Here’s an example: User1 posts a
prompt or creates a fanvid, User2 compliments and shares it, User3 writes a
short piece of fan fiction, User4 and 5 make a comic or a fanvid based on the
drabble, and then User6 expands User3’s fiction into a chaptered story, all the
time sharing, praising and discussing the content together.
As Busse and Hellekson point out, in fandom “the creator of meaning, the person we like to call author, is not a single person but rather is a collective entity.” 1 In terms of cultural production, this level of equal, communal practice and collaboration is rare. Television and film production has a definite hierarchy of who calls what shots. Ideas can be dismissed, invalidated, details deemed too small or fleeting to dwell on, and there’s no time or space for contradiction.
As we discussed in Episode 1, fan fiction opens up the possibility
for fans to become cultural producers, and to foreground their own readings and
ideologies. This is supported by the supportive, communal nature of fandom.2 On this communal nature of
interpretation and production in fan communities, Henry Jenkins writes:
“Fan reading… is a social process through which individual interpretations are shaped and reinforced through ongoing discussions with other readers. Such discussions expand the experience of the text beyond its initial consumption. The produced meanings are thus more fully intergrated into the readers' lives and are of a fundamentally different character from meanings generated through a casual and fleeting encounter with an otherwise unremarkable... text.”3
Hellekson and Busse compare fan
fiction production to Roland Barthe’s idea of the “writerly text.” This term
refers to the rare text that puts the reader in a position to control meaning,
even to construct multiple meanings.4 Readers can approach the
writerly text from their own subjective standpoint, and are self-aware of the
role that they, and others, play in the construction of narrative. By destabilising
the roles of reader and writer, the writerly text defies commodification or
definition. This clearly connects to the production of fan fiction and fan
works, which sees the “ultimate erasure of a single author as it combines to
create a shared space”5
We know fan fiction takes a
defiant stance towards the creation and ownership of the source text, and this
is underpinned by the equal, communal nature of the process. In contemporary
online fandom a few lines of dialogue or a cute headcanon written by an
anonymous fan can be shared, reblogged, and extrapolated upon by countless
others, becoming part of a vast, multidisciplinary bricolage or database of
story.6 There is no owner, no creator,
and no need for internal consistency or agreement amongst authors. As Tisha
Turk states, for “fans who produce and consume fan works, the boundaries of the
source text’s fictional world are not fixed; rather they are infinitely
expandable.”7
Fans not only create their own
fictional universes surrounding a primary text, they create real-life
universes: the communities. Of course, whilst fandom is a communal practice,
it is not a single monolith. Fan fiction communities also engage in
self-censorship and endeavour to create their own separate safe spaces, even
within larger fandoms. For instance, those who engage with genres of fan
fiction that are controversial or that some fans morally or personally oppose
can form relatively hidden online sub-spaces.2
Recently, fandom and fan fiction
practices have significantly shaped both popular media production and media
academia. For instance, fan-favourite series like Supernatural and Community
frequently break down perceived barriers between fandom and producers, by not
only acknowledging fans in real life and online, but in-text, through
forth-wall-smashing moments and self-reflexive, wink-wink-nudge-nudge
metafictional references.
In academia, fan and audience
studies continue to grow. Fan fiction stories have been analysed to give
insight into their source texts, and fan writers have turned scholars by
discussing their own fan-made work.8
Fandom does away with traditional
hierarchies of creator/consumer, accepting multiple perspectives and spaces and
nurturing a creative environment defined by communal effort, support and
passion. This is a powerful, postmodern and incredibly
freeing mode of cultural production, and is more intellectual and badass than
fans are often given credit for in popular discussion.
This is still just the tip of the
fan fiction iceberg – there’s so much more fantastic scholarship on this topic,
and many more interesting areas and perspectives to consider! [A Whole New
World plays]
Thank you for sticking around and
reading, it means so much! Now get back to work, that coffee shop AU Johnlock
ain't gonna write itself.
1 Kristina Busse and Karen
Hellekson, “Introduction: Work in Progress,” in Fan Fiction and Fan
Communities in the Age of the Internet, edited by Karen Hellekson and
Kristina Busse (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2006), 6.
2 We briefly discussed scholarship
on the supportive and therapeutic potential of fandom in Episode 2.
3 Henry Jenkins, Textual
Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York and London:
Routledge, 1992), 45.
4 Busse and Hellekson, 6.
5 Busse and Hellekson, 6.
6 For more on the idea of the fan
universe as database, take a look at Hiroki Azuma’s “Otaku: Japan’s Database
Animals.” I get very excited about this book, and will talk about it later.
And sorry about the word
bricolage, it was just the perfect word and it makes my inner fine art geek
swoon.
7 Tisha Turk, “Metalepsis in Fan Vids and Fan
Fiction,” in Metalepsis in Popular Culture, ed. Karin Kukkonen and Sonja
Klimek (New York: De Gruyter, 2011), 88.
8 See Busse and Hellekson, 20 for
a list of some examples, but examples of articles like this can be found in
most pop culture or fandom-focused anthologies and journals.
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