Chapter 2: Asylum 5 a Fan Convention
Chapter 2: Asylum 5 a Fan Convention
One of the longest running practices of fandom is the convention - typically an organised event for fans to meet one another and more often than not, the actors and creators of the text that the fans are invested in. As Jenkins notes it is these conventions which ‘facilitated the face-to-face contact between fans from across the country and around the world’ (Jenkins, 2006a:138) and it is these events which enabled a particular form of personal and non-commercial fan participation to circulate amongst those with a common interest; fan magazines, written and published by fans. These fan created magazines typically included discussions about the favoured text, fan art and, another form of personal fan participation which will be discussed later in this chapter, fan fiction. To understand how fans communicate and interact at these types of events, one needs to be in attendance.
Asylum 5: Feast of the Dead - is the fifth UK convention dedicated to Supernatural, organised by Rogue Events - an events company which has hosted ‘Fun and Fan friendly Conventions since 2005’ (Rogue Events) most of which focusing on the television programs Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries. Having hosted four previous Supernatural conventions in the UK and the first European convention in May 2010 - Asylum Europe: No Rest for the Wicked - Rogue Events has maintained a loyal relationship with fans in the UK and some European countries, many attendees return again and again, rewarded for the loyalty in kind, by Rogue which regularly has the core cast members, often in attendance of multiple conventions; Jensen Ackles (portrays Dean Winchester) in 2007, 2009 and scheduled for May 2011, Misha Collins (portrays Castiel from season four onwards) in May 2010, October 2010 and scheduled for October 2011. Also, Jim Beaver (portrays Bobby Singer) in 2008 and May 2010, Jared Padalecki (portrays Sam Winchester) in 2009 and scheduled for May 2011 and Richard Speight Jr. (portrays Trickster/Gabriel) in 2009 and scheduled for May 2011 are amongst the mix of recurring and one off fan favourite actors. (SupernaturalWiki)
The line up for Asylum 5: Misha Collins, Mark Sheppard (portrayed Crowley for two seasons), Fredric Lehne (portrayed Azazel during the second season), Julie McNiven (a brief recurring role as the angel Anna), Jake Abel (the third Winchester brother Adam), Jason Manns (professional musician, long time friend of Jensen Ackles and the entertainment for the Saturday night) and Aldis Hodge (appeared in the final two episodes of the second season as Jake) continued the trend of high profile and popular guests.
The event lasted three days, running from the 29th - 31st of October 2010 held at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel, which is a popular venue for such events to be held, having previously attended two similar conventions at this location myself. The convention consisted of talks on the Saturday and Sunday with all the guests; singles and mixed groups along with talks opening and closing the weekend with all guests in attendance. Attendees are able to purchase photo shoots with guest of their choice and can obtain autographs from each of the guests along with bidding on places in ‘Coffee Lounges’ - an exclusive intimate chat only between the stars and ‘winners’. In addition to purchasing a range of merchandise from vendors in a designated room and taking part in an auction at the end of the weekend; bidding on exclusive and at times signed items provided by Rogue Events. This option for fans to acquire products and so become more akin to collectors is a strong theme of conventions and allows the fans to take home their specialist items and remains a strong topic of conversation between fans long after the convention has finished reinforcing the ‘community feel’.
Studying Convention Attendees
As I was already attending this event as a fan, I decided to attempt an ethnographic-come-observational study of this particular fandom from the perspective of an academic - I would be Jenkins ‘aca-fan’ (Jenkins, 2006). To capitalise on spending an entire weekend with fans of Supernatural, I constructed a brief questionnaire about the fandom to be distributed at the convention in order to collate primary data from them. The questionnaire covered the topics of conventions, their experiences with the fandom and the practice of reading and writing fan fiction - to garner a small view of fan opinion on my selected topics. However, I encountered a problem with distributing the questionnaires; my own schedule as a fan and the overall timetable for the entire weekend was full, leaving little time or opportunity to converse with fellow fans long enough to broach the subject of them participating in the questionnaire - this is most likely due to the fact the convention itself is geared towards fans and not academics and the balance I was hoping to achieve over the weekend was out of reach. This contrasts with Vivien Burr’s (2005) work which documents her experience ‘at the Slayage Conference on Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ (Burr, 2005:376) which unlike Asylum 5, ‘clearly identified itself as an academic conference.’ (Burr, 2005:376) However, Burr still had to tackle ‘the defensiveness and anxiety associated with trying to have a foot in both camps.’ (Burr, 2005:376) Which I was somewhat unsuccessful in overcoming; of the five questionnaires I was able to give out, only two were returned completed.
It is in this dilemma that I was able to tap into what Levy (1997) referred to as a "knowledge community" and make contact with attendees after the convention had ended via the social networking site Twitter (www.twitter.com), as many Supernatural fans are members of the site and converse regularly with each other about the show, the actors, spoilers and news, and also allows those who are not in attendance of conventions, much like Asylum 5, to read tweets from those who are. An aspect of ‘the age of media convergence’ (Jenkins, 2006b:26) which has enabled fan cultures to become fully digital - following tweets from convention attendees in real time. A simple tweet requesting attendees who would be interested in completing the questionnaire, which I emailed directly to them, garnered another eight participants. This allowed me to collate a small amount of data about a percentage of the fans who attended.
Returning to my experience at the convention, one of my initial observations when I arrived was that the average age of fans in attendance was much higher than I expected - while queuing to collect my registration pack, the majority of fans queuing near me were five years to fifteen years older than my own age of twenty-three. This was an unusual occurrence in my experience of conventions and fandom as a whole - my previous involvement with fandom events such as a convention, the age of most active fans had been in the teens to early twenties - the ten attendees who completed my questionnaire were aged from twenty-one to thirty-three, with an average age of almost twenty-seven, which would seem to prove evident that the fan age is significantly different to the current stereotyped fan in media, that of the teenage girl;
If you are neither 15 years old nor the sort of person for whom the term fan fiction has an ounce of resonance, then chances are that "Supernatural" is not in your DVR queue or even in your frame of reference. (Bellafante, 2011)
This article presumes that the typical Supernatural fan is still in their teens and the show is unlikely to garner any interest from older viewers - the participants of my questionnaire and the observed age range of attendees at Asylum 5 seem to contradict this.
The Appeal of Conventions
One of the sections of my questionnaire was related to fan conventions; why they chose this particular convention, if they had attended other conventions and in the participant’s opinion, why conventions are so popular amongst fans. A common theme amongst the responses as to why they attended Asylum 5 was the prospect of meeting Misha Collins:
Participant 1: Two words. Misha Collins. I’m a huge fan of Misha’s and I honestly wouldn’t have bothered with this one if he hadn’t been a guest.
Participant 5: I wanted to see Misha…
Participant 4: Because Misha would be there.
The draw of Rogue Events booking top guests and fan favourites seems to play a significant factor in whether fans attend, in addition to wanting to make face to face contact ‘with my twitter friends from the fandom.’(Participant 4) This desire to meet fellow fans at such events seems to be an integral part, not only of the conventions, but of being part of a fandom as a whole. The participants all shared similar opinions as to why conventions like Asylum 5 are so popular amongst fans;
Participant 1: Conventions create a comfortable environment where fans know that we are all there for the same thing.
Participant 2: […] a lot of cool likeminded people getting together, sharing their passion for their show and generally having a good time.
Participant 6: […] being together and meeting people with the same interests. That is the reason I go. Escape from reality.
These fan opinions seem to maintain much of Jenkins (1992, 2006a) work on fan cultures, where ‘by joining a "community" of other fans who share common interests’ (Jenkins, 2006a:41) isolated fans find others to share their opinions, thoughts and feelings with, and ‘To enter fandom is to "escape" from the "mundane" into the marvellous[…]’ (Jenkins, 2006a:42) Furthermore, the participants also highlighted that the conventions also provide them with a chance;
Participant 7: […] to get up close and personal with the stars of the show that we love and admire
Participant 8: […] to actually say to their faces "great job" and show appreciation. […] These people work very hard to entertain me for 22 hours of television, it’s nice to be able to offer them some validation in return.
Conventions seem to be seen as an invaluable opportunity to show how much the fans enjoy and appreciate the media text they are all enamoured with to those who are creatively involved in it; bringing producer and reader closer. According to Jenkins (1992) this relationship between producer and reader is one of conflict ‘one which has had to be actively fought or at least negotiated between fans and producers in almost every fandom’ (Jenkins, 1992:32) which is typically centred around the issue of ‘textual poaching.’ (Jenkins, 1992) Relating to fan activities such as fan fiction, photo manipulation of network owned images, use of series footage to create reimaginings of certain scenes and relationships or music videos which allude to a different version of events than what is presented in canon. The former of these activities will be discussed in Chapter 3. Returning to the conflict which Jenkins discussed, it would seem that it is muted to near non-existence between the creators and network of Supernatural and its dedicated fan base, to the point where a different relationship has begun to form, one which reflects the formation of a dialogue between fan and creator; this will be discussed in Chapters 4 and 5.
Two participants made rather interesting comments about conventions, the first speaks of the interactivity of the fandom and how the coming together of fans at these events ‘makes the show much more interactive.’ (Participant 3) This interactivity is a key component of fan cultures and the ‘knowledge communities’ of Levy’s (1997) work, as it enforces the idea that ‘the separation between transmission and reception, composition and interpretation’ (Levy, 1997:122) will reduce as fans become more involved in the text than merely watching and interpreting alone, they will converse, discuss and analyse what they have seen with like-minded people.
This is reflected in the second comment of interest; ‘It’s like a collective friendship even if you don’t know everyone’ (Participant 1). This feeling was echoed by other participants when asked to describe the Supernatural fandom;
Participant 2: [...] incredibly friendly and willing to chat [...] it’s okay to be ourselves with each other.
Participant 5: It’s like a huge big family and if you need help or have a problem you just tell or write it down [...]
The sense of community which the participants feel furthers the idea that ‘Fandom functions as an alternative social community’ (Jenkins, 1992:280) which within Levy’s (1997) utopia vision of ‘knowledge communities’ the Supernatural fandom seemingly reaches this ideal, to a degree at least. Issues are still present, divisions within the fan culture, and ridicule and contempt from outside but much of the time there is a sense of unity amongst the fans, this was the overall impression I took away from attending Asylum 5, fans were able to easily fall into conversations;
Participant 1: I struck up conversations with people I didn’t know while waiting in line or in one of the coffee lounges.
It is this ease of finding others to discuss your interest which has been a part of fan cultures for many years and continues to be an integral part of why people invest their time and money in such activities as attending conventions.
Masterpost | Chapter 1: Introduction | Chapter 2: Asylum 5 a Fan Convention | Chapter 3: Fan Fiction: a Prolific Practice | Chapter 4: Postmodernism and Catering to the Fans | Chapter 5: New and Evolving Forms of Interaction | Chapter 6: Conclusion: Supernatural fan culture ahead of the game? | Filmography and Bibliography | Acknowledgments
One of the longest running practices of fandom is the convention - typically an organised event for fans to meet one another and more often than not, the actors and creators of the text that the fans are invested in. As Jenkins notes it is these conventions which ‘facilitated the face-to-face contact between fans from across the country and around the world’ (Jenkins, 2006a:138) and it is these events which enabled a particular form of personal and non-commercial fan participation to circulate amongst those with a common interest; fan magazines, written and published by fans. These fan created magazines typically included discussions about the favoured text, fan art and, another form of personal fan participation which will be discussed later in this chapter, fan fiction. To understand how fans communicate and interact at these types of events, one needs to be in attendance.
Asylum 5: Feast of the Dead - is the fifth UK convention dedicated to Supernatural, organised by Rogue Events - an events company which has hosted ‘Fun and Fan friendly Conventions since 2005’ (Rogue Events) most of which focusing on the television programs Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries. Having hosted four previous Supernatural conventions in the UK and the first European convention in May 2010 - Asylum Europe: No Rest for the Wicked - Rogue Events has maintained a loyal relationship with fans in the UK and some European countries, many attendees return again and again, rewarded for the loyalty in kind, by Rogue which regularly has the core cast members, often in attendance of multiple conventions; Jensen Ackles (portrays Dean Winchester) in 2007, 2009 and scheduled for May 2011, Misha Collins (portrays Castiel from season four onwards) in May 2010, October 2010 and scheduled for October 2011. Also, Jim Beaver (portrays Bobby Singer) in 2008 and May 2010, Jared Padalecki (portrays Sam Winchester) in 2009 and scheduled for May 2011 and Richard Speight Jr. (portrays Trickster/Gabriel) in 2009 and scheduled for May 2011 are amongst the mix of recurring and one off fan favourite actors. (SupernaturalWiki)
The line up for Asylum 5: Misha Collins, Mark Sheppard (portrayed Crowley for two seasons), Fredric Lehne (portrayed Azazel during the second season), Julie McNiven (a brief recurring role as the angel Anna), Jake Abel (the third Winchester brother Adam), Jason Manns (professional musician, long time friend of Jensen Ackles and the entertainment for the Saturday night) and Aldis Hodge (appeared in the final two episodes of the second season as Jake) continued the trend of high profile and popular guests.
The event lasted three days, running from the 29th - 31st of October 2010 held at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel, which is a popular venue for such events to be held, having previously attended two similar conventions at this location myself. The convention consisted of talks on the Saturday and Sunday with all the guests; singles and mixed groups along with talks opening and closing the weekend with all guests in attendance. Attendees are able to purchase photo shoots with guest of their choice and can obtain autographs from each of the guests along with bidding on places in ‘Coffee Lounges’ - an exclusive intimate chat only between the stars and ‘winners’. In addition to purchasing a range of merchandise from vendors in a designated room and taking part in an auction at the end of the weekend; bidding on exclusive and at times signed items provided by Rogue Events. This option for fans to acquire products and so become more akin to collectors is a strong theme of conventions and allows the fans to take home their specialist items and remains a strong topic of conversation between fans long after the convention has finished reinforcing the ‘community feel’.
Studying Convention Attendees
As I was already attending this event as a fan, I decided to attempt an ethnographic-come-observational study of this particular fandom from the perspective of an academic - I would be Jenkins ‘aca-fan’ (Jenkins, 2006). To capitalise on spending an entire weekend with fans of Supernatural, I constructed a brief questionnaire about the fandom to be distributed at the convention in order to collate primary data from them. The questionnaire covered the topics of conventions, their experiences with the fandom and the practice of reading and writing fan fiction - to garner a small view of fan opinion on my selected topics. However, I encountered a problem with distributing the questionnaires; my own schedule as a fan and the overall timetable for the entire weekend was full, leaving little time or opportunity to converse with fellow fans long enough to broach the subject of them participating in the questionnaire - this is most likely due to the fact the convention itself is geared towards fans and not academics and the balance I was hoping to achieve over the weekend was out of reach. This contrasts with Vivien Burr’s (2005) work which documents her experience ‘at the Slayage Conference on Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ (Burr, 2005:376) which unlike Asylum 5, ‘clearly identified itself as an academic conference.’ (Burr, 2005:376) However, Burr still had to tackle ‘the defensiveness and anxiety associated with trying to have a foot in both camps.’ (Burr, 2005:376) Which I was somewhat unsuccessful in overcoming; of the five questionnaires I was able to give out, only two were returned completed.
It is in this dilemma that I was able to tap into what Levy (1997) referred to as a "knowledge community" and make contact with attendees after the convention had ended via the social networking site Twitter (www.twitter.com), as many Supernatural fans are members of the site and converse regularly with each other about the show, the actors, spoilers and news, and also allows those who are not in attendance of conventions, much like Asylum 5, to read tweets from those who are. An aspect of ‘the age of media convergence’ (Jenkins, 2006b:26) which has enabled fan cultures to become fully digital - following tweets from convention attendees in real time. A simple tweet requesting attendees who would be interested in completing the questionnaire, which I emailed directly to them, garnered another eight participants. This allowed me to collate a small amount of data about a percentage of the fans who attended.
Returning to my experience at the convention, one of my initial observations when I arrived was that the average age of fans in attendance was much higher than I expected - while queuing to collect my registration pack, the majority of fans queuing near me were five years to fifteen years older than my own age of twenty-three. This was an unusual occurrence in my experience of conventions and fandom as a whole - my previous involvement with fandom events such as a convention, the age of most active fans had been in the teens to early twenties - the ten attendees who completed my questionnaire were aged from twenty-one to thirty-three, with an average age of almost twenty-seven, which would seem to prove evident that the fan age is significantly different to the current stereotyped fan in media, that of the teenage girl;
If you are neither 15 years old nor the sort of person for whom the term fan fiction has an ounce of resonance, then chances are that "Supernatural" is not in your DVR queue or even in your frame of reference. (Bellafante, 2011)
This article presumes that the typical Supernatural fan is still in their teens and the show is unlikely to garner any interest from older viewers - the participants of my questionnaire and the observed age range of attendees at Asylum 5 seem to contradict this.
The Appeal of Conventions
One of the sections of my questionnaire was related to fan conventions; why they chose this particular convention, if they had attended other conventions and in the participant’s opinion, why conventions are so popular amongst fans. A common theme amongst the responses as to why they attended Asylum 5 was the prospect of meeting Misha Collins:
Participant 1: Two words. Misha Collins. I’m a huge fan of Misha’s and I honestly wouldn’t have bothered with this one if he hadn’t been a guest.
Participant 5: I wanted to see Misha…
Participant 4: Because Misha would be there.
The draw of Rogue Events booking top guests and fan favourites seems to play a significant factor in whether fans attend, in addition to wanting to make face to face contact ‘with my twitter friends from the fandom.’(Participant 4) This desire to meet fellow fans at such events seems to be an integral part, not only of the conventions, but of being part of a fandom as a whole. The participants all shared similar opinions as to why conventions like Asylum 5 are so popular amongst fans;
Participant 1: Conventions create a comfortable environment where fans know that we are all there for the same thing.
Participant 2: […] a lot of cool likeminded people getting together, sharing their passion for their show and generally having a good time.
Participant 6: […] being together and meeting people with the same interests. That is the reason I go. Escape from reality.
These fan opinions seem to maintain much of Jenkins (1992, 2006a) work on fan cultures, where ‘by joining a "community" of other fans who share common interests’ (Jenkins, 2006a:41) isolated fans find others to share their opinions, thoughts and feelings with, and ‘To enter fandom is to "escape" from the "mundane" into the marvellous[…]’ (Jenkins, 2006a:42) Furthermore, the participants also highlighted that the conventions also provide them with a chance;
Participant 7: […] to get up close and personal with the stars of the show that we love and admire
Participant 8: […] to actually say to their faces "great job" and show appreciation. […] These people work very hard to entertain me for 22 hours of television, it’s nice to be able to offer them some validation in return.
Conventions seem to be seen as an invaluable opportunity to show how much the fans enjoy and appreciate the media text they are all enamoured with to those who are creatively involved in it; bringing producer and reader closer. According to Jenkins (1992) this relationship between producer and reader is one of conflict ‘one which has had to be actively fought or at least negotiated between fans and producers in almost every fandom’ (Jenkins, 1992:32) which is typically centred around the issue of ‘textual poaching.’ (Jenkins, 1992) Relating to fan activities such as fan fiction, photo manipulation of network owned images, use of series footage to create reimaginings of certain scenes and relationships or music videos which allude to a different version of events than what is presented in canon. The former of these activities will be discussed in Chapter 3. Returning to the conflict which Jenkins discussed, it would seem that it is muted to near non-existence between the creators and network of Supernatural and its dedicated fan base, to the point where a different relationship has begun to form, one which reflects the formation of a dialogue between fan and creator; this will be discussed in Chapters 4 and 5.
Two participants made rather interesting comments about conventions, the first speaks of the interactivity of the fandom and how the coming together of fans at these events ‘makes the show much more interactive.’ (Participant 3) This interactivity is a key component of fan cultures and the ‘knowledge communities’ of Levy’s (1997) work, as it enforces the idea that ‘the separation between transmission and reception, composition and interpretation’ (Levy, 1997:122) will reduce as fans become more involved in the text than merely watching and interpreting alone, they will converse, discuss and analyse what they have seen with like-minded people.
This is reflected in the second comment of interest; ‘It’s like a collective friendship even if you don’t know everyone’ (Participant 1). This feeling was echoed by other participants when asked to describe the Supernatural fandom;
Participant 2: [...] incredibly friendly and willing to chat [...] it’s okay to be ourselves with each other.
Participant 5: It’s like a huge big family and if you need help or have a problem you just tell or write it down [...]
The sense of community which the participants feel furthers the idea that ‘Fandom functions as an alternative social community’ (Jenkins, 1992:280) which within Levy’s (1997) utopia vision of ‘knowledge communities’ the Supernatural fandom seemingly reaches this ideal, to a degree at least. Issues are still present, divisions within the fan culture, and ridicule and contempt from outside but much of the time there is a sense of unity amongst the fans, this was the overall impression I took away from attending Asylum 5, fans were able to easily fall into conversations;
Participant 1: I struck up conversations with people I didn’t know while waiting in line or in one of the coffee lounges.
It is this ease of finding others to discuss your interest which has been a part of fan cultures for many years and continues to be an integral part of why people invest their time and money in such activities as attending conventions.
Masterpost | Chapter 1: Introduction | Chapter 2: Asylum 5 a Fan Convention | Chapter 3: Fan Fiction: a Prolific Practice | Chapter 4: Postmodernism and Catering to the Fans | Chapter 5: New and Evolving Forms of Interaction | Chapter 6: Conclusion: Supernatural fan culture ahead of the game? | Filmography and Bibliography | Acknowledgments