Fan Culture @ Swarthmore

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?

so i’m not sure why i didn’t just do this before but i reserved the family viewing room (3rd floor mccabe) for the rest of the semester.

so now alternate screenings will take place each wednesday and will start at 7:45 (please get there early so we can start AT 7:45)…

thanks and see you there!

Here are some thoughts to help synthesize this week’s readings and screenings. As always, feel free to use the comments section to explore or go beyond these prompts.

• Star Trek: New Voyages (a k a Star Trek: Phase II) seems to illustrate key points of Chris Anderson’s “Long Tail” thesis: it’s the product of newly “democratized” tools of digital video production, it’s distributed via online channels to the specific audience that seeks it out, and it represents the collaborative blending of amateur and professional talent. At the same time, the show’s near-religious allegience to the established Star Trek franchise suggests that the coming era of grassroots media production may play out along the same branded, consumerist lines as always. What do you think the show indicates about contemporary media authors and audiences? Do you see it as an anomaly, part of a coming trend, or something else entirely?
• Rebecca Tushnet discusses the legal definition of “transformative works.” Where might New Voyages fall in the taxonomy she lays out? In what ways does the participatory culture of the New Voyages makers complicate our ideas of copyright and intellectual/artistic property, if at all? Finally, how would you compare the New Voyages to slash vids, fan fiction, and other types of fan creativity we’ve looked at?
• Galaxy Quest presents us with yet another fantasy of texts “coming to life,” but does so with frank acknowledgment of the tawdry backstage end of franchises: aging actors struggling to make ends meet by appearing at conventions and bank openings. The film, in other words, seems as much about the business of fandom as it is about fans themselves. It also appears to be concerned with the importance of community (here figured as different types of “family”) to fan belief and practice. Does Galaxy Quest seem to shed a different light on the pictures of fan identity and fandom we’ve seen previously? What does it say about contemporary culture that a mainstream science-fiction comedy film on this subject was greenlit and released to audiences (and to pretty good box office)?
• Going back to points raised in today’s discussion (and perhaps between the lines of Jenkins’s “Afterword” and Kristina Busse’s essay), how does gender factor into both New Voyages and Galaxy Quest? Are these texts parables, in different ways and on different levels, of “boys and their toys”? How do women figure into their narratives, and what implicit messages/meanings about gender are constructed thereby?

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!

So, I have a few thoughts after tonight’s (most excellent) slash video screening that are largely related to the brief discussion we had a couple of weeks ago about the insularity of the slash community, i.e., should/do non-slashers have the right to view slash vids without a proper context/introduction and make what they will of them? (Apologies if I repeat some of the points I already made in my comment on Ariel’s post from awhile ago, but I feel like this topic was incompletely discussed.)

While I appreciate Lauren and Nicole’s close reading of the slash videos, I am not convinced that you need to have a specific, slash-oriented introduction to understand the videos. Eye contact to imply a relationship, the paralleling of violence and sexuality, the conjunction of specific song lyrics with characters and actions–all of these are things that a reasonable critical person could read out of a slash video knowing nothing about slash. Taking intro to film might help, but I don’t think even a “normal” (uncritical) viewer could mistake the meaning of a video like Closer, even if they knew nothing about slash.

To follow up on that, I think that “normal” people can produce slash, even if they are not working within the slash community, per se. I’m a big fan of the nonexclusivity of categories, so I (respectfully) disagree with Lauren’s categorization of “Brokeback to the Future” as being resolutely not a vid. Although I think the point about the different social/artistic traditions vids and parody-trailers come out of was a good one, “Brokeback to the Future” used many of the elements we discussed as being integral to slash-vids–they eye-contact between the characters establishing a relationship, their physical touching, the clever use of material outside of the source (in the other vids, the song lyrics; in this vid, the relationship to the “Brokeback Mountain” trailer)–all of these things scream “VID!” to me. There’s also nothing that indicates that the comedy troupe who produced this video did not have a slasher among them. If that were the case, would that make this a vid? Why can’t it be both a vid and a parody movie trailer, authorship aside (the same way Shakespeare, for example, is both a great classic and pop culture, depending on the tradition from which you read it)?

Finally, my impression about the controversy surrounding non-slashers viewing slash was that the problem wasn’t that non-slashers couldn’t understand the basic content of slash videos (who has a relationship with whom, is that relationship happy/sad/repressed/violent, etc.), but that they understood the videos perfectly well and didn’t like the way the characters were used and/or the way sexuality was expressed (violently, homosexually, for example). I’ve already elaborated my thoughts on this issue below, but to bring up a few that seem especially relevant now: At what point are you a slasher–when do you gain the authority to create a vid, view a vid, show other people how to view a vid? Is it even possible to define this category? Can we really categorically say that the Brokeback to the Future folks can’t interpret vids properly, when they used so many techniques of veteran vidders? Is every vid sacred? Why can’t we (“normal people”)  look at vids that show violence against women and say, That’s not okay? Can only vidders themselves do this (like “Women’s Work”)? What about vids that show pedophilic relationships? Are we assuming that once you’re a “vidder” or part of that community (if we can decide what that means), you interpret these vids in the same way? Or is your opinion okay no matter what it is, just as long as you’re a vidder, and that’s what counts?

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?

Please note these changes to the reading & screening lineup for next week:

Reading: Textual Poachers chapters 3 & 4 (“Fan Critics” & “Not A Fairy Tale”). Save chapter 5 (“Scribbling in the Margins”) for week 6.

Screening: Rather than gathering everyone together on Tuesday night, I would like you to view this week’s material on your own time. Here’s the plan: go to the library and view two episodes of either Beauty and the Beast or Twin Peaks. (Both box sets are on reserve at McCabe.) You can do this anytime up till Thursday’s class. On Thursday, we’ll split into groups to discuss the texts and fan-reading strategies of the different series, based on the episodes you chose to watch.

I’m making these changes after reviewing the Jenkins chapters and deciding that next week will be most productive if we collectively put together a “big picture” of the TV texts: comparing our impressions and noting patterns across multiple episodes, rather than working from a singular text as we did with “Amok Time.”

Please let me know if you have any questions about this change in plans. And as always, thanks for being flexible …

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?

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.

My apologies to those of you who, for whatever reason, couldn’t make tonight’s screening of Love and Death on Long Island for writing this post… Maybe come back here after tomorrow night’s viewing?

For those of you who did make it tonight, I’ve been kind of mulling this over for the past three or so hours: what was it about Giles’s behavior that was so funny?

I laughed throughout the entire film, not at the hilarity of the characters/situation, but rather at how uncomfortable I felt watching Giles and his growing obsession with Ronnie/Jason Priestley. In retrospect, I can’t think of a single thing Giles did that I didn’t do at the height of my fandom participation (apart from stalking the hometown of my favorite celeb): I watched movies/read books repetively, bought any magazine that had a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio in it, memorized every little detail of his/her personal life, made a scrapbook, enjoyed fanart that was, if not as graphic, more graphic than what he was producing. That about covers it all. Granted, the character of Giles was an exaggeration of such fan activity. Uh…a HUGE one at that.

Was it that exaggeration that had me squirming in my seat? Was I embarrassed at the parts of Gile’s behavior that I saw as being reflective of my own activities? Or was I uncomfortable watching a stodgy, old British intellectual engaging in behavior that would fall into what one would expect of a thirteen year old fangirl? (And yes, that final question falls into the debate of gendered fanroles [fanboy vs. fangirl] that was briefly alluded to in Tuesday’s class!]

Or was he just a weird and awkward stalker dude who deserves no sympathy from the fan community and should be shunned for giving us a bad name?

Those are just a few personal questions I’ve been going over since the viewing. I’m interested in hearing, or reading, what you guys thought of the film.