![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gnineAs you may or may not know, I’m currently working on my MA in Critical Media and Cultural Studies at University of London, SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies). For my thesis, I’m delving into the question of how culture, one’s own, as well as that of the source material one is fanning on, affects how fans identify and interact with said media and the fandoms surrounding them.
I am very aware that academic scrutiny of fandom has at times been…less than pleasant, shall we say. With that in mind, I’d like to make clear that it is not my intent to place fen or fandom under the microscope, but rather to use them as one concrete example in the broader investigation of culture’s impact on the field of media studies.
The following questions I’ve split into two sections, one focused on the media itself, the other on fandom as a whole. These are just a jumping-off point; feel free to answer as many/as few of the questions as you’d like, in as much/little detail as you feel comfortable. If you’d prefer to comment anonymously or email me directly at gnine AT livejournal DOT com, that’s fine, too.
Media Questions:
How much of what you fan on is produced by your own culture/country?
How much of what you fan on is originally produced in your native language(s)?
Have either of the above changed over the course of your time in fandom?
If/When consuming material not originally produced in a language you are fluent in, how do you access it? (e.g., dubs, scanlations, muddle through the raws and just enjoy the pretty people/art/voices, etc.)
Are there any culture’s materials you particularly avoid or seek out? (e.g. you avoid anything Japanese, be it anime, manga, video games, etc.; you love anything British, TV, books, etc.)If so, why?
The first time you watched/read/listened to something produced by a culture whose material you had not previously fanned on, were there details you had to adjust to (e.g. narrative styles, character depictions, pacing, cultural references, etc.) ?
Are there any particular tropes/stereotypes/character traits/plot devices you particularly associate with a certain culture’s material?
Fandom Questions:
At a guess, are the majority of the people you regularly fan with your nationality?
Do you think this changes depending on what fandom you’re in?
If you go to live fan events/conventions/meet-ups, have you attended different fan events for media of different cultures? (E.g. have you gone to both conventions for an English-language series (such as Supernatural) and anime conventions?)If so, have you noticed any differences between such conventions?
Have you ever attended fan events/conventions/meet-ups in more than one country? If so, did you notice any differences?
Has fanning with people from various countries ever caused surprise/confusion/misunderstandings?
Do your expectations for the fandom and its fanwork change depending on the source culture?
Additionally, there are a few details that’d be helpful for everyone to include, if they could:
Nationality:
Native language(s):
Language(s) you most often fan in (e.g. write/read/discuss in):
Gender (that you're most comfortable identify yourself as):
Is it all right for me to reference you directly in the final paper:
If yes, how would you prefer to be called (e.g. LJ handle/name/nickname/anonymously, etc):
If needed, would it be alright for me to contact you for more questions/details via email/skype, etc.?
Beyond that, if there are any other details, personal experiences, general trends you’ve observed, feel free to expound. Further discussion/questions in the comments is also very welcome.
If anyone's willing to link this in their journals, I’d be grateful, as the more responses the more expansive the research.
Thanks for your help!
I am very aware that academic scrutiny of fandom has at times been…less than pleasant, shall we say. With that in mind, I’d like to make clear that it is not my intent to place fen or fandom under the microscope, but rather to use them as one concrete example in the broader investigation of culture’s impact on the field of media studies.
The following questions I’ve split into two sections, one focused on the media itself, the other on fandom as a whole. These are just a jumping-off point; feel free to answer as many/as few of the questions as you’d like, in as much/little detail as you feel comfortable. If you’d prefer to comment anonymously or email me directly at gnine AT livejournal DOT com, that’s fine, too.
Media Questions:
How much of what you fan on is produced by your own culture/country?
How much of what you fan on is originally produced in your native language(s)?
Have either of the above changed over the course of your time in fandom?
If/When consuming material not originally produced in a language you are fluent in, how do you access it? (e.g., dubs, scanlations, muddle through the raws and just enjoy the pretty people/art/voices, etc.)
Are there any culture’s materials you particularly avoid or seek out? (e.g. you avoid anything Japanese, be it anime, manga, video games, etc.; you love anything British, TV, books, etc.)If so, why?
The first time you watched/read/listened to something produced by a culture whose material you had not previously fanned on, were there details you had to adjust to (e.g. narrative styles, character depictions, pacing, cultural references, etc.) ?
Are there any particular tropes/stereotypes/character traits/plot devices you particularly associate with a certain culture’s material?
Fandom Questions:
At a guess, are the majority of the people you regularly fan with your nationality?
Do you think this changes depending on what fandom you’re in?
If you go to live fan events/conventions/meet-ups, have you attended different fan events for media of different cultures? (E.g. have you gone to both conventions for an English-language series (such as Supernatural) and anime conventions?)If so, have you noticed any differences between such conventions?
Have you ever attended fan events/conventions/meet-ups in more than one country? If so, did you notice any differences?
Has fanning with people from various countries ever caused surprise/confusion/misunderstandings?
Do your expectations for the fandom and its fanwork change depending on the source culture?
Additionally, there are a few details that’d be helpful for everyone to include, if they could:
Nationality:
Native language(s):
Language(s) you most often fan in (e.g. write/read/discuss in):
Gender (that you're most comfortable identify yourself as):
Is it all right for me to reference you directly in the final paper:
If yes, how would you prefer to be called (e.g. LJ handle/name/nickname/anonymously, etc):
If needed, would it be alright for me to contact you for more questions/details via email/skype, etc.?
Beyond that, if there are any other details, personal experiences, general trends you’ve observed, feel free to expound. Further discussion/questions in the comments is also very welcome.
If anyone's willing to link this in their journals, I’d be grateful, as the more responses the more expansive the research.
Thanks for your help!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 09:30 pm (UTC)Native language(s): English
Language(s) you most often fan in (e.g. write/read/discuss in): English
Is it all right for me to reference you directly in the final paper: Yep
If yes, how would you prefer to be called (e.g. LJ handle/name/nickname/anonymously, etc): "Zoe" is fine
If needed, would it be alright for me to contact you for more questions/details via email/skype, etc.? Yep - I can PM you my email address if needed
Just a quick note before I start: I'm not feeling too fannish at the moment. By this I mean I still watch TV sometimes; I still play games; I still read books (more than in a couple of years, in fact) and try to read some fanfic. But every speck of spare mental energy I have right now is going into the book I'm writing, and it's not leaving me any time to be truly immersed in any fandom at all. So when I speak about fanning on things, I'm not doing so with the all-encompassing love that I would if I had "time" to do it; I hope I'm still fannish enough for the study...
no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 09:31 pm (UTC)How much of what you fan on is produced by your own culture/country? At the moment; less than half, unless you count carefully not RPSing the EPL, in which case a little more than half.
How much of what you fan on is originally produced in your native language(s)? About 80% of it at the moment, the rest being JRPGs and the odd bit of anime.
Have either of the above changed over the course of your time in fandom? Yes, on both counts; I used to watch more anime and play even more JRPGs than I currently do, and my English-to-American book and show ratio has swung around a lot over the years.
If/When consuming material not originally produced in a language you are fluent in, how do you access it? (e.g., dubs, scanlations, muddle through the raws and just enjoy the pretty people/art/voices, etc.) Dubbed/translated games; translated manga; subbed anime.
Are there any culture’s materials you particularly avoid or seek out? (e.g. you avoid anything Japanese, be it anime, manga, video games, etc.; you love anything British, TV, books, etc.)If so, why? I gravitate to JRPGs. For a games fan, there's this whole debate about whether they're actually RPGs, i.e. role-playing games; they don't offer the same option to decide what to do to advance events as WRPGs (computer or tabletop); they're only role-playing in that they're interactive stories in which the gamer walks the characters through events. Thing is, they're often quite fun interactive stories; western studios' work on WRPGs too often leaves the storytelling part unpixellated due to the attachment to letting the gamer choose the path through the story. So I particularly seek out Japanese games.
Other than that; I prefer UK shows to US ones, probably because I grew up with the UK storytelling and social conventions, but I don't really avoid US ones. Books; there's a lot of exciting new SF/F coming through in Britain at the moment, more so than from US writers, but I'm not ignoring US writers, and one of my biggest fandoms at the moment is by a US author.
My "embarrassing fandom gap" is "everything originally produced outside the UK, the US and Japan". :/ Really need to broaden horizons sometime.
The first time you watched/read/listened to something produced by a culture whose material you had not previously fanned on, were there details you had to adjust to (e.g. narrative styles, character depictions, pacing, cultural references, etc.) ? Well...
* People seem to die more often in anime than in Western animation.
* The manga style of art and using different drawing styles to portray the same character in different circumstances.
* Is it just the few I've read, or do manga series have more dramatic peaks in different places when compared to Western comic series?
* When watching anime I'm aware there's a whole subset of references I'm completely missing due to inadequate knowledge of Japanese culture. I can tell they're there but haven't a clue what they are.
* American spelling's a big one.
* So are American notions (and changing notions, at that) of society, femininity, race, religion etc. Almost what I naturally "expect", but not quite.
Are there any particular tropes/stereotypes/character traits/plot devices you particularly associate with a certain culture’s material? Buddy-cops feel American; subordinate/superior cops feel British. Shows that tie each episode neatly up at the end feel American; ones that don't feel British. Mecha and tentacles feel (very) Japanese... and there seems to be a whole sub-coding to anime femininity that I don't yet get so couldn't begin to describe.
More later...
no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 09:45 pm (UTC)At a guess, are the majority of the people you regularly fan with your nationality? No, as 80% of my fen-time is in one group that's about half American, quarter British and quarter rest-of-world.
Do you think this changes depending on what fandom you’re in? Yep; in other fandoms and at general SF/F fan-meets the British ratio increases, because the face-time increases and, well, based in the UK...
If you go to live fan events/conventions/meet-ups, have you attended different fan events for media of different cultures? (E.g. have you gone to both conventions for an English-language series (such as Supernatural) and anime conventions?)If so, have you noticed any differences between such conventions? Yes and no. Aside from Pendracon, which I'll leave out of this discussion if Kip doesn't mind, I've only been to general cons as opposed to fandom-specific ones; but three of these started as lit cons or TV-cons-thrown-in-lit-con-style, and one was much more a media con with a little lit stream. That's a whole cultural divide in and of itself. I did not feel comfortable at the media con; I would not have felt happy about striking up a conversation with a stranger; the programming was very different and centred more around personalities than Interesting Stuff.
Have you ever attended fan events/conventions/meet-ups in more than one country? If so, did you notice any differences? Only ever attended fan events in the UK.
Has fanning with people from various countries ever caused surprise/confusion/misunderstandings? Some differences in US and UK English, including grammar, have caused confusion; outside discussion of the fan-work itself, social expectations have clashed.
Do your expectations for the fandom and its fanwork change depending on the source culture? Yes, but not always very much so. I associate stacked-high fanfic and art much more with JRPGs than WRPGs, for instance, due to aforementioned note about WRPGs generally having less storytelling and the point I should have made about them having less characterisation. Books and shows; the fanwork amount seems dependent more upon the original medium than the original culture, scaled for popularity and, on the books side, on the author's opinion of fanwork (e.g. there is far less fan-art for one of my big fandoms in which the author has banned fanfic than one would expect from the size of the fandom; I chalk this to the fic-and-art people staying clear of producing much of anything more than to the author's nationality).
no subject
Date: 2010-07-13 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-26 09:01 pm (UTC)In what ways (if any), for you personally, do your fannish practices change depending on the source culture of the material you're fanning on? (e.g. do you watch more music vids for anime, do you read/write particular kinds of fic for western shows, do you seek out cons for only certain types of fandoms, etc.) The more specific the examples, the better.
Semi-related to the above question, in what ways, if any, has your fannish practices changed over your time in fandom? (both in general over the years you've been in fandom and in specific fandoms. ) And have these changes at all coincided with differences in source culture? (eg for western fandoms, you've always just watched/read fic w/out much change over time but with Japanese fandom, you started watching anime then moved on to music vids then progressed to
helping scanlate manga because you went on to learn Japanese, etc.)
And one or two questions on one topic I might be exploring in a bit more detail, so:
Are you interested in/have any experience with/in slash/Boys Love/yaoi/ m/m etc.? If yes, do you notice a difference in how it is approached/explored depending on the source culture of the material? Examples/details appreciated.
Do you personally approach it differently/have different expectations for how it's depicted in fan works depending on the culture? If so, in what ways?
Oh, also, if I don't already know it (ie know you in person) and you're comfortable sharing it, what gender do you identify yourself as?
Again, thanks for your time, any details you have already or can additionally provide are a big big help! ^_____^
no subject
Date: 2010-09-06 04:34 pm (UTC)In what ways (if any), for you personally, do your fannish practices change depending on the source culture of the material you're fanning on? (e.g. do you watch more music vids for anime, do you read/write particular kinds of fic for western shows, do you seek out cons for only certain types of fandoms, etc.)
I enjoy looking at other people's art more for book fandoms, strangely, because for fandoms that start in a visual area - anime, film, live-TV, whatever - I'm always comparing to the original and using that as the sole determiner of how much I like the art. All my book fandoms are British or American. I generally prefer vids from games and anime (Japanese original) to live-TV and film (almost all UK and US original). Apart from that, no real differences.
Semi-related to the above question, in what ways, if any, has your fannish practices changed over your time in fandom? (both in general over the years you've been in fandom and in specific fandoms. ) And have these changes at all coincided with differences in source culture? (eg for western fandoms, you've always just watched/read fic w/out much change over time but with Japanese fandom, you started watching anime then moved on to music vids then progressed to helping scanlate manga because you went on to learn Japanese, etc.)
No real changes.
Are you interested in/have any experience with/in slash/Boys Love/yaoi/ m/m etc.? If yes, do you notice a difference in how it is approached/explored depending on the source culture of the material?
Read and written it. The source culture... hm. There are some fandoms in which it's quite common to see one of the male characters in a slash pairing being unduly feminised; in my experience this has been more common in anime and JRPG fandom than in Western film, live-TV and book fandom, but I'd call it a tendency rather than anything stronger. There seems to be more AU in TV fandom. As well as where pretty boys abide, there's a trend to write more slash for fandoms that contain few realized female characters, but that factor isn't really determined by source culture, I think.
Do you personally approach it differently/have different expectations for how it's depicted in fan works depending on the culture? If so, in what ways?
I try not to.
And I'm a girl. :p