the rise and fall and shift in trends in fandom media accessibility - VHS tapes to DVDs to digital
This is where I shake my stick and croak: "In my day, we got English language origin media (or, for that matter, any other language media) solely two or three years after the original US broadcast, and dubbed! And if we wanted to see the undubbed original versions, we either had to live in a big city with at least one cinema in English, and ditto a video store with an English section, or we had to have British relations/friends who recorded the stuff for us! Because if we had US friends, the tapes wouldn't even work in our region!"
Seriously, though: growing up in the 70s and 80s in a small German town, it would have been impossible for me to watch any of the movies or shows I was interested in in English. Save for the last two years at school because my English teacher there showed us the occasional movie in English in order to widen and train our vocabulary. I still remember being 14 and participating in an US student exchange programm, watching a series I was familiar with, though not fannish about - I think it was Dallas - on US tv and being bewildered by two things: a) all the advertising breaks. (We have those in Germany, too, by now, but back then we didn't, sigh of nostalgia.) and b) those utterly unfamiliar voices coming out of the mouths of the characters I associated with different voices altogether.
My love for Star Trek started during my childhood, but I didn't watch any ST (TOS, movies, TNG) in the original version until moving to Munich as an adult, and probably not so coincidentally, this was also when I went from being a passive fan to being an active one (going to conventions, finding other fans to debate the then current shows - TNG and DS9 - with). (Mind you, part of my childhood imprint has never left. I heretically prefer Spock's German voice to Leonard Nimoy's, and who is this Bones you speak of? He's nicknamed Pille!.) During the 90s, I also started to look out for English-language video tapes, either by buying them when visiting London (we were still a year or two behind US broadcast, so by the time London had TNG episodes from season 6 in the HMV or Virgin stores, these were still utterly new to me) or looking in desperation for some friendly, met-at-a-convention soul who was in possession of tapes.
And then came the internet. Seriously, I think that was the biggest shift, not least because suddenly you could communicate with fans all over the globe, and being years behind was ever so much MORE annoying when you didn't read spoilery reviews in a quaterly fanzine but in an online discussion forum. If you were in possession of British friends then, you really lucked out (I still have the video tapes
kathyh recorded for me of Buffy's fourth and Angel's first season, respectively.) But it still took however long the mail took. Mind you, the "download illegally" option slowly but surely also raised its head, emphasis on "slowly", and also "expensively", because those things could take all night and flat rates were rare...
Anyway. The arrival of dvds made a difference mostly in weight (as in, less of same if you borrowed or bought them), because they were still regionally coded, which meant the fact the US had already seasons out on dvd which hadn't been broadcast in Germany yet was of zilch practical use unless you had a Region 1 dvd player. Also, of course, you could use your computer to play them, but then you still had to change the region, and you could only change it a limited number of times. Basically, being a German fan of most genre tv meant you had the eternal choice of either being spoiled by reading discussions about stuff that you wouldn't get to watch for a while or, conversely, being unable to read a considerable part of either meta or fanfiction. Which meant that by the time you did watch it, everyone was already talking about something else.
I think the arrival of streaming made the biggest difference since the arrival of the internet itself. Because now it's possible to watch at virtually the same time it's broadcast, or just one day after, and to do so lawfully. And even do so when travelling, instead of sweating over whether or not you programmed the damn video recorder/dvd recorder correctly. A further bonus for overseas fans is that we since some years even get some movie premieres before the Americans do, though why that is, I honestly don't know, I'm just glad it happens.
One thing, though: with this new accessability also comes a great many more offerings, which means in turn that, mega fandoms aside, I have the impression fandoms tend to be smaller. Fewer people for more shows/movies, because there's a limited amount of time each of us has at their leisurely disposal, and it's impossible to consume all that gets reccommended, let alone all there is which could be of interest.
The Other Days
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1266713.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Seriously, though: growing up in the 70s and 80s in a small German town, it would have been impossible for me to watch any of the movies or shows I was interested in in English. Save for the last two years at school because my English teacher there showed us the occasional movie in English in order to widen and train our vocabulary. I still remember being 14 and participating in an US student exchange programm, watching a series I was familiar with, though not fannish about - I think it was Dallas - on US tv and being bewildered by two things: a) all the advertising breaks. (We have those in Germany, too, by now, but back then we didn't, sigh of nostalgia.) and b) those utterly unfamiliar voices coming out of the mouths of the characters I associated with different voices altogether.
My love for Star Trek started during my childhood, but I didn't watch any ST (TOS, movies, TNG) in the original version until moving to Munich as an adult, and probably not so coincidentally, this was also when I went from being a passive fan to being an active one (going to conventions, finding other fans to debate the then current shows - TNG and DS9 - with). (Mind you, part of my childhood imprint has never left. I heretically prefer Spock's German voice to Leonard Nimoy's, and who is this Bones you speak of? He's nicknamed Pille!.) During the 90s, I also started to look out for English-language video tapes, either by buying them when visiting London (we were still a year or two behind US broadcast, so by the time London had TNG episodes from season 6 in the HMV or Virgin stores, these were still utterly new to me) or looking in desperation for some friendly, met-at-a-convention soul who was in possession of tapes.
And then came the internet. Seriously, I think that was the biggest shift, not least because suddenly you could communicate with fans all over the globe, and being years behind was ever so much MORE annoying when you didn't read spoilery reviews in a quaterly fanzine but in an online discussion forum. If you were in possession of British friends then, you really lucked out (I still have the video tapes
kathyh recorded for me of Buffy's fourth and Angel's first season, respectively.) But it still took however long the mail took. Mind you, the "download illegally" option slowly but surely also raised its head, emphasis on "slowly", and also "expensively", because those things could take all night and flat rates were rare...
Anyway. The arrival of dvds made a difference mostly in weight (as in, less of same if you borrowed or bought them), because they were still regionally coded, which meant the fact the US had already seasons out on dvd which hadn't been broadcast in Germany yet was of zilch practical use unless you had a Region 1 dvd player. Also, of course, you could use your computer to play them, but then you still had to change the region, and you could only change it a limited number of times. Basically, being a German fan of most genre tv meant you had the eternal choice of either being spoiled by reading discussions about stuff that you wouldn't get to watch for a while or, conversely, being unable to read a considerable part of either meta or fanfiction. Which meant that by the time you did watch it, everyone was already talking about something else.
I think the arrival of streaming made the biggest difference since the arrival of the internet itself. Because now it's possible to watch at virtually the same time it's broadcast, or just one day after, and to do so lawfully. And even do so when travelling, instead of sweating over whether or not you programmed the damn video recorder/dvd recorder correctly. A further bonus for overseas fans is that we since some years even get some movie premieres before the Americans do, though why that is, I honestly don't know, I'm just glad it happens.
One thing, though: with this new accessability also comes a great many more offerings, which means in turn that, mega fandoms aside, I have the impression fandoms tend to be smaller. Fewer people for more shows/movies, because there's a limited amount of time each of us has at their leisurely disposal, and it's impossible to consume all that gets reccommended, let alone all there is which could be of interest.
The Other Days
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1266713.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.