Blog Post #4: Affirmational vs. Transformational Fandom
In obsession_inc's blog post, "Affirmational fandom vs. Transformational fandom," the audience is given two types of fan practices to compare. The first, affirmational fandom, is the practice of intimately studying and absorbing the source material without changing it or adding new elements into the universe that aren't already supported by the original text. To contrast that, transformational fandom is the practice of taking a source material and remixing it to either "fix a disappointing issue(...) in the source material, or using the source material to illustrate a point, or just to have a whale of a good time" (obsession_inc 7). The author points out that traditionally, affirmational fandom is comprised of male fans and transformational fandom contains more female fans. However, I believe that focusing on these gendered differences too closely only hinders our ability to accurately study fan practices.
When we look at the material side of fan practices, or mimetic fandom as Matt Hills puts it, we can see ways that this binary can be both harmful and plainly incorrect. When considering the idea of mimetic fandom, or "the creation of highly screen-accurate prop replicas" (Hills 1.2), we see how one can look at it as a purely affirmational practice. However, to do so would be unfair to a large portion of the mimetic community. For example, if we study mimetic fandom as a male dominated practice, we would be ignoring the hugely popular community of female cosplayers, a community that is not only rapidly growing in numbers, but also distinct enough to be studied on its own.
Mimetic practices are also unique in their ability to blur the lines of affirmational and transformational fandom, erasing the need for a binary where one is unnecessary. When studying products of mimetic fandom, we see how a fan designing a screen-accurate costume might have to take certain liberties in the design where the source material may not have an answer, thereby turning an affirmational work into a transformational one. On the other side, when creating a transformational work, generally an extensive knowledge of the source material is needed to help the new work fit into the universe of the original, further blurring the line of these two forms of fandom practices. When we study fandoms in a binary, we risk either ignoring large communities of fans or misrepresenting the work that goes into both affirmational and transformational practices.
Works cited:
obsession_inc. “Affirmational Fandom vs. Transformational Fandom”. Dreamwidth. Dreamwidth Studios, 1 June 2009. Web.
Hills, Matt. “From Dalek Half Balls to Daft Punk Helmets: Mimetic Fandom and the Crafting of Replicas”. Transformative Works and Cultures. TWC, vol. 20, 2015. Web.