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Gaana Srinivas

Professor Nithin Manayath

Media Research

25th October 2013

To Boldly Go Online: Fan Communities in the Digital Age

Introduction

In my previous assignment/paper, Poaching and Enterprising: An

Adventure into Star Trek Fandoms, I reviewed two works – Henry Jenkins’

Textual Poaching: Television Fans and Participatory Culture and Camille Bacon-

Smith’s Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth.

Both works detailed the way people in the Star Trek fandoms

express themselves (through songtapes, fan fiction, cosplaying

etc.) and their interactions with the external world, their

dynamics and gender issues albeit in slightly different ways.

Seeing as it was but a review of literature, I was only looking

at others’ work, critiquing it and occasionally offering my

opinion. In the process, I had some questions about the scope and

the definition of a fan, and the various ways in which fan

communities formed. My main issue was with the fact that these

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two touchstone works released in 1992, before I was even born. As

a result, they spoke about practices and activities that I had

only heard of in literature. I live in the age of fanfiction.net,

digital photo manipulation and live role-playing. I didn’t think

that my participation in online fannish activity made me any less

of a fan than an individual who had attended a convention in

costume or went through the elaborate initiation rituals as

described in exquisite detail in Enterprising Women by Bacon-Smith.

The purpose of this paper is to draw compare and online and

offline fandoms through the lenses of hierarchy formation, value

creation, gender, and fan-producer dynamics. Some of the examples

regarding the microblogging site Tumblr have been from my own

experience as a fan. The shift of some fannish activities to the

online sphere has changed my understanding of the abovementioned

texts. Much of what was written about fans twenty years ago

applies just as well today, but online fandoms have made fandoms

in general much more visible to the public. Although this may

have ‘mainstreamed’ fan identity, it has also increased fan

awareness of their online representations, and possibly, the way

I have come to understand them in my experience.

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By juxtaposing what seemed to be two completely different

fan attitudes in the analog and digital ages, I have found many

similarities, as well as some exhilarating differences. I hope

this paper proves to be interesting and exciting to the reader. I

thoroughly enjoyed researching and writing it.

A Brief History of Fan Studies

Critics and academics usually identify three stages of fan

studies. The first stage was a purposeful intervention on the

part of the writers which was an attempt defend them against

ridicule by mass media and by non-fans. This was through a

projection and repetition of attitudes that promoted fan pride –

‘fandom is beautiful’, ‘fandom is cool’, an attempt to take

something that was low in status and desirability and make it

positive.

The second took place in the 1990s, which saw new media

and new forms of fan culture in the 1990s in which fan

communities proliferated endlessly, often fuelled by the

Internet. Authors such as Henry Jenkins (Textual Poaching), Camille

Bacon-Smith (Enterprising Women) followed a more sociological

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approach, at the same time providing an insider’s view by

inserting themselves into the fandom – writing from the inside

out in some sense. Jenkins coined the term aca-fan in 1992, a

phrase that would be used by scholars with similar research

methods for decades to come. During this wave, celebrities and

even politicians began to define themselves in terms of fan-

related objects and came to define themselves in fannish terms.

It therefore began to be seen more positively in the mainstream

culture.

The third wave of fan studies is the participatory stage.

During this stage, we see a move from observing a fan’s actions,

tastes and behavior in exclusive terms to one that investigates

fandom as a way of life. This wave choses to include the entire

spectrum of fans – those of shows, theory, Martha Stewart, as

well as fans of high culture, a topic marginalized or

ignored in earlier fan studies within the broad field of

cultural studies which focused attention on the popular.

First wave theorists in the 1950s and 60s went on the works

of Adorno and Horkheimer of the Frankfurt school of media theory.

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This stage believed in the concept of passive audience that all

accepted what they saw in the same way. The audience was thought

not communicate with each other about their media experience.

They posited the presence of a dichotomy of power, following de

Certeau’s (1984) description of powerful producers on one side

and disempowered consumers on the other. This idea was later

revised by researchers like Klapper, Lazarsfeld, and Katz, who

argued for a model of limited effects. They said that the

influence of the media was not consistent across the audience.

Instead, the impact varied according to the individual and the

situation.

The approach of aca-fans and scholars of especially the

second wave of fan studies have utilized some media and social

theory in their work in order to explain the particular nature of

the functioning of fandom. The term ‘poaching’ as it appears in

the book Textual Poachers, by Henry Jenkins was first ideated in

Michel de Certeu’s book The Science of Everyday Life. De Certeau

argues that audiences are not passive consumers but instead

active interpreters. He suggests that people do in fact attach

their own meanings to the texts that they read, reaching beyond

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the limits drawn by academicians or scholars, thus bypassing a

possible cultural monopoly. This was when the concept of

conventions, fan fiction, cosplaying, and the ‘fan’ in terms of

what we might see it today truly began to take shape and gather

weight in the academic world.

The second wave was constituted by what Jenkins calls the

1992 movement, which arguably his paper – Textual Poachers, Television

Fans and Participatory Culture and Camille Bacon-Smith’s Enterprising Women:

Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth sparked off, with these

two touchstone publications taking place within months of each

other. Though scholarly works the two of them were, they provided

accreditation and weight to fannish activities that had not been

previously seen. They looked at the nuances of fandoms,

identifying different tastes and different levels of involvement

of the individuals in these subcultures or communities.

However, even at this time, the kind of activities, rituals

and community interaction were limited to what we can call an

‘offline’ space. It was not yet the digital age as we know it.

Although technology existed – yes people were making fan tapes

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and music and distributing them among friends, it lacked the

speed, finesse and multi-level connectivity that we associate it

with today. In my opinion, the second and third waves of fandom

studies are bridged in fan communities themselves by one thing –

the internet.

Third wave theorists keep in mind the fannish anthem of

FIAWOL – Fandom Is A Way Of Life. More recently, theorists like

Sandvoss, Hellekson and Busse have explored the role of fandom in

constructing fans’ identity, and the social and cultural

significance of identity performance in distribution of power and

have introduced a focus on the individual previously

neglected in cultural studies, including prioritizing the

emotional aspects of fanning. These authors look at the effect

that internet, as all-pervading as that is on its own, on the

behavior and activities of fandoms.

Defining the ‘Fan’

The word ‘fan’ comes from the word ‘fanatic’, which

essentially means those who worship at temples but quickly

acquired the tendency to be understood as “excessive and mistaken

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enthusiasm” (Jenkins, 1992). There is plenty of disagreement

about what exactly constitutes the definition of ‘fan’, and at

what point a casual observer can become a fan. The general

consensus is that a fan is an individual who participates in

fannish activities like writing fanfiction, fan mail, or

participating in conventions, apart from appreciating the

original text.

Defining the ‘Fandom’

There have been many attempts to define what exactly a

fandom is. According to Nancy Baym (2010), it is the “collective

of people organized socially around their shared appreciation of

a pop culture object or objects” By doing so they in essence

create a ‘subculture’, due to their defined ways of acting,

speaking or interacting with each other in their space. Some,

like Bacon-Smith, wish to restrict the definition of fan to those

who participate in certain codified fan activities like vidding

or writing fan fiction. The term ‘fandom’ could refer to the

overarching fan of a community, or a part of that community.

Essentially, fan communities can form around anything – sports,

music, comic books, and video games are only a few. According to

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Burke (2001), it is a place for nurturing reactions and “agreed-

upon, specific rules for speech and behavior”. Fandom, in the

most basic terms, is a group of fans who form social networks

with one another based on their common interest in reading and

watching particular texts, and the fans in turn write or

otherwise produce materials for that text. This means that a fan

space could even be a mailing list, a zine, or a message board.

Before the days of the computer, this was centered on conventions

and other forms of face to face interaction, as well as through

written communication in zines and those sent through mail.

Hereafter, the phrase ‘fan community’ or ‘fandom’ will refer to

the media fandom unless otherwise specified.

Conventions are one of the oldest and formerly commonest fan

communities, with some conventions dating back to the 1930s.

However, they tend to be an entirely American phenomenon whose

practices and conduction have only recently begun to spread to

other countries. For example, the largest and oldest Doctor Who

(a BBC creation) convention, Gallifrey One, takes place every

year since 1969 in Los Angeles, California. According to Bacon-

Smith (1992), they “spatially and temporally organize the

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interaction between the community and potential new members, and

serve as formal meeting places for the various smaller groups of

fans who follow a convention circuit” ( p. 9).

However, in recent years, online fan communities have begun

to come to light. Some obvious advantages of an online community

is that a vast number of topics can be discussed without the

limitations of geographical distance. Literally anyone with an

internet connection and a laptop can become part of an online fan

community. This reduces one of the main problems at conventions,

which is getting there – before the proliferation of the

internet, people might have had difficulty in finding people

around them or in their area to share texts with. Fan studies is

an attempt to understand the working of this ‘shadow cultural

economy’ and understand its functioning along with that of

mainstream cultural functioning.

Hierarchy and Power

As in every community, there is an inevitable formation of

hierarchy and power. However, due to the nature of fandoms,

especially online fandoms, the currency, or the substance that

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determines the two will differ from that of the rest of the

world. There is actually very little research about this;

especially with authors like Bacon-Smith asserting that there is

no hierarchy in fandoms and that one of the merits of fandom is

that it serves as a social equalizer within the boundaries that

it operates. Other scholars agree that there are hierarchies, but

differ when determining upon which factors they are built (Hills,

2002) The problem with other papers that have tried to address

the same thing is that they often focus on one fandom or a

cluster of similar fandoms which doesn’t provide the kind of

‘general theory of fandom’ which scholars say we need.

In discussing fandom, we tend to for the most part, lose out

on the measuring of money to judge hierarchy and status. Here we

can apply Foucault’s theory of capital building, which centers on

collecting objects that are valuable in a society. This model

shows not only how one can amass ‘wealth’, but how one can change

one’s standing in the community by doing so.

Here, the fandom becomes an economy where a person can

invest capital – this could be in the form of time, effort,

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skill, which converts into something that is a stand-in for

economic status or gain. There are essentially three kinds of

capital, according to Foucault - (monetary, asset-based), social

(based on who you know), and cultural (based on knowledge of

specific cultural works).

The first asset, money, does have a certain amount of

privilege that accompanies it. The second, social capital belongs

to those who are ‘known for being known’. Bourdieu says those

with high social capital “do not need to ‘make the acquaintance’

of all their ‘acquaintances’; they are known to more people than

they know” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 52). Social capital is not as

strongly linked to wealth as is it is to the connections you have

– this in turn is often attributed to ‘good breeding’ or class.

The very name fan, comes from fanatic, which has inescapable

undertones of social subjugation. Fiske (1992) states that fandom

is associated with “the cultural tastes of subordinated

formations of the people, particularly with those disempowered by

any combination of gender, age, class and race” (p. 30). This

argument is made by Jenkins (1992) as well, as he states: “fans

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operate from a position of cultural marginality and social

weakness” (p. 26).

What is seen as the desirable ‘taste’ to possess, or the one

that is usually linked to high status or class is usually the

hegemonic ideal. According to Jenkins, “Taste becomes one of the

important means by which social distinctions are maintained and

class identities are forged” (1992, p. 16). Fan studies actively

shun the discussion of what is hegemonic or ‘high culture’. That

is not to say that ‘fans’ in the context of high culture

artifacts do not exist – these people take the name of

‘connoisseurs’ or ‘aficionados’ in order to shun the popular

culture connotations associated with the word ‘fan’ which is an

overly negative one. The popular cultural materials that fans

tend to spend their time thinking carefully about are also seen

by many to be culturally worthless or simply there for

entertainment purposes. According to Jenkins, media fans were

often tagged as social misfits, intellectually immature, and

feminized. Concern has also been raised about the inability of

fans to separate the fantasy of media texts from the reality of

their everyday lives.

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However, the kind of actions that they perform are and

exhibit just as much fervor as the actions of fans, but are still

deemed low in social desirability. In some cases, fans are seen

as a threat to the boundaries of taste because they give more

importance to popular culture than high culture.

To Bourdieu, cultural capital is the “knowledge and

accumulation of a set of texts”. “Cultural capital thus works

hand in hand with economic capital to produce social privilege

and distinction” (Fiske, 1992, p. 31). In keeping with the notion

of a fandom as being a subculture, one could use the term

subcultural capital as a part of cultural capital. Subcultural

status holds relevance in only a small part of a society, and not

the society as a whole; “subcultural capital confers status on

its owner in the eyes of the relevant beholder” (Thornton, 1996,

p.11). For example, the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary special is to

be broadcast on the 23rd of November, 2013, the trailer for which

was first screened at the San Diego Comic Con in July 2013. To

have seen it live at the Comic Con, or rather, to have been known

as to have seen it at the Comic Con would garner respect in the

Doctor Who fandom, but not from someone outside the fandom. In

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some sense, prestige amongst these fan communities makes up for

the lack of social standing that one would otherwise expect, and

it is done through an accrual of this subcultural capital that

can be equated to economic capital. But Fiske (1992) asserts that

the most popular forms of cultural capital are those that cannot

be converted into economic capital. Instead, the individual finds

satisfaction in the “esteem of one’s peers in a community of

taste” (p. 34). The exception would be individuals who have made

profit from fannish activities, such as Matt Elliott, who

professionally cosplays as the 11th Doctor from Doctor Who.

Value Creation

According to Fiske, there are three kinds of

activities which contribute to value creation and thereby

hierarchy.

Meaning making

Contrary to the beliefs held by Adorno and Horkheimer of the

Farnkfurt School of thought, audiences are not passive receivers

of information – they make different meaning of texts they

encounter, often various levels or differently according to their

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need. Herein lies our first distinction – that between the fan

and the ‘social viewer’. The main difference is that the social

viewer regards the text as a text while the social viewer uses it

to make meaning of the world. This is (in part) Jenkins’ poaching

and Fiske’s semiotic productivity. Sometimes fans do not stop at

a single text – rather they search for ancillary material like

interviews with the actors or their mentions in magazines in

order to further their understanding of the original text.

Jenkins likens them to nomads, constantly on the hunt for new

material. The pleasure that the fans get comes from the

associations and juxtapositions that they make between the

primary and ancillary texts.

Meaning sharing

The act of semiotic productivity is an entirely internal

process. When that process goes from being internal to external,

that is, when one shares ones findings with another party, it

becomes enunciative productivity. As Jenkins puts it,

The moment of reception is often also the moment

of enunciation…Making meanings involves sharing

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enunciating and debating meanings. For the fan,

watching the series is the beginning not the end

of the process of media consumption (p. 278).

Some of the pleasure that the fan feels in these

associations comes from the ability to share them with those who

share the same taste as you – to exhibit your increase in

cultural (or subcultural) capital. It is common to engage with a

text for the sole purpose of discussing it with fellow fans at a

later date. Therefore, not only is the act of engaging with

fellow fans exciting, but the anticipation is also. The medium

that the individual chooses to use is diverse – online message

boards, chat forums, blogs, or even just face to face interaction

but it is not limited only to verbal or written modes of

communication.

In the context of music fandoms like the Rastafarians, punks

and hipsters in Britain, Hebdige (1979) writes:

These groups challenged the authority of traditional

mainstream British culture—not through any overt

political demonstrations or violent clashes with

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authority, per se, but through their clothing, pierced

ears and noses, and other publicly visible signs. These

signs were ultimately unsettling and disruptive to the

status quo. (pg. 90–91).

In a similar fashion, the way that fans choose to decorate

their space, in fact, the very act of cosplaying and going to a

con is a way of identifying and sharing meaning with others who

share the same subcultural space or fandom as you do.

Textual productivity (poaching)

Second wave scholars like Jenkins and Bacon-Smith interested

themselves not only in complex way that fans studied the original

text, but also the way in which they used the close reading of

that primary text as a creative launchpad, or as raw material to

creating their own content. Jenkins termed this textual

productivity ‘poaching’. He suggests that people do in fact

attach their own meanings to the texts that they read, reaching

beyond the limits drawn by academicians or scholars which assume

a binary between media production and consumption. In the process

of doing this, fans claim ownership over a certain piece of

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material and feel one with the text, manipulating it as they

please.

The commonest forms of textual poaching are fanfiction,

vidding, and visuals in the form of photo edits and original

artwork.

Fanfiction (or fan fiction)

Fan fiction is the practice of taking material that already

exists (in the form of canonical material or even another fan

fic) and using it as a starting point for one’s own creative

piece. Although most fanfiction tends to stay within the realm of

the fandom in question, a genre of fanfiction called crossovers

is dedicated to displacing characters from a certain show and

putting them in the context of another show (for example,

Sherlock and the Doctor meet in the TARDIS). Another kind popular

kind of paradigm-altering fan fiction is that which explores an

AU, or Alternate Universe, in which all the characters are

displaced into to a setting where few or many changes have taken

place. For example, an AU where Hogwarts is now a prep school in

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the US; characters remain the same though their traits may change

slightly in accordance with the AU.

From the time of Star Trek fanfiction, there have been three

main kinds of stories that are favoured by writers – hurt-comfort

(where usually one character comforts the other one who is in

some form of physical or emotional distress), relationship (non-

sexual, which explores a heterosexual relationship between

characters), and slash ( inserting a romantic or sexual element

into an existing storyline). Other common types of storylines are

recontextualisation, where the story focuses on events that did

not take place on the show (could be back story, such as in the

case of Black Widow and Hawkeye in the Avengers film – what

happened in Budapest?) and refocalization, where secondary or

tertiary characters are made the protagonists. Much fanfiction is

also written when fans are dissatisfied with an ending or a plot

twist that the writers have provided.

Vidding

Vidding, or video creation is the process of putting

together a video using existing footage from a show or film. It

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usually contains scenes or stills of characters set to music,

mostly to establish a romantic relationship that does not exist

canonically. Earlier crudely put together with home video tapes

and VCR recordings, were the norm. Now, high-quality fan videos

are regularily made on freely available editing software using

music and footage that can be readily uploaded onto YouTube for

rapid sharing within fan communities.

Photo Edits and Original Artwork

Photo manipulation and digital artwork have received little

attention from aca-fans in recent research. However, after doing

some of my own I feel it relevant to include it as a valuable and

on occasion beautiful example of textual poaching. From slight

color correcting, to multiple exposure effects to what is

commonly referred to as ‘crack’ (overlaying amusing subtitles or

imagined dialogues on screenshots of the show, often in the font

Comic Sans), photo edits are common on social media sites like

Tumblr and DeviantArt. Artists often link their art to each other

across multiple platforms and watermark to preserve authenticity.

Digital fan art inspired by television shows also find place in

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the social media sites mentioned above, as well as on Facebook,

where someone on another site occasionally reposts them. Before

the internet really caught on, it was difficult to reproduce and

distribute any kind of art (cosplaying is commonly considered

exhibitionist art). Online, art and manips can be shared with

ease.

Collecting

Collecting is the fourth kind of fan activity. Often

associated with comic book fandoms, the practice of collecting

memorabilia, props, set pieces, costumes, boxed DVD sets, signed

scripts etc. is one that is associated with fan communities. CBS’

show, The Big Bang Theory frequently displays the almost magpie-

like tendency of its avid fanboy characters of Sheldon, Raj,

Howard and Leonard to grab all the merchandise related to their

favourite fandom at Comic Con as they can. Comic book fandoms are

unique in that “…it is the possession of the actual comic that

acts as the focal point for the entire community” (Brown, 1997,

p. 22). Collecting is where economic capital and cultural capital

collide. By owning these many things of a certain rarity (for

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example, action figures in their original packaging are prized

higher than if they were removed), one can alleviate one’s status

in the fan community.

Knowledge building

Fans try to learn as much as possible about the show or film

in as much depth as possible in the long term. However, there is

an emphasis on knowing a particular kind of information at

crucial points in the airing of a show, such as during its

premiere, its finale, or at a major plot twist. “Fan cultural

power comes from having knowledge of a show’s history and the

ability to control how fans read and interpret the text;

knowledge has thus been shown to be a form of subcultural capital

(Williams, 2004)” Some shows fill their episodes with meta (self-

referential material), Easter eggs, references to other items in

pop culture, which only serve to enhance the viewer’s feeling of

pleasure when making these associations or sharing them. For

example, the show Supernatural has entire episodes based on meta –

the most meta being The French Mistake (06X15) where the

characters Sam Winchester(Jared Padalecki) and Dean Winchester

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(Jensen Ackles) are transported into an alternate reality where

their names are Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles who play the

roles of Sam and Dean Winchester on a show called Supernatural.

In this alternate reality, the characters of ‘Jensen’ and ‘Jared’

cannot act, and are responsible for the low ratings that the show

‘Supernatural’ is getting. Needless to say, Supernatural has one

of the largest and most driven fanbases online to ever exist, who

enjoy creating wikis, tumblogs and fansites dedicated to finding

out every bit of meta that the authors have incorporated into the

show.

An example of official content that is almost meta is BBC’s

Sherlock. The show is a 21st century reboot of the famous Arthur

Conan Doyle series, where technology like blogging and cellphones

are key to the plot. In the show, Sherlock runs a blog entitled

www.thescienceofdeduction.co.uk, which we catch glimpses of

during the episode. Meanwhile, his companion, Watson, chronicles

his adventures on www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk. In order to

understand some of the references in the episode, one can view

the blogs which are unfortunately not in operation for the most

part. They function as an ‘online memorabilia’ collection, where

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instead of strolling through museums filled with sets and props

from the show, you can visit the blog that was developed for it.

But they are somewhat more fulfilling because the act of looking

around the site and seeing the comments and participating in the

puzzles related to the shows is a small manifestation of agency

on behalf of the fan. This is far more engaging than if one was

to only be a passive observer of this memorabilia.

Gifting Culture

We have explored how fans create items of cultural value,

but how are they exchanged? Says Karen Hellekson:

Fan communities as they are currently comprised,

require exchanges of gifts: you do not pay to read fan

fiction or watch a fan-made music vid. They are offered

for free [. . .] yet within a web of context that

specifies an appropriate method of ‘payment’ (2009, p.

114).

In the days of conventions, these rewards would be small

items that were delivered by snail mail, or at conventions and

were of a nature that would supposedly not be a violation of

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copyright. Now, when sharing via the internet, new methods of

payment have arisen. For example, if someone wishes to read a

fanfic on fanfiction.net, one usually requests a comment or

criticism as incentive to continue writing new chapters. On

Tumblr, the equivalent of appreciation is a reblog or a like, so

that the artist is encouraged to continue producing. An

independent art blog on Tumblr, SoyArts, is one of the many blogs

that allow fellow bloggers to commission portraits of characters

from their favourite fandoms. In return, they ask for a ‘promo’,

or a promotion, which is usually either a screenshot of their

blog page accompanied by a link to their blog and a word of

praise about it, encouraging others to take a look at it. Nothing

is obligatory.

Fan – Producer Relationships

Jenkins, in Textual Poachers, outlines three tactics producers

use to respond to productive fan bases which can be summarized as

supporting, dismissing and supervising. Producers can enlist fans

as support for their own cause (lowering production costs by

looking to them for plot developments, or as a readymade source

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of market research). They can treat them with contempt (e.g.,

taking legal action against them over intellectual property

issues, mocking them in interviews, ignoring or disregarding

popular and vocal fan opinions etc.). Last, producers can attempt

to supervise fan endeavors (e.g., encourages parallel content

creation, putting producer presence on fansites, attempting to

regulate the fan community by giving it an economic motivation

etc. – see FanLib for how well that worked out).

The support tactic seems to be increasingly popular as

producers realize the enormous market potential of fans. There is

something symbiotic in producers supporting fans, so that fans

can support producers. Even before the internet, Star Trek fans

and writers have had this relationship, where the fanbase was the

only thing keeping it alive when there was a ten year gap between

the end of the TV series and the first feature film. More

recently, members of the Writer’s Guild of America posted videos

on You Tube, encouraging fans who were worried about their

favourite shows to contact producers on behalf of the writers.

Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema, when beginning the process of

turning The Lord of the Rings, the beloved book series, into

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movies, catered to fans with the specific intention of

appropriating them into support of the films (Murray, 2004;

Shefrin, 2004). They granted interviews to low-level fan

websites. They honored a petition by fans that encouraged New

Line to stay faithful to the source text.

Some producers choose to deny the possibility of a healthy

fan-producer relationship or at least feel that the impact on the

fandom is collateral damage and that their decisions will be for

the better, long term. This is the case for most ‘unpopular

casting’, a recent example of which is Ben Affleck in the newest

Batman series, which has received no end of flak in the media.

The outrage of a ‘few angry fans’ was ignored in favour of what

is envisioned to be an overall good choice. Online fandoms have

increased the accountability of producers to fans, but the

attitudes to the fandom itself suggest that some producers see

them as “mildly obsessed cranks representing the geek fringe of a

show’s audience” (Andrejevic, 2006, pg. 27).

Such producers either ignore or are hostile towards active

consumers and in some cases may even take legal action against

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them over the question of property rights, even though the

majority of fan-based activity is not done for profit. The very

idea that there could be a party outside of the production house

that could change the course of a show is perceived as a threat.

This is sort of ironic because audiences of popular texts are at

an obvious disadvantage - Fans have neither access to the funds

and technical resources for professional media production, nor

any kind of official legal hold over the material that they are

so invested in. The Organisation for Transformative Works is a

fan-run conglomerate that lobbies for the protection of the

property rights of fans.

Copyright is intended to protect the creator’s right to

profit from her work for a period of time to encourage

creative endeavor and the widespread sharing of

knowledge. But this does not preclude the right of

others to respond to the original work, either with

critical commentary, parody, or, we believe,

transformative works. (Organization for Transformative

Works, Frequently Asked Questions)

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The response of producers differs. For example, when

Warner Bros bought producing rights to Harry Potter, one of the

first things they did was attempt to shut down fansites that were

using names relating to the Harry Potter trademark or brand,

ignoring the fact that all their activities were solely for

pleasure and not for profit. According to Jenkins:

When fans protested on the grounds that they were the

ones that made Harry Potter what it was (before it was

a movie series, or even a book series, it was one low-

level book release in the UK), Warner Bros. backed

down, but began to supervise fan activity. (2006a)

This kind of supervision is seen as the middle ground for

many fan-producer relationships. In this kind of relationship,

producers accept and even encourage the production of fan texts,

so long as it remains in the cultural and legal framework set by

the producer. However this is often seen as curtailing the

creativity of the fan. As Kristina Busse puts it,

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The fannish community [. . .] might have to disavow

those parts that do not please the owners of the media

product. Certain groups of fans can become legit if and

only if they follow certain ideas, don’t become too

rebellious, too pornographic, don’t read the text too

much against the grain. That seems a price too high to

pay. (Interview with Kristina Busse and Cornel

Sandvoss, henryjenkins.org)

One the other hand, it seems unfair to use the work that

fans have done for free. However, “free labor, however, is not

necessarily exploited labor” (Terranova, 2000) – writers are not

obtaining economic capital, but are instead gaining culture

capital by association with the show within the subculture,

because it is “willingly conceded in exchange for the pleasures

of communication and exchange”.

One famous case of commodifying the community occurred in

the case of FanLib, an enterprise that was started up by 3

individuals attempting to put a price on fanfiction at a fan

archive site. In the words of Kristina Busse (2009),

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Although outreach included targeting and e-mailing

fanfic writers and encouraging them to upload fic to

the site in exchange for prizes, participation in

contests leading to e-publication, and attention from

the producers of TV shows […] FanLib’s persistent

misreading of the situation alienated fans, as did the

draconian terms of service. (p. 117)

In the terms of service, the property rights of the authors

of fanfic were not protected at all. In addition to this, they

did not work by the rules of the community – FanLib was to

operate for profit and not for pleasure, by commerce and not by

the accepted convention of gifting. It was shut down 1.2 years

later.

Close to Home – Indian Soap Opera Fandom

So far we have discussed TV fans in an international

context, limited mostly to science fiction and fantasy shows that

originate or revolve around the US and the UK. Both of them have

similar definitions and ideas of what fans and fandoms are and

do. Only a small percentage of Indians, mostly of the urban

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middle class, interest themselves in these show, and an even

smaller percentage consider themselves to be more than passive

watchers, or fans of these shows.

The small proportion on the Indian fannish audience, and by

this definition those who indulge in fannish activities such as

writing fanfiction or making art, manifests in online on sites

like india-forums.net, myeduniya etc. and is a relatively new

phenomenon. The interactions between members of the fandom differ

is different from that of some of the larger forums for

fanfiction, such as fanfiction.net and livejournal. It is common

behavior to upload fanfic on india-forums and expect it to be

read and commented upon by peers. Common fan courtesy suggests

that one accepts comments graciously and as inspiration to write

further. Apparently the fandoms of shows like Iss Pyar Ko Kya Naam

Doon for one do not follow this protocol.

Indian soap opera fandom is not only limited to India.

Several fans exist in Europe as well, who depend on subtitles to

comprehend the situation, and invest in characters in an

inherently adapt the Indian soap-opera style storytelling into

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their fanfiction. Just as Indian audiences are finding

connections with shows from other countries, Indian shows are now

finding context and appreciation abroad through the web.

Indian soap opera fans seem to have some agency in

determining the course of a show. The weekday programmer for

Colors says:

[We ]seriously consider what the audience wants to see

and now we can get their feedback from the Internet

almost instantly. We even execute changes based on

what people ask from us, sometimes changing storylines

too.”

Fans of the show Madhubala, for example, have pressured the

writers via online message has caused characters to get married

in the fifth week instead of the sixteenth. This is an example

of fanon, when a fan’s writing becomes canon. This is less

common in the case of British and American television shows.

This could be because the Indian fanbases are smaller and

therefore easy to keep a definite track, or because many Indian

soap operas seem to follow in the same vein of romantic tragedy,

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and crafting a storyline based on what the fan wants could be a

popular USP.

The Internet and Convergence Culture

As mentioned earlier in the timeline of fan studies, there

has been a shift in focus of from the second to the third wave of

media studies – from that of participatory culture to convergence

culture. And what has facilitated this change is the evolution of

technology and the advent of the internet. The term ‘convergence

culture’ was coined by Henry Jenkins in 2006, with his paper

Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. According to Jenkins,

we are heading away from the participatory culture that he

described in Textual Poachers towards a new era of convergence

culture. Convergence culture, he says, is the way we are

encouraged to assess all the information that we get from various

sources on the same topic, such as many functions of a laptop

being transferred onto a sole gadget like a cell phone.

“Convergence does not occur through media appliances – however

sophisticated they may become. Convergence occurs within the

brains of individual consumers. Yet, each of us constructs our

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own personal mythology from bits and fragments of information we

have extracted from the ongoing flow of media around us and

transformed into resources through which we make sense of our

everyday lives.”(p. 3)

Because these bits are so fragmented it is

impossible for all of us to know everything about everything,

which provides an incentive for us to talk more about the media

that we consume. This causes an increase in the circulation of

media content – and makes us collectively intelligent.

Gender and Fandom

Female presence in fandoms has been the subject of

controversy since Star Trek. Although they have always made up a

significant part of fandom, they are looked upon as ‘lesser’ fans

or ‘not authentic’ fans solely by virtue of their gender. They

make up and for the most part always have made up a majority of

fan fiction writers at least 90%, but they are less visible in

the public eye. Buck Coulson, a science fiction writer has been

quoted as saying,

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There is no subtle discrimination against Trek fans in

science fiction—it's blatant.' And the women said, 'The

heck with this,' and started making their own zines and

organizing their own conventions.... Trek fandom was

the mirror image of science fiction fandom. I would say

90 percent of science fiction fandom at the time was

men and 10 percent was women, and there was a reverse

10-to-90 men-to-women split in Trek fandom. (Walker,

2011, p. 6)

Exclusively female fandoms like Twilight, or even adolescent

and adult female fans of science fiction are regarded as ‘not

true fans’ and Twilight in particular is seen as one of the

lowliest of fandoms and has been deemed responsible for ‘ruining

Comic Con’ with its screaming , hysterical fanbase. Indeed, even

the TV show Supernatural with a similar demographic (18-24 year

old females) has a trope based episode called ‘Live Free or

Twihard’ (06X05) which makes fun of the film franchise and its

fans. Such a tone is typical in mainstream depictions of

Twilight fans (referred to as ‘Twihards”) that rather uniformly

depict fans as childish and/or hyperfeminine. This rendering of

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fandom in terms that simultaneously infantilize and feminize it

reflects the historical and deep-rooted nature of the prejudice

against the female in general and the derision targeted at female

fandoms more specifically.

Representation at Cons

From the time of Star Trek Conventions, there have always

been fewer females than males at conventions. One version of the

stereotype brought about by Bacon-Smith is that regarding the

position of the female fan in a con.

When I have entered the rooms set aside at conventions

for games, I have met with strong resistance (most of

the men in the room stopped their play and stared at me

until I left). On two occasions when I tried to ask

questions, no one agreed to talk to me, and I was

approached with "mock" aggression… Although the

violence of the attack (pinned to the wall by the

throat, glancing blow to wall next to head with wooden

sword) was strictly in "play," the gamer clearly

intended to intimidate me. (Bacon-Smith, 1992)

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She finds the general reception of females in the universe

of cosplaying generally hostile and suspicious. Not only so, even

in the presumably safe and understanding space of cons, women

face harassment due to the nature of their outfits. She

attributes it to the fact that female cosplayers are still fewer

in number than males and the sphere of role-playing is an

aggressively male-dominated one.

Rarely is a woman commended on the quality of her outfit or

praised at the time and effort that it may have taken to make it

or its likeness to the original character – rather on how

revealing it is. The movement ‘Costume Does Not Mean Consent’ is

an attempt to combat this issue that women face at conventions.

This was taken from an interview with Mandy Caruso, a Black Cat

cosplayer at an unspecified con when she was in costume.

Him: Damn, alright! Well, let me ask you an important

question then…what is your cup size?

Me: That is actually none of your f***ing business.

Him: Oh! I think that means to say she’s a C.

Representation in Second Wave Offline Fandoms

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Most of the television in our frame of reference is written

for the white, cis-gendered heterosexual male. Jenkins suggests

in Textual Poachers that fanfiction is a reaction on the part of a

female audience trying to find their own pleasures in media that

mostly caters to that specific male audience. Earlier, gatherings

of women would take place to make songtapes or fanvids, they

would share their fanfiction through zines and in intimate

gatherings where they could share their writing and express their

emotions and feelings about the object of their affections, as

well as life in general. One could feel at home both in the

larger scope of a fan community, as well as the few women with

which they interacted and shared with regularly.

Fanziners don't gather in each other's homes and in

hotels around the country to march on the male

heterosexual bastions and demand their rightful place.

They come together for mutual healing, for protection

from the outside, and to ponder the most pressing

questions in their lives. Who am I? What do I really

want? Why can't I have it? Why does life hurt so much?

(Bacon-Smith, 1992)

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Bacon-Smith’s view of a fandom as a support group has only

expanded to accommodate more questions that people, mostly women,

have about themselves. A fandom, in particular the smaller

variety of fan communities, are lauded as a ‘safe space’, a

secure outlet for sexual curiosity and expression, often without

fear of rejection by the work or by peers.

Pseudonyms, Risk, and Shame

However, no safe space can be completely hermetically

secure. There is always a risk of someone outside the community

discovering fan work. Pseudonyms are the tool that these fans

employ to be as honest in their work as possible and to give the

confidence to explore themselves and grow as writers. Pseudonyms

minimize risk, a characteristic of any individual that puts

themselves into a fandom. Even within the fandom, there are

certain boundaries , exclusive to every sub-community in the

fandom, that define what is ‘okay’, what is ‘too extreme’ or ‘not

authentic enough’ in terms of content and theme of the fanfiction

that is written and/or discussed. This includes risk of being the

nature of their activities being found out, and most importantly,

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that of being shamed. The kinds of shame, as Zubernis and Larsen

address it, are many -

“ … Shame over the extremity of “some” fans, shame

over “certain” fan practices, over having those

practices revealed to the rest of the world, or

to the fannish objects themselves, as the fan at the

convention discovered. There is also shame about

studying something as “frivolous” as fandom—or worse

yet, taking frivolous pleasure ourselves, “sitting too

close” instead of remaining suitably detached

observers.” (2012, p. 11)

Sexuality and Exploring Sexual Preferences

Historically, the first fan fiction ever written was for

Star Trek. Slash fiction is a shortened form of the term used for

fanfic written about the most common romantic pairing in the

series, Captain Kirk and the Vulcan Spock, usually represented as

K/S, which over time has been shortened to ‘slash’. The

characters are not officially (canonically) homosexual, although

fans point out that they should be or that there is overwhelming

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evidence to the contrary. Nonetheless, it set off a tradition of

fan fiction writing that involved mostly homosexual couples,

usually male. The action itself needn’t be described; even the

implication of it is enough. When fan was asked about why this is

so, she said

Well, on the one hand [there is] the general attraction

of gay men for women. It's the only way we can even

[in] fantasy we can be the one and have the other.

(1992)

Bacon-Smith says that a number of fans agree with this idea,

and that it allows them to take the place of either male in

opposition to the one that she probably already has a crush on.

In this scenario, they give and receive love from the position of

either character, and in some situations, readers and writers of

slash simultaneously identify with all the characters in the

scene.

It is common for fans to identify with a particular

character in their fandom – it could be due to character traits

or physical appearance. In some cases, the character has an

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undefined sexual or gender identity which makes it easy for the

person to project herself onto the character and let them explore

within themselves through the character. This person, who is now

a creator of this work of fiction, can explore their sexual

curiosity through work. When the fan uses characters to figure

out their sexual and gender identities, it creates a sort of

wall. The wall protects the fan, both physically and mentally,

from harm until the fan is willing and able to explore on their

own.

Online Fan Communities as Safe Spaces

The internet provides a way for fans to meet their needs for

discussion and sharing without having to geographically

congregate. It means that they can locate all their material in

one place, without having to worry about it getting lost in the

mail or running out of funds to print and circulate. Which meant

essentially two things: Firstly, with increased security

regarding their material, fans can admit and confess more freely

without as much fear of prosecution. Secondly, the internet

provides anonymity. And with anonymity comes the courage to

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explore oneself and the boundaries of the fandom further than

ever before.

Online fandoms are as mentioned earlier, safe spaces. This

includes in the case of some fandoms, total freedom from

homophobia or sexual harassment of any form. It is a space where

a person can freely explore their sexual identity and where, they

find comfort, advice and help from those who are doing the same.

Often, older members of a society serve as mentors or guides to

newer members as to what they can choose to explore, and share

their own personal experiences as to how the fandom had an effect

on them. On Tumblr, this takes place in the form of asks. The

asker, if they so choose, can turn on the ‘anon’ or anonymous

feature and pose a question to another blogger who is known to

take questions of this variety. Personal questions are

encouraged.

Thus online fandoms can open doors to exploring new kinds of

sexual practices, including kinks and fetishes. A kink meme is

group, unusually on livejournal, usually for a specific fandom,

that is designed for NC-17 art and fic. While some have rules or

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restrictions, others are "anything goes" and members can request

or contribute fic or art of fetishes that would otherwise be kept

under the rug.

Recently, there has been a recent trend of requesting fics

and art that are sexual in content but are not so much to fulfill

a need or gratification, but for more for exploration. Requests

for trans characters in fanfic such as Homestuck is one such

example, as is requests for gender-fluid characters, and

characters exploring their sexualities. The acceptance of the

kink meme creates a natural environment for a fan to explore

their sexual and gender identity, and the variety of the source

media gives a context. Fans who are not sure where they lie

sexually might read about their favorite character being asexual

and realize that they are, as well.

Distinguishing Online and Offline Activities

The concept of “in real life” or IRL has emerged in cyber-

fandom to help fans distinguish between their online identities

and those they maintain outside of fandom. Often, fans will keep

their fan identities and activities separate from their routine

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activities that prescribe to what society deems the norm. This

level of disconnectivity is helped by the kind of anonymity that

the internet allows. This could be with respect to their sexual,

professional, familial or otherwise social lives. The commonly

used phrase “nightblogger” comes from ways that bloggers identify

themselves on their blogs - ______ by day, blogger by night –

thereby emphasizing this idea of dual identity. As the two

spheres of life needn’t collide, the individual can be more

diverse in the topics they discuss and the activities they

participate in, both online and offline. Activities such as

reading or writing slash fiction is considered to be “abnormal

and threatening” to the hetero-normativity of our society and is

thus seen as a “disruption of dominant cultural hierarchies”

(Jenkins, 1992, p.17). The internet, however, allows female fans

a means by which to explore their sexuality without risk of this

exploration negatively affecting aspects of their everyday lives

more easily before the existence of cyber-fandom.

In essence, online fan communities are providing more

convenient and varied means of being and being seen as a fan, and

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it is affecting and shaping the way we now perceive fans. They

are no longer the weird furry at the convention last week, or the

girl in the Uhura Starfleet uniform but with pink hair. They

embrace their geeky side and express themselves perfectly well in

the online world, and if they choose to do so, they spread their

activities to the offline world as well.

Conclusion

The addition of an online space to conduct fannish activity

has led to engagement within the fandom on multiple levels, with

an inter-fandom hierarchy that has found almost an identical home

on the web. It has allowed fans to submerge themselves in the

text and yet remain distant from it when required, and provides a

safe space for women in particular to explore their

interpretation of popular media in a male dominated setup.

Traditional practices of fan interaction still hold true. It is

not the what that has changed, but the how. Offline fan activities

find online counterparts, and new ones emerge. The fate of fans

and producers are even more delicately connected. And we grow

closer to our favourite shows than ever before.