Notes

This is an analysis of fan culture, but from the perspective of a fan and cultural theorist.

Fans are a borderline cultural group, they are diverse, and exist at intersections of different cultural groups. Thus, the traditional sociological treatment of hegemonic culture falls apart a little in discussing fans.

One aim is to challenge the images of fans as depraved social misfits. And the goal is to replace that with the notion of active readers.

Textual poachers explicitly derives from DeCerteau, who described active readers as “poachers”, who refuse to absorb content as mere consumers. They occupy a position of weakness and desperation, petitioning media producers to keep the integrity of their favorite characters.

“Fans must actively struggle with and against the meanings imposed upon them by their borrowed materials; fans must confront media representations on an unequal terrain.” (p. 33) Producers and consumers often have conflicting interests, and this can lead to suspicion and open opposition over media artifacts.

Poaching is not misreading, rather it is an appropriation. Misreading implies that there is a “correct” approach to finding content, and anything else is false. This struggles with but does not obviate authorial intent. It also challenges traditional semiotic communication theory (Stuart Hall’s encoding and decoding). Even in Stuart Hall’s understanding of oppositional readings, it is necessary for the reader to have a stable position, which is lacking in popular tactics. Poaching is thus more fluid.

Poachers are also nomads, they travel intertextually, appropriating new materials, and constructing new meanings. Jenkins diverges from DeCerteau in claiming that fans take these new and appropriated meanings and become producers themselves. It seems though that fan created content is always at a second class compared to produced content.

Textual Poachers 6: Welcome to Bisexuality

This chapter is on fan writing, specifically the phenomenon of slash fanfiction. The term “slash” itself derives from the way that the stories are signified to the community. Examples are Kirk/Spock or simply K/S, but this can naturally be extended to other areas of fandom Potter/Snape, etc.

Jenkins provides a rather holistic discussion of slash, the communities that arise around it, and various theories put forth by scholars of cultural studies on the matter. This approach is somewhat dangerous, since it runs the risk of simplifying a very broad and widespread phenomenon into something that can be theorized about generally. It is important to note that it is a widespread phenomenon and is highly diverse in nature, thus the communities around it are similarly diverse and complex.

Nonetheless, Jenkins starts with a historical account of Slash as pertains to Star Trek, originating in the early 1970s. Reception to the writing has been generally very negative (usually from the perspective of official writers or other fans).

To fans and slash writers, the fiction serves a more complex role: It allows for an exploration of and a challenge to traditional gender roles. (Stoltenberg) It also allows a projection of sensuality into masculine characters. (fan writer Joan Martin) Joana Russ sees slash as giving insight into female sexual fantasy.

It is important to note that slash reading and writing is predominantly a female phenomenon. In this sense, it serves to look at romantic literature as studied by Janice Radway, who finds that romance gives a release from the traditional patriarchal gender roles, while simultaneously reinforcing them. Slash serves a similar function, but by virtue of being fan created, it is necessarily reflective and exploratory.

The ambiguity and androgyny (or hyper-masculinity) of characters in slash echoes the reflectiveness found in Turkle’s study of chat room gender play. Ultimately, slash is a kind of “making do” to use DeCerteau’s term, with the content provided by popular media. The gender deconstruction of the characters, as well as the identification with their masculine status sounds like a tactic for co-opting gender for the slash community.

Slash has a formulaic structure with several phases:

1. A perspective on the initial relationship.
2. Masculine dystopia.
3. Confession.
4. Masculine utopia.

The fascinating thing about this is that it reflects very sharply the formulaic structure of Romance by Radway. (http://www.icosilune.com/Research/012_radway.php) The parallel here is that both serve to restore a utopia of emotion. Jenkins leaves off claiming that slash serves to challenge traditional masculine roles, but its existence is evidence of a poaching tactic to find emotional fulfillment in a landscape of cultural artifacts that is lacking.

All cultural artifacts and products of creative expression come laden with implicit ideology of the producers. When fans take these artifacts and poach them, they introduce new values into their creation, which is a synthesized product. However, within participatory culture, the separation between producers and consumers can narrow significantly. When this occurs, what happens to the ideology of the artifact and synthesized products?