A Vindication of the Rights of Shippers (and fans in general)
This was originally a comment on Red_satin_doll's journal, but I decided to expand on it a little bit.
Remember all of the research I was doing in Community fandom? Well, when I went to write up what I learned, the thing people were the most passionate about were shippers and shipping. Love 'em, hate 'em, everyone wanted to talk about shipping. So my research ended up focusing on that, and I actually got into the California State University system-wide student research competition (woohoo!) with my paper on shippers.
I needed to go heavily in depth into theory on this paper, and I began reading de Certeau. De Certeau is the guy who originally said readers "poach" when they appropriate something from a media work, and Henry Jenkins used the term "poach" to describe what fans do with fan fiction and fan works. And I've been reading up on deconstruction and bricolage and humanistic literary theory and my brain will likely explode by the end of this semester, but it has really got me thinking about fandom and the way we see shippers and OTPs and favorite characters. So here's what I wrote on red_satin_doll's journal:
I've been reading a bunch of French post-structuralists the past couple weeks, and I think I understand the problem with fandom: we over-identify with our favorites (be it ship, character, show, whatevs), so when someone insults that ship/character/show, we take it as a personal blow. de Certeau (the guy I've been reading the most) has this thing about "strategies" and "tactics" - strategies are the ways "the system" or "the man" or hegemony makes us conform to the dominant narrative, and tactics are developed by individuals to navigate those strategies. We are given a media narrative and told the strategic meaning by the dominant culture. You can "buy in" to the message given, or you can deconstruct it and take what meaning you want from it.
Fandom is a tactic against the strategies of mass media. Fans say "Thanks, Star Trek, for your masculinist narrative, but I'm going to ship Kirk/Spock and create my own narrative." Thus, slash shipping is a tactic meant to navigate the strategy of the masculinist narrative. Another tactic is in picking and choosing what we identify with. In Harry Potter, it can be what house you're in or what you ship. I am a troubled Ravenclaw shipping Tomione like it's nobody's business, you can be a Gryffindor shipping Cho Chang and Minerva McGonagall. Likewise with Buffy fandom. I am a late-season loving, Buffy-centric Spuffy shipper. I identify with the B-Team of Spike, Dawn, Anya and Tara more than Giles, Xander and Willow. I use these identifiers as my tactic to make meaning of mass media - they become who I am and how I see myself.
So when someone insults Buffy, I want to get into their face about it, because insulting Buffy is like insulting me. The conversation (mentioned in red_satin_doll's journal but not really directly relevant) was about how shippers see the entire series through their shipper-shaped lenses. My answer? OF COURSE THEY DO! The thing they identify with most in the show is that particular relationship, so of course it's going to color the way they see the show. What bothers me is when people dismiss shippers as all being "problematic" or "troublesome" or "the reason why fandom is so terrible."
Here's my line of thinking: I've been known to get up in people's grill about particular ships and characters. Disliking these ships and characters (I'll leave what these ships and who these characters are up to the reader) is also part of how I differentiate myself from other mass consumers - it's part of my identity as much as being a late-season loving, Buffy-centric Spuffy shipper is. So when I say something passionate against said ship or character, I'm saying it because something fundamental inside me objects to them.
So this brings us to ship wars. You have people who over-identify with ship A, which goes counter to those who over-identify with ship B. "A" shippers object to ship B because we're all rapist lovers (was that too specific? Okay, we're all bad people who like problematic characters). When "A" shippers and "B" shippers meet in discourse, of course there's going to be conflict. I think it's extremely naive to believe that two groups of people who firmly believe and identify with two contrasting things won't have some conflict.
That doesn't mean we dismiss shippers completely, and some of the people dismissing shippers would be the first ones out of the gate with a chainsaw if their favorite character was disparaged or dismissed.
WE ALL OVER IDENTIFY WITH OUR FAVORITES. It's how we differentiate ourselves from every single other mass media consumer. When I write my list of fandoms and ships on my tumblr page, I'm making a declaration about who I am. So it really annoys me when people place all the blame about fandom conflict on shippers. If your favorite was threatened, wouldn't you rally to support them?
So yeah. I support the shippers because they have every right to identify with what they end up identifying with. That doesn't give them (or me) the right to be a jackass about it, but shippers shouldn't be looked at as some lesser being because they're distinguishing identifiers is a romantic relationship.
I think I may have lost myself in this, but do you get my point? I'm not even sure what my point originally was.
Remember all of the research I was doing in Community fandom? Well, when I went to write up what I learned, the thing people were the most passionate about were shippers and shipping. Love 'em, hate 'em, everyone wanted to talk about shipping. So my research ended up focusing on that, and I actually got into the California State University system-wide student research competition (woohoo!) with my paper on shippers.
I needed to go heavily in depth into theory on this paper, and I began reading de Certeau. De Certeau is the guy who originally said readers "poach" when they appropriate something from a media work, and Henry Jenkins used the term "poach" to describe what fans do with fan fiction and fan works. And I've been reading up on deconstruction and bricolage and humanistic literary theory and my brain will likely explode by the end of this semester, but it has really got me thinking about fandom and the way we see shippers and OTPs and favorite characters. So here's what I wrote on red_satin_doll's journal:
I've been reading a bunch of French post-structuralists the past couple weeks, and I think I understand the problem with fandom: we over-identify with our favorites (be it ship, character, show, whatevs), so when someone insults that ship/character/show, we take it as a personal blow. de Certeau (the guy I've been reading the most) has this thing about "strategies" and "tactics" - strategies are the ways "the system" or "the man" or hegemony makes us conform to the dominant narrative, and tactics are developed by individuals to navigate those strategies. We are given a media narrative and told the strategic meaning by the dominant culture. You can "buy in" to the message given, or you can deconstruct it and take what meaning you want from it.
Fandom is a tactic against the strategies of mass media. Fans say "Thanks, Star Trek, for your masculinist narrative, but I'm going to ship Kirk/Spock and create my own narrative." Thus, slash shipping is a tactic meant to navigate the strategy of the masculinist narrative. Another tactic is in picking and choosing what we identify with. In Harry Potter, it can be what house you're in or what you ship. I am a troubled Ravenclaw shipping Tomione like it's nobody's business, you can be a Gryffindor shipping Cho Chang and Minerva McGonagall. Likewise with Buffy fandom. I am a late-season loving, Buffy-centric Spuffy shipper. I identify with the B-Team of Spike, Dawn, Anya and Tara more than Giles, Xander and Willow. I use these identifiers as my tactic to make meaning of mass media - they become who I am and how I see myself.
So when someone insults Buffy, I want to get into their face about it, because insulting Buffy is like insulting me. The conversation (mentioned in red_satin_doll's journal but not really directly relevant) was about how shippers see the entire series through their shipper-shaped lenses. My answer? OF COURSE THEY DO! The thing they identify with most in the show is that particular relationship, so of course it's going to color the way they see the show. What bothers me is when people dismiss shippers as all being "problematic" or "troublesome" or "the reason why fandom is so terrible."
Here's my line of thinking: I've been known to get up in people's grill about particular ships and characters. Disliking these ships and characters (I'll leave what these ships and who these characters are up to the reader) is also part of how I differentiate myself from other mass consumers - it's part of my identity as much as being a late-season loving, Buffy-centric Spuffy shipper is. So when I say something passionate against said ship or character, I'm saying it because something fundamental inside me objects to them.
So this brings us to ship wars. You have people who over-identify with ship A, which goes counter to those who over-identify with ship B. "A" shippers object to ship B because we're all rapist lovers (was that too specific? Okay, we're all bad people who like problematic characters). When "A" shippers and "B" shippers meet in discourse, of course there's going to be conflict. I think it's extremely naive to believe that two groups of people who firmly believe and identify with two contrasting things won't have some conflict.
That doesn't mean we dismiss shippers completely, and some of the people dismissing shippers would be the first ones out of the gate with a chainsaw if their favorite character was disparaged or dismissed.
WE ALL OVER IDENTIFY WITH OUR FAVORITES. It's how we differentiate ourselves from every single other mass media consumer. When I write my list of fandoms and ships on my tumblr page, I'm making a declaration about who I am. So it really annoys me when people place all the blame about fandom conflict on shippers. If your favorite was threatened, wouldn't you rally to support them?
So yeah. I support the shippers because they have every right to identify with what they end up identifying with. That doesn't give them (or me) the right to be a jackass about it, but shippers shouldn't be looked at as some lesser being because they're distinguishing identifiers is a romantic relationship.
I think I may have lost myself in this, but do you get my point? I'm not even sure what my point originally was.