#abhinavbannerjee

[rtffanculture]

A Fan’s Labour

It becomes worthwhile to delineate transformational and affirmational fan practices if one is to discern the autonomy of the fan in the creative processes. Is the accumulation and interpolation of every minute detail of a media purely affirmational? To some degree, the fan practice of wiki compilation may be considered as being conventionally celebratory, but to confine this compendium of peer-sourced work to the realm of yea-saying is academically and logically reductive. 

How tangible is the effect of a Lostpedia on television ratings? One can only venture that the site came of use to active members and stray visitors alike after every new episode premiere. Take the example of a con, and consider that at least some portion of the conversations that occur inside its duration are likely similar to banter and fact-checking that occur on wikis and forums online. Where cons provide reason for even lay fans to engage in face-to-face interactions with fellow viewers/readers and cast/writers, wikis and forums are purely exchanges between those who care to archive this discourse in a structured, open manner. Indeed, it is precisely the interactions between fans on these peer-driven digital encyclopedias that make wikis transformational. As Mittell notes, sites like these “function as a space of debate” (2.11).

Lostpedia plays host to “canon, theory, fanon, and parody” and delineates “policies on how to treat borderline material” (Mittell 2.12, 2.4). While the act of being a fan or a transient viewer may be binary, the peer analysis of a media text to the degree that it spawns new maps, theories, and speculative fiction is certainly not. Not all fans strive for accuracy in their conversations, and one certainly need not be versed in the lore of a show like Lost to engage in affirmational practices like t-shirt purchases. Yet, where wikis are concerned, theory and canon exist separately “to further enshrine…authorial-endorsed factual content (2.16). There is value in the argument that any space where “users discuss the page’s content, debate ideas before posting them to the main page, and even vote on proposed policies or major edits” is already transformational based solely on the fact that complex data structures and an informational hierarchy have been created around a media text meant chiefly to be consumed (Mittell 2.6).

Even if one were to argue that the production team of a show like Lost intended to inspire contact between members of its audience, it would be reaching further even still to suggest that television executives were, at the onset, relying on mass digital archiving and lively rapport between a significant portion of their television audience outside of primetime viewing hours. That is to say, if a community of unpaid contributors play the role of part-time investigators hunting the depths of a show’s abstracted and thinly-veiled subtext, this online village of “truth-seekers”, theorists and cartographers go above and beyond the affirmational practices of live-tweeting and merchandise collecting.

Works Cited

Mittell, Jason. Sites of participation: Wiki fandom and the case of Lostpedia. Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 3.

[rtffanculture]

Am I in the Jellyspotters Now?

The adoption of the popular portrayal of fans as a critically affected audience is effective marginalization if one’s goal is to capitalize through caricatures that resonate with expectations of “excessive, bordering on deranged, behavior”, but the nature of the reason-emotion dichotomy has “barely been studied” (Jenson 9, 26). Spongebob Squarepants suffers from the injection of such a trope in this episode where the popular ‘jellyspotter’ Kevin runs the all too willing and oblivious protagonist through a deadly gauntlet for the sake of earning affirmation. Spongebob is indeed “willing to die for [his] team” (Jenson 20).

It is a quest pursued in vain, as, ultimately, Kevin has no such intentions of granting Spongebob freedom from the otherness he is convicted of despite being a jellyfish enthusiast with, the writing posits, superior skill. Kevin is affronted by Spongebob’s “emotional, passionate, ‘hot’ behavior”, presumably because it contrasts with his “unemotional, detached” standards (Jenson 20).  The writing of this episode rather pointedly pivots on such a dichotomous relationship between Spongebob and the object of his affection. The plot redeems Spongebob instead of participating in “the celebration of all that is orderly and unemotional”. As the story unfolds, it is Kevin who suffers injuries from the Chaplin-esque theatre he hoped to direct. Kevin, the alleged professional jellyspotter, is utterly deconstructed by his own “display of hostility” when he witnesses the effortless capturing techniques of one of “this group of inferior types” (Jenson 24). He fails, ultimately, in “a scapegoating that allows explanation” for the way in which this hysterical pawn escapes discerning definitions of fanatical impotency.

Yes, there are “consequences to defining fans as abnormal ‘others’” (Jenson 23). In Jenson’s view, complications arise as we, the “thoughtful, educated, and discriminating” forfeit attempts at “respectful engagement” (26). Kevin’s “insulting and absurd” means of lampooning a member of these “primitive tribes” suffering from modernity creates a “poisonous atmosphere” which results in his own undoing (Jenson 24, 25). The subtext also reveals warnings about pretending to the throne of so-called normalcy. Both Spongebob and Kevin are members of an already fringe conglomeration of fans. The indicated fan hierarchy is destructive to a possible diffusion of knowledge about jellyfish capture. Perhaps, if Kevin were to abandon the “moral stance of superiority”, he would learn valuable lessons from his number one fan (Jenson 25).

Works Cited 

Jensen, Joli. “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization.” The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media. Ed. Lisa A. Lewis. London: Routledge, 1992. N. pag. Print.

Madtrackerr2. "Am I in the Jellyspotters Now?" YouTube. YouTube, 2012. Web. 11 Sept. 2016.

[rtffanculture]

Best Practices

Rebecca Wanzo raises concern with a lack of substantial dialogue about race and critical genealogy in contemporary fan academics where “increasing numbers of scholars say they do interdisciplinary work without actually engaging with other disciplines” (5.4). Instead, many authors will excuse themselves from writing at length about race by either citing a lack of non-white fandom analysis or omitting the discussion. Yet, despite apprehension, scholars must endeavor to engage in a critical understanding of multiracial fan communities and the agency of otherness.

Inferences about fan communities should not be based solely on demographics or through the lens of its majority group as this risks erasure of diversity. Indeed, a general conclusion to be drawn from an exercise in applied identity hermeneutics may leave us with a complicated understanding of truly globalized fan communities like Hip-Hop where many members are “consumers who become producers”, a contrast to the theory that fan culture “is shaped by capitalism, as fans lack the ability to influence, produce, circulate, and profit from what they consume.” (Wanzo 2.9, 2.10)

Scholars should always consider the cause for a fan’s presence in a community when making judgments about “claimed otherness” (Wanzo 2.3). One can start by acknowledging the “normativity of some fandoms” while still acknowledging their intrinsic cultural value so as not to disturb the perceived beauty of fandom (Wanzo 2.2). To echo Wanzo, privileging Latino people, for example, in this regard would mean acknowledging the erasure of their contributions to hip hop culture (as this student does) as “people of color often demonstrate the complicated tension between preexisting sociopolitical otherness and chosen alterity” (2.4). As is the case with most textual borrowing and interpolation, the Afro-Punk scene seems to share its roots with Latino culture’s discourse with the Bronx around the 1970s in that the expression “speaks to their identity” (Wanzo 2.7). Yet, Latino contributions to hip hop are overshadowed by its perception as hosting predominantly African American discussion. Like Tricia Rose, who says “that people say she doesn’t ‘fit the image of a b-girl’ to many people”, Latinos are similarly othered (Wanzo 2.9).

To avoid expressing an offensive implicit ignorance when writing about the subject of study, scholars must practice an awareness of their possible lack of intimate understanding of the impact of preexisting culture on fan audiences. They may seek to remedy inexperience by seeking out acafandom’s often ignored work on race and in all cases should value academic fan insight over uninformed inference. This is of great importance to any scholar who strives to study predominantly non-white communities that are shaped by and rebel against the limiting and misrepresentative social construction of race.

Works Cited

Wanzo, Rebecca. 2015. "African American Acafandom and Other Strangers: New Genealogies of Fan Studies." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 20. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2015.0699.

"Justifying Latino History in Hip-Hop Culture." Justifying Latino History in Hip-Hop Culture. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Sept. 2016.