#huntermasterrace6

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Post #4

In his article titled “Masculine Pursuits?: Gender, Generation, and the Fan Collector,” Lincoln Geraghty talks about how “affirmational” and “transformative” modes of fan engagement traditionally have been gendered terms in the fan community. Affirmational fan practices include things like obtaining extensive knowledge and trivia of any fandom they are a part of, collecting items like memorabilia or DVD box sets, and overall gaining a mastery over the content. This is typically seen as the more masculine form of fan engagement, things that align with the original meaning that the creators intended for the text. Transformative fan practices are typically held by females in this model, and they are practices that challenge or change the intended meaning of the text for the fan’s purpose, like writing fan-fiction, or vidding, things that change the original narrative. 

When you gender these terms however, you can lose a large part of the community that either breaks these gendered norms or can be categorized as both. Geraghty talks about how typically “masculine means aggressiveness, competitiveness, and a desire for mastery, and feminine preservationism, creativity, and nurturance,” (Geraghty 60) but then mentions how a male fan may take his Star Wars collectible to “Death Valley to recreate scenes from the film” (Geraghty 60). This would be considered a “creative” form of fan engagement, which is gendered towards females, but it was done by a male. It is almost impossible to correctly categorize a large group of people with simple binary distinctions since there will inevitably be an overlap. For example, cosplay is a common fan practice that is done by both males and females, both in which could be considered an affirmational or a transformative mode of engagement, depending on how it was carried out. 

In the article, Geraghty concludes his statements by saying that nostalgia is one of the largest driving factors when it comes to collecting and how nostalgia is a “genderless emotion” (Geraghty 70). If this is the case then it would be hypocritical to say that cult collecting is a gendered practice.

Geraghty, Lincoln. Cult Collectors: Nostalgia, Fandom, and Collecting Popular Culture. New York: Routledge Books, 2014. 60, 61.

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In the article, “User-Penetrated Content: Fan Video in the Age of Convergence,” Julie Levin Russo talks about the state of fan vids and fan films during the age of the digitization of mass media and how “the industry relies on the labor of fans to produce and promote the value of its properties with increasing openness” (Russo 129).

The video I chose for this post is a fan trailer for the Leviathan Raid in the game Destiny 2. On the Bungie website they have a community creations page where members of the Destiny fandom can post any sort of fan creation, be it fan art, fan film, machinima, etc., and every week they choose one video as the Movie of the Week. This encourages fans to post their own creations to this page in hopes of having their entry nominated. However, “it becomes increasingly difficult to hold in place the distinctions between owners and consumers” (Russo 129).

In regards to this video specifically, the creator is essentially making promotional material for the game with almost zero effort being taken by the company. By framing it as a contest of sorts, Bungie is able to collect hundreds of fan creations on their site so that people can browse through a large catalog of things like gameplay or artwork from the game as a way to promote its own property without having to do any work. When the fans start doing the work for the company then it becomes difficult to determine who the work really belongs to.

On a community creations forum page, Bungie, under a tab called Intellectual Property and Trademarks, states that they strongly support “the efforts of our community to produce non-commercial content using video images, footage, music, sounds, dialogue, or other assets from our games,” non-commercial content being the key words. It then states that if you wish to monetize your content, then you have to refer to another set of guidelines and then goes on to provide a link to those guidelines. Companies are beginning to allow more fan creations than before, which is a good thing, but they still only fully support fan creations that fit under their set limitations.

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Reading Response Option 2

In the Jenkins reading, the author talks about the popular stereotypes that are often associated with fans and fan culture. This includes that fans are brainless consumers of the media text itself and of commercial items associated with it, cultivators of worthless knowledge relating to their fandoms, desexualized, infantile, and fanatics (Jenkins 10, 12). I decided to use a clip from a Simpsons episode featuring Comic Book Guy and his interaction with Stan Lee as an example to show how fans are often portrayed in media as the stereotypes mentioned above.

First off, it is a long well known fact that The Simpsons is a show filled with characters that fit the conventional stereotypes that most people would know, such as Chief Wiggum as the stereotypical police officer and Apu as the stereotypical Indian convenience store clerk, and Comic Book Guy has been no exception to that ever since his introduction to the show in 1991. Simply by referring to the character only as Comic Book Guy and not by his birth name, the show is stating that he is the epitome of a comic book fan and that all others must look and act just like him. By making the main representation of a comic book fan in the show as an owner of a comic book store, it fits in with the stereotype that fans are consumers of commercial items, furthered by when you only portray them in a setting surrounded with products. The clip then goes on to show a child purchasing a separate toy to go with his batmobile, continuing this idea. Comic Book Guy also shows his knowledge of comics in this clip when he makes a long analogy about his heart pounding like “Thor’s hammer on Doctor Doom’s titanium infused face-plate,” upon Stan Lee entering his shop, emphasizing on knowing exactly what material Doctor Doom’s face-plate is made out of. Comic Book Guy’s appearance is another example of how he plays into the stereotype. Jenkins mentions how the Trekkies in the SNL skit are infantile like a “mixture of small children and overweight adults” (Jenkins 10), and Comic Book Guy fits this description through his looks and his reactions to meeting Stan Lee. Also on the topic of Comic Book Guy’s appearance, Jenkins mentions desexualization as a stereotype of fans with the “have you ever kissed a girl” (Jenkins 10) comment from the SNL skit. Lastly, Jenkins talks about fans as being portrayed as fanatics, whether it be through “religious devotion,” (Jenkins 13) or linked to “madness and demonic possession” (Jenkins 13). Between the way he seems to worship Stan Lee and the line about him stalking Linda Carter to the point of receiving a restraining order, Comic Book Guy is a clear example of a fictional character completely based off of stereotypes on fans and fan culture.

Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Routledge, 2013.