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Fandom – self expression or exploitation?
A fan is someone who has an intense admiration for something, be it a sport, a kind of music, or a particular text. The word 'fandom' is sometimes used in academic texts to mean something like 'the condition of being a fan'. But when used by Fantasy & Science Fiction fans on the web, it is used in a slightly different way. They talk about being 'in a fandom', for instance 'Stargate fandom' or 'Highlander fandom'. And it is possible to be a fan of a show without being in the fandom. To sit alone watching a show with great admiration might make you a fan, but it is only when fans get together and interact in ways centered on the object of their admiration that they are 'in fandom'. The word therefore means something more like kingdom, except the fans rule.
'Fan' in mainstream culture is a somewhat stigmatizing label. 'Fan' was originally short for 'fanatic'. There is the constant suggestion that fans take things too seriously, and too far. Fans and their common activities in fandom are “seen as excessive, bordering on deranged” [Lewis, 1992, p.9]
The manipulative model sees a straightforward process where media owners and producers put together texts with the intent of making money. The messages in these texts are taken in uncritically and acted upon. Like advertising, audiences watch something telling them to buy, then go out and buy those things. Fans of television shows consume massive amounts of products tied to their favourite shows. They buy tapes and DVDs, even though the show has already been broadcast and they could have recorded it at home. They buy tie-in books and comics. They buy, it seems, everything with the slightest connection to their show, even a simple printed logo. This appears a straightforward example of the mass culture mass consumption the manipulative model theorises – the shows are made to make money, and they make it by exploiting the fans.
However, this simple model ignores how fans use and consume texts. A lot of fan responses to texts don't seem to make any money for anyone. And far from uncritical acceptance, the intense attention fans devote to shows often results in intense opinions about what is wrong, what is right, and what the underlying messages of the show are. “Organised fandom is, perhaps first and foremost, an institution of theory and criticism, a semistructured space where competing interpretations and evaluations of common texts are proposed, debated, and negotiated and where readers speculate about the nature of the mass media and their own relationship to it.” [Jenkins, 1992, p86] Fans are not blind to what media tries to do, they discuss it among themselves and decide how to respond.
Individuals make choices about the media they watch. The pluralist model theorises that media presents highly diverse content to reflect the interests of a diverse society. The consumer is king - commercial success of any media product depends on people actually wanting to buy it, and they want things that are relevant, useful, valuable to them. Fans focus on specific media texts – while there is a sort of overarching 'Science fiction fandom', within it there is 'media fandom', fans of F&SF audiovisual texts, such as television and film. And within that there are specific fandoms centered on particular shows. Fans haven't simply sat down in front of the television and been fed a message, they have selected a specific show from the many available. They are attracted to it for a variety of reasons and get a variety of things out of watching it.
The uses and gratifications model of audience responses is all about how people use media. McQuail [Haralambos p.845] suggests four main categories of use: diversion, personal relationships, personal identity and surveillance. Lull [Haralambos p.845] adds more detail, dividing the use of television into structural and relational, and further dividing relational into communication facilitation, affiliation/avoidance, social learning and competence/dominance. Diversion is the category most people think of when they think of fans. A fan, with their intense involvement with a fictional text that (especially in the case of fantasy and science fiction shows) bears little or no resemblance to everyday life, is seen to be attempting to escape their routine, and possibly their reality. But once fans associate in fandoms, personal relationships become much more central. Hobson's research on 'Jacqui' [Haralambos p.844] found that office workers passed the time and bonded throughout the day by talking about the show they were fans of, in that case Coronation Street. F&SF fans likewise talk together about their shared texts. It is used to enable them to “operate better in a real community”[Haralambos p.845], the community of fandom. It serves many functions in communication facilitation – the common ground of people from many diverse social groups becomes this shared text. It provides a way to start conversations and something to keep them going.
But these conversations don't simply talk about fantasy happenings in a fantasy world. With 'Jacqui' and her co-workers, “the conversation quickly turned to their own lives and interests and to discussions of what they would do if they were in the same circumstances as the characters” [Haralambos p845]. Though F&SF shows have many superficial differences from the everyday, they are all written by humans (as far as we know), and they therefore deal with many aspects of what it means to be human. Highlander, a show generally known for people running around with swords chopping each other's heads off, is known to writers and fans as “talmudic discussion with swords” [Abramowitz, head writer, on stage at HLWW7 convention, 2006]. The shared texts form a starting point for discussions ranging over every moral issue. In Highlander the central issue is when, if ever, it is morally right to kill, and other issues that come up involve keeping or breaking promises, or dealing with bereavement. Fans talking over if a character did or did not do the right thing in that week's episode are engaging in another part of Lull's communication facilitation, that of value clarification. Comparisons to events in the lives of fans, and discussions about them, are useful when dealing with difficult situations. Texts, and quoting from them, are also used directly for self expression, explaining to others by referencing a particular story, or providing shared means of expression likely to be understood by the community in shared ways. Quotes bring a lot of connotations that single words do not, conveying the emotion of the characters and contexts.
Fans form subcultures, fandoms, communities that share reading practices and enjoy the same leisure activities, both directly and indirectly about the texts. They watch shows, chat about them afterwards, write both fiction about criticism. They also associate, talking as friends now they've got that one thing in common. And they go to conventions, dress up and party for three days, sometimes with people who were involved with making the shows the fandoms center on, sometimes just with other fans. It is hard to see these activities as forms of exploitation, rather they are all about self expression.
Fandoms can also develop shared values. Some of these overlap strongly with mainstream culture – an emphasis on charity, collections and donations, is common. But other aspects seem contrary to mainstream values. Whereas success in the mainstream is measured by how much monetary wealth you can acquire, success in fandom is measured more by what knowledge you can demonstrate, and what fan products you can give away. Those that can create and distribute pictures or stories for free get a high status within fandom. Those that try to charge money for such products are greatly disapproved of. The recent attempt by a Star Wars fan-fiction author to sell her book on amazon inspired mass mockery and derision.
But the right of the original producers and owners of a text to make money from that text, even by way of spin off merchandise, is not often disputed. However, the less that merchandise has a connection to the text that brought a fandom together, the less approval the owners will get, however 'official' they call it. The manipulative model would suggest that fans can be easily talked into buying bags and lunchboxes with a tenuous connection to the text, and indeed such products are available. But the less connected to the text they are, the less likely they are to be bought. New DVDs, new additions to the original text, are usually eagerly bought by most of the fandom. New logo items are bought by only a minority, many of whom mostly want a bag, and see the logo as a bonus. But logos, badges, t-shirts, and other products that allow fans to carry around a piece of a text or a recogniseable sign are used in the construction of fan identities, and are some of the signs by which members of the fandom recognise each other. Like the shared style of punks or mods, fandoms often have styles of their own. Star Trek uniforms are symbols to be read, and identities to be worn.
Fans are often aware there is a preferred reading, a way of understanding the text where the message read is the same as the message encoded by the writers. But certain groups of fans decode texts in ways that are negotiated or even oppositional. They see the original meaning, but keep only the parts they like and read something else there instead. 'Slash' fans are fans who see two same sex characters in a media text and choose to read them as if they are having a homosexual relationship. They are aware that, in mainstream texts, that is very seldom the case. That is rather the problem. So they take the parts of the texts they like – attractive and interesting characters – and reinterpret them to work better for them. Moments on screen that can support their new reading are eagerly collected and connected. Moments that contradict it, for instance canon heterosexual relationships, are either ignored or worked into new fan narratives where they can be explained in terms of the new reading. Fan fiction is a common way of expressing this, but there are also essays, discussions, or artwork. Fans are not simply consumers. They also produce. In ways that make no money for the original producers of a text. And that doesn't fit the straight manipulative model at all well.
However, the hegemonic model suggests that there is still a dominant message – perhaps 'buy our products' – but there is room left around the edges for other messages, in order to appear fair and defuse resistance. In that context, the acceptance of fan activity by some creators would be their attempt to appear fair. Their message, in the 'canon' text that brings a fandom together, is still the dominant message. They can afford to allow fans their say. And instances where the producers listen to fans and incorporate characters or storylines they have requested are again ways to keep the fans involved, make them more interested and therefore more likely to spend money. But they do not change the balance of power. At any time the legal owners of the original text could bring legal action against fans. Sometimes they do. Then websites get taken down and things stop being on sale. The process can be compared to the process of resistance and incorporation seen with punk, where a subculture sets out to resist dominant norms and values and create their own, but the dominant culture incorporates something unthreatening yet superficially similar – say, punk clothing, without punk politics. Or giving a little screen time to an idea but presenting it as marginal, unusual, ridiculous. Many more shows have made a joke of a relationship popular with slashers than have ever simply written a homosexual relationship. Theory suggests that by giving the idea some time they present themselves as acting fairly, but by representing the idea as ridiculous they maintain cultural hegemony.
There are a lot of attempts to exploit fans by using them as an easy and reliable source of money. But there are also a lot of responses to these attempts. Fans can be creative, critical, careful about what they consider worthy. Fans don't follow blindly into every storyline or toy line. Fandoms are communities that share information, and inferior products or ones that are not useful to the community get bad word of mouth and so sell badly among fans. Membership of fandom is not based on expensive consumption or uncritical acceptance of a text. Fans connect through ideas, reading and writing about the shows in ways which examine and evaluate messages, not spending money. That being the defining core of fandom, and how they spend the majority of their time, it is difficult to see exploitation. So the relationship between producers and consumers could be seen as symbiotic. Fans, fully aware of the intent to make money, buy products, which pleases media producers. But then they use them for their own ends, for self expression. Yet there is tension, where the producers want more money for less expensive media products and the fans want more text, preferably for less money. It is more negotiation than exploitation. On balance, the experience of being in fandom is much more about self expression.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Edgar, A & Sedgwick, P (2002) Cultural Theory The Key Concepts Routledge
Haralambos & Holborn (2004) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 6th ed. London: HarperCollins
Jenkins, Henry (1992) Textual Poachers London: Routledge
Lawson, T. & Garrod, J. (2003) Complete A-Z Sociology Handbook, 3rd ed. Hodder Arnold
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Date: 2006-07-06 03:53 pm (UTC)