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OK, so this is a serious entry.
I give a talk on fandom to the Fantasy, Reality and Media class on the semesters when it's taught.
Some of this is in note format, and I elaborate as the interest is there.
Media love to portray us as pimply boys living in their parents' garage and spending their minimum wage on elaborate Klingon costumes, or fat, middle-aged women who live with our cats, and have no other social life.
In reality, fannish activity is as old as human civilization, or at least the leisure class. Graffiti on the walls of Pompeii brothels extolled the merits of favorite gladiators. Wealthy Roman citizens wore markers of their favorite gladiatorial team colors. Nero was said to be such a great fan of the Greens he would dye the sand of the Circus Maximus green before a race.
In the Middle Ages, Romances began in the 12th century as poems in the local language. The listeners were almost all women. It spawned courtly love. In this, men and women lived their lives by the dictates of a slim volume written for Elenore of Aquataine and her daughter, Marie, countess of Champagne, with sometimes fatal effects as in the case of the young lover who dressed in deerskin and let his mistress' hounds hunt and kill him. The idea was that a knight would serve a lady with the same fealty he served his liege lord. He did great deeds and won her favor. This was not a married love, but came to be the ideal by which people married after the Victorian era.
Jonathan Edwards, the great Puritan preacher had his devotees, people who would come miles to hear him preach. Some people took down his famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," first delivered in 1741, word for word. Others memorized and delivered it elsewhere, sometimes posing as Edwards. It sparked what is called "the Great Awakening" which was a spiritual movement over all of the colonies.
Lord Byron had such a devoted following of ladies that at least one tried to killed herself over him. Caroline Lamb, sister of Charles and co-author of Shakespearian tale for children, stabbed herself with sewing scissors. 1824
In the Victorian era, fandom took off. People waited weeks for the next installment of a novel or penny dreadful. They discussed them endlessly. Upper class Victorian women were great readers, having little else to do. The first recorded fanfiction was written in this era, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off his great detective, Sherlock Holmes. Anguished readers devised myriad ways for him to survive the plummet over the waterfall. Eventually, Doyle did revive Holmes for more stories.
Written SF had its fanatics as well. During the pulp era of the 20's-30's, some magazine published letter writers' addresses. They wrote to each other. The first SF fanclub, the Scienceers formed in NYC in 1929. The first zine, The Comet, was published in 1930, and the first convention was held in Leeds England in 1936.
Films bred their own style of stars and fandom. Rudolph Valentino had a following that rivaled Byron's. Photoplay Magazine and other studio organs kept the hype about the stars going between films up into the 50's and 60's, when the Studio System died. And looks seen in movies and on celebs were always imitated. Millions of women went blonde when Monroe became a star. Pillbox hats were all the rage because of Jackie Kennedy. The Twiggy look put every girl in America in a girdle and on a diet. The Farrah Hair. The Dorothy Hamil cut. The Miami Vice look. (Ask for more examples.)
When TV arrived in the 50's, it gave viewers an opportunity to connect with characters in an ongoing basis, just as Saturday Morning serials did. Millions of children played at The Lone Ranger and Gunsmoke. Millions of women yearned to be like their soap opera heroines: rich, thin with fancy problems instead of wet dogs and dirty linoleum. They wanted to keep house like June Cleaver, be eternally patient like Mrs. Brady and still look like Marlo Thomas. Personally, I think Erma Bombeck's book Motherhood, the second oldest profession, says it all in the chapter on TV moms.
Beatlemania. In 1964. The last Beatle concert in 1966 in Candlestick park.
Star Trek is responsible for what many of us think of as "fans." It attracted a wide demographic by offering a vision of hope. Here, it said, is the future. A place where no one is hungry. A time when white and black and asian, American and Russian, men and women live and work together. Most of the stories were morality plays on issues of the day. A letter-writing campaign kept it on the air for a third season. Fans started organizing conventions, and fanzines. Fanfiction gave the characters more adventures. Some fan writers went on to become actual novelists for Paramount.
SF went through a lull phase in the 70's. 2001 was almost untoppable. The rest had serious political or social messages: Clockwork Orange, Rollerball, Logan's Run. Then came SW, a little film that opened on 1000 screens across the country. It changed the entire face of SF and possibly the country as well. In 77, the Bicentennial fervor was gone, the gas lines were long, the summers were hot and the economy was in recession. Movies had ambiguous endings, or the badguys weren't delineated. Here was a small movie about good & evil, mythic concepts etc. All the stuff the people had thought was so square 5 years ago, but were now hungering for. Happy endings became fashionable again too. SW altered the zeitgeist of gloom.
Many, many SF movies came out in the 80's. Some good, some bad, some indecipherable and some abominable. Conventions flourished and SF fandom began moving into the public eye. Kids still played with their media toys, women still wanted to be their soap opera ladies, but now a new breed had emerged.
Obviously, as this overview demonstrates, there are many levels of fandom. There's the "hey it's time for my story," of my grandmother and sister. There is the "Oooh, a Liam Neeson movie on Wednesday, let's catch that!" of my Mom. There's the, "yeah, I wonder what the next Sw movie's gonna be like" fan. Then there's the "I've got 3 zine stories coming out this year and have entered a fanvideo in the competition at MediaWest Con and fifty WIP's on my computer." That is me.
Suggestion that media fandom is weird because of 1940's attitudes. "keep feet on ground, it's only a movie/book, whatever and not worth a second viewing like the Bible or Shakespeare." Boomers began post-modernism, where canon has no more meaning. Text has only the meaning we bring to it. Old myths of religion and country don't work, but nothing taking their place. Gen X was first to treat media text like canon works. No myths, and so we flounder in cynicism.
Fandom is trangressive:
1) Treats commercial properties like canon texts. Puts Ally McBeal on same level as Hamlet, and makes Joss Whedon the equivalent of Jonathan Swift. This crosses lines of good taste set out by the cultural elite.
2) Treats disposable items like enduring ones. Media shows only want to create enough interest to keep you hooked until the next one. Marketing tie-ins to movies are forgotten when the next hits the shelves.
3) Moves texts from being consumed to being produced. In our consumer culture, entertainment is passive. We are entertained; we do not "make our own fun." We read stories and listen to music. We don't produce our own. Fandom says "I can do that." And writes a story, makes a costume or composes a song.
I think this latter point is where fandom really starts.
We are a consumer culture. Making stuff is weird.
My daughter has a pair of shorts I made her. I was long on cloth, and short on money. They are her favorites, and her classmates think they are cool. They want to know where she got them, and she says "Mom made them." The classmates freak out.
Joanna gave me the example of learning to make bread at 14, and her brother showed it off to his friends saying "My sister made that." They all thought bread came in wrappers from the store.
Creativity is considered a bit strange to begin with.
And creating based on someone else's creation is moreso.
But we are doing no more than people have for centuries, when they drew pictures of favorite stories, or composed dirty lyrics about the prowess of favorite gladiators, or wove tapestries of David and Bathsheba or created the legend of the Wandering Jew (which was appropriated for the Casca: Eternal Centurion novels).
Media texts are meant to be consumed and discarded. No one is supposed to brood about the deeper meaning of summer action movies. Lines like "After all, you still have each other" aren't supposed to be dissected within a phoneme of their meanings.
Hanging on to these texts is considered a bit strange. Then doing something with them is even stranger.
And my clarity gene isn't firing on all codons today, so i'll quit rambling.
I give a talk on fandom to the Fantasy, Reality and Media class on the semesters when it's taught.
Some of this is in note format, and I elaborate as the interest is there.
Media love to portray us as pimply boys living in their parents' garage and spending their minimum wage on elaborate Klingon costumes, or fat, middle-aged women who live with our cats, and have no other social life.
In reality, fannish activity is as old as human civilization, or at least the leisure class. Graffiti on the walls of Pompeii brothels extolled the merits of favorite gladiators. Wealthy Roman citizens wore markers of their favorite gladiatorial team colors. Nero was said to be such a great fan of the Greens he would dye the sand of the Circus Maximus green before a race.
In the Middle Ages, Romances began in the 12th century as poems in the local language. The listeners were almost all women. It spawned courtly love. In this, men and women lived their lives by the dictates of a slim volume written for Elenore of Aquataine and her daughter, Marie, countess of Champagne, with sometimes fatal effects as in the case of the young lover who dressed in deerskin and let his mistress' hounds hunt and kill him. The idea was that a knight would serve a lady with the same fealty he served his liege lord. He did great deeds and won her favor. This was not a married love, but came to be the ideal by which people married after the Victorian era.
Jonathan Edwards, the great Puritan preacher had his devotees, people who would come miles to hear him preach. Some people took down his famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," first delivered in 1741, word for word. Others memorized and delivered it elsewhere, sometimes posing as Edwards. It sparked what is called "the Great Awakening" which was a spiritual movement over all of the colonies.
Lord Byron had such a devoted following of ladies that at least one tried to killed herself over him. Caroline Lamb, sister of Charles and co-author of Shakespearian tale for children, stabbed herself with sewing scissors. 1824
In the Victorian era, fandom took off. People waited weeks for the next installment of a novel or penny dreadful. They discussed them endlessly. Upper class Victorian women were great readers, having little else to do. The first recorded fanfiction was written in this era, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off his great detective, Sherlock Holmes. Anguished readers devised myriad ways for him to survive the plummet over the waterfall. Eventually, Doyle did revive Holmes for more stories.
Written SF had its fanatics as well. During the pulp era of the 20's-30's, some magazine published letter writers' addresses. They wrote to each other. The first SF fanclub, the Scienceers formed in NYC in 1929. The first zine, The Comet, was published in 1930, and the first convention was held in Leeds England in 1936.
Films bred their own style of stars and fandom. Rudolph Valentino had a following that rivaled Byron's. Photoplay Magazine and other studio organs kept the hype about the stars going between films up into the 50's and 60's, when the Studio System died. And looks seen in movies and on celebs were always imitated. Millions of women went blonde when Monroe became a star. Pillbox hats were all the rage because of Jackie Kennedy. The Twiggy look put every girl in America in a girdle and on a diet. The Farrah Hair. The Dorothy Hamil cut. The Miami Vice look. (Ask for more examples.)
When TV arrived in the 50's, it gave viewers an opportunity to connect with characters in an ongoing basis, just as Saturday Morning serials did. Millions of children played at The Lone Ranger and Gunsmoke. Millions of women yearned to be like their soap opera heroines: rich, thin with fancy problems instead of wet dogs and dirty linoleum. They wanted to keep house like June Cleaver, be eternally patient like Mrs. Brady and still look like Marlo Thomas. Personally, I think Erma Bombeck's book Motherhood, the second oldest profession, says it all in the chapter on TV moms.
Beatlemania. In 1964. The last Beatle concert in 1966 in Candlestick park.
Star Trek is responsible for what many of us think of as "fans." It attracted a wide demographic by offering a vision of hope. Here, it said, is the future. A place where no one is hungry. A time when white and black and asian, American and Russian, men and women live and work together. Most of the stories were morality plays on issues of the day. A letter-writing campaign kept it on the air for a third season. Fans started organizing conventions, and fanzines. Fanfiction gave the characters more adventures. Some fan writers went on to become actual novelists for Paramount.
SF went through a lull phase in the 70's. 2001 was almost untoppable. The rest had serious political or social messages: Clockwork Orange, Rollerball, Logan's Run. Then came SW, a little film that opened on 1000 screens across the country. It changed the entire face of SF and possibly the country as well. In 77, the Bicentennial fervor was gone, the gas lines were long, the summers were hot and the economy was in recession. Movies had ambiguous endings, or the badguys weren't delineated. Here was a small movie about good & evil, mythic concepts etc. All the stuff the people had thought was so square 5 years ago, but were now hungering for. Happy endings became fashionable again too. SW altered the zeitgeist of gloom.
Many, many SF movies came out in the 80's. Some good, some bad, some indecipherable and some abominable. Conventions flourished and SF fandom began moving into the public eye. Kids still played with their media toys, women still wanted to be their soap opera ladies, but now a new breed had emerged.
Obviously, as this overview demonstrates, there are many levels of fandom. There's the "hey it's time for my story," of my grandmother and sister. There is the "Oooh, a Liam Neeson movie on Wednesday, let's catch that!" of my Mom. There's the, "yeah, I wonder what the next Sw movie's gonna be like" fan. Then there's the "I've got 3 zine stories coming out this year and have entered a fanvideo in the competition at MediaWest Con and fifty WIP's on my computer." That is me.
Suggestion that media fandom is weird because of 1940's attitudes. "keep feet on ground, it's only a movie/book, whatever and not worth a second viewing like the Bible or Shakespeare." Boomers began post-modernism, where canon has no more meaning. Text has only the meaning we bring to it. Old myths of religion and country don't work, but nothing taking their place. Gen X was first to treat media text like canon works. No myths, and so we flounder in cynicism.
Fandom is trangressive:
1) Treats commercial properties like canon texts. Puts Ally McBeal on same level as Hamlet, and makes Joss Whedon the equivalent of Jonathan Swift. This crosses lines of good taste set out by the cultural elite.
2) Treats disposable items like enduring ones. Media shows only want to create enough interest to keep you hooked until the next one. Marketing tie-ins to movies are forgotten when the next hits the shelves.
3) Moves texts from being consumed to being produced. In our consumer culture, entertainment is passive. We are entertained; we do not "make our own fun." We read stories and listen to music. We don't produce our own. Fandom says "I can do that." And writes a story, makes a costume or composes a song.
I think this latter point is where fandom really starts.
We are a consumer culture. Making stuff is weird.
My daughter has a pair of shorts I made her. I was long on cloth, and short on money. They are her favorites, and her classmates think they are cool. They want to know where she got them, and she says "Mom made them." The classmates freak out.
Joanna gave me the example of learning to make bread at 14, and her brother showed it off to his friends saying "My sister made that." They all thought bread came in wrappers from the store.
Creativity is considered a bit strange to begin with.
And creating based on someone else's creation is moreso.
But we are doing no more than people have for centuries, when they drew pictures of favorite stories, or composed dirty lyrics about the prowess of favorite gladiators, or wove tapestries of David and Bathsheba or created the legend of the Wandering Jew (which was appropriated for the Casca: Eternal Centurion novels).
Media texts are meant to be consumed and discarded. No one is supposed to brood about the deeper meaning of summer action movies. Lines like "After all, you still have each other" aren't supposed to be dissected within a phoneme of their meanings.
Hanging on to these texts is considered a bit strange. Then doing something with them is even stranger.
And my clarity gene isn't firing on all codons today, so i'll quit rambling.
