Fan Culture @ Swarthmore

I had a question for the panels today that did not seem to fit into the flow of conversation, so I thought I’d pose it on the blog. We’ve explored the impact of new media technologies and convergence culture as they relate to other fandoms, but I was wondering about their relationship with music fandom.

 It seems that new media is probably brought up more in regards to music than other products, but only from the perspective of legal ramifications of downloading and the effect those practices have on the music industry. I wondered if the proliferation of new media technologies might also have an impact on the fan experience. I am speaking very generally about everything from apparatus theory and the effect of location and medium on experience, to  the idea that ‘true’ fans listen to albums. Also, is there a parallel to the changes in fan demographics like we observed with vidding and computer editing technologies? Any thoughts…

It seems that the show Blake’s 7, one of the shows listed as a work with a great deal of fan involvement has just been green lit for a remake.

The story is http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7364663.stm

There isn’t much to the story other than explaining that the show was being remade but, I’m wondering if there was fan involvement behind this? The question is whether SkyOne decided to remake a popular old sci-fi show due to the success of Battlestar Galactica or if there’s more of a fannish hand behind the remake, possibly a mass Internet petition.

Even more so, this doesn’t seem to be the first re release of the show, there was a radio drama done last year and in 2003 there was another attempt to remake the show, before the current sci-fi remake boom. It’ll be interesting to find out if fans had anything to do with these projects as well.

THE BACKGROUND:

This post grew out of a New York Times article on the publication of the (book-form) Harry Potter Lexicon, which existed first as a website. MTV has informative and concise coverage of the issues behind the trial. We began discussing this issue at Tuesday’s screening, and Abby, feel free to tack stuff onto this post–somehow, via the design of this site, I guess, posts feel more legit than comments, and I don’t want to shut out your post just because I got to the internet earlier in the night.

THE DISCUSSION:

Of particular interest to me is the idea of transformative work. It seems to me that anything Steve Vander Ark writes in his own words (as opposed to quoting from the HP text) is, in some way transforming or adding to our understanding of Harry Potter.

“It’s not as if we are describing something that exists outside my imagination,” said Rowling, according to the MTV article, which is an interesting contention to say the least. I’m right now trying to decide whether Tolkien would agree with or chastise his most visible of fans, Rowling.

I am reluctant to get into a discussion of the HP Lexicon website, as the book/copyright issue is so interesting, but I don’t think it’s possible to fully flesh out the issue without realizing that the book came out of (and still exists as) a website. Also, once I post this, it’s really out of my hands (a transformed work?).

P.S. For those swing dancers in class, Henry Jenkins presents…THIS

I wanted to continue our conversation about symbolic pligrimages and the question of whether there really is a certain aura that surrounds texts and places of fandom. After reading Brooker and listening to the comments in class, I was thinking about the phenomenon of visiting preserved historical sites such as Plimoth Plantation and the Vanderbilt Mansion. At Plymouth, for example, actors dress up in clothes of the 1500s and stay in character as they go about their daily lives as if they really were pilgrims first settling in America. So, I would say that visitors to Plymouth can make a sort of connection to the past and put themselves physically into space that would otherwise be inaccessible. This seems to be very similar to what Brooker talks about when he talks about pilgrimages to Graceland and the Coronation Street set. He quotes Sandvoss and says, “the emotional significance of visiting a place lies in the ability of fans to put themselves physically into the otherwise textual universe” (Brooker, 160).

At the Vanderbilt Mansion, there are no actors, only tour guides that lead visitors through the home, talking about the significance of certain rooms, paintings, etc. based on the real lives and events of the Vanderbilt family. Still, when you walk through the house, there is a sort of sense of travelling in space and time in order to enter an “otherwise textual universe.” Using another quote from Brooker, “one gets a bit closer to the man and his time by being in places associated with him,” and this seems to be the phenomenon that takes place as countless visitors walk through the rooms of these mansions that have no substantial significance except through the symbolic values tour guides and visitors seem to bestow upon them.

Would we say this is a different phenomenon or practice than the types of pilgrimages and emotional connections fans make to places or other physical spaces associated with a fan object? I wouldn’t necessarily say that all visitors to Plimoth Plantation or the Vanderbilt Mansion are fans of the sites themselves, and they are not necessarily history fans either, so how do we compare what seem to be very similar yet still somehow different practices?

Oh, and on a totally different note, I just wanted to bring people’s attention to a comment I had made on Loretta’s post about 2ge+her…I had been editing the comment and it posted before I was able to finish it, but now the full comment is there, links and all. I’m not sure how that happened, but it’s fixed now. The links to O-Town music videos are good for entertainment value if nothing else if you want to check it out.

Fan Artifact: On Fan Pilgrimages and Producerly Control Over Information

Rachel Turner

 Being from New Jersey (and unsurprisingly, proud of it) I could not help but decide to focus this weeks fan artifacts on everyone’s favorite mafia family, The Sopranos.  The series ran for eight years (1999-2007) on HBO, and has recently been picked up on A&E for reruns.  With an already established “On Location Tour” that can be found on the shows official website that has attracted people from all over the world, I felt a little uncreative simply giving you a run-down on the already established tour.  Instead, I “called in some favors” and am happy to present you with à

  The Sopranos: What You Didn’t Hear on the Tour, and the Reason Why.

 Bob, a Kodak employee in the Film Sales Division in New York City was the main contact between Kodak and The Sopranos production.  He worked intimately and frequently with the executive producer and cinematographers on set (just to name a few).   What the cast and crew of The Sopranos did not know was that Bob is also a fan of the show.  Having had a privileged interaction with the inter-workings of The Sopranos, he was able to comment on his behind-the-scenes experience as a fan. 

 I began my phone interview with Bob and explained what I was interested in talking about regarding The Sopranos.   I then asked what he would be willing to share, and he responded, “Nothing I couldn’t be shot for.”  Joking aside, the secrecy that was kept on the set for eight years was intense (and extremely successful) to avoid spoilers getting out to the public.  Bob mentioned that every single person in the studio (which is located in New York, by the way, not New Jersey) regardless of their connection to the show, was very serious about keeping the storylines and threads very hush-hush.  It was nothing to joke about.  (Bob actually enjoyed this aspect of his job as he hated being on set and overhearing a conversation or a scene being filmed that spoiled part of the story for him.  He wanted to be surprised when he watched the show and was always upset when something was “ruined for him.”) 

 This high level of secrecy and security is certainly something that the producers care deeply about.  Spoilers upset fans and also destroy any reason people have to watch the show.  The balance between giving to the viewers and keeping from viewers is a delicate one which the producers like to be in control of. 

For example, one thing that Bob overheard on set is something that the producers would rather not be common knowledge about their star, James Gandolfini.  In a conversation with a fellow cast member, Gandolfini was heard to be heatedly expressing his frustration with his stalled theatrical and motion picture career due to his association with the Tony Soprano identity.  He felt stuck in the type-cast of Tony and was greatly upset by his inability to move on from the show.  His unhappiness in the show could have greatly dented and jaded the fans that followed his life as Tony Soprano.   For this reason, the producers are concerned about controlling the amount and type of information that the public has access too.  Thompson addressed this issue in The Frodo Franchise, stating that “studios might be willing to reveal what sots of screws they use in their sets, but they’re not about to tell fans everything…their need to keep many things confidential clashes with the fans’ desire to know every last detail.” 

And with good reason, too.  In the Couldry chapter in Fandom, he speaks of his own Sopranos tour experience.  When visiting the “Bada Bling” strip club, which is actually a real strip club that was conducting its everyday business while the tour was there, Couldry comments on an uneasy realization of reality in their fantasy fiction tour.  It was almost as if the magic was broken.  Knowing too much can be dangerous ground for maintaining the sustained level of disbelief needed. 

 This control of information readily available to the fans by the producers is very interesting.  There is a need to promote closeness and an intimate connection for the fans to their show, however, the protection around spoilers is taken very seriously and information about unhappy stars is guarded.  Just as they create a fantasy on the show, they try to recreate it in their tours to keep it alive as long as possible.  Now that the show has come to a completion, the drive to keep fans interactive and, more importantly, consuming, they attempt to make the series more tangible. 

1. Reflect on your own fan interests and practices.  What are the areas you wish you knew more about?  Are there areas you would like to stay away from?
2. What are your thoughts on the producer control clash with fans’ desires to gain knowledge? 
3. Should fans be able to learn as much as they want?  Are their dangers in getting everything you want?  (Is an integral part of being a fan is always wanting more?)
4. We’ve spoken a lot in class about the difference between masculine and feminine fandom.  Can these differences be related to a fan’s desire to seek out spoilers or inside information compared to fans that prefer to wait to be surprised by the show and interact more via fan fiction?

In my pre-sleep browsing, I ran across this interesting link: http://www.fantasymoguls.com/

Below is a description from IMDB (on whose home page I found the link):

“Think you can do a better job of picking hit movies than the studios? Then prove it at Fantasy Moguls.com, the fantasy game for Hollywood movies, now with a new look and easy new gameplay for all seasons. Create your own studio with a budget of $100, which you’ll use to select up to eight movies to fill out your studio slate. You’ll rack up points for your studio based on things like box office, review score, “legs” (the term for longevity in the theaters after the initial release) and per-theater average. You can play in a league with your friends or join a public league and make new ones. Perhaps best of all, it’s 100% FREE to play. The ultra-competitive summer season is now underway, so sign up and join Fantasy Moguls, sponsored by the 2008 Honda CR-V.”

While there are obviously many levels to unpack here (commodification of the process of commodification, for instance, or the “revelation” of “insider” knowledge via the industry term “legs”), I am hitting the sack, and just wanted to get this up here before I forgot about it.

Other possible discussion points include this in-depth strategy article that, at first glance, I took for a film review, or Honda’s large advertising presence in this venture.

Perhaps I will edit this to include a more thorough reading tomorrow, but please don’t let that stop you from commenting.

You know this had to come up eventually. Reading through Victoria K. Gosling’s article, “Girls Allowed?,” in which her female football fans in the UK see “true fans” as constructed by the “footballing establishment” as male, I couldn’t help thinking of a feminist book I once skimmed through, Laurel R. Davis’ The Swimsuit Issue and Sport: Hegemonic Masculinity in Sports Illustrated. Gosling discusses the ways in which live sports venues can be coded as male spaces, making them feel unsafe or uncomfortable to female fans attending live games, and she touches on television and print media’s construction of “sports” as men’s sports, giving little to no attention to women’s teams. However, in addition to individual male fans of sports sometimes using their fan communities as implicit male-only spaces in which they can express antipathy towards women, it seems clear from the example of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue that sources of information for sports fans encourage and appeal to this tendency within sports fandom (most likely as a strategy to make money).

I’m not sure if Sports Illustrated is really the dominant publication that Davis seemed to think it was in 1997 (the year her book was published). However, it does seem interesting to me to note that the swimsuit issue is pretty much the issue of Sports Illustrated for any given year. A publication that is in name dedicated to sports coverage is devoted in significant part to soft-core porn distribution. One of the headings on SportsIllustrated.com, for example, among “On Campus,” “Fannation,” “SI Vault,” etc. is “Swimsuit,” and the second hit on Google under the search “Sports Illustrated” is a link to their swimsuit page for 2007.

So, right. Consumers of sports news and consumers of soft-core porn come together to form the readership of Sports Illustrated. This makes more money for the magazine. I could imagine, however, that the people who initially subscribed to SI for the sports might start to like the swimsuits, and the people who started off just to look at the swimsuits may have started reading articles about the sports, too. Masculine heterosexuality (in the implied male gaze of the photographs in the swimsuit issue) thus gets mixed up with sports in that if you’re a heterosexual male who likes soft porn, a publication like this encourages you to also be a sports fan. Not to belabor the point (too late!), sports fans are also encouraged to be straight men who like soft porn.

I remember coming across a swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated as a child in a doctor’s waiting room.  Being the sketchy kid that I was, I liked the pretty pictures, and decided that SI was the magazine for me. For years, I picked up SI in doctor’s offices looking for another swimsuit issue, and getting disappointed. At some point, I got to be the “kind of girl” who doesn’t like sports, so I started picking up Cosmo instead. At the time, I didn’t like fashion any more than I liked sports, but I just assumed it must be “the magazine for me.”  Eventually, I started to like fashion, makeup, boys, telling embarrassing stories about myself, etc.

Sports Illustrated is a sports fan’s magazine, ostensibly, but, like any other magazine, it is also a product that is based on a construction of identity. Not only do you construct your own identity based on what magazine you pick up, but you also announce to the rest of the lobby what kind of person you are based on what magazine they see you with. In the same way that women’s fashion magazines associate femininity with heterosexuality and a fan-like relationship to fashion, celebrities, sex with men, etc., could it be that men’s sports magazines associate masculinity with heterosexuality and a fan relationship  to sports?

In other words, Gosling writes that sports fan communities are hostile to women and celebrates the entrance of women into those communities, but I’m trying to ask: could membership in sports fandom be more accessible to men because they are in some way coercively associated with sports? Just as I felt an increasing interest in fashion, etc. as somewhat pushed onto me with my identification as a feminine woman?

Do men have to like sports to be a “real man?” Are sports not only a location for a confirmation of civic pride, entertainment, and community, but also a confirmation of  masculinity (that is then coded as heterosexual)? Is there an implicit threat to heterosexuality in the male contemplation of male athletic bodies that SI seeks to eliminate with its ostentatious association with het soft porn?

If liking sports is supposed to be a symbol of any male fan’s association with dominant heterosexual masculinity, does he lose those points if he wrestles in the backyard with other men? Especially if he feels “ecstatic pain” at the hands of other men? Maybe I’m going too far reading bdsm-like qualities into McBride and Bird’s backyard wrestlers. What about female sports fans? Do they experience a sense of masculinity through their association with certain teams, their spectatorship, etc?

Imagine my surprise when I heard a pretty in-depth commentary on the commodification of user-generated content while watching the latest episode of South Park. (I tried to get a clip of this but was only able to find a link to the whole episode, so if you want to watch it click and go the last one. You can also go to 19:25 mins into it and find the clip). Anyway, the boys need to make a lot of money so they try to create a hit YouTube video, and succeed in doing so, only to find out that it doesn’t actually pay. Most episodes end with one of the characters having learned a valuable lesson and sharing it, a parody of the cheesy moralism found in many TV shows. After watching this clip like 20 times, I was able to transcribe it:

“You see, I’ve learned something today. We thought that we could make money on the Internet, but, while the Internet is new and exciting for creative people, it hasn’t matured as a distribution mechanism to the extent that one should trade real and immediate opportunities for income for the promise of future online revenue. It will be a few years before digital distribution of media on the Internet can be monetized to an extent that necessitates content producers to forgo their fair value and more traditional media.”

This seems to me to tie in to a lot of the things we’ve been studying, particularly Julie Levin Russo’s SkewTube presentation. She asks how user production might become more commodifiable in the future, and whether commercial production is the most legitimate type of production. To that last question, she answers with an unequivocal “no”; the boy in South Park (Kyle) however, suggests that commercial production is the most legitimate and desirable mode of production and that it would be best to hold off until user-generated content can be more profitable. I’d like to hear what everyone thinks about this, and if Kyle’s speech can be connected to other material we’ve been studying.

Post by Danielle Tocchet and Sarah Reynolds

After doing the readings on music fandom for this week, we decided to look into online fan communities and focus on the fascination with music personalities as well as the commoditization of music. As two girls who grew up during the heyday of boy bands, *NSYNC was the first fan following that came to mind and, thus, became the topic of our fan artifact presentation. In our search for artifacts, we found a website that seemed to aptly illustrate common music fandom behavior. NSYNCery.com highlights many similarities between music fandom and the other fandoms we have already studied in this class as well. Apart from the typical photo galleries, band bios, and news updates that many music fan sites contain, this site also includes fan fiction, fan art, fan poetry, and a pen pal section where *NSYNC fans can locate other fans around the world to share in the *NSYNC fan community. Another really interesting feature of the site was a series of “obsession quizzes.” These quizzes essentially test the intensity of fans’ obsessions with the group as a whole and with individual band members specifically based on meeting certain criteria, such as, “Your friends keep telling you that you are sad and your *NSYNC obsession is constantly getting worse and you will end up in a mental hospital if you don’t snap out of it.” This quote seems to reinforce the saying we have used over and over in this class to explain interactions among fans:”I laugh because I understand.” The fans on this site have created a safe community in which they can share their intense emotional attachments to *NSYNC without being judged by the people who do not “understand.”

Once we found this site, we thought the Cavicchi article was particularly useful in understanding the content of our fan artifact. In talking about the origins of music fandom in the mid-nineteenth century, Cavicchi pays close attention to the star quality of musicians that seems to spark fan attention. He writes, “the act of loving music often idealized identification with performers” (238). He uses the example of Jenny Lind, a Swedish opera singer, to illustrate this more personal connection between fan and artist and argues that although Lind fans enjoyed her music, they were just as entertained and fascinated by her personal character. In fact, it sometimes appeared that the personal character of the star was more appealing to fans than the music was. We also found the Scodari piece to be important in understanding the additional romantic attachment many fans develop toward objects of music fandom. This is extremely relevant to the types of practices *NSYNC fans are partaking in on this website. Although these fantasies exist in other fandoms, Scodari draws a distinction between the different types of fans by arguing that these feelings and practices are often intensified when the subjects in question are real-life people rather than fictional characters (54).

We also wanted to talk about the commoditization of music briefly since we think it played a significant role in the *NSYNC fandom. Although Cavicchi intended his arguments for music fandom in the 19th century, the commoditization of music can be applied to current day fandom too. Cavicchi discusses that Boston “first created markets around making music, including sheet music publishing and instrument sales” as one of the results of the popularity of the music industry (237). In current day, this could be akin to sales of *NSYNC cd’s, the popularity of websites such as www.lyrics.com, and perhaps the use of the pop band songs in Karaoke bars. However, Cavicchi also mentions the early trend of consumer culture around goods that are unrelated to the music, and rather more relevant to the fandom surrounding the “stars” themselves, discussed above. Cavicchi writes, “with the growth of the music press at mid-century, including regular reviews and the use of lithography and photography for circulating images of musical stars, scrap-books supplanted diaries and sheet music binders as music lovers most useful tool, able to contain descriptive writing, clippings of reviews, and images” (243-244). The use of the word scrapbook, although likely unintentional on the part of Cavicchi, led us to a connotation of teeny-boppers making *NSYNC collages and scrapbooks. This leads us to another interesting fan artifact(s), which is the varied and quite interesting eBay search results for *NSYNC: http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=nsync&category0=, which include bobble-head dolls, tee-shirts, barbies, cd’s and much, much more. Finally, if we had gone back in time a few years, we could have found *NSYNC tickets on sale for hundreds of dollars for the big concerts on this site. The evolution of what Cavicchi calls “commodification of music in concerts” certainly occurred, although now it is perhaps more than what he terms “the ways in which hearing could become a form of consumption,” as the performance part of the concert (the dancing, special effects, and the star’s speeches) has become of increased importance during the boy band era (248).

Discussion Questions:

1. Similar to in other fandoms, we face the question of where to draw the line on who is a fan and who is not. How would we attempt to do so in music fandom? (See Cavicchi 248-249)
2. How do we distinguish fandoms that revolve more around the music and those that revolve almost solely around the celebrity? Is it a distinction we have to make?
3. How had the existence of sites like YouTube, where we can see the musicians perform their songs, affected the importance of the commodification of concerts?
4. With increased media (MTV, celebrity sites etc), have music fandoms become less about the music? Or has this trend always existed?
5. There are some fans who worry that their favorite band may be tainted somehow by entering the music mainstream through the radio, TRL, etc. How do we fit these fans into the big picture of fandom?