Fandom Paper.
In case anyone wants to read an academic paper written around 2 AM - 10 AM after an evening of pure crack.
Fanwank and Flamewars: The Breaking of a Utopian Ideal
There are three major literary tropes of conflict: man vs. self, man vs. man, and man vs. environment. These three categories also define fan interactions and fan conflict: fan versus the text, fan versus the fan, and fan versus the industry. Because of the broad and differentiated nature of fandom, it is almost impossible for a fandom to exist without some level of conflict. For the vast majority of television history, there was no easy way for television producers and writers to monitor fan activity without the fans themselves making an effort to share their opinions, nor for fans to instantly communicate with fans not near themselves. However, due to the recent advances in technology and the advancement and spread of the Internet, the landscape of fandom and fan interactions is being changed.
Henry Jenkins, in his book Textual Poachers, argues towards a utopian vision of fandom. He discusses communal projects, such as filk bardic circles, and explains that they capture fandom’s “status as a utopian community” (Jenkins 280). According to Jenkins, this utopian fandom community provides the fans a ‘safe space’ in which they can escape the harsh realities of daily life and form an alternative social community that is bound together by their love for a certain television show. The newly linked society creates a world surrounding their fandom’s canon [i], using its relationships and plotlines as models for their own life and ideals. Through these communal values, the fans bond over the show and strive to make it into the best show that it can be. Because they are all supporting each other, Jenkins’s vision does not allow for the “versus” of anything other than a united Fan vs. Industry. The utopian community does allow for dissent amongst the fans in the fandom. Jenkins puts forth the argument that the fans are not fighting amongst themselves, but rather are fighting against the external power that is the producers of a show. This is shown through fan organized groups and action committees such as the Viewers for Quality Television. Organizations such as Viewers for Quality Television formed around the belief that viewers had the power to change the networks if only they presented a unified front. The viewers knew that the production networks would not seek them out for their opinion, and because of this went to great lengths to mobilize communities of fans to petition for television shows to remain on-air for another season. The fans rose up to protest the industry, but Jenkins argues that fandom itself remains a coherent whole.
However, Jenkins’ utopian view of fandom is an inaccurate portrayal of fan culture for many (if not most) contemporary fandoms. Fandom today is unable to be defined by a single definition. A given fandom can be small and typically in the same socioeconomic demographic, such as the fans who banded together over ABC’s Our World documentary. Other fandoms - such as the fandom for Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer [ii] - can be extremely large and extremely diverse, sprawling to encompass people of different social and economic status, different geographic areas and different backgrounds. The different points of view that the fans bring to the table mean that fandom often has multiple viewpoints and interpretations on many issues, ideas, and interpretations. Derek Johnson, in his article entitled “Fan-tagonism: Factions, Institutions, and Constitutive Hegemonies of Fandom”, propositions that internal fan disagreement (fan versus fan) is central to the development and sustainability of fandom as a whole.
Johnson focuses on the different factions that are often found in fandom. These factions often fall along the lines of the relationships in the television shows. As do most fandoms, the fandom for Buffy the Vampire Slayer has camps of fans that believe certain characters should enter into a romantic relationship. These fans are commonly known as ‘shippers’ [iii]. The shippers in different camps do not always get along with each other or with the producers, often fighting to the bitter end to prove that their pairing is the one that should endure. But through their argumentation, discussion, and debate over the show text, the fans fight for claim of ownership of the text. Johnson labels this debate as ‘fan-tagonism’: the “ongoing, competitive struggles between both internal factions and external institutions to discursively codify the fan-text-producer relationship according to their respective interests” (Johnson 3). Buffy was a show that provided no lack of characters to pair together - the LiveJournal.com community “Ship_Manifesto” lists thirty individual manifestos that state why their pairing is right and should be canonical (if it isn’t already) [iv]. These manifestos must contain logical points backed up by textual evidence to be admitted into the community that only accepts essays with a minimum word count of 1,500 words. The necessary commitment that writing a manifesto requires demonstrates conviction that fans have to their character pairings. These fans will pore over the source text, searching for minute details in addition to explicit plot arcs to prove that their relationship theory is validated in the text. In the process of doing this, they affirm their ownership and mastery of the text, thus showing that they have the right to make their claims.
Another faction of fandom that Johnson mentions is the anti-shippers - the fans who believe that the show should not be focused on character relationships. These fans think that the action plot should be what drives the show, for example when Buffy fans argue that the show should be focused on the demons and not the Buffy/Spike relationship. The anti-shippers are still fans of the show, they just believe that the show should take a different focus than it currently it. This is very different from the attitudes of anti-fans, as described in Jonathan Gray’s article Antifandom and the Moral Text: Television Without Pity and Textual Dislike. Gray argues that “Hate or dislike of a text can […] serve just as powerfully [as admiration] to unite and sustain a community or subculture” (Gray 3). Antifans need not be intimately knowledgeable about the fandom or the text. In fact, much antifan credibility comes from having never watched the show, and fans who have turned antifan often go to great lengths to demonstrate their hatred for a show [v]. In today’s technological culture, antifans have turned to Youtube.com as a platform through which to preach their distain. Videos such as “5 Things I Hate About Star Trek Online” [vi] provide antifans with a place to vent where fans of the show cannot reach them and where they can connect to other antifans.
Antifans also use the text of the show in close readings in order to discuss exactly what it is that is reprehensible about the show (or book [vii], or movie) that they dislike. By closely reading and interacting with the text, antifans find “moral, aesthetic, and intellectual” reasons to dislike a text (Gray 15). Though antifans paint themselves as engaged in a battle against the text itself, through their portrayal of their consumption of the text they inadvertently end up propagating and advertising the text itself. Different television industries choose to react to antifans in different manners - some ignore the antifans, and others choose to alter their text in order to cater to the antifans in hopes that they will gain more viewers.
The way that the industry reacts to fandom (or antifandom) can be a great determining factor in the success of a show. The fandom for the television show Supernatural, for example, has a level of interaction with the producers and actors of the show that is rare for fandom. The producers and actors have not only publicly acknowledged the presence of fanfiction (slash fanfiction as well as character-incest slash fiction) but have admitted to having read it. The producers and writers of Supernatural have taken this relationship a step further by ‘canon-bashing’ their own show and having the characters in the show find a fandom, complete with fanfic, based around them as if they are unknowing characters in a book (which, in this specific story line, they also are) [viii]. The producer-fan interaction of Supernatural has worked towards fostering a dedicated fan community that feels as though their thoughts and opinions are being heard, and through this they have created a community that is more invested in their show and less likely to abandon it.
The majority of fan practices are legally protected in the Supreme Court Case Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music (510 U.S. 569 (1994)). In a case that dealt with a parody song becoming an economic success, the court laid a precedent for the legal production of what they deemed “transformative works” - a work that instead of replacing the original “adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning, or message”. This 1994 court case was the first time that a transformative work had been addressed. By stating in the majority opinion that “the goal of copyright, to promote science and the arts, is generally furthered by the creation of transformative works”, the Supreme Court validated fans and fan practices. This case set precedent for Fandom action when the production industries and fanwork hosting websites began taking actions against fandom. A number of concerned fans from different parts of fandom came together to form the Organization for Transformative Works. The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a legally recognized nonprofit organization that works to serve fans by providing hosting services, a discussion board, and through archives and a fan-wikipedia (called FanLore) preserving fan works and history. The OTW is run by fans, for fans, and posits itself as a neutural ground in the middle of fandom.
By acknowledging the different factions in fandom, the founders and board of directors of the Organization for Transformative works show that there is a great deal of tension that they know can violently explode. Because of this, they have established that their multi-fandom, cross-fandom organization will adopt a ‘Plural Point of View’. As fans, the founders understand that it is sometimes hard to remain neutral on a subject, and as such the Plural Point of View recognizes each different viewpoint but does not lay value on one over another. By presenting all of the viewpoints, OTW codifies the factions of fandom and their often diametrically opposite viewpoints. Fan productions such as fanfiction, vids, and filk all provide the fan community with ways to delve deeper into the meanings of the original text, and thus to transform it. Because of this, the Organization for Transformative Works strives to preserve and represent all of these works, regardless of the initial viewpoint presented in them.
Debate within fandom and across fandoms is so prevalent that fandom has adopted internet terms “wank” and “flamewar”. Wank, taken from UK slang ‘rubbish’, is loosely defined as massive internet drama that involves many parties and causes a great disruption. If Jenkins was correct in his version of utopian fandom, then there would be no cause for fanwank nor for flamewars (a heated, public, written argument where two or more parties engage in an attention-drawing debate). Yet because fans have created terms for these scenarios, because there are entire online communities dedicated to tracking the wank in fandom, Jenkins’ theory of utopian fan practices crumbles. With the interconnectivity of fans through the Internet, through phone and other instantaneous communication, there is no longer a great divide between fans. It is harder for a fan to isolate themselves among a community of like-minded people and not be aware of the other side of the argument. Although Jenkins provides a view of fandom that is complimentary, it is no longer a realistic representation. Instead it is Johnson and Gray, with their factions and antifans, who provide a contemporary painting of fandom that depicts both the unity, the division and the strife that can cause a fandom to rally together.
[i] Canon is the original “source text” for a fandom. This is the TV show, the book, or the movie in which the story takes place. There are internal fandom debates about what qualifies as “canon” - for example, canon purists state that only the original text is canon, and subsequent other-media endeavors to continue the story are not canon. This debate is common as a story changes media (ex. from book to movie, or from TV show to comic book).
[ii] The instinct to give ‘ownership’ of Buffy to series creator/producer Joss Whedon instead of the TV network on which Buffy was shown is demonstrative Whedon’s endurance and connection to the show. It also illustrates how positing yourself as the sole person who has mastery of a text can give you that credibility (in this case it is Whedon, and not the network, who fans associate with being the end-all authority of the show). Part of this is because of Whedon’s very visible role within the network, and how they often seemed to defer to him. Again, this validates fan rationale for knowing the text to the point of ownership. A non-television example of this can be seen in the ‘Harry Potter Lexicon’ (HP-Lexicon.org), a fan-created encyclopedia of everything in the Harry Potter series. Although he has no ties to JK Rowling or the Harry Potter publishers, Lexicon compiler Steve has become the go-to source for Potter information through his demonstrated knowledge and familiarity with the text.
[iii] A “ship” is a desired romantic pairing of characters. Someone who ships two characters wants them to get together (in the romantic sense). “Ship” can be used as both a noun and a verb: a shipper will ship characters, or support a ship. Just as ships sailing on the ocean are christened with a name, fans will give their favored pairings ‘ships names’: rather than saying they ship Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, some people will say that they support “Harmony” (a vague example of a portmanteau created by combining the characters’ names; others are usually more literal: Drarry for Draco/Harry). People who support a ship are called shippers.
[iv] List of ship_manifesto entries taken off of http://community.livejournal.com/newbieguide/130 52.html?thread=480508
[v] An example of this can be found in the filk song, “Let’s Slushie Glee!”, by the band ‘No-Win Scenario’ , that was inspired by the writing of this paper. A fan turned antifan, Stephanie uses her music to express her changed opinion of the show: “But it's two years down the line and I've come to realize: Glee, you're not at all what you promised to be.”
[vi] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZvhCET9HOg
[vii] Although this is a course on Television fandom, it would be remiss to speak about antifans and not mention today’s largest (or at least most vocal) antifan community: the antifans for Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight novels. The Twilight antifan community finds antifan fodder in the novels themselves (ex., Misogynistic representations of women, a fetus eating it’s way out of the mother, and sparkly skin to represent vampires) but also in the fandom communities that support Twilight and in the rabid ship wars that occur within the fandom (ex., Team Edward versus Team Jacob).
[viii] For further reading on the Supernatural fandom and the producer-actor-fan interactions, Irene McGinn (Dublin Ciry University) has done an in-depth analysis that can be found at http://metapancakes.com /?p=253.
The anti-Glee song referenced can be found here:
The song was recorded at 3:30 AM as we got kicked out of the dining hall. She's since done a version with piano. Y'know. No pianos in the dining hall. Whatevs. My favorite part is the people laughing at the next table right before the end.
Fanwank and Flamewars: The Breaking of a Utopian Ideal
There are three major literary tropes of conflict: man vs. self, man vs. man, and man vs. environment. These three categories also define fan interactions and fan conflict: fan versus the text, fan versus the fan, and fan versus the industry. Because of the broad and differentiated nature of fandom, it is almost impossible for a fandom to exist without some level of conflict. For the vast majority of television history, there was no easy way for television producers and writers to monitor fan activity without the fans themselves making an effort to share their opinions, nor for fans to instantly communicate with fans not near themselves. However, due to the recent advances in technology and the advancement and spread of the Internet, the landscape of fandom and fan interactions is being changed.
Henry Jenkins, in his book Textual Poachers, argues towards a utopian vision of fandom. He discusses communal projects, such as filk bardic circles, and explains that they capture fandom’s “status as a utopian community” (Jenkins 280). According to Jenkins, this utopian fandom community provides the fans a ‘safe space’ in which they can escape the harsh realities of daily life and form an alternative social community that is bound together by their love for a certain television show. The newly linked society creates a world surrounding their fandom’s canon [i], using its relationships and plotlines as models for their own life and ideals. Through these communal values, the fans bond over the show and strive to make it into the best show that it can be. Because they are all supporting each other, Jenkins’s vision does not allow for the “versus” of anything other than a united Fan vs. Industry. The utopian community does allow for dissent amongst the fans in the fandom. Jenkins puts forth the argument that the fans are not fighting amongst themselves, but rather are fighting against the external power that is the producers of a show. This is shown through fan organized groups and action committees such as the Viewers for Quality Television. Organizations such as Viewers for Quality Television formed around the belief that viewers had the power to change the networks if only they presented a unified front. The viewers knew that the production networks would not seek them out for their opinion, and because of this went to great lengths to mobilize communities of fans to petition for television shows to remain on-air for another season. The fans rose up to protest the industry, but Jenkins argues that fandom itself remains a coherent whole.
However, Jenkins’ utopian view of fandom is an inaccurate portrayal of fan culture for many (if not most) contemporary fandoms. Fandom today is unable to be defined by a single definition. A given fandom can be small and typically in the same socioeconomic demographic, such as the fans who banded together over ABC’s Our World documentary. Other fandoms - such as the fandom for Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer [ii] - can be extremely large and extremely diverse, sprawling to encompass people of different social and economic status, different geographic areas and different backgrounds. The different points of view that the fans bring to the table mean that fandom often has multiple viewpoints and interpretations on many issues, ideas, and interpretations. Derek Johnson, in his article entitled “Fan-tagonism: Factions, Institutions, and Constitutive Hegemonies of Fandom”, propositions that internal fan disagreement (fan versus fan) is central to the development and sustainability of fandom as a whole.
Johnson focuses on the different factions that are often found in fandom. These factions often fall along the lines of the relationships in the television shows. As do most fandoms, the fandom for Buffy the Vampire Slayer has camps of fans that believe certain characters should enter into a romantic relationship. These fans are commonly known as ‘shippers’ [iii]. The shippers in different camps do not always get along with each other or with the producers, often fighting to the bitter end to prove that their pairing is the one that should endure. But through their argumentation, discussion, and debate over the show text, the fans fight for claim of ownership of the text. Johnson labels this debate as ‘fan-tagonism’: the “ongoing, competitive struggles between both internal factions and external institutions to discursively codify the fan-text-producer relationship according to their respective interests” (Johnson 3). Buffy was a show that provided no lack of characters to pair together - the LiveJournal.com community “Ship_Manifesto” lists thirty individual manifestos that state why their pairing is right and should be canonical (if it isn’t already) [iv]. These manifestos must contain logical points backed up by textual evidence to be admitted into the community that only accepts essays with a minimum word count of 1,500 words. The necessary commitment that writing a manifesto requires demonstrates conviction that fans have to their character pairings. These fans will pore over the source text, searching for minute details in addition to explicit plot arcs to prove that their relationship theory is validated in the text. In the process of doing this, they affirm their ownership and mastery of the text, thus showing that they have the right to make their claims.
Another faction of fandom that Johnson mentions is the anti-shippers - the fans who believe that the show should not be focused on character relationships. These fans think that the action plot should be what drives the show, for example when Buffy fans argue that the show should be focused on the demons and not the Buffy/Spike relationship. The anti-shippers are still fans of the show, they just believe that the show should take a different focus than it currently it. This is very different from the attitudes of anti-fans, as described in Jonathan Gray’s article Antifandom and the Moral Text: Television Without Pity and Textual Dislike. Gray argues that “Hate or dislike of a text can […] serve just as powerfully [as admiration] to unite and sustain a community or subculture” (Gray 3). Antifans need not be intimately knowledgeable about the fandom or the text. In fact, much antifan credibility comes from having never watched the show, and fans who have turned antifan often go to great lengths to demonstrate their hatred for a show [v]. In today’s technological culture, antifans have turned to Youtube.com as a platform through which to preach their distain. Videos such as “5 Things I Hate About Star Trek Online” [vi] provide antifans with a place to vent where fans of the show cannot reach them and where they can connect to other antifans.
Antifans also use the text of the show in close readings in order to discuss exactly what it is that is reprehensible about the show (or book [vii], or movie) that they dislike. By closely reading and interacting with the text, antifans find “moral, aesthetic, and intellectual” reasons to dislike a text (Gray 15). Though antifans paint themselves as engaged in a battle against the text itself, through their portrayal of their consumption of the text they inadvertently end up propagating and advertising the text itself. Different television industries choose to react to antifans in different manners - some ignore the antifans, and others choose to alter their text in order to cater to the antifans in hopes that they will gain more viewers.
The way that the industry reacts to fandom (or antifandom) can be a great determining factor in the success of a show. The fandom for the television show Supernatural, for example, has a level of interaction with the producers and actors of the show that is rare for fandom. The producers and actors have not only publicly acknowledged the presence of fanfiction (slash fanfiction as well as character-incest slash fiction) but have admitted to having read it. The producers and writers of Supernatural have taken this relationship a step further by ‘canon-bashing’ their own show and having the characters in the show find a fandom, complete with fanfic, based around them as if they are unknowing characters in a book (which, in this specific story line, they also are) [viii]. The producer-fan interaction of Supernatural has worked towards fostering a dedicated fan community that feels as though their thoughts and opinions are being heard, and through this they have created a community that is more invested in their show and less likely to abandon it.
The majority of fan practices are legally protected in the Supreme Court Case Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music (510 U.S. 569 (1994)). In a case that dealt with a parody song becoming an economic success, the court laid a precedent for the legal production of what they deemed “transformative works” - a work that instead of replacing the original “adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning, or message”. This 1994 court case was the first time that a transformative work had been addressed. By stating in the majority opinion that “the goal of copyright, to promote science and the arts, is generally furthered by the creation of transformative works”, the Supreme Court validated fans and fan practices. This case set precedent for Fandom action when the production industries and fanwork hosting websites began taking actions against fandom. A number of concerned fans from different parts of fandom came together to form the Organization for Transformative Works. The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a legally recognized nonprofit organization that works to serve fans by providing hosting services, a discussion board, and through archives and a fan-wikipedia (called FanLore) preserving fan works and history. The OTW is run by fans, for fans, and posits itself as a neutural ground in the middle of fandom.
By acknowledging the different factions in fandom, the founders and board of directors of the Organization for Transformative works show that there is a great deal of tension that they know can violently explode. Because of this, they have established that their multi-fandom, cross-fandom organization will adopt a ‘Plural Point of View’. As fans, the founders understand that it is sometimes hard to remain neutral on a subject, and as such the Plural Point of View recognizes each different viewpoint but does not lay value on one over another. By presenting all of the viewpoints, OTW codifies the factions of fandom and their often diametrically opposite viewpoints. Fan productions such as fanfiction, vids, and filk all provide the fan community with ways to delve deeper into the meanings of the original text, and thus to transform it. Because of this, the Organization for Transformative Works strives to preserve and represent all of these works, regardless of the initial viewpoint presented in them.
Debate within fandom and across fandoms is so prevalent that fandom has adopted internet terms “wank” and “flamewar”. Wank, taken from UK slang ‘rubbish’, is loosely defined as massive internet drama that involves many parties and causes a great disruption. If Jenkins was correct in his version of utopian fandom, then there would be no cause for fanwank nor for flamewars (a heated, public, written argument where two or more parties engage in an attention-drawing debate). Yet because fans have created terms for these scenarios, because there are entire online communities dedicated to tracking the wank in fandom, Jenkins’ theory of utopian fan practices crumbles. With the interconnectivity of fans through the Internet, through phone and other instantaneous communication, there is no longer a great divide between fans. It is harder for a fan to isolate themselves among a community of like-minded people and not be aware of the other side of the argument. Although Jenkins provides a view of fandom that is complimentary, it is no longer a realistic representation. Instead it is Johnson and Gray, with their factions and antifans, who provide a contemporary painting of fandom that depicts both the unity, the division and the strife that can cause a fandom to rally together.
[i] Canon is the original “source text” for a fandom. This is the TV show, the book, or the movie in which the story takes place. There are internal fandom debates about what qualifies as “canon” - for example, canon purists state that only the original text is canon, and subsequent other-media endeavors to continue the story are not canon. This debate is common as a story changes media (ex. from book to movie, or from TV show to comic book).
[ii] The instinct to give ‘ownership’ of Buffy to series creator/producer Joss Whedon instead of the TV network on which Buffy was shown is demonstrative Whedon’s endurance and connection to the show. It also illustrates how positing yourself as the sole person who has mastery of a text can give you that credibility (in this case it is Whedon, and not the network, who fans associate with being the end-all authority of the show). Part of this is because of Whedon’s very visible role within the network, and how they often seemed to defer to him. Again, this validates fan rationale for knowing the text to the point of ownership. A non-television example of this can be seen in the ‘Harry Potter Lexicon’ (HP-Lexicon.org), a fan-created encyclopedia of everything in the Harry Potter series. Although he has no ties to JK Rowling or the Harry Potter publishers, Lexicon compiler Steve has become the go-to source for Potter information through his demonstrated knowledge and familiarity with the text.
[iii] A “ship” is a desired romantic pairing of characters. Someone who ships two characters wants them to get together (in the romantic sense). “Ship” can be used as both a noun and a verb: a shipper will ship characters, or support a ship. Just as ships sailing on the ocean are christened with a name, fans will give their favored pairings ‘ships names’: rather than saying they ship Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, some people will say that they support “Harmony” (a vague example of a portmanteau created by combining the characters’ names; others are usually more literal: Drarry for Draco/Harry). People who support a ship are called shippers.
[iv] List of ship_manifesto entries taken off of http://community.livejournal.com/newbieguide/130 52.html?thread=480508
[v] An example of this can be found in the filk song, “Let’s Slushie Glee!”, by the band ‘No-Win Scenario’ , that was inspired by the writing of this paper. A fan turned antifan, Stephanie uses her music to express her changed opinion of the show: “But it's two years down the line and I've come to realize: Glee, you're not at all what you promised to be.”
[vi] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZvhCET9HOg
[vii] Although this is a course on Television fandom, it would be remiss to speak about antifans and not mention today’s largest (or at least most vocal) antifan community: the antifans for Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight novels. The Twilight antifan community finds antifan fodder in the novels themselves (ex., Misogynistic representations of women, a fetus eating it’s way out of the mother, and sparkly skin to represent vampires) but also in the fandom communities that support Twilight and in the rabid ship wars that occur within the fandom (ex., Team Edward versus Team Jacob).
[viii] For further reading on the Supernatural fandom and the producer-actor-fan interactions, Irene McGinn (Dublin Ciry University) has done an in-depth analysis that can be found at http://metapancakes.com /?p=253.
The anti-Glee song referenced can be found here:
Click to viewThe song was recorded at 3:30 AM as we got kicked out of the dining hall. She's since done a version with piano. Y'know. No pianos in the dining hall. Whatevs. My favorite part is the people laughing at the next table right before the end.