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The Origins of Fandom Studies
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Fandom
In this course, Professor Henry Jenkins (University of Southern California, Annenberg) discusses his ideas of Fandom and Fandom Studies. In the first module, we look at the origins of Fandom Studies. After this, we explore the typical stereotypes of fans and fandom. Then, we look at how fandom operates as a subculture. After this, we explore the idea of Participatory Culture in a little more detail. Then, we look at the idea of Pop Cosmopolitanism in a little more detail. After this, we explore the idea of Civic Imagination in a little more detail. Then, we look at the idea of Transmedia Storytelling in a little more detail. Finally, we look at the idea of Spreadable Media.
The Origins of Fandom Studies
In this module, we look at the origins of Fandom Studies. In particular, we focus on: (i) how Fandom Studies' origins can be traced back to the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies in Great Britain, including a discussion of Raymond Williams' essay "Culture Is Ordinary"; (ii) how Stuart Hall's idea of "encoding-decoding" challenged the notion of a dominant reading and emphasised various interpretations of media texts by different audiences; (iii) Dick Hebdige's idea of subcultures, particularly working-class adolescence, and their use of appropriation and remixing of symbols to form their identities; (iv) how Angela McRobbie criticised Dick Hebdige for not acknowledging women's roles in subcultures and their cultural expressions; (v) how Bell Hooks highlighted the oppositional gaze and critical reading of media representations by marginalised groups; (vi) how John Fisk popularised the idea of how ordinary people resist dominant cultural meanings and process television images; (vii) how Henry Jenkins saw fandom as a mix of fascination and frustration, and viewed fans as "poachers" who creatively appropriate and remix elements from existing culture to create new expressions; and (viii) a discussion of "Have you heard George's podcast?" which serves as an example of appropriation and resignification in modern media.
Hi. I'm Henry Jenkins. I'm a professor of communication
00:00:05journalism, Cinematic Arts,
00:00:09and Education at the University of Southern California.
00:00:11In this module,
00:00:16I'm gonna talking about the origins of fandom studies.
00:00:17So if we trace it back, we trace it back to Great Britain.
00:00:22We trace it back to the so called Birmingham School of
00:00:26Cultural Studies, which is in Birmingham, England.
00:00:30And back to someone named Raymond Williams,
00:00:34and Raymond Williams wrote an incredible essay,
00:00:36it's one that I rewrote every year called Culture Isordinary.
00:00:39When he's making a very basic case, that everyone
00:00:44is part of culture, that culture is a total way of life,
00:00:47and that everyone makes contributions to the culture.
00:00:51It is not about elites, it is not as Matthew Arnold.
00:00:54Claimed about the best that man has created. It is about the
00:00:59sum total of human experience.
00:01:04AND IN DOING SO AND Laying CLAIMED TO HIS OWN BACKOUND AS
00:01:07A WORKING CLASS RURAL BRIT.
00:01:11He opened the door for a variety of other scholars and writers.
00:01:14One of those is DEKEPTAGE, and DECEPTIG
00:01:19WAS A SCALLER OF SUBCULTURES,
00:01:22PARTICULARLY THE PUNCTS, THE TETTY BOYZE AND A RANGE OF OTHERS.
00:01:25And what Decaptich said is that these groups create meaning
00:01:30through signification
00:01:35and resignification.
00:01:37That is they take everyday objects around them and turn
00:01:38them into symbols of their own identity.
00:01:42He's looking at adolescence and particularly working class adolescence,
00:01:46at a moment of rebellion, breaking away from their
00:01:50parents. And as they're breaking away,
00:01:53they often choose symbols from their parents' culture,
00:01:56so they might, for example, take a safety pin,
00:02:00and stick it through their cheek,
00:02:03So something that had been a symbol of their mother's care
00:02:06for them when they were a baby becomes an artifice
00:02:09OF SELF ABUSE OR THEY MIGHT TAKE THE
00:02:13IRRON CROSS, THE SIMBLE OF GERMANY AND THE TEDTY BOYS in
00:02:17taking the iron cross or taking a symbol their parents fought
00:02:21against and turning into a symbol of their own identity.
00:02:25So what was important about his work was this idea of appropriation
00:02:30and remixing. A theme will see a lot.
00:02:35As we think about what fandom is and how fandom operates.
00:02:37But Angela McGrawbey,
00:02:41a feminist scholar reacted against
00:02:44DICTVIG'S argument saying, FIRST of all,
00:02:47HE wasn't BEEN HONEST THAT HE WAS HIMSELF
00:02:50PART OF THE subcultures AND the understanding how you know what
00:02:53you know, where you're positioned
00:02:57in relation to the culture that you're studying is an important
00:03:00part of the work. Of doing cultural analysis.
00:03:03And secondly,
00:03:07she called him out for not paying a sufficient attention
00:03:07to women's roles in subcultures.
00:03:11For example, she said that in focusing on the street displays
00:03:14of the punks, he wasn't paying attention,
00:03:18to what was taking place in the bedrooms of teenage girls.
00:03:21People were cutting out pictures of magazines,
00:03:25putting them on their walls,
00:03:28creating sound spaces around them, choosing their decor,
00:03:31hanging out with their friends,
00:03:35and all of those were cultural activities.
00:03:37Ways that they were appropriating and remixing
00:03:41the content of culture.
00:03:43So those wall pictures and collages that probably a lot of
00:03:46the students I'm talking to create in their own bedrooms
00:03:49are cultural expressions
00:03:53of subcultural identity,
00:03:55and that was an important part of what she was arguing.
00:03:57We bring this to America, the black scholar Bell Hooks, is
00:04:01saying there that groups that are excluded from dominant representation,
00:04:06groups like black people and America,
00:04:11are are forced to read from the margins, are forced to
00:04:15look critically at the representation that are there,
00:04:19and in many cases imagine themselves,
00:04:23or fantasize themselves as part of that experience.
00:04:26And so that notion of an oppositional gaze or an
00:04:31oppositional reading would become very important to fan
00:04:34them studies down the line.
00:04:37We add to this list of scholars, Stuart Hall, who
00:04:40wrote an essay called encoding decoding,
00:04:44And what Stuart Hall is arguing is that there's not simply a
00:04:47dominant reading,
00:04:51that everyone doesn't read the same text in the same way.
00:04:53But rather, there's a range of reading positions.
00:04:57So one person might read A text, LARGELY, AS IN THE MAIN
00:05:01STREAM, ANOTHER MIGHT NEGOTIATE
00:05:06A READING, THAT IS SAY
00:05:08I accept this much, but not this. This is valuable. This is
00:05:10wrong. Or they might read it in an oppositional way,
00:05:15much as Bell Hooks was saying,
00:05:18black Americans were often reading media representations
00:05:20of white society.
00:05:25So, the idea of encoding decoding opened up a space to
00:05:26pay attention to this question of decoding.
00:05:30How do different audiences decode the media that enters their lives?
00:05:33This is where I enter the story. I was taught by a man named John Fisk,
00:05:39and John Fisk helped to popularize all the ideas I've
00:05:43just described. He was interested in how do everyday people,
00:05:47as part of ordinary culture, process television images in
00:05:52ways that were resistant
00:05:57to the dominant meanings of the culture.
00:05:59When I started exploring describing my experience as a
00:06:03fan, he got very excited and encouraged me to write about
00:06:07it. You see, I had started out as a fan
00:06:10probably at ten eleven twelve, fan of comics,
00:06:14fan of Batman on television,
00:06:18a fan of mad magazine,
00:06:20and particularly a fan of monster But the time I was in
00:06:21my late teens, I was very drawn to Star Trek in particular
00:06:25and going to science fiction conventions.
00:06:30And what I saw there was very different from the way fans
00:06:33were being represented in the media,
00:06:36and we'll talk more about that in a later segment.
00:06:39But what was important to me was that I thought both the
00:06:41media and scholars were getting it wrong.
00:06:45They thought fans were passive consumers,
00:06:48couch potatoes, hanging out, watching TV, and more or less,
00:06:51I'm critically accepting what they saw.
00:06:54And what I saw was that fandom was a mix of fascination and frustration.
00:06:57That if we weren't fascinated, we wouldn't remain a fan.
00:07:03If we weren't frustrated,
00:07:05we probably would work through it and go on to something else.
00:07:07But it's that sense of being almost right, so close, but
00:07:10not there, that led fans to being negotiated readers in
00:07:15Stuart Hall's sense.
00:07:19That's where my argument starts.
00:07:21I read fans as poachers, people who took elements from the
00:07:24existing culture,
00:07:28and brought it together in new ways through their creative expression.
00:07:30Let me close with an example from the media you've been discussing.
00:07:34Have you heard George's podcast?
00:07:39When I first heard that podcast,
00:07:42it was amazing to me because George is such a profound
00:07:43speaker, such an original artist.
00:07:48But if we look at it more closely, we see he is continually
00:07:51quoting from everyday speech, from popular culture,
00:07:56assigning his own meanings to what he borrows.
00:08:00It's a process of appropriation, poaching,
00:08:03resignification, which is very much what we've been describing
00:08:07throughout this segment.
00:08:11So listen to George, pay attention to his language,
00:08:13I'll close with a claim from Mikhail Bakgin,
00:08:16who was a Russian linguist who said we don't take words from
00:08:19the dictionary We take them from other people's mouths,
00:08:23and they come with us dripping with a history where they've
00:08:26been. So as you listen to George,
00:08:30LISTened to where those words have been and how he is making
00:08:33new meaning through this process of appropriation and remixing.
00:08:37
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Jenkins, H. (2023, July 25). Fandom - The Origins of Fandom Studies [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/fandom/fandom-as-a-subculture
MLA style
Jenkins, H. "Fandom – The Origins of Fandom Studies." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 25 Jul 2023, https://massolit.io/courses/fandom/fandom-as-a-subculture