So I'm getting into the real research material of my actual Phd now, which as some of you know is a Foucauldian look at how discourse works between SPN and fandom - how concepts are formed, taken up, altered, contested, etc. The big concept I'm doing right now is 'race'/ethnicity, which is quite neglected in media studies focused on fandom so far. ( Read more... )

Oh dear God. I truly wish this were a parody. But it isn't. For those who are fortunate enough not to have heard of the EDL, it stands for English Defense League: a loose consortium of neo-facists rapidly gaining a level of notoreity formerly reserved for the abhorrent British National Party.

And they want Britain to be back British.If this were ( Read more... )

Just read an interesting article arguing that derivative fan works should be considered legal under the same framework as review and parody are, as part of the set of interpretive rights that an author cedes once a work goes public ( Read more... )

Sign the petition and pass it on:

http://www.change.org/petitions/demand-that-apple-remove-ex-gay-iphone-app#?opt_new=t&opt_fb=t

( It's long. )

Reading Abigail Derecho, 'Archontic Literature' in 'Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet', ed. Hellekson and Busse. I appreciate the historical perspective on rewritings by minorities, but the idea that fanfiction is something women do because it fills their need for nurturance and emotional gratification is making me very ( Read more... )

I find it fascinating how much more scholarship - and better scholarship - there is on slash fanfic than het or gen. Numerically, slash accounts for a relatively small proportion of fanfic - but judging by the bookshelves in the cultural studies library, or, for that matter, occasional mentions in mainstream media, you'd think it was all that ( Read more... )

Due to the untimely release of 'Sex and the City 2', (by which I don't know whether the Western side or the Arab side of me is more insulted), I feel like recommending some real films set in the Middle East. Today I want to note 'Etz Limon' ('The Lemon Tree'), 2008, dir. Eran Riklis, an absolute gem which would have slipped under my radar had not ( Read more... )

I live in a turbo-capitalist society, so a lot of demeaning media wank kind of goes over my head - the kind of advertising aimed at young women and girls especially. But my stomach pretty much dropped last week when I opened the free paper to
this particular piece of fucked-up fuckeryon the bus on my way into college. I know I really shouldn't be ( Read more... )

Greetings. I come in optimism ( Read more... )