Audiences are no longer seen as passive as fans that are
engaged in a dialogue have helped replace the once common notion of the mass
audience with that of the active audience. As John Fiske noted in 1992, fans
are now giving more subversive and oppositional readings of media texts. Now fandom
is very much a participatory culture, fans of different media texts, whether it
be films, comic books, video games, music or sports have been resisting the
dominant ideologies of their chosen texts and recycling elements of them to
create their own, new material.
What Henry Jenkins is attempting to state in his definition
is that a fan culture is where fans and amateurs create new and recycled texts
and media that draw much of their content from mass-produced and mass consumed
media. The text and media produced by fans are then sold and made available to
fans in an unrecorded economy that is more often than not filled with fans of
the same or similar texts and those of a niche audience. Now there are some
pros and cons to Jenkins’ definition, if the fan community in question was
based around a text that was part of the mass culture, then it can clearly be
argued that they would draw their content from commercial culture. LEGO, for
example, is a prime example of a community that draws much of its content from
commercial culture and also makes their produce available through an
underground economy. It can, and should be argued that Jenkins’ definition
ignores fan practices such as fan fiction and cosplay, that only draws its
content from the source material, not commercial culture. Also, the majority of
fan practices, including fan fiction and cosplay don’t produce texts for mass
culture, but produces new, diverse texts for those of a niche audience.
Fans find their identities wrapped up with the pleasures
connected popular culture. Fans therefore inhibit social roles marked out as
fandom, and fandom can therefore be seen as a form of cultural creativity. The work
of fandom includes the way it can ‘heighten our sense of excitement, prompt our
self-reflexivity, encourage us to discuss shared values and ethics, and supply
us with a significant source of meaning that extends into our daily lives
(Duffett, 2013, p.18). In his 2002 text Fan
Cultures, Hills claims that practices of fandom are not too dissimilar to
academic practices. He notes that fans, like academics create a sense of
imagined subjectivity around a particular text or subject, with fans also both
consuming and critiquing media texts, in similar ways to academics. Unlike
Jenkins, Hills’ definition of fan culture does not omit the social and political
issues regarding fandom and he argues that not all fan cultures produce texts
for underground economies. Hills suggests that fans create and critique texts
as a form of self-reflexivity and claims that such ‘mutual marginalisation’
between fans and academia ‘would suggest that fandom and academia are
co-produced as exclusive social and cultural positions’. (2002, p.19)
In his 2005 text, Sandvoss states that fan culture is a form
of self-reflexivity and completely disregards Jenkins’ definition of fan
culture being dependent on fan texts being made for an underground economy. He
also claims that the relationships between fans and objects of fandom are
‘based on self-reflective reading and narcissism’ (2005, p.121). Now as the
majority of film practices; fan fiction, cosplay, fan film are often regarded
as an extension of the self, rather that something produced for an audience, a
fans chosen media text gives them the ability to extend themselves past
everyday surroundings. It also enables fans to project an image of oneself
within a different medium, not for profit, production or consumption, just
simply for self-reflexivity.
In his text Cult
Collectors (2014), Geraghty gives both acknowledgement and supporting
evidence to Henry Jenkins’ definition of fan culture. He suggests that fan
practices aside from fan fiction and cosplay, for example, collecting, is a fan
practice that very much draws from commercial culture. Collecting action
figures and LEGO are just two examples that represent an underground economy,
which gives new meanings to fan texts and media. Geraghty also suggests that
fans are personalised by commercial culture and gives examples through Star Wars fandom.
‘The LEGO Brick is a cultural object with its own history’
declares Lars Konzack in LEGO Studies (2014,
p.1). LEGO is a line of plastic
construction toys that have been manufactured since 1949. Since then, a global
LEGO subculture has developed. Supporting movies, games, competitions, and six
Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. As of July 2015,
600 billion Lego parts had been produced.
In February 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as Brand
Finance's "world's most powerful brand". Since the 1950s, the Lego
Group has released thousands of sets with a variety of themes and has licensed
numerous cartoon, video game and film franchises. Although some of the licensed
themes, LEGO Star Wars for example
had highly successful sales (making up 10 out of the 20 most expensive sets),
LEGO has expressed a desire to rely upon their own themes, and over the past 15
years investors in LEGO have secured a better return buying LEGO sets than from
the stock market, gold or bank accounts.
LEGO isn’t just transmedial, it is also
‘transfranchisal’ (Wolf, 2014, p.xxiii) which is where many different
characters from different franchises come together in one text. It is
transmedia in both its themes and its representation. LEGO’s popularity with
fans is demonstrated by its wide spread representation and usage in many forms
of fan and popular culture, including books, films, art, clothing and video
games. The LEGO group aim to intrigue their mass culture into becoming creative
for the self, rather than for a secondary audience or economy, by aiming for
their users to generate ideas and artifacts that combine existing themes, to
expand an understanding.
As Susan Pearce wrote in 1995, there are three approaches
to collecting. Souvenir collecting, which creates a romanticized life history
for each object, these objects being used as an autobiography for the
collector. Fetish collecting, where the object dominates and collectors gather
as much as possible to create a sense of self and systematic collecting, which
works on a completest method, where having the complete set is the aim and that
achieves a full understanding of the fan text. As Geraghty states,
collecting ‘represents a new form of “cultural capital” as fans collect in
order to possess and gain special access to the movies and texts, making claims
of ownership’ (2014, p.8). Collecting is ultimately based on a hierarchal
system of whoever has the most collectibles, or the ‘ultimate collectors’ items
and who has the most pristine collection.
Collectors can also be a part of what Jeremy Beckett coins
‘Peter Pan Syndrome’, where they attempt to recapture their youth through
collecting toys from their childhoods to gain a sense of appropriation, cultural
relevance and resistance to normality. Statistics show that the majority of Star Wars LEGO collectors are in there
30s and 40s, and even have their own name ‘Adult Fans of LEGO’. Geraghty
supports the idea of collecting for memory by stating those who collect the
merchandise today do so because the act of collecting, playing, and recapturing
one’s youth is bound up in the modern desire to define oneself through symbolic
possessions rather than through shared national beliefs’ (2006, p.220). Collecting has become a fan community
in itself through its vast popularity and its secondary economy of underground
buying and selling.
Star Wars has
‘morphed into something much more tangible, something much more real’
(Elovaara, 2013, p.8). It has blossomed into a phenomenon that exerts influence
over fans in their daily lives and dominates pop culture, and is clearly
evident in our society and global culture as a whole. All to similar to that of
LEGO, which is made for the mainstream audience and its purpose is to be bought
and sold to the everyday consumer. What makes LEGO into an underground
community is the fact that people buy certain LEGO sets as investments, which
they later sell on for in some cases, ridiculous profit. LEGO sets kept in
pristine condition consistently increase in value every year and the
second-hand prices of items sold on sites like eBay also increase, the
‘ultimate collectors edition’ of the Millennium Falcon retailed at £342.49 in
2007, almost 10 years on and is can be purchased for £2,712 on the second hand
market.
Collecting the complete range of toys and figures has become
an important part of the competitive struggle that can be seen in Star Wars fandom, and it is sites such
as eBay that have ‘revolutionized collecting and made the physical objects of
popular media culture all the more available’ (Geraghty, 2014, p.2). As soon as
Star Wars minifigures became
available, fans started to customise existing characters and creating their own
completely new characters using official LEGO parts, but customising with their
own paints, stickers and handmade accessories. Over the years MOCs (My Own
Creations) have become a vital part of the LEGO fan experience and they give
new use to old objects, subverting the narrative and making it something fresh
and more self-reflective. It is through underground economy that MOCs become
available and the buying and selling of second-hand merchandise circulates,
this second economy makes merchandise once only available in the country of
production, now available to audience across all borders.
Collecting is important to fan culture, but it tends to be
inclusive rather than exclusive, the emphasis is not so much upon acquiring a
few good objects as upon accumulating as many as possible. Individual items are
often cheap and devalued by official culture and mass-produced and the
‘distinctiveness lies in the extent of the collection, rather than in their
uniqueness or authenticity as cultural objects’ (Fiske, 1992, p.44).
Hierarchies within fandom are based on distinction, taste,
value and productivity. There comes a sense of ownership, being the ‘best’ fan
is based on what you own and your accumulation of knowledge. All of this
creates a ground for movement; it causes a certain group of fans to be subversive
from establishment, as they have come outside of the hierarchy to the top of a
hierarchy based on their knowledge and collection. In terms of fan hierarchies,
cultural capital is very much valued and is subsequently turned into economic
capital.
Knowledge is power and ‘social hierarchy is evident where
‘fans share common interests whilst also competing over fan knowledge, access
to the object and status’ (Hills, 2002, p.60). Star Wars provides fans with a culture and devoutness outside of
the mainstream. Symbolic capital suggests that the apprised audience poses a
specific cultural capital when set against the commonly devalued mass
audiences. Star Wars is one of the key texts in which fans make evident their
subcultural capital through their knowledge of the text, which is more often
than not unfamiliar to mainstream audiences.
In terms of Star Wars LEGO
collecting, Henry Jenkins’ definition of a fan culture is accurate because collecting
as a fan practice draws from commercial culture and collectible items represent
an underground economy due to the buying, selling and modification of LEGO
products. In terms of wider fan practices, this is not the case, fanfiction,
cosplay and fan film are often created as a medium of self-reflexivity, not for
the consumption of an audience and market. As a fan community, elements of Star Wars Fandom and fan practices show
elements of what Jenkins is suggesting and other elements he has ignored. The
fan practices involved in a community like Star
Wars fans ranges from the aforementioned fanfiction and cosplay, which has
no economical capital, to merchandise and pilgrimage, which does involve a
certain level of economic capital.
When defining fan culture it is crucial that you do not
define it as one individual practice. We must follow the likes of Matt Hills who
argues that fan cultures cannot be constricted through one singular theoretical
approach or definition. Fandom and fan culture does not simply have one
definition. It is crucial that when attempting to define fan culture you are
broad-minded in discussing the several different fan cultures that exist in fan
communities, and not just those that develop on the idea of making new texts
available for niche audiences aside from the masses.
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