film? Why are we asking these interpretive/intentional questions? This film is very much one of Barthes’ “writerly” texts. It intentionally solicits multiple interpretations. More importantly, however, I see a reflexive quality in the film about its very ambiguity. Giles in his relationship with Ronnie is consciously shaping the experience (presenting it as “chance”). The “text” of the relationship is open to manipulation by people who are traditionally “passive.” Giles wanted this type of relationship and was able to make it happen. We can perhaps all relate in the way we approach our lives as an aesthetic text to be “read” (mere passive reflection) but also shaped into the piece of art we desire it to be.

Before we leave the fanifestos behind us, I’d like to invite you to share your perceptions of the larger patterns organizing the responses. In other words, while I asked in class about your feelings on writing/reading the fanifestos, I’m wondering if now we can draw out some of the common threads and key differences in content.

For example, I was struck by the number of times that parents and siblings (as well as friends) were invoked as “initiators” or “gatekeepers” of fandom: giving you particular books or movies, taking you to concerts or sports events, or sharing their own fan identities (e.g. coming out as a closet Trekkie). This phenomenon, it seems to me, moves us from text to (cultural) context, highlighting the ways in which fandoms are passed on between generations, or among peer groups. And it emphasizes the social aspect of fan activity.

Do you have any thoughts on this or other meaningful patterns in the fanifestos?

Here are some topics and questions to keep in mind while watching Love and Death on Long Island. Feel free to respond to any of them here, or to raise other questions / share other perceptions about the film.

• How is this a movie about fans and fandom — i.e. what is its particular characterization or “take” on the phenomenon? (Some things you might want to think about here: characterization of individuals, of mass and elite culture, the fan’s values, the lifestyle or “etiology” of fandom.)
• What does the film say about texts and the uses we put them to (or that they put us to)?
• What is the role of desire in the film? (Keep in mind the many ways that desire might be defined or measured, from sexual orientation to poetic longing or textual investment.)
• What relationship does the film suggest between “high” and “low” culture? Between aesthetics and value?
• How might the film itself be “readable” as a fan text, whether we consider that to mean “a text that lends itself to fannish investment” or “a text that is a product of fannish investment”?

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A general policy for screenings: please silence cell phones or other potential distractions to the viewing experience; have pen and paper or laptop in front of you to jot down notes, questions, and reactions. You will find it extremely helpful to have your notes as a memory aid during discussion on Thursday.

Comment on this post with your fanifesto. The deadline for this is Monday, Jan 28, at noon, so we all have a chance to read each others’ fanifestos in advance of Tuesday’s class.