Fan Culture @ Swarthmore

Opening disclaimer: I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with the post–mostly I was hoping to put something out there and hope that other people can figure out what to say about it.

So, one of things that didn’t come up today, but that occured to me during our discussion, is how incredibly raced the music industry and music fandom is. Boy bands and girl bands and their followings seem to especially embody this theme. Off the top of my head, I can’t name one multi-racial boy band. New Kids on the Block: all white. Boyz II Men: all black. New Edition: all black. Menudo: All latino.  *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees, LFO, O-town: all white.  Furthermore, when rivalries are constructed, the racial frontiers are maintained. Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera (and to a lesser extent Jessica Simpson and Mandy Moore) were all constructed as rivals to each other, but Brandy and Maya weren’t considered in the bracket, even though they were young, hot women producing PG to PG-13 boy-centric pop music for a similar demographic. The only counterexample that I can think of right now is that the Spice Girls had one black member. And I think it’s pretty telling that she was “Scary Spice.”

I just had a few observations based on these samples. The first is the obvious statement that the music industry reproduces and perpetuates social cleavages. Especially since all of the above music is targeted at pre-teens and teens, it’s somewhat sinister that the expectation/stereotype that people of different races won’t have similar tastes is being reinforced in the next generation. The other, slightly less boring, but related observation I had was that I think a lot of this is bound up in the sexual and homosexual subtext of pop icons. Girls aren’t only supposed to find a member of *NSYNC to identify with (“The Sensitive One”; “The Young, Hip One”; “The Wacky One”), they’re supposed to want them sexually. And it’s still seen as threatening for the stereotypical boy-band consumer–a 13-year-old white girl–to sexually want a black man. And it is especially threatening if she discovers her sexuality through wanting a black man, entirely possible given the middle-school target age of a boy-band consumer. The homosocial dynamic of boy bands also seems to be similarly raced/racist.

I guess a way to end this post would be ask: how does this relate to what Brandon was saying in class about what people stand to gain or lose through particular music fandom identifications? And is this mostly constructed in the fandom (i.e., a black person who likes Jessica Simpson won’t get respect from black peers), constructed in the industry (the industry tells black people to like Beyonce and white people to like Christina Aguilera), or both? Hopefully someone else can say something coherent, because I’m just not entirely sure where I’m going.

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.

Fan Artifact Presentation: Week 11

The Sports Anti-Fan, Rivalries and YouTube

Steve Wolf and Loretta Gary

Red Sox Suck!

Red Sox vs. Yankees Lean Back Parody

Sports in general are filled with different rivalries. As Theodoropoulou points out in her essay, these rivalries can stem from various sources, but the most important factors in a rivalry are that the two teams are “opposing threats” and that the fans of each team share mutual feelings of “fear, admiration, respect, and envy” of each other. Right now, one of the longest lasting and most discussed rivalries is between the baseball teams the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. This particular rivalry is interesting because the dominating side of the rivalry has shifted recently. The New York Yankees have been the most historically successful team in Major League Baseball while the Red Sox were historically inept teams. However, during the past few years, the Red Sox have won two championships in 2004 and 2007, while the Yankees have struggled, by their standards, and have had an 8 year title drought. While Yankees fans used to patronize Red Sox fans with chants such as “1918!” (the last year before 2004 that the Red Sox won the World Series) now, Red Sox fans have the upper hand in terms of recent success.

Another aspect of sports rivalries that Theodoropoulou discusses is the “game” of mocking each other’s teams. Similar to her example of Tom and Aspa’s argument (322), ESPN columnist Bill Simmons an avid Red Sox fan has a running gag in his podcast where he calls up his friend, who is a Yankees fan, and asks “Are you worried yet?” The openness about his fandom has varying results. First, there are similarities between the Red Sox-Yankees and the Olympiakos-Panathinaikos rivalries mentioned in Theodorpoulou’s essay. But also, as a columnist for one of the most popular sports websites (ESPN.com), Simmons garners a national audience, and his writing style, which clearly reveals his Red Sox fan status, leads to his ability to blur the line between being a media producer and being a fan. As a sports fan, Steve had some background knowledge of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, such as the curse of the Bambino, but a large part of his knowledge of the rivalry is derived from Simmons’ columns. Because of his national following, Simmons has developed some anti-fans of his own which then causes his anti-fans to become anti-fans of Simmons’ cherished fan objects. For example, during the last Super Bowl, the New York Giants played the New England Patriots. Although the Giants are one of the rivals of our favorite football team, the Philadelphia Eagles, Steve found himself cheering for the Giants. The biggest reason was because the Patriots were undefeated and heavily favored, but partly because Simmons’s article would be more interesting if his team lost rather than if they won.

The clips we’re focusing on showcase the role of YouTube as a venue for anti-fans to broadcast their opinions and participate in discussions with other fans, which Theodoropoulou describes as “antagonistic but also playful and teasing” (323). There are hundreds of videos not only about why a certain sport team sucks but there are also many response videos and comments from the rival fans explaining why the opposing team is worse. Two of the videos we selected support opposing teams the Red Sox and the Yankees. Both videos use image montages and mock the other team and their fans while bolstering support of their own team. This “game” of YouTube anti-fan postings is just another example of how the fans are aware of and perform their anti-fan identity. The “Lean Back Parody” video is especially interesting because it showcases the tradition of creating songs and chants that mock the other team and fans.

Finally, we’ve included a few other videos as well to highlight the wide variety of anti-fan activity through YouTube. Both videos come from YouTube users who have made multiple videos supporting their team while attacking others creating numerous anti-fans of themselves. The first is a short animation highlighting the Eagles dominance over the Cowboys. The other is a video blog entry in which the anti-fan explains why he hates Dallas Cowboys fans.

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On a different note, we also thought the following dialog between Howard Stern’s boss, Pig Vomit, and a media consumer researcher adds another perspective on the role of the anti-fan in other fandoms. Quote from Private Parts (Betty Thomas, 1997):

Researcher: The average radio listener listens for eighteen minutes a day. The average Howard Stern fan listens for – are you ready for this? – an hour and twenty minutes.
Pig Vomit: How could this be?
Researcher: Answer most commonly given: “I want to see what he’ll say next.”
Pig Vomit: All right, fine. But what about the people who hate Stern?
Researcher: Good point. The average Stern hater listens for two and a half hours a day.
Pig Vomit: But… if they hate him, why do they listen?
Researcher: Most common answer: “I want to see what he’ll say next.”

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More thoughts and questions:

1.)In what other realms of fandom are there prominent anti-fans?

2.) What are the distinctions between the consumption of an anti-fan and a “true fan” in non binary situations?

3.) If there is no clear opposition, is it possible to become an anti-fan that acts similar to an actual fan (i.e. someone who still consumes the fan object)? (such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Howard Stern, etc.)

4.) In one sided rivalries, what side is the “rival” and where does the loyalty lie?

5.) Are the gender dynamics and stereotypes that are explicitly seen in sports fandom an example of the fanboy/fangirl identities? Does sports fandom support the argument for the reality of the fanboy/fangirl structure or negatively perpetuate the concept?

6.) What role do commentators play on influencing (anti)fan identities?

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?

The McCourt/Burkart article discusses online music services. I thought it would be useful to visit a few modern and popular incarnations of the types of services they discuss.

1. One type of service mentioned is “listening machines” that automatically analyze and categorize music based on actual waveform, tempo, etc. A free and popular service that does this (related to the Music Genome Project the article discusses) isPandora.

2. Another type of service is “collaborative filtering” where the musical tastes of people who listen to similar music as you dictate suggestions. A popular and free service for this type of site isLastFM.

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…

Hello all. The inspiration to this post is the release of a NEW Counting Crows album followed with a tour!! For any of those interested, check it out at www.countingcrows.com .And to see a video to their new single, check out this website: annabegins.com
Now many of you are probably asking why this is at all relavent to the class. First, for those of you who read my fanifesto- you may (but probably don’t) remember that I have never seen a Counting Crows concert, despite my obsession with their live versions of songs. I am proud and extremely excited to announce that this summer, it shall be remedied! On July 31st, I will have the Trekkie equivalent of seeing Spock speak at a convention in person. I cannot wait.

Also, the release of this new album was also exciting seeing as it has been quite a while since they have produced much (two years since the release of their last album, which was a live album recorded in 2003 and did not include many new songs). Due to this I had begun to fade interest in keeping up with the band, seeing as I already had most of their songs and plenty of live versions to keep myself occupied. But this new album has certainly spiked my interest level way back up. I’m going to make this a long stretch and connect this to how the the Tolkien movies really brought attention back to the original book series. The parallel lies in that the original fan generation had all the books and simply passed them onto their children, reducing sales and some of the interest in the series. With the revamping of the tales through a hollywood movie, much of the suppressed fan notions were brought back to the surface. While watching the rather interesting “Ringers, Lord of the Fans” documentary, I couldn’t help but relate it to my own re-awakened fanish practices with Counting Crows in reponse to their album. (I am embrassed to admit that I did not know until recently that they even had a new album coming out! I was too caught up in 1994 with “August and Everything After” to even check up on them!)

This then made fan fiction click with me. It is a way to keep excited about the object of the fandom, and gives the fans something to look forward to as well as something new to process. I was struggling a little with the concept (seeing as fan fic does not really translate over to music, except maybe into revamped versions of old albums like the “August and Everything After Deluxe Album” ), but it certainly falls into place seeing the significant response I had to something new (finally!)

Sorry if I have begun to gush, but I wanted to share this with all of you. I also thought it would be cool to open a discussion about fan objects that are not producing new material anymore, and ways in which fans maintain interest, interaction and contact with.

PS: For some reason, the blog won’t let me add links to this post. Sorry.

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?

I think it is worth continuing the discussion about the merits of franchises that span TV, movies, comic books, action figures, McDonalds Happy Meals, etc. Previously criticisms were raised about its destruction of traditional narrative techniques — completeness, comprehensibility, enjoyability, etc.

I briefly mentioned Star Wars in relation to this, and I’d like to outline its cross-media tradition and give my opinion about it, but there are many series worth discussing here. Professor Rehak, for example, focused on The Matrix, and made the insightful comment that the series has not really “stuck around” like Star Wars or Star Trek.

1. The original Star Wars trilogy made reference to many elements not explained in the context of the movies. What are the Clone Wars? How did the emperor seize power? How did Darth Vader become who he is? Many places and technologies were also only mentioned in passing. Most of these “comprehensibility” complaints were not raised by viewers of the Trilogy. My opinion is that it’s because the movie followed archetypal narratives — a war is a war, and we can imagine the details of the Clone Wars. An evil dictator is an evil dictator. The plot could be understood without understanding the details. Many fans would later find enjoyment in these details, however, with publications similar to those shown by Professor Rehak about Star Trek. Of course these details also left room for the new trilogy.

2. The new trilogy in my opinion followed the same techniques in many ways as the original trilogy. Yet there was a negative response about most aspects of the new movies. Plot holes were declared marketing ploys for more action figures, video games, etc. However, the difference is that in the original trilogy, the details truly were unexplained. In the time between the two trilogies, cross-media story telling had taken over and, for example, in novels and comic books many of the “plot holes” in the new trilogy had already been explained. The villains in the new trilogy, for example, were not brand-new creations, but had complex backstories already published.

So the question is whether one could understand the new trilogy without reading all these other cross-media sources, and whether one should have to. I know that after watching Ep.1-3 the first time, going back again had them make a lot more sense, even without resorting to extra-textual information.

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!