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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!
Part 2 of the massive REPLY OF DOOM
Date: 2010-07-24 03:14 am (UTC)I avoid Swedish stuff. Like I said, there was the one children's program (I remember it as cool SF about a dystopia where laughter and fantasy were basically outlawed, and rebels fighting to overthrow that oppressive rule), but since then? Um... I tend to find Swedish-language movies pretentious and boring, and what's produced for domestic TV feels like it's all so slice-of-life that I have no interest for it. I'm aware that this is more of a prejudice than a fact, but I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything avoiding Swedish TV/movies. See - I want something beyond the ordinary in my fiction! Mystery or magic or at least some action, and I cannot for the life of me think of any Swedish show that's offered me that.
The one exception is Swedish books - I do read Swedish books, and I love them, too. But the books I seek out are - not surprisingly! - the ones that contain the aforementioned extraordinary elements.
What I seek out: well, either you'll have see it as seeking out things in "my" culture when I fan on anything Western (since I am all kind of mixed, but at least solidly Western), or you'll have to go for the fact that I seek out US/UK stuff and mark that down as another culture. I don't even know myself - I think of it as "mine" in that I understand pretty much everything (including cultural/historical references), and it feels familiar... at the same time, there are nuances you have to have grown up with to fully grasp, I think.
For example, the US High School experience is one of those things that show up everywhere in fiction, but that is totally alien to me - our school systems are just that different... So as an abstract, I understand it - I know more or less how the system works, in theory, and I am familiar with many high school narratives. On the other hand, I can't compare any of the HS scenarios I see on TV with my own experience.
I also do differentiate between US and UK stuff, where I see the US as producing quantity, and the UK as producing quality. (There's another essay here, don't you know!)
Lastly - and this should already be obvious in my previous answers - I seek out Japanese texts. Because my love for anime literally goes back almost as far as I can remember (age 5 or 6). And now I've made Japan my home, and I'm doing my best to master the language, and, yes, fandom has been a huge reason while I've done all of that. (This is not something I advertise, though, especially not in real life.)
Part 3! Only one more part to go...
Date: 2010-07-24 03:15 am (UTC)All of the above! It's weird - because I watched anime when I was so young, I had all this fiction produced in a foreign culture around but I didn't even know it! I mean, I thought it was French. Maybe. I guess I didn't think too hard about it - I just knew that it was something I could watch during the summers when I was in Switzerland, and I hated going back to Sweden where all kids' shows were lame and nothing exciting ever happened in shows aimed at my age. I was totally high on the danger and tension in shows like Saint Seiya (Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque) and City Hunter (Nicky Larson), where things like death actually happened.
(For example: one of my favorite characters saved his friends by sacrificing his vision through putting out his eyes. It wasn't graphic at all, but... wow. Then his friends took care of him and went on a perilous journey to try and find a healer who could help him and to me this showed that whoever made these shows took me seriously, because it wasn't all just bumbling bad guys and slapstick-like last-minute escapes from danger and I ate it up with a spoon.)
I can clearly remembering having these thoughts when I was maybe ten or eleven, and so being into Japanese texts now isn't exactly new - but it's still different. The storytelling is totally different from Western things in a lot of ways - the arcs, for example, the 600-chapter epics that just keep getting better (well - the one 600-chapter epic, at least I will never shut up about One Piece, no), the way a lot of people - including me, now - get their stories in weekly installments... And there's other things, too. But you have another question about that, so I'll answer there!
So, yeah. I see most Western TV as episodic, and... ah, I guess a lot of Western stuff is simply more collaboratory. Even in things like US comics, which have huge complicated plots that go on forever in installments there seems to be so many creators involved - new writers introduce new plotlines, and then the writers replacing them retcon everything and... I'm not really familiar with Marvel and DC, but it seems that even something that superficially looks like it might be really similar to Japanese texts (comic books vs manga) they're created in really different ways.
A lot of Japanese texts are created by one individual - the mangaka - who does both plot and art. That's one thing that strikes me as exceedingly rare in Western fandom. (The exception of course being novels - Harry Potter and Twilight are one-creator texts, and just look at how huge they've become! They're probably closer to the way a lot of popular Japanese texts are being produced than anything else - one creator comes up with the original plot, and then it's turned into anime or movies or what have you... Plus, huge fandom and huge merchandising department.)
Part 4 - DONE! :D
Date: 2010-07-24 03:15 am (UTC)Because Japan and the West are so far apart both in distance and history, there are tropes and archetypes that are just different. It can range from Japanese character traits like humorous gluttony (which is a staple in shounen, and possibly in shoujo too, though I don't read enough of it to know) and characters with no sense of direction to the differences in Japanese and Western redemption arcs.
"Redemption" in a lot of Western stuff means that you have to die for the bad things you've done. Sorry, if you tried to kill the heroes, it means that even if you have a change of mind the most you can hope for is to be allowed to give your life for theirs.
Conversely, in Japanese shounen, former enemies turning into allies is a staple.
If I keep looking at the sort of texts that I'm a huge fan of in Japan, and compare them to things for the same age group in the West, Japan also does a lot more with death and danger. Even in kids' shows, people kill and are killed. There is a lot more implied or even explicit abuse in peoples' pasts and such.
Oh, and because of the arc vs episode nature of Japanese and Western texts mentioned above, things in Japanese texts strike me as having far more consequences than in a lot of Western texts. (Again, this is probably due to the one-creator vs team-creator thing that happens when you compare anime and US TV). For example, the most realistic and heartbreaking character death (and the effects of said character's death the survivors) was in One Piece, and it just crushes any character deaths I can think of in my western fandom. (Let's not even go into how Stargate: Atlantis killed a main character, and in the next episode it was like he'd never even existed, much less like anyone was still mourning him...)
(And because I'm a spoilerphobe myself I'm not posting anything too spoilery here, but I know you'll know exactly what I'm talking about,
Annnnnnnnnnd this is getting really, really, REALLY long so... let me know if there's anything else you'd be interesting in discussing, and I'll try and get back to you quicker than I did this time!