Sep 02 2008
Fan Culture and the Origins of Participatory Culture
Fandom has existed for a long time, certainly visible since the 1950s. Publications and activities of fans in those times included fanzines (with very limited circulation) and conventions etc, it is limited by geographical locations. Early fandom appeared to be a male thing, female fans were not visible or they had ‘masculine connections’ with the fandom. During the 1990s, the visibility of female fans had rocketed. They became more obviously significant as they visibly engaged in fan fiction (fanfic) writing.
After the millennium, a lot of fandom migrated to the internet and the ‘sense of community’/identity is now more obviously about dispersed fan communities instead of geographical locations. Fanfic and fan art are now in websites which can be widely searched through search engines. The copyright problem is then evoked. Also, to serve the interest of adult fans, some fan fic includes sexually explicit languages that are inappropriate for young fans.
‘Cyber-fandom’ seems to have a lot of impact as again it amplifies the effects of fandom. In this digital age, where will fandom go and how will it affect us? And how do the origins of fandom online reflect the larger growth of online communication and ‘virtual’ communities?
Readings:
[X] Henry Jenkins – ‘”Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?: Digital Cinema, Media Convergence, and Participatory Culture“’, 2003
[X] Gooch, Betty – ‘The Communication of Fan Culture: The Impact of New Media on Science Fiction and Fantasy Fandom’
[X] Chilling Effects – ‘Harry Potter in the Restricted Section’
[X] Elana Shefrin – ‘Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Participatory Fandom: Mapping New Congruencies Between the Internet and Media Entertainment Culture’
[X] Westcott, Grace – ‘Friction over Fan Fiction: Is this Burgeoning Art Form Legal?’
[X] Lee, Kylie – ‘Confronting Enterprise slash fan fiction’
[X] Hero Complex – ‘ “Harry Potter” fan rebellion of 2008’
[X] Bruns, Kendall – ‘Film: Pleasures of Fandom – Annual Comic-Con is a Multimedia Pop Culture Extravaganza’
Questions to think about:
What makes a fan? Just a supporter of a text, or an active participant in fandom activities? Are fans essential to media products, especially novels and movies?
Does cyber-fandom help with the visibility of female fans?
Who is responsible for stopping young fans (supposedly under 18) from reading fan fiction which contains explicitly sexual languages? The parents, fan fiction site owners or fan fiction writers?
Do you think fan fictions are legal in terms of fair use, or it is just being tolerated by copyright owners (tolerated use)?
Does fan fic do any good to the original author? (It is a promotion of a particular piece of work, but what if, as Westcott mentioned, a non-fan which is unfamiliar with Harry Potter comes across a fan fic with a sado-masochistic Hagrid?)
How does Henry Jenkins suggest fan culture relates to broader notions of participatory culture?
12 responses so far
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
12 Responses to “Fan Culture and the Origins of Participatory Culture”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
So this is interesting:
Just this morning on the news, I heard that JK Rowling (well, her lawyers, I expect) has successful prosecuted a fan for some fiction that they wrote. It’s a Harry Potter lexicon, and the fan is pretty hardcore it seems (a “true” fan??). Anyway, what a coincidence that we were discussing it yesterday!
The case has been going on for a while, and this blog is quite interesting. There are comments at the bottom that balance the view, and some discussion of fair use.
http://sjlibrarian.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/ip-and-the-harry-potter-lexicon-court-case/
My first reaction was, oh so Rowling is using that theoretical power after all, after allowing plenty of fanfic action to arise (even endorsing some on her website, I believe) – and now she’s using copyright law to crush a fan. But the story is deeper than that, and I probably need to read more to have a valid opinion anyway. It seems the fan has done a kind of cut-and-paste directly from R’s novels, with very little of his own original writing. And while it was published on the net only, R actually supported it, and reportedly spoke highly of it on her website. But rumour is she is planning a HP encyclopedia of her own, and this fan wanted to work on it with her (?!?) but when she refused, he went ahead and published his – physically.
That seems to be the gist of the story. And I’m starting to think, actually fair enough. In this case I wouldn’t support a fan publishing this book (for profit) when it is largely not his work, except the collating and structuring, I guess.
So yeah, check it out, there’s a lot of discussion on fandoms, apparently.
That is most definitely interesting Kiri and I think it brings up a pretty good distinction for “fair use” in a moral sense rather than a legal one. As long as this guy wasn’t making any money from his fan contribution (I’m avoiding using the word work here) Rowling was happy for it to exist. But when he began trying to get money from it (especially given what you’ve said about it being mostly her own work, with no re-writing done by him) she said no, which asks some interesting questions to my mind.
I wonder how things would have transpired if it had been left on the internet, available for free and she had published her work independent of him. Actually, now I think a little bit, hers would have been no less successful, his really only being seen by people seeking it out, who would more than likely come across hers with its high grade paper and fancy illustrations beforehand.
I guess all these falls back to the question on how comfortable we are sharing our work with others. And the distinction of fair use in the moral or legal sense was mentioned before in class too. Rowling was magnanimous in allowing him to use her characters for his fan contribution. However, he had cross the limit. Trying to make money out of someone’s preexisting work is a definite no-no. Who would not be defensive over that? Ultimately, authors still their rights over what they have done and treat fan culture/fandom as something to enhance their work/fame/publicity. As rude as it sounds, who would not be anxious over copyright issues when it has money involved?
I think that one of the issues of fandom is that fans can become so involved in the stories, characters and such of a book/film/game (through discussion, fanfic, and the creation of other works such as tribute films) that perhaps (and of course this doesn’t apply to everyone) they feel that they are, in part, the co-creators of the book/film/game. This is reflected in the fan mentioned in Kiri’s post wanting to co-write the Harry Potter lexicon – he feels that he has a right to suggest he co-write a book with JK Rowling. I think this is pretty presumptuous. I’m sure that he put a lot of work into going through all the books to come up with all the information. But this doesn’t mean that he should be able to co-write a book with JK Rowling. Or publish his own book.
I agree with joanne, that once money becomes involved, it makes things a lot messier!
That’s definitely a consensus I think we’ve all agreed on, the one relating to money. But those blurry boundaries of what is acceptable ask some pretty nice questions as well, particularly relating to remixing of works. So things like Rowling insisting that any fan-fic be at a PG level have no legal basis, but arguably a justifiable moral one. Granted, there are counter arguments that say anyone reading the PotterPawn* would have to be looking fairly hard for it, and kids can come by regular pawn* on the internet a lot more easily, but Rowling seems concerned that people will see these re-workings and associate them with her and her franchise. Although, now I’m thinking about it all a little more, that concern seems less and less legitimate, as people are (hopefully) rational beings who can discern between something author(is)ed by Rowling and something that is pure fan-fic. I think this is possibly an area Creative Commons type agreements can have a really useful effect, whereby there is a contract published, maybe at the end or beginning of each book, that states what can and can’t be done with it for the fans, rather than the present unclear system.
Incidentally, on the weekend I actually bought a cd that came with a bonus disc containing all of the individual tracks of a multi-track recording, and some mixing software, the idea being that you could use these tracks to remix the songs.
*there’s a word filter?! change the ‘aw’ into ‘or’ and my paragraph will make more sense.
I also agree that things get messy when they involve money.
And I am thinking about what Chris said, adding CC license to books published. I guess it is a good idea but it has a very mere chance that authors would do so. Authors use the ‘All Rights Reserved’ claim in order to reserve all their rights on use of content. Therefore, if CC license is put in a book, I think that equals to opening the door for not only fan use, but everybody who wants to develop whatsoever to the original story, and probably earn money (by CC+). (I am being quite pessimistic on the CC license issue which I think it would be so hard and nearly impossible to replace ‘All Rights Reserved’ to ‘Some Rights Reserved’ in commercial products.) With the current ‘All Rights Reserved’ claim, authors can open whatever doors to their creative work according to their own will, look at the different views of JK Rowling and Lucasfilm towards fan production. Rowling opens the door for PG fanfic, closes half for R-rated ones and closes completely for co-writing and commercial use of fan work. I guess most human beings are hungry for power and becomes especially serious when it comes to their own creative work for MONEY?
One more thing, in my opinion fans can write fanfic to share with other fans but not copying exactly the original for commercial use, just like the piece of news that Kiri has posted. But I do think about Joanne’s claim on ‘Trying to make money out of someone’s preexisting work is a definite no-no’. Do you mean rewriting/recreating or copying or both? It reminds me of Walt Disney using previous story ideas to create new ones. Of course, the works that he had taken were uncopyrighted, but let alone copyright issues I guess the rewriting/recreating is exactly what Disney had done.
I think that joanne means making money off any work that isn’t wholly your own (or at least that’s how I took it…), and yes I definitely think that fanfic is very similar to work which walt disney did… only he didn’t have the moral, legal and economic issues that we all seem to becoming against (he was a lucky guy!)
Money is certainly an issue, money and power. But I’m not sure that it’s unfair to allow an author to control their own work (not that they do entirely – the publisher’s concerns also play a part). Has the value given to creativity changed with technological advancements? How much due should an author be given for the work they produced? I know you can say no work is entirely original, since we unavoidable build on what has come before us, but for the sake of the argument, if an author has created an original work of, let’s say fiction since that seems to be discussed most, then shouldn’t they be allowed to do what they will with the characters, settings and events in their creation? A large part of me says, yes, the fans should not demand to be able to do whatever they will with an author’s work. Not that most fans would, because there are many people who would recreate their favourite stories out of sheer admiration and enjoyment, not for their own gain. Maybe it should simply be limited as Rowling has already done. I think I said it during the seminar, but even after all this, I still think I like Rowling’s approach best. I guess she does hold ultimate control, which is a little scary, but there’s room enough for fans to explore the Harry Potter world in their own imaginations within the forums they’ve created. Isn’t that enough?
And to play devil’s advocate on my own argument, a little…maybe one reasons why the fanfic culture should be encouraged is that it can foster creativity in individuals, who may or may not otherwise be inspired to sit down and create stories. I guess that’s more of a social purpose.
Fanfic does seem to provide an outlet for fans to foster their creativity, as Kiri mentioned above. I think that it was mentioned in one of the readings that fanfic is a good way to introduce children to writing, as they don’t have to start from scratch, they can use characters, actions and locations already created to craft their own stories. It seems like a great way to introduce children, and anyone who hasn’t written fiction before to writing and get them started.
Kiri raises a complex and difficult question (How much due should an author be given for the work they produced?) – as she said, no work is original, so how do you rule how much control an author has over their work, in which they undoubtedly were inspired in some way by someone else’s works? Off the top of my hand I can’t seem to find some wonderful solution to this problem… I guess only time, trial and error will find the answer?
It seems like a conclusion will not be reached in these discussions after all. Perhaps it would be a good idea to extend fanfics into school, with the support of authors, of course. It would provide a win-win situation: more recognition for authors and creativity for children.
If you were an author, how much control would you like to have over your writings? Will you be comfortable with fans/people recreating your work for their own gains? I tried putting myself in the shoes of authors and thought of Kiri’s point. I would be happy to see people recreate their stories out of sheer admiration and enjoyment but I cringe at the thought of them outbeating my sales (if that happens). Unto Shemila’s point about adding CC license to books published, I would disagree with her on one point. If I remember correctly, there is an icon in CC which states “for non commercial purposes”? If that were added into books, recreation would still be possible without commercials gains.
Hmm just was wondering… Was Harry Potter built upon something in the past or a new creation altogether?
I don’t know if this is the best place for it, but I can’t think of anywhere else, so here goes:
A forum of which I am a member (Big Day Out music festival) recently has had a pretty big uproar, when a bunch of threads about OTHER music festivals were deleted, and the moderators were told to delete any other threads on the topic that sprung up.
This prompted everyone to kick up a massive fuss and change their avatars to advertisements for the other festivals (when before they weren’t) or Big Day Out logos photoshopped into photos of dictators or oppressive regimes or whatever. And there are thoughts of a mass exodus, among other things happening.
Anyway, possibly boring, but it does seem to relate to internet communities and the like, so equally likely interesting.