Hegemony, incorporation, and fanfic

[beccaelizabeth]

So I read some more from the Cultural Studies reader about hegemony. There's a section about the 60s counterculture and how dominant culture incorporated it into the mainstream. I knew none of the specifics of this stuff. I mean I'd heard of Woodstock and Vietnam but I didn't have a coherent picture of the cultural moment, sort of thing. So it's really interesting to read about. And makes me think anti-war stuff about now too. So, still working then.

Interesting bits (where I mash quoted lines together) - counterculture musicians as Gramscian organic intellectuals, only collective. Advocated and articulated a culture in which the distance between producer and consumer was minimal. The bands represented the community. To remain representative of the community they had to remain part of the community. But then the music industry didn't see it as a community, they saw it as a market. And in order to make the music the bands had to deal with those who controlled the means of production - the ones that owned the music studios and stuff. Well, if they were singing to the people in front of them I guess not so much, but to reach the most people they had to make it be records. But in doing so they lost control of stuff like what was done with the profits. And in fact profits from anti-war music were going right back in to making stuff to make war. So the dominant culture happily used bits of the counterculture to its own ends. Yet that meant the message was out there making it harder to think war supporting type thoughts. And then it goes on to the repressive state apparatus side, to people getting shot and stabbed for demonstrating.

So, anyways, the middle bits made me think of some stuff that goes on in fandom. Only because that's the classic resistance/incorporation shape of things. Book says - "like all popular cultural initiatives under capitalism, it faced three possible futures: marginalization, disappearance, or incorporation into the system's profit-making concerns."

So here we have this little space where production and consumption are pretty much mushed together. We're slashers, so we write and read and squee. All the same crowd. And there's lurkers, yes, but they can join in any time, there's no gatekeepers keeping them off stage, so to speak. We're not just an audience, we're a community.

Except for our space is in fact LiveJournal's space, and a bunch of other money making organisations. And to get here we have to have computers and internet access. And various different things get in the way of internet access (did you know there's a UK gov list of websites thou shalt not access? They say it's all kiddieporn, but how is one to know? They block them all at the ISP level, so nobody gets to see them). So the stage is not as open as we'd in theory like. And there's all these dudes who are, on the whole, NOT part of the community, and they're seeing not even audience but market. And, and this is the clever bit from their point of view, product.

I don't know about you, but I don't like feeling like a product.

So there's all these different ways of trying to get money out of this community. And quite often the bit people object to isn't that they're making money, it's that they're not part of the community. And they have weird ways of looking at us.

Like, the whole strategy of that 'fan' place that promised to put fanwriters in vaguely the same corner of the net as source-text-writers seemed to be based on looking at us fanwriters as if we're already marginalised. Like they're sitting in the middle with doors and keys and they might deign to let us in. But from where we're sitting we're right in the middle, thankyou very much, and did we mention that our favourite writers are out here with us? Not that I've gone looking for many of them, but the variety of people with LiveJournals is very great, and some of them I bought books off before I found their journals. And others of them I found their journals and found I could if I wished buy books off them. All connected and right in the middle of things, thanks.

But then the nearly-invisible people who own this here thingy we are posting on speak up, and claim the right to kick some people *out* of the community. And they frame it in terms of values - they're doing things wrong - but it's reframed by many in terms of commodities - they're not good product. Perfectly good market, fee paying users of the system, but not a good product to the new and more profitable users called advertisers.

And then there's the strategies for fighting back. Own the means of production/distribution! Only it's not so much a revolution cause they can own theirs too and oh look, mostly people who've 'moved' are still double or triple posting. And the ones that aren't I confess I'm having trouble following because it gets a bit drowned out in all the copied stuff.

Plus LJ keeps on trying to win hegemony, be leaders, by putting in more about morals and such that lines up closer with existing community values so it's easier to sway. and by framing the debate in terms of such values, instead of the 'get what you pay for' or whatever other argument that might put them in the wrong. And both sides keep doing this, debate things their way and try and get the other lot to agree with them, and will continue to do so because that's how things work. But the edges and what precisely the argument is about get pushed.

So all this in the theory book about conflict and capitalism and community and values and hegemony and leadership and ISAs and RSAs, that's not distant stuff what happens to ye olde texts made before I was born, that's here and now and if I can or cannot talk to people.

The plus side is I'm much less likely to get shot at.
At the moment.
I think.

So, anyway, it also made me think more about how what we're saying and doing here both reflects and *forms* values and attitudes and suchlike. Makes me feel like I should do more to try and make a difference. And of course that's what all the squee-harshing complaints about perceived inequality-isms is all about. Forming community values where that shit just isn't cool.



I'm going to stop typing now cause I'm concurrently watching "100 scariest moments" on E4 and that makes it kind of harder to concentrate. And also it's actually getting into moments that are in fact scary.

... I can't turn the cultural studies side of my brain off. I'm looking at horror movies and a track in my head is thinking 'what cultural anxieties and value judgements do these reflect/construct?'

and also thinking 'eeps!' a lot of course.

ooooh, Ghostwatch! Scared the hell out of me!
*watches avidly*

Comments

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

... I can't turn the cultural studies side of my brain off.

Why would you want to?

But yes. And yes and yes and YES.

[beccaelizabeth]

because it's a different source of pleasure to watch a film just to go "eee!" than it is to watch it with actual brain and thinking, and they sorta get in the way of each other.

and thanks :)