Fan F(r)iction: When Do Fans Have Too Much Power?

Both of the chapters this week seemed to have a strong relationship between the texts that consumers create and the way that these texts challenge or develop the existing media. Chapter 4 has more to do with film contexts, and the way that these contexts often relate to seemingly “amateur” materials, or the celebration of using a minimal budget. Chapter 5 seemed to have more to do with the relationship of fan texts to books, and thus had stronger ties to educational concerns and the way that written materials impinge on our understanding of reality. But there is a strong correlation between these two chapters, and so I will talk about them together in my blog post for this week.

Lowering the Barriers For Consumer Interaction

Both chapters talked about increased participation and interactivity as a result of the greater ability of fans to spread their media around, and to then communicate with other fans. On the one hand this has to do with the actual modes of production, as we see with the lowered cost for cameras and editing equipment. On the other hand it has to do with the access to a community of like minded readers in the case of Fan-Fiction writers. The result of this lowered area for access is to allow consumers to take action with or without the support of the corporate system that created the initial texts.

While the younger generation is open to the possibilities of these new modes of production, I was interested in the moments where Jenkins expressed the concern that only more sub-par quality items are being created. But while a greater amount of “crap” will be proliferated, he points to the fact that the larger the group of consumers, the greater the chance that new and amazing productions will be created. While some might imagine, then that the large breadth of fan-texts might dilute the overall product, it seemed like the flock of consumers revealed where some of the deepest loyalties were proliferated in the fan base.

For example, the fans of Star Wars have mostly created light saber battle movies, demonstrating their desire for more action, and the distaste for the childhood back story of Aniken Skywalker. In the Harry Potter Fan Fiction, many of the fans have channeled their ideas into talking about the world of being a student, about dealing with parents, school, and teachers. So while many of these texts might not be the best quality, they open up a space for the producers to understand where the fan base wants to go.

What Jenkins only briefly touched on was how producers need to negotiate the needs/desires of the fans while also creating the product that they want to create. If the fans had control, there would be a remarkably different product out there, but should they be satiated? Jenkins seems to attribute these fan-creations to doing a lot of good, but at the same time, the producers must be careful to still create the type of product that they were working on in the first place. How much should the fan’s interest drive the product? This almost feels like the same argument of the sophomore release of a popular band. On the one hand they want to stay “true to themselves” but then again this truth has to partially rest on being something new, trying something different. Perhaps these impulses were partially covered in the chapter on Survivor but I guess I’m still not convinced.

Genre and Media Convergence

Another fascinating aspect of these two chapters is how the genre of media came into play of what was allowed to be produced and what came under the label of copyright infringement. Parody, which seemed to be a common way for fans to relate to the texts/films, were not as stringently policed as serious genres such as fan fiction. Jenkins rationale for this was that the serious elements, or even the more seemingly trivial ones, took away from the actual story that the writer/producer had created, where as more critical or parodic avenues had marked themselves as commentary, and thus were less dangerous to the franchise as a storyline.

This marks both an interest and a problem, possibly. Jenkins talks about how the policing of fan fiction relates to the way females aren’t thought of as participatory. Men are more likely to create parody texts, and thus their voices are more likely to come out, while females often create fan fiction, and thus are more likely to be silenced. It seemed like these moments about how different genres are allowed to be published by fans, can spawn further discussion about the relationship of humor to media.

Questions:

How does integrating media into Christian values/doctorine change the way the religion is processed and interpreted? How does it change the way we often tie together “conservatism” as religious and less technologically oriented?

In what other ways to consumers re-appropriate the material elements of consumer culture in order to create their own artifacts in a similar sense to the way Star Wars fans used action figures?

Critical and Parodic texts tend to be more allowed because they mark themselves as removed from the original texts, in what ways do these types of texts impinge on the original texts in a way that is similarly transformative as “serious” fan fictions?        
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