Global Fandom Jamboree: Alexia Smit (South Africa)

A fan-made meme compares South African black twitter fans to an armed militia, ready to take aim at participants on the show.

Sunday Night Black Twitter and TV Fandom in South Africa

On Sunday nights South African viewers can be assured that the Mzansi Magic Channel (hosted on pay TV service DSTV) will screen its most talked-about reality television fare.  During the evening timeslot fans head to twitter to share responses, banter and memes for the duration of the programme screening.  The Sunday night slot became popular through Mzansi Magic’s hit show Our Perfect Wedding (OPW) which produced a culture of fan commentary on South Africa’s “black Twitter” during its 7pm timeslot.   OPW was soon followed by another local reality tv success Date My Family (DMF) in the Sunday 6pm timeslot.  While Mzansi screens other premium fare in the later timeslots it is Our Perfect Wedding and Date My Family which have garnered significant twitter activity. These shows centre black South African experiences and like much reality TV fare foreground ‘real people’ performing themselves for the cameras. The twitter responses to these texts are laden with acerbic comedy and linguistic play. The OPW and DMF fan activity is a significant example of South African television fandom and is a particularly creative and critical site for the negotiation of black identity in the post-apartheid space. 

While most of my work has been textual analysis-based, my studies of OPW and DMF have been my first experiences of engaging with fandoms. In 2020 I collaborated with Tanja Bosch on a study of the twitter feed for Our Perfect Wedding in an article which combined both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the twitter data attached to the hashtag #OPW. I admit that, while I knew we were examining the work of fan audiences, I gave little thought to how this activity might be theorized in relation to existing scholarship on fandom. This conversation series gives me the opportunity to reframe this work in relation to the field of fandom studies and to consider how the South African context fits in to broader discourses on fandom. 

As Tanja Bosch and I argued in our discussion, the twitter feed attached to OPW operates as a backchannel to traditional modes of television viewing. The TV channel (which is hosted on a pay TV service) actively encourages and reinforces the twitter life of these programmes, through in-text references to twitter, screen pop-ups with the twitter hashtags and active promotion of the show through the programmes official twitter page (Smit and Bosch, 2020).  Through an examination of twitter data for the hashtag #OPWmzansi, we found that the broadcaster maintains considerable power in the show’s twitter network. However, our qualitative study of the twitter responses revealed the work of fans in producing comedic responses to the text, constructing memes, and recounting storylines for viewers without access to pay TV networks. 

Work on fandom in South Africa has focused primarily upon sports fans (Davis and Upton, 2004, Kaminju and Ndlovu, 2011, Fletcher 2012, 2014, 2015). Some studies have explored local fan engagement with global fan culture, for example, Catherine Duncan’s (2018) work on transnational fandoms in South Africa, and Trish Ramrathen’s (2016) work on anime fandom in South Africa. There is little work on South African fandoms organized around local film and television productions despite the fact that very exciting fan cultures exist. This may simply be the result of a generally limited interest in television and popular culture amongst South African scholars.  I also wonder whether the limited development of fandom studies in South Africa might be linked to certain entrenched ways of thinking about South African audiences. Fandom has largely been constructed as a white phenomenon despite the existence of thriving black fandoms (Stanfill 2011, Wanzo, 2015) and black South African television viewers may not accord with assumptions about what constitutes a fan. With some notable exceptions in the small field of audience studies in South Africa (Tager, 1998; Roome 1998, Tomaselli, 2019) black South African audiences have often been conceived of either as receivers of public service messages or as markets for the consumption of TV products. There has been much interest in audience reception of messaging around the HIV/AIDS pandemic (Tufte, 2002; Ponono, 2014). And scholars have also examined how audiences have engaged with messaging around democracy and transformation in the post-apartheid years (Roome, 1998; Kruger 1999). 

Black South African television viewers are often positioned by media culture as “consumers” rather being considered for their active engagement as fans.  Indeed, as Iqani (2017) has argued, black South Africans have been fetishized for the potential promised by their consumer activity in post-apartheid space, with the increased spending power of black South Africans also taken as a representation of social change.  Work in critical consumption studies has explored how South African transformation has been expressed through representations of black spending power and through narratives of aspirational consumption (Posel 2010; Iqani and Kenny, 2015). The field of critical consumption studies is vibrant in South Africa, producing tremendously important and nuanced work.  But this emphasis on consumption both in popular culture and in academic spaces has possibly meant that black audiences have very often been considered in relation to consumption rather than fandom. 

Limited attention has been paid to the creativity of South African television fans and the cultural spaces and artefacts that they produce.  Examining the Sunday night fan practices around OPW and DMF provides opportunities for exploring how black TV fans in South Africa position themselves in relation to representations of consumption, aspiration and black identity. I want to highlight a series of points which may have interesting connections to global debates in fandom:

Twitter fans of OPW and DMF position themselves self-consciously in terms of shared black experiences through their alignment with black twitter.  The hashtag #blacktwitter frequently shares space with #OPW in fan tweets and tweeters make explicit reference to Sunday night practices as a function of black twitter.  This South African black twitter is a site of confluence with global fan practices, and particularly with American black Twitter. This is potentially an exciting area for further study. On the one hand this is a distinctly local space where tweeters share very situated experiences using local languages and expressions but through its positioning as “black twitter” this fandom also marks itself as connected to global blackness. Unlike black Americans, black South Africans are a majority audience, and yet due to the unequal nature of South African society, and a history of limited access to official cultural sites,  the self-aware positioning of fan twitter activity as  “black twitter” demonstrates the need to seek out site of community around shared black cultural understandings. Sunday night twitter practices could be constructively linked to broader debates about the role of Twitter in John Fiske’s “audiencing” (1992) which is defined by Highfield et al. (2013) as “the public performance of belonging to the distributed audience for a shared media event”. Here the practice of audiencing is also a means of producing a sense of black belonging.  While this belonging is crucial to the pleasures of black twitter, the twitter feed for these shows also features an active grappling with the complexities of black identity and a pointed undermining of performances of class distinction. 

Language play and multilingualism is a means through which South African Sunday night twitter fans express community and negotiate black South African identity.  This tendency potentially intersects with discussions of fan multilingualism in many different regional contexts and in transnational TV fandoms. OPW and DMF are both primarily narrated in English but feature a range of South African indigenous languages, depending in the ethnicities of the participants. South Africa has 11 official languages and many South Africans have some proficiency across these languages. However, due to the legacy of apartheid and colonialism, English language proficiency is often understood as a marker class mobility due its association with university education and employment opportunities. The twitter feed attached to these programmes features frequent comedic responses to language use and particularly to perceived failures in English pronunciation and grammar. I am interested in embarking on a more extensive engagement with the ways in which this interest in language operates as a way of critically examining performances of classed identity for black South African fans.  

Finally, because OPW and DMF are behind a paywall, the Twitter feed becomes a way in which fans without access to the service consume the texts. This means that for some Twitter is not the “backchannel” but the primary site of consumption. And so we could ask to what extent does DMF/OPWs reliance on fan narration and retelling of the story events undermine the traditional relationship between sites of TV production and consumption even as this twitter engagement bolsters the brand identity and prestige of the traditional pay TV broadcaster ? 

References

Duncan, Catherine. Production locality: practices in a South African transnational participatory fandom. Diss. University of Johannesburg,  2018.

Fletcher, Marc William. " These whites never come to our game. What do they know about our soccer?": soccer fandom, race, and the Rainbow Nation in South Africa. Diss. University of Edinburgh, 2012.

Fletcher, Marc. "‘You must support Chiefs; Pirates already have two white fans!’: race and racial discourse in South African football fandom." Soccer & Society 11.1-2 (2010): 79-94.

Fiske, John. "Audiencing: A cultural studies approach to watching television." Poetics 21.4 (1992): 345-359.

Highfield, Tim, Stephen Harrington, and Axel Bruns. "Twitter as a technology for audiencing and fandom: The# Eurovision phenomenon." Information, communication & society 16.3 (2013): 315-339.

Iqani, Mehita. "A new class for a new South Africa? The discursive construction of the ‘Black middle class’ in post-Apartheid media." Journal of Consumer Culture 17.1 (2017): 105-121.

Iqani, Mehita, and Bridget Kenny. "Critical consumption studies in South Africa: roots and routes." Critical Arts 29.2 (2015): 95-106.

Kaminju, Antony, and Thabisani Ndlovu. "Playing from the terraces: notes on expressions of football fandom in South Africa." African Identities 9.3 (2011): 307-321.

Ramrathen, Trisha. Rise of the Otaku: investigating the anime fandom in South Africa. Diss. 2016.

Roome, Dorothy. "Transformation and Reconciliation:‘Simunye’, a flexible model." Critical Arts 11.1-2 (1997): 66-94.

Roome, Dorothy. "Humor as" cultural reconciliation" in South African situation comedy: Suburban Bliss and multicultural female viewers." Journal of Film and Video 51.3/4 (1999): 61-87.

Smit, Alexia, and Tanja Bosch. "Television and black Twitter in South Africa: Our perfect wedding." Media, Culture & Society42.7-8 (2020): 1512-1527.

Stanfill, Mel. "Doing fandom,(mis) doing whiteness: Heteronormativity, racialization, and the discursive construction of fandom| Stanfill| Transformative Works and Cultures." Transformative Works & Cultures 8 (2011).

Tager, M. 1995. The Bold and the Beautiful: The relationship between the fictional universal universe of the soap opera and the lived experience of the black urban viewer in KwaZulu-Natal . Diss.  University of Natal, 1995.

Tager, M. 2002. The Bold and the Beautiful and Generations: A comparative ethnographic audience study of Zulu-speaking students living in residences on the University of Natal's Durban Campus . Diss. University of Kwazulu Natal, 2002. 

Teer‐Tomaselli, Ruth. "Drama, Audiences, and Authenticity: Television Programming and Audiences in Post‐Apartheid South Africa." A Companion to Television (2020): 423-438.

Wanzo, Rebecca. "African American acafandom and other strangers: New genealogies of fan studies." Transformative Works and Cultures 20.1 (2015).

Short Biographical Note

Alexia Smit is a senior lecturer in Film and Television studies at the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She holds a PhD in Television studies from the University of Glasgow. Her research focusses on popular entertainment television, with a particular interest in South African reality television, gender, class, postfeminism, transnational African TV, and womens television genres in Africa. 

Global Fandom Jamboree Conversation: Yiyi Yin and Susan Noh (Part Two)

Susan (respond to Yiyi):      

Two features of Yiyi Yin’s entry stood out to me: the emergence of fan circles and the continued centralization of algorithmic cultures and digital features which mediate engagement between the fans and their objects of affection, as well as engagement with one another. I believe that “fan-circles” may need further clarification and definition of what it actually is. From the entry, I am presuming that fan circles are fandoms in which boundaries are blurred between various groups. For example, Chinese ACG fans can easily overlap with K-pop fans, as is often the case with the American anime fandom, and it may be safe to assume that one who is literate in anime culture within the United States may also have a fair amount of exposure to K-pop culture as well. It is interesting then to consider how fan morality may overlap with one another, irrespective of one’s object of affection. For example, the general acceptance of fansubs as being necessary within both K-pop culture and anime culture, even in the face of strict piracy laws, may gesture towards this overlap in ethical codes that govern global fandoms. How scholars can go about studying the overlap of international fandom, the moments of contact, and the frictions and symbioses that these moments of contact foster would be very productive. 

            In the case of K-pop fandom and ACG fandom within China, I would particularly be interested in how historical colonial legacies continue to shape the ethicality of these overlapping fandoms, and whether these histories influence the way Chinese fans engage with these various fandoms. Given the blurring of boundaries between fandoms in China, it would be interesting to see how one’s own historical background may contribute to this blurring. In the American anime fandom, but perhaps more specifically, the music fandom subsection of the anime fandom, there are sometimes discussions and frictions relating to how one should perceive K-pop within this merging of East Asian music fandom. While discussions between fans are tinged with a kind of political ethos that may go unnoticed by the fans themselves, it is fascinating to see how these historical legacies continue to color fan rhetoric. 

            In regards to using the formal features of platforms to shape fan practices, there was also a key moment of overlap between Yiyi’s research and my own on formal streaming services. Crunchyroll, which is a streaming service that caters primarily to the global anime fandom has a series of platform features which help to define them as a “fans-first” service within the slew of streaming services that originate from the United States. Given the intense competition that they face from more general and mainstream services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, and more, all of which have stakes within anime distribution, it behooves Crunchyroll to really highlight features that foster fannish affect. This includes a five-star review system, forums, comment sections, review sections, news sections, and more. Given the high volume of fan contact that subscribers are privy to, it has been productive to observe the ways in which fans govern themselves within these spaces. 

            Much like the “report” function that Yiyi gestures to in her own research, fans can be seen occasionally using the “spoiler” function on Crunchyroll’s comments sections, which immediately whites out the comment. There are moments where these comments are not actually spoilers for the media text in question, but instead, reveals a kind of negativity that fans may not support. Defining some of these comments as “spoilers” immediately whites the comment out of the discussion and also forces those who are interested in these kinds of comments to have to do additional labor to see them. These small moments reflect the ways in which fans are using elements of the formal platform in order to govern themselves as fans, either to censor or to influence the general mood of the discourse that is occurring within these comments sections. 

            Despite Crunchyroll’s commitment towards creating a space in which fannish affect can flourish within their interface, there are moments when these features backfire. One example where we can see this is through the fan reception of an anime-inspired Crunchyroll Original series, High Guardian Spice, which was marketed as a progressive series that would have abundant LGBTQ representation. Fans used the comment and review affordances of the platform to “review bomb” the series, as well as create a hostile and homphobic/transphobic atmosphere within this progressive series. For fans who did not openly engage with homophobic/transphobic rhetoric, but were still critical of the series, they pointed to the fact that the production was “anime-inspired,” a term that often yields an ambivalent fan reaction due to perceptions of anime-inspired work being of lower quality in comparison to Japanese originated content. 

            This case study revealed two things: that fans can easily hijack the formal features of their platform to go against the platform itself and that fandom is certainly not guaranteed to use these spaces for progressive or supportive modes of expression. Indeed, one must never forget that a fan’s personal identity always governs their membership into fandom, and in this case, it became very clear that there was an active homophobic and transphobic branch within anime fandom that would foster a hostile environment for LGBTQ global anime fans. Homophobic fans may ban together in order to upvote comments that reflect their own political views, while simultaneously shutting down more productive commentary within these spaces. This is yet another use of the formal features of the platform. While the digitization of fandom does help large corporations to govern fannish affects to a certain extent, fans remain more than capable of using these features for their own governance, irrespective of the platform’s desire. Whether this is progressive and productive for the fandom has yet to be seen. 

            Given that Crunchyroll is a global platform that serves many different regions, I would be curious to see how this border crossing may affect fan attitudes towards media objects around the world. For example, does the homophobic and transphobic nature of the reviews stemming from the American branch of Crunchyroll affect the way fans may be receiving the work in Latin America or Russia due to certain forms of anime journalism and social media? I would be curious to see if there’s a merging of global fan ethics due to these platform features or a divergence. 

Yiyi (respond to Susan):

I would like to thank Susan for the inspiring response. Before I come to further discuss the fan-circle and the digitalization of fandom, I’d like to first respond around the impact of historical legacies on fan consumptions. This is a very interesting topic especially when thinking of the linkages between the historical colonial legacies and the current global relations. In China, the consumptions of Japanese anime and K-pop were long considered as “flattering” by the mainstream discussions. Back in 2010, the K-pop fans in China were seriously attacked online because the fans gathered chaotically at the World Expo before a concert inviting the K-pop group Super Junior. More recently, a domestic actor was boycotted because he took a photo in front of the Yasukuni Shrine several years ago. These cases show that the nationalist ideology emerged in China has largely influenced the fan rhetoric and the norms of fan practice in China. The fans, especially whose fan objects involve nations like Japan and Korea, have to paradoxically negotiate with their own historical background as Chinese and the affective passion towards the fan objects. For example, in celebrity fandoms, fans would voluntarily mute online on dates like July 7th (Marco Polo Bridge Incident), September 18th (Mukden Incident), and consider these historically significant dates as the “no-entertainment day”. This kind of norms of practice also becomes something that fans need to negotiate with in the overlapping fandoms, especially in emerging fandoms like the eSports fandom. As the eSports teams in China has started to invite Korean players since 2015, there were a lot of new coming fans from the K-pop fandoms. The conflict between fans of “all-Chinese teams” (i.e. a team with all Chinese players) and fans of Korean players has lasted till today. I agree with Susan that it would be very interesting to see the impact of one’s historical legacies on fan practice especially when the global relations have become intensive again in the recent years, as the contextualized fan participation could become the frontier of nationalism.

Going back to the topic of “fan-circle”, as Susan suggested, I need to further define it as a specifically contextual phenomenon in Chinese fandom. For my research, the definition was summarized from more than 50 interviews I have conducted with fans from various fandoms (e.g. anime fandoms, eSports fandoms, K-pop fandoms, TV fandoms etc.). A “fan-circle” refers to a group of fans with sharing cultural norms, knowledge, and ideologies. At first glance, the fan-circle carries similar meaning with the term “fan community.” Nevertheless, the “fan-circle” should not be interpreted as a particular fan community with its own performances and norms. Instead, it refers to a broad set of norms, rules, culture tastes, and patterns of participation that is cross-community. 

According to the interviews, the fan-circle culture has reclaimed the authorial legitimacy of certain affective practices, not on the basis of the moral economy but of a sort of rationale that can only be made sense with specific cultural imagination. Almost all of the interviewees who lived with such struggling attributed it to the influence of “the rules of the fan-circle”. In their narratives, the fan-circle is defined by specific patterns of rules and participation, including the regulation of online practices, supportive activities, sociality, consumption, fan-production, and so on. The formalization of the fan-circle practice is thus seen as a process in which fans explore and legitimate “proper” ways to actualize the abstract and affective fan-object relationship, negotiating it with specific industrial, socio-cultural and media circumstance. With its own characteristics and norms, the “fan-circle” culture has invaded to various fandoms, and thus been questioned, contested and challenged by many fandoms. This is a typical phenomenon that could happen in the trans-fandom when individuals traveled all across the fandoms and communicate with different types of performances and values.

The fan-circle type of fan practice can be easily identified on social media platforms like Weibo, not only because the topics will be mostly about a particular celebrity or fan object, but also because of the formats they have adopted. The formatted content of posts has become a sort of shared knowledge or social capital among the fan community, whereas the term “efficient” clearly hints at the platform logic. In a research proceeded by me and Zhuoxiao Xie (2021), we explored five functionally differentiated purposes of speaking on Weibo: resources, sentiments, fan works, ritualized tasks, and diplomatic interactions. We also found that most of the functional terms used by fans are highly technologically constructed. The construction of proper fan behaviour has shaped the discourse, as the fans selectively utilize certain functions or resources provided by the platform.

This observation echoes to Susan’s case in which fans use the technological settings of platforms like Crunchyrollfor their own governance, but meanwhile also suggests that the governance itself becomes digitalized and technological. For example, the use of “report” on Weibo and the use of “spoilers” both gesture to the logic of digital visibility. That is, fans govern themselves and the fan others by manipulating the visibility of certain (positive or negative) content on the platform. The digital governing has thus facilitated and meanwhile constructed the rule of fan practice. This logic of visibility, as we argued in our research, becomes the logic of fan-circle participation and legitimates the fan-circle as a dominant way of fan participation in the overlapping fandoms. In the case of fan-circle, even when fans start to use the formal technological setting for their own governance, the governance itself is made sense by the platformized rule. This is the reason that I come to argue that the Chinese fan-circle culture is becoming an algorithmic culture in which fans not only use the technology to participate, but also participate in technology. I’m thus very curious whether the logic of visibility or the significance of “traffic data” makes sense in other countries and regions as it does in China. For example, fans on Weibo pay particular attention to the trending, and would devote significant digital labor to control the content appears on the trending list (e.g. posting to heat the hashtag or posting the same content around the hashtag). I would be curious to see how global fandom develops differently in the trends of platformization and digital capitalism.

Bibliography

Yin, Y., & Xie, Z.E* (2021). Playing platformized language games: Social media logic and the mutation of participatory cultures in Chinese online fandom. New Media & Society. First published online. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211059489

Global Fandom Jamboree Conversation: Yiyi Yin and Susan Noh (Part One)

Yiyi (respond to Susan):

I would like to thank Susan for the fascinating introduction about the English anime fansubbing and especially the emergence of fan-ripping. Sadly I have not done any research on fan-subbing myself, so that I might not be able to provide many critical thoughts. However, as a Chinese anime fan, I grew up receiving translated anime content provided by online fan-subbing groups, and I’m now seeing a similar landscape where the grass-root fan-subbing groups were largely declined. For me, it is particularly interesting to see how the traditional distinction between the competitive camps, namely the speed-subbers and quality-subbers, has been challenged by the existence of fan-rippers who can distribute the official translated version of anime most rapidly. Fan-subbing can be a very good case indicating how fan practices and engagement might react to the shifting media industry and the formal media distribution portals. As Susan also mentioned, fan-subbing served primarily for accessibility in the earlier days. Similarly, in my interviews with Chinese ACG fans, they recalled that they were simply “fed” by the fan-subbing groups in the late 1990s as there was nothing else to consume. Today the problem of accessibility has been replaced by the difficulty to consume media content from different streaming services, and the fan-rippers emerged to solve the problem by downloading and distributing the content.

One thing I’ve been curious about throughout the reading was: Who were the fan-rippers? More specifically, to what extent were they also fans? I ask the questions because the ripping seems to require much less labor the time than translating and subbing, which somewhat makes the fan-ripping less a “fannish” practice but more “commercial”. For example, there are several non-official video sites and Apps in China that do similar things as fan-rippers, as they rip the content from streaming services and distribute it onto their own sites. Unlike fan-subbing groups, these ripping websites gained profit from advertisements and low subscription prices. These websites and Apps are very popular among common audiences and consumers (partially because the accessibility remains a problem to Chinese audiences), but fans would rather embrace the version released by fan-subbing groups to consume the content with better “quality”. As Susan emphasized, the “quality” remains as the important cultural capital of fan-subbing groups not only because the text type or special effect was necessarily needed by fans, but also because it indicated the distinctive time and effort dedicated by fans. Consequently, in China, the conflict between fan-ripping and fan-subbing was always paralleled with the binary of fans/non-fans, or true/fake fans. To some extent, fan-ripping seems to be recognized by fans more within the formal economy rather than the informal economy in China. I’m thus particularly interested in how fans and the fan-rippers themselves consider their identities, and how they might share the content in specifically different ways.

            Another topic that interests me is the blurring boundary between formal and informal economy, as Susan mentioned that the co-option of fan-subbing groups was not likely to happen in the English-speaking anime fandoms. A quite interesting observation for me is that in China it is the platformization of fandoms that progresses this kind of co-option, in which the platform exploits but also saves the fan-subbing groups by hiring them as “professional fan-subbers” to distribute the content with the quality that fans need. For example, the video site Bilibili, the largest video platform for ACG content and subcultural fans in China, began to collaborate with fan groups and fan-subbing groups recently. In some cases, Bilibili purchased the license from the distribution company and collaborated with the fan-subbing groups to produce the subtitles. The subtitles usually include special text type and animation, especially during the openings/endings and special scenes such as charm spelling. The subtitles might also include extra information for fans or for the common audience to learn when watching the anime series. This kind of co-option can now be seen also in the cases of English drama and film fandoms. In its recent release of The Lord of the Ring, Bilibili worked with the fan group “LotR Chinese Wiki” to produce the official version of the subtitle with the beautiful translation of poems in the background soundtrack.

In the case of Bilibili, the co-option happens when the platform, which purchases the license from the content distributor and needs to translate it, tries to snatch the fans from fan-subbing groups. The “quality” still plays a significant role that justifies the survival of fan-subbing groups and distinguishes fan-subbing from either official or speed-subbing works. However, the “quality” is also becoming the means for industrial players to exploit labor within the formal economy. I’m thus interested in how platformization and digital capitalism might influence fan practices such as fan-subbing. From the case of Bilibili, I think the platformized fan labor might be the way that the declining fan-subbing groups reenter the neoliberal market. Yet, the underlying ideology within the informal economy that “quality as the proof of love” has been largely replaced by the social media logic of visibility or popularity in van Dijck’s term.

Susan (respond to Yiyi):

            An interesting point that Yiyi brings up in her response is this perceived divide between the commercial, formal economy of media distribution and the fannish shadow economy, which helps to sustain a wider web of interest. Indeed, as Yiyi has accurately pointed out, fan-rippers often help to bridge the gaps between franchises that are split apart due to digital platforms vying for popular media titles. Particularly for Japanese anime, narratives can expand to multiple seasons, movies, remakes, OVAs (original video animation), and more. These wide-spanning franchises are often fractured in their distribution along the lines of streaming networks. For example, for the enormously popular Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise, Netflix currently streams the original anime series and two films in the United States, but Amazon Prime distributes the newest filmic remakes, as well as a documentary series revolving around the series creator. Unless one has the economic means to legally access all of this content through streaming subscriptions, which is often not the case for younger viewerships, fansubbed and ripped content continues to be the primary means in which fans can gain access to all of the fragments of a media franchise. As part of my own research, I engaged in an online survey of anime fans within the United States regarding where they got their content and why they chose the particular routes that they did. Unsurprisingly, not being able to afford all subscriptions to legally gain access to their desired anime content was one significant reason why fans continued to turn towards ripped and pirated content.   

            Certainly, these dynamics may continue to change as fans witnessed announcements in 2021 of the consolidation of two major anime streaming portals, Funimation and Crunchyroll, in the North American anime streaming scene. This merging may help in further centralizing a formal access point for fans. Further, as anime industry related news regarding the challenges and hardships of industry laborers continue to travel from Japan to the rest of the world, fans may also reconsider where they decide to source their content along the lines of personal ethics. 

            Returning back to the divides between fansubbing groups, rippers, and formal streaming services, it should be noted that an antagonistic relationship between fansubbers and services like Funimation and Crunchyroll need not have necessarily been a foregone conclusion. As a case in point, Crunchyroll began as a pirating site for anime fans, before they changed their branding and models of operation in order to collaborate directly with Japanese anime studios. Because of the streaming service’s legally questionable beginnings, gaining the trust of Japanese studios was an uphill battle for the founders of Crunchyroll. Becoming a more legitimate global distributor required purging fansubbed content from their catalogues, which drew critique from both formal industry players and fansubbers alike. 

Instead of the rather antagonistic route that formal North American anime distributors and tertiary anime companies took towards English-language fansubbers, there is also an alternative tactic that could have been engaged, where industries co-opt fansubbers’ talents and help them to professionalize, fostering a potentially more harmonious relationship. There have been moments where fansubbers and formal distributors have collaborated successfully with one another, and these collaborations may be seen as a source of pride by fansubbing groups due to the legitimacy and testament to quality that is implied in such relationships. For example, one fansubber that I interviewed enthusiastically recounted how the popularity of their group’s fansubs influenced the studio behind a widely-known anime series in using the group’s naming conventions within the formal subtitles.  However, it seems like these moments remain unlikely exceptions, particularly when considering the punitive measures that have been taken against anime piracy within the United States, as well as the rhetorical strategies that have been leveraged against fansubbers in order to try to delimit their practices. For example, on June 8, 2003, Anime News Network released an article titled, “A New Ethical Code for Digital Fansubbing,” which sought to encourage the formation of some ground rules for fansubbing groups. For example, suggestions included ensuring that a fansubber always aims to minimize their impact on the commercial sphere and that motivations for doing such labor should never be for personal fame or profit. Of course, these rules tend to go against the ethos of fansubbing, particularly in the contemporary moment, when fansubbing tends to differentiate itself through discourses around quality, as well as a more personal interest in learning the technicalities and artistry behind the trade. Far from not attempting “​​to match or better the quality of a professional DVD,” fansubbers continue to push the limits of what fansubbing can do or be both in technique and artistry. For example, productive fansubbers have programmed scripts that help to automate certain steps of the process in order to ease the labor of their fellow fansubber, as well as make the communication processes between fansubber and their viewerships smoother.  Given this ethos of constant self-improvement and exploration that characterizes the industrious fansubber, it is no surprise that fansub groups did not fall in line with these ethical codes that were outlined for them. 

While I would argue that fansubbing is not necessarily “dead,” we are certainly witnessing a moment when former motivations that once encouraged individuals to pick up the labor of fansubbing are no longer so prevalent. Challenged both by streaming services and ripping groups alike, the existence of fansubbers are intimately connected to the whims of digital platforms and portals. Contrary to the “social media logic of visibility or popularity,” fansubbing is seeing a decline in returns for both factors, as content hungry fans are more likely to default to what is most convenient and available fastest (simulcasting or ripping), as opposed to what is arguably of better quality. In this manner, perhaps the current state of English fansubbing reflects an exception to this rule that Yiyi has stated at the end of her response. 

Global Fandom: Yiyi Yin (China)

I’m Yiyi Yin. I self-identify as an aca-fan and have been working on Chinese fandom studies for several years. In 2002, I wrote and posted my first fanfiction on a BBS where fans of the Japanese animation B’TX congregated. I was 12 years old back then, and hardly knew anything about fandom or fan culture. I even had never heard the word “fans.” Every day I discussed the storyline of B’TX with one of my neighbors who was also fond of it, and wrote poems together for our favorite characters. I remembered how we snuck into her mother’s office and dialed-up to the Internet, reading everything we could find on a themed forum related. I remembered my very first post on the forum, which was a repost of another B’TX fanfiction from one forum section to another. As I recalled, my personal experience as a “fan” probably started from there, even though I had no idea of such identity at that time. 

Since then I’ve been a long-term observer and participant of multiple fandoms, including some in Japanese manga, some in English television dramas and films (e.g. Lord Of The Rings, Sherlock, and Marvel movies), some in popular music, and some in eSports. Growing up in the 1990s in mainland China, my own experience as a media fan was accompanied by the process of becoming a “netizen”. In terms of the expanding media industry of China, the period between the 1990s and the 2000s was also a critical process in which the marketization, commercialization, and the national “soft power” construction significantly progressed. Meanwhile, as the acceleration of the process of globalization has led to a drastic transformation of fan culture in China, the fandom has emerged from hitherto underground development and community-based activity to a vibrant social group operating on the Internet. During this time, I, as a teenager, inevitably encountered new genres of media and cultural products, new patterns of participation, and new forms of fandom. For me, the meaning of the term “fandom” has been constructed precisely during this time, as a naturally dynamic and relational concept that never restricted to only one single object.

In mainland China, the development of local fandoms was not linear, as it was varied constantly by waves of foreign culture. The local fan culture was firstly introduced into mainland by Hong Kong celebrities and their fans, and thus formed the earliest celebrity fandom in mainland China. Another influential fan culture was shaped by the imported Japanese animations in the late 1980s. The ACG culture and Otaku culture influenced Chinese fan culture to a large extent, which have made the Chinese fan culture notably different from the Western country where Star Trek was always noted as the early fan-text. It is fair to say that the transcultural Otaku culture initially shaped the Chinese fan culture in terms of the patterns of participation, ways of expression, and communal appearance. However, the Japanese cultural products were mostly banned in China in the early 2000s. The materials for fan consumption have thus changed, way before the Chinese fan culture has been formalized by the Otaku culture. Since then, along with the development of the Internet, the Chinese fan culture was primarily influenced by the K-pop celebrity culture, and then the Anglo-American traditions of media fans. When the so-called domestic fandom focusing on local celebrities and cultural products emerged in around 2005, the Chinese fan culture has become a very hybridized and multi-cultural combination of various subcultural traditions. Figure 1 shows the fandoms that my interviewees involved. Almost everyone has involved at least two fandoms in the past decade. The fandoms are thus interconnected with a flow of participants.

Figure 1: Hybridized online fandoms in China

Interestingly, these foreign waves, including Japanese Otaku culture, Hong Kong/Taiwan celebrity culture, Hallyu, Western media fan culture, had not appeared as separate fandoms in China. In the age of digitalization, we’ve seen different patterns of fan cultures clashed, negotiated and converged especially in the 2000s. My research interest thus comes from the dynamic development of fan culture in China, especially how fan performances are constantly negotiated and reconstructed, while fan norms, values and cultural practices are formalized and legitimated. My recent works focused mostly on the phenomenon of “fan-circle” in China, which was defined as a dominant pattern of fan participation, involving intense digital labor and regulation of online communicative practices, sociality, media use, consumption and production. [YY1] The fan-circle became discursively powerful in the past decade, ruling out other fan performances by establishing new moral values and redefining the legitimacy of being a fan. These fan-circle moral values first penetrated the popular or mainstream fan communities such as ACG[HJ2]  (Animation-Comics-Games) and celebrity fandoms, and then the relatively marginalized or underground communities like eSports and crosstalk fandoms. In this process, fandoms have become interrelated, without clear-cut boundaries separating each fan realm. Instead, the new boundaries have been set as fan-circles, where fans instantly step in and out to struggle with their own cultural identities of being fan.

My general interest is to see the process of formalization of the fan-circle [HJ3] [YY4] and its rules in multiple fandoms (Yin, 2020a). I and Dr. Xie Zhuoxiao from Nanjing University first noticed the technology-specificity of fan-circle, as it largely reflects the platform setting and algorithm in terms of how fans speak, consume, produce and use the media (Yin & Xie, 2018). One of my works (Yin, 2020b) examined particularly the Chinese online fandom as an emerging algorithmic culture in which the ongoing interaction among affect, fan subjectivity, and the algorithm continually shapes and reshapes the everyday fan practice in terms of its sequence of acts, norms, and ways of thinking. In this dynamic process, some activities have been formalized into everyday practice, with authority borrowed from the commercial or industry framework, while others are still negotiated by fans in playing with the rules of the algorithm. The platforms and institutions such as Sina Weibo strategically embed the logic of data in daily fan practice by promoting numerous algorithmic operations including all the indexes, ranking and their rewards. The digitalization significantly shapes the fan performance when it promises certain affective fan-object relationship. The rematerialization of data has allowed the fans to connect themselves to the fan objects that were inaccessible in the past. Through practicing around the data, fans can actualize certain relationship to the foreign celebrities that were out of reach before.             

Figure 2: The popularity ranking designed by Weibo

It is also very interesting to see how fans, including the fan-circle participants, make use of the technological resources provided by the platform in unexpected ways. Examples might include how fans appropriate the “report” function to achieve their own goals, and how they flood to resist against the visibility algorithm manipulated by the platform. I’ve seen a case in which the Weibo trending topic was originally about one thing (e.g. “Marvel screening”), but was transformed by fans into a completely different thing by flooding with Weibo posts containing the same keywords yet in different combination (e.g. “Marvelous film screening”). For those who clicked the trending topic without knowing the original event, the content of the trending topic has been efficiently changed by fans. In doing so, they still claim to control the visibility that is powerfully manipulated by the platform and the media producers engaged. In cases like this, fan agency is still potentially creative in a sense that fans would never entirely compromise to the dependency of commercialized cultural industry. 

I discussed mostly about how fan-circle is technologically specific. And I am now interested in how and why this algorithmic fan culture can be culturally specific. For instance, Weibo was known as similar to Twitter in terms of its technological settings and social media functions. In media use, fans on both Twitter and Weibo participate in producing Trending, Hashtags, Super Hashtags. Yet the specific patterns, rules, and purposes of fan participation vary. A forthcoming paper of mine and my coauthor would examine the very particular communicative practices of celebrity fans on Weibo, but we have not yet elaborated it from a comparative perspective.

 Another interesting but rather pessimistic concern about the cultural specificity of fan-circle is the politicization of fan culture, which can also be seen in other countries (e.g. the fans of Donald Trump) but is especially noteworthy in China due to its complex socialist tradition and political scene. The stressful cultural censorship has forced the fans to further regulate their own participations to prevent the possibility of being criticized or even banned. While there has been a dangerous trend that fans make use of the authorial power to attack the vital fan groups or fan individuals. In fact, the use of “report” function can be seen as a case in which fans take use of the “punishment mechanism” to shut down the posts they don’t like. In recent years, along with the increasingly strict control of Boy’s Love literatures, some fans even report the disliked fanfic to the governmental Weibo accounts. When fandom is becoming more and more mainstream, it is noticed not only by the capitals but also the political actors as potential social power. As the political intervention and fan activities have progressively overlapped, the politicization of fan practice is becoming an increasingly significant and another complicated aspect of the fan-circle phenomenon. 

My Projects for References

Yin, Y. (2020). An emergent algorithmic culture: The data-ization of online fandom in China. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 23(4), 475–492.

Yin, Y., & Xie, Z. (2018). The bounded embodiment of fandom in China: Recovering shifting media experiences and fan participation through an oral history of Animation-Comics-Games lovers. International Journal of Communication, 12 (18): 3317–3334. 

尹一伊（2020），《粉丝研究流变：主体性、理论问题与研究路径》，《全球传媒学刊》，7 (1)：53-67页。

Global Fandom: Susan Noh (United States)

Anime Fansubbing in the Age of Simulcasting

The widespread exposure of anime in the United States and the global community more broadly has largely been predicated on fansubbing communities which have existed since the 1980s. Fansubbers are industrious fans who translate and distribute international work to their various social and digital networks. Despite this history, fansubbing and peer-to-peer distribution remain deeply ambivalent and polarizing practices, exemplified by the ways in which fans, industry, and practitioners grapple with the motivations and effects of these cultural practices as it relates to questions of access and impact on production industries. While much has already been written about the motivations and practices of fansubbers prior to the rise of streaming services, my research seeks to centralize the impact that the existence of formal distribution portals has had on the English anime fansubbing community, and where different forms of illicit distribution have emerged to challenge the once-dominant presence of anime fansubbing. One such emergent figure, which intersects with the streaming services’ rise to mainstream popularity, is the fan-ripper: individuals who use automated scripts to download content from these formal streaming services to distribute illicitly elsewhere. Whereas previously, the practice of fansubbing had largely been justified as a means for proliferating awareness and access to anime in a media landscape that seemed disinterested and incapable of licensing productions in a timely fashion, that is no longer the case, as simulcasting services like Crunchyroll, HiDive, and Funimation release content often merely an hour after the official broadcasting in Japan. 

            Given the prevalence of fan-ripping and formal anime streaming services in the United States, the number of individuals who are devoted to the practice of fansubbing has declined. Anime fansubbing used to be divided into two distinct groups that were distinguished by their strategy of approaching translation. There were the speed-subbers, who focused on delivering fans rapid-fire subtitles, often at the cost of quality, and then there were the quality-subbers, who would often take their time to ensure accurate subtitles, immersive typesetting and effects, and more. The advent of simulcasting streaming services largely put speed-subbers out of business, as no matter how speedy a fansubbing group may be, it was impossible to compete against streaming services who often receive early access to the work in order to create their own subtitles for coordinated international releases. Beyond the formal streaming portal, it was also difficult for speed-subbers to compete against the growing community of fan-rippers, who would automatically download the content that streaming services provide and distribute them to often-illicit anime providers. It is no surprise then that one of the primary justifications that contemporary fansubbers give for their continued presence in the distribution landscape is that of “quality,” as this discursive thread is a remnant of the quality fansubbing groups that used to exist alongside the speed-subbers. 

            How “quality” is discursively defined within the fansubbing community and their supporters primarily revolve around the editing of the translations, typesetting, and the inclusion of unique textual features that fansub groups incorporate in order to cater specifically to fans’ needs. These definitions of quality exist against the grain of official releases from streaming portals. For example, throughout a series of interviews that I did with active fansubbers, features like karaoke type during the opening/endings of series, immersive typesetting of background signs and text, as well as organic sounding translations that carefully balance accuracy became markers that distinguish the fansub from the official translations. Simultaneously, fansubbers were quick to denounce the quality and perceived weaknesses of official translations, often criticizing exploitative labor practices as one primary reason for the continued mediocrity of official releases. As a few interviewees noted, their fansubbing work would not be complete until official releases can meet their unique standards of quality. To the contemporary fansubber, spending more time working on a translation as a passion project is more amenable than the idea of working for a company that provides paltry pay and demands an unreasonable schedule for getting this labor done. Indeed, several fansubbers were deeply critical of the ways in which they saw corporate entities exploit the professional translator’s fannish passions for anime to encourage them to take lower rates than what may otherwise be considered the norm for translation labor in other fields. While much of the news regarding low pay rates and exploitative labor conditions are not publicized, the whisper networks that connect fansubbers to professional translators continue to allow certain forms of gossip and knowledge to travel. Admittedly, it is difficult to discern the extent of veracity of this news, but its existence nevertheless reveals much about the ideological tensions that exist between official corporate players and those that work within the informal economy. 

This distinction between the unpaid digital laborer feeling empowered through their hobbies and the professional as being exploited, despite being economically compensated and retaining the clout of working on their beloved projects in an official capacity, echoes Tizianna Terranova’s observation of free labor on the Internet as “not necessarily exploited labor” (Terranova 2000, 48). While in the earlier years, the clout that fansubbers would receive from making anime accessible to non-Japanese speakers may have deeply shaped the neoliberal fannish economy, such clout is rarely found today, as the viewers who often engage with fansubs are those who are willing to wait for their release, sometime after the ripped or official version has already been made available. When asked why contemporary fansubbers continue to do this labor in spite of dwindling subcultural capital, my interviewees often repeated that as much as contemporary fansubbers continue to toil in the name of “quality,” what often really motivates them to remain is the friends and forms of community that continue to persist in the face of a changing distribution landscape that may eventually call for their obsolescence. While Matt Hills noted in his work on fansubbers that these groups often acted in highly competitive and individualized manners that reflected the neoliberal market dynamics of cultural production, that no longer seems to be the case within English fansubbing, as individuals often moved and collaborated between groups depending on where they saw a need for their particular skill sets (2016). Where we see the neoliberal branding function of fandom is now largely between fan-ripping groups, due to their rise in visibility in the current media distribution network.  

Despite the multivalent work that the concept of “quality” is doing in both discursively marking the boundaries between fansub and official release, as well as providing justification for the continued necessity for fansubbers, there remain critical points of overlap between these two supposedly rivaling factions. The emerging figure of the fan-ripper is one result of these areas of overlap. While the fan-ripper takes advantage of the simulcasting capacity of the formal service, they continue to compete for space and attention within the digital arenas that once were occupied primarily by fansubbing groups. With faster release schedules, it is often the fan-ripped content that receive the most engagement from viewers with a few exceptions, such as the fansubbing groups that strategically work with content that reside in “Netflix jail,” a term that was coined to describe when content was being broadcast to nations abroad, but purposely stalled for a full “bingeable” season release in one’s own country. While most fansubbers seem apathetic about the presence of rippers within their community, many were quick to denounce that what they did was fundamentally similar to that of the rippers, leveraging labor and dedication to the crafts that come with fansubbing as something that fundamentally separates them from the rippers.

Fansubbers were once the primary means of access to many anime titles; however, with the mainstream success of streaming services, accessibility is no longer a concern for many English-speaking anime fans. While the fracturing of anime catalogues along the lines of each service may be a challenge for avid consumers, rippers conveniently fill in those gaps with relative ease and piracy continues to challenge official industry players across national and cultural boundaries. While much scholarship has been done on the impact of streaming services on current media industries, its effects on the shadow cultural economies which powered much of the engagement with international media forms like anime in the past has largely gone understudied. For some fandoms, such as East Asian dramas (Viki) and Webtoons, the labor of fansubbing seems to have been co-opted by official industries as a convenient source of labor, further blurring the boundary between formal and informal economy (Dwyer 2012). However, this co-option will likely not happen between the English-speaking anime fandom and the official distributors that serve them, due to the continued antagonism between fansubbers and official industry players. Despite the myriad ways in which both actors contribute to one another’s cultural practices, the discursive strategies employed by both official industry and fansubbers alike reveal how one can understand the distinct ethical systems and ideologies that emerge within the formal and informal economy.  

Bibliography

Dwyer, Tessa. "Fansub Dreaming on ViKi: “Don’t Just Watch But Help When You Are Free”." The Translator 18, no. 2 (2012): 217-243.

GJM. Kamisama ni Natta Hi episode one screenshot. Oct. 12, 2020. Digital image.  

Hills, Matt. "Transnational cult and/as neoliberalism: The liminal economies of anime fansubbers." Transnational Cinemas 8, no. 1 (2017): 80-94.

Terranova, Tiziana. "Free labor." In Digital Labor, pp. 41-65. Routledge, 2012.

Author Bio 

Susan Noh is a PhD candidate in the Media and Cultural Studies program at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Her research interests include the digital circulation of international media, fan studies, and the formation of global audiences. 

Global Fandom Jamboree Conversation Series: Libertad Borda and Thessa Jensen (Part Two)

Libertad Borda: Before tackling the subject of our role as researchers, I would like to comment on some very interesting points in your reply. I definitely agree with you on most. Social media platforms like the ones you mentioned really did make a big impact on fan universe, but not always with desirable results. For instance, together with another colleague, Carla Trovarelli, I tried to delve into the Wattpad phenomenon a few years ago, and we were really shocked to find how many of the things we thought were a given in fandoms, or at least in fanfiction writing communities (such as implicit reciprocity rules, gift economy and the like), were completely out of the picture in this new environment. This can be read in

Borda, L. and C. Trovarelli (2021). “Relatos en Wattpad: ¿es posible una fanfiction sin fanatismo?” [Wattpad Stories: is fanfiction outside fandoms possible?” in Borda, L. and F. A. Gandolfi (eds.), Fanatismos. promoteo libros.https://prometeoeditorial.com/libro/1260/Fanatismos.

And much of this new panorama derived from the fact that the link between the old fans and new fans was broken in a way. You hit the nail on the head in two respects: mentorship and ownership. “Mentorship falls away”, you said. We found a whole new trend of fanfic writers who landed on Wattpad without any knowledge of the old fandom traditions, so many things that were so often discussed over the years like Mary Sue, or respecting the fanon, were completely dismissed, not even actively, but just because they ignored them. Real Person Fiction, which was often marginal within fanfiction writing communities, started to emerge as a potent force within Wattpad. Maybe there is another good explanation for that emergence, but we concluded that it might be due to the fact that “filing off the serial numbers” is much easier when it comes to RPF. The nice boy with the face of Harry Styles simply becomes Billy or similar, and there is no “author” sending you cease and desist letters if you publish the story with a major publishing house. And with this growth of RPF we get to a point where a very peculiar thing happens; fanfics are revamped leaving no trace of the original connection to fandoms (that is the reason for the title of our article).

And then there is the second question, ownership. Wattpad is a for-profit company, and indeed now a very profitable one, so the only traditions encouraged are those that lead to profit. Whereas “real” publishing for the world outside fandoms was very rarely considered in the old communities, Wattpad as a platform motivates users to think that their fic can be printed and that they can be the next Anna Todd. These cases are exceptional, that is true. But the expectation is created, and even industry players have their Wattpad profiles. Down goes the fourth wall…

If we stick to the question of the site architecture, another problem comes up. Wattpad is a site for stories, any story, so even if fanfiction is often characterized as the third genre in the platform as regards the quantity of stories posted, it is not the only type of fiction there. On the other hand, tagging stories in Wattpad is not very orderly, mainly because (back to your lucid comments) there is little or no mentorship. So, users get an explosive combo of corporate ownership, lack of mentorship and poor tagging, which can make Wattpad into a confusing universe for those who were used to the old traditions which prepared the reader about what to expect from fics. And at this point I would like to return to one question I raised in my opening statement and that is the new role of corporations/industry in relation to fandoms and fanification. In a context where this is happening, we cannot expect corporate-owned platforms to lean towards memory and content safety, because that is not important for these players. Of course, I really think that moves such as OTW/AO3 are extremely important to resist profit drive, and maybe one of our roles as researchers is to call attention to this asymmetric situation.

As you can see, I am trying to link this with your question about our role as researchers and your legitimate worry about bringing some practices into the limelight, I wonder if in these which we might call “new ways of being a fan”, this is really seen as an issue or, on the contrary, visibility can become a goal for many. But if the fandom or even the individual fan in question is not ready to “come out of the closet”, we must find ways of referring to those practices without revealing data that they do not want to expose. You know this is an old problem for field research.  But I did not stumble on this kind of issue during my work. Instead, it was fun to read in one telenovela forum I researched in the past a comment as to “Why researching on this? It is like researching on a coke lid, no use”. That is, they were not really worried about it, indifference was more the attitude. On the other hand, when a boy wrote me once telling me that he had created a Facebook group to post Betty la fea (the Colombian soap opera) fanfiction, I was thrilled because Betty writers had never used the term fanfiction before. They spoke about “Betty stories”, “imagined stories”, etc. So I asked him when they had started to use it, and to my dismay he said that it was after reading one of my papers. I had not participated in the forums I studied because they were too many and they stretched over a 15-year long period. But still, the fan’s answer proved that sometimes you intervene in the field even if you do not intend to.

I have one last question for you. I would like to know your position about this corporate advance on fan traditions, or if you coincide about this diagnosis. Maybe you are more optimistic.

 Thessa Jensen: So, the corporations and commercialisation of fandom. I really like your paper on Wattpad! We need more of that kind of research! And it also shows how important it is to keep “our” kind of fandom safe. Not just because it is special–which it is–but because it shows how things can be done online. How you can create spaces where people feel safe, recognised, and belonging to a community, which they help build and maintain. All things, which you won’t find on Wattpad or other platforms that use user-created content to earn money. And sorry to say, I am not optimistic. Look at AO3, every time they make a donation drive, we get the usual discussions on why they need money and how it can be so expensive to just run a few servers. Again, it shows the lack of history, lack of knowledge about how AO3 works. It is fan created, fan maintained, voluntary work–and anybody can become part of it and get their ideas tested and discussed, maybe even implemented. But you must do something, must invest time and work in this–instead, people seem to dismiss it, complain about it, and have lots of ideas on how to change it, without taking steps to make those ideas workable. So, sorry, I’m very pessimistic about this.

One of the things which worries me is the growing use of Patreon and sites like it, where fans earn money by writing fanfiction. It blurs lines between hobby and work, copyright and fair use. Also, between being a fan, a follower, just a reader–creating expectations, demands, and probably lots of other stuff, which will further erode the community-based culture of fanfiction.

And maybe, maybe, that should be our prerogative as a researcher? Fighting to keep the good things of fandom alive, by showing what is possible today? And showing the new side of fandom, entangled in money and possible fame (with all the bad things this entails)?

Libertad Borda: We both seem to agree on the importance of highlighting these tendencies to fandom commercialization as researchers. Anyway, in my view, we should not forget two aspects of this situation: 1) many fan practices have been disseminated into much bigger audiences/communities as compared to previous small and protected groups, which is not necessarily a problem. I made a point of researching on these fan practices that transcended small groups. As is often the case in an expansion process, some traditions change and are likely to continue changing over time. On the other hand, 2) fandoms themselves, as you and I already pointed out in our opening statements, are not free from the issues that affect society at large, and this drive to profit is one of them, operating at the expense of neglecting or directly abandoning other practices based on reciprocity. Some fans claim that the urge to monetize fan labour is legitimate, and they may be right, but the problem is the power asymmetry that I pointed out before. Selling your work to corporations may imply following the path those companies have already marked for you, no matter how good your intentions are. This phenomenon is not likely to change if society itself does not, but I think that we must keep on reflecting on these matters and even trying to engage into dialogue with fields of studies which approach these problems in other areas.

Thessa Jensen: YES! To all of the above. And thank you, Dr Borda, for this interesting and eye-opening discussion!

Global Fandom Jamboree Conversation: Libertad Borda and Thessa Jensen (Part One)

Libertad Borda: Hi, Dr. Jensen, it is a pleasure to take part in this dialogue with you, because our countries are really far apart, but there are always common areas to talk about. For instance, although many of the things you mention in your statement were extremely interesting, I think we might start talking about what you call “the darker side of fandom”. You rightly focus attention about the fact that research of fandom and fanfiction communities implies approaching not only creative and positive practices “but also the ugly sides like extremism, conspiracy theories, racism, shitstorms”. In some works, mainly from people who are beginning their research on online fandoms, only the bright side emerges, but fandoms are framed in a bigger structure where class, race and gender biases still prevail in many respects.  I would like to hear more about how the design of platforms could help to somehow control this negativity, as you suggest.

Thessa Jensen: Thank you, Dr Borda!

Like you, I find a dialogue like this very interesting, especially because we belong to such different cultures and, as far as I can tell, work on and with fandom in very different ways. So, let’s start with your question on the design of platforms and how or if it could help control the darker side of fandom. Well, the short answer would be: I would love to have a clear and positive answer for this one. It is easier to tell which design choices aren’t working. Like, Tumblr’s reblogging, which is copying the original post, enabling the reblogger to comment and with that, totally change the original meaning. At the same time, neither the original blogger nor any subsequent reblogger and commenter will be able to follow each of the ensuing arguments. Comments aren’t threaded, and what started out as a positive post about a certain fandom might end up as a threatening attack on fans, who love a certain ship in that fandom.

Because Tumblr as a platform focuses on the posts, that is, content, content creation, and ease of reblogging, rather than community building. The latter would need the possibility to engage in a meaningful dialogue with other fans. Making it possible to follow comment threads as well as identifying and possibly block certain fans from participating in a certain community. All of which is not possible on Tumblr. You can find that kind of functionality on platforms like Discord or Facebook, where fandom groups are plenty. However, here you need an invite, which means, these groups are not easy to find for new fans. Also, you are dependent on the administrators of these groups. While most have explicit rules on how to interact and what to post, these groups can be shut down at any time or certain fans can be blocked from entering the space.

While this is still a problem, I have encountered several groups, where not one but at least two or more people are collaborating as administrators, making the risk of a random shutdown, or blocking of other fans less likely. Also, several of these groups have a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy, again, making it possible for fans to learn how to behave, or to discuss whether a certain rule should change.

So, to sum up, for the design part I would recommend looking at sites like Discord, where the users have a site which provides possibilities for organising groups in a very democratic way, in principle giving each fan a voice on which behaviour is wanted and unwanted. However, Discord is not good when it comes to the archiving and content creation part. It’s very difficult to search for certain comments or memes or other content, which is created on the go, through the various chat channels in a given group.

For this, the archiving part, you would need something like the archiveofourown.org (AO3). This is to me the epitome of what online communities are able to create, maintain and use for community building, even if the focus is on the archive and the content creation. I won’t explain a lot about how AO3 came to live, please read

Fiesler, C., Morrison, S., & Bruckman, A. S. (2016, May). An archive of their own: a case study of feminist HCI and values in design. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 2574-2585)

Fiesler, C., Morrison, S., Shapiro, R. B., & Bruckman, A. S. (2017, February). Growing their own: Legitimate peripheral participation for computational learning in an online fandom community. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work and social computing (pp. 1375-1386).

What AO3 offers, beside the community, which operates behind the scenes and keeps the archive running, is a way to connect with other fanfiction writers (collections, fandoms, writing competitions, translations, etc.), fanfiction readers (comments, likes, follows, etc.), and through all of this create a tent-pole, a place, where fans can find other fans in the first place. However, there is no means of private messaging or chatting like on Tumblr or on Discord. You had part of this on livejournal.com, where you could post content, comment on it, create fandom groups including a set of rules and an administrator. And while you had fandom wank and fandom rants, in your own group of fellow fans, you could discuss fandom related issues in relative safety.

Does this help on how to tackle the darker side of fandom? *sigh* I think you'll always have problems with people who can’t accept other people. People, who will not play by the rules, either because they find it funny to stir up drama (which, sorry to say, seems to be the main cause for trolling, doxxing and the like–because it is “fun” to watch people getting furious, sad, or irritated) or because they have a just cause, which other people don’t or won’t recognise as such. The latter probably because of privilege and not wanting to change one's ways. Which probably isn’t a very good answer for your very good question in the first place.

With the above, I would like to point to three elements of importance regarding the design of platforms.

First, the possibility of having a shared history. History creates context, a common ground for fans to talk from and understand any ongoing discussion. But history is elusive, especially with social media platforms. Their design is built on new-ness; new content is created and distributed constantly, changing the timeline, pushing the most engaging posts to the front. None of this helps in creating a common ground, rather the opposite. Sites like fanlore.org, a part of the OTW, is trying to change this. But it also shows why it is problematic: to have a history, you need a separate website. This includes a certain slow-ness; instead of new content being pushed our way, existing content should stay for longer, being examined, discussed, and catalogued, before being pushed away by a new post.

Second, participatory culture needs media, which are easy to use, access, and distribute. With this, mentorship falls away, because anybody can comment and share every post on a platform without the need of learning anything about the context or background. Using platforms like Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr for fandom means a constant call to action: Like this! Reblog that! Comment! Tweet! Do! Participation in fandom presupposes not only knowledge about the fandom in question, but also knowledge about canon and fanon of said fandom. Participation should require a certain patience on the side of fans with each other, teaching and learning the do’s and don’ts about the fandom. A patience, which is contrary to the world of social media as we know it.

Third, ownership. As it is, archiveofourown.org (AO3) is one of the very few platforms on the Internet, which is created, developed, and maintained by the users who use it (another one is Wikipedia). Ownership regarding fandom is more than controlling your data. In our case, fandom has time and again experienced platform owners who with short or no notice close profiles, delete fanworks, or change terms of service. All of which is a call back to fandom history and the need to remember. Ownership means influence on how fandom could move on, change, and become a new way of participation and community. Ownership, on the flipside, also means hard work, and in the case of AO3, volunteers, who work for free.

This leads me to a question for you (or maybe both of us). You come from another part of the world, and another part of fan studies. How do you see our roles as researchers? I for one, am always afraid of breaking things, meaning, I want to understand fandom, but at the same time, I’m afraid of drawing attention to people and their work in a way, which drags them into the limelight. Maybe making it difficult for them to continue doing what they do.

Global Fandom: Thesa Jensen (Denmark)

The Hogwarts Express at Magical Days in Odense, Denmark, 2019. The one week long festival started as a Harry Potter reading event at the Odense Libraries in 2016.

An interweaving braid of fanfiction, design thinking, and ontological ethics

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/33774943.

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The Løgstrupian

Thessa Jensen & Peter Vistisen, Thessa Jensen & Bo Allesøe Christensen, Thessa Jensen & Bo Allesøe Christensen & Jacqueline Meintzinger

Knud Ejler Løgstrup, Peter Vistisen, Bo Allesøe Christensen, Jacqueline Meintzinger

ontological ethics, design thinking, crossmedia content quadrant, positioning theory, secular eschatology

Published: 2021-09-09 Words: 1212

An interweaving braid of fanfiction, design thinking, and ontological ethics

by ThessaJensen

Summary

Prompt by professor Henry Jenkins:

"The statement would introduce you and your work and offer some more general observations about fandom and fandom studies in the country where you do your research."

Notes

While the following is an introduction to fandom studies in Denmark, at least in the way, I have conducted my research through the years, it is not a particularly Danish fandom research.

While we have Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal) and Olsen Banden (an old movie series about three crooks, always trying and failing to carry out the great coup), identifying Danish fans in fanfiction has proven rather difficult. Most Danes speak and write English quite well, and just blend into online fandoms without identifying themselves as Danes.

I hope, the following will suffice anyway.

See the end of the work for more notes

”The radical demand says that we are to care for the other person in a way that best serves his interest. It says that but nothing more. What this means in a given situation a person must discover for himself in terms of his own unselfishness and in the light of his own understanding of life. This is why in the very nature of things it is impossible to obey the radical demand on the basis of motives which are foreign to the demand.”

Løgstrup, K. E. (1997), The Ethical Demand, Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, p. 47.

I am an academic, and was for a long time, before I discovered fandom and with it, fanfiction. It took a while, before I realised how well my research into interactive digital media and design thinking would fit within the realm of fandom communities. From the crossmedia content quadrant, which shows how a tentpole event can give rise to fandom (1); through understanding how the design of platforms used by fans support or restrain different kinds of communities (2); the importance of presence in fandom spaces (3); an analysis of The JohnLock Conspiracy expanding the notion of secular eschatology and analysing the design of Tumblr as part of the problem (4); and using positioning theory to understand the was fans interact with each other through the creation of fanfiction (5). As scattered and disorderly as this may seem, there is one thing, which connects these different themes besides all being part of fandom life. It is the theory of ontological ethics by Knud Ejler Løgstrup, a Danish philosopher who contemplated the ethical basics of everyday life.

For Løgstrup the ethical starting point is the specific, dyadic meeting of two people. This meeting places demands on the two people involved. The ‘other person’ places an unspoken demand of trust, openness of speech, compassion, and a wordless appeal for non-violence on the first one, the ‘I’. These demands are the sovereign expressions of life, and they will, according to Løgstrup, always be present when two people meet each other. The sovereign expressions of life can be seen as an undercurrent in the meeting.

The radical demand found in Løgstrup’s ethics, is thus based on the actual situation, the actual people involved in it, and how the one person determines what is in the best interest of the other. This leaves the ‘I’ in a constant struggle with the threat of paternalism, because the ‘I’ must keep listening to and empathically recognize the other’s needs without assuming unlimited responsibility for the other.

Fandom and fanfiction communities are people meeting other people. The online platforms used by fans can be seen as a kind of institutions, mediating certain structures, constraints, and possibilities for building of communities. Basically, however, a fan meets another fan–and magic happens. Fandom is about human beings coming together, recognising, acknowledging, and respecting each other. This is the reason why I understand Løgstrup’s ontological ethics as the basic grounding for my research.

With this in mind, my three main categories of fandom research are:

1. The platform, its design, and the designer as the “I”, and the fandom community as the “other”. Here, my main interest is on the possible interactions of fans with each other provided through the design of the given platform. How does design influence the creation and maintenance of a community? Further, how can a design afford for the creation of new content? And why can different kinds of communities, one appreciative and creative, another misrecognising and destructive, exist side by side on the same platform? While the designers of the platform are invisible, their choices decide, how the platform can be used–even if the users, here, the fans, often create workarounds, or simply flood a new platform for their own purposes, forcing the designers(?) into a re-design (as seen with the chat roulette platform Omegle).

2. The researcher as the “I” and the fan and fandom community as the “other”. This is the always present question of power, paternalism, freedom of research. Who has the right to articulate how fandom works? Should we even use fandom as a subject for research? How much has fandom changed from the hidden, sold under the counter fanzines, to influencers advertising their fannishness as a way of monetising through sponsors and followers? Is fandom as critical, inclusive, diverse, and equal, as we as researchers want to believe?

3. The fan and The other fan. This meeting of two likeminded people.The idea that a common third, the fandom, makes it possible to create a third space, where people can meetup and hangout, being themselves, their true selves, behind the security of a pseudonym or total anonymity. Participating as a fanfiction writer, reader, and commenter; taking part in fandom events, writer’s challenges, even a few cons over the years. The joy in being accepted as an equal, despite my shortcomings as a writer (English not being my native language), but also feeling the anxiousness as a fanfiction writer when posting. Will they like what they read? Will there be any readers at all? The happiness about comments, likes, follows. But most of all the direct interactions with other fans on Tumblr, in AO3’s comments section, in real life. Realising that fandom can make friends, can be life changing in so many ways.

Løgstrup’s ontological ethics, based upon he actual meeting between two or more people, has been my guiding principle. Even so, I am bound to have made mistakes, of course I am and will be. As well as doubting my research. Should I publish my findings? Am I doing the right thing, exposing this to a world outside fandom and fanfiction? Is it even necessary to do so?

While the doubt is ever present, I use myself and my own stories, the way I react, as the seed for understanding and explaining what fanfiction and fandom is about. I use my colleagues and co- authors as sounding boards, incorporating different perspectives on the phenomenon, we are trying to analyse. And, I have my ‘fan whisperers’ who have spent more years than me in fandoms, lived through the ups and downs of Harry Potter, livejournal.com, or Tumblr. Fans who know about my research, have participated actively in it, explained and listened, discussed and argued. Showing me new perspectives, supported my conclusions, dismissed others.

And yet, here I am, still wondering if it is the right thing to do. Fandom and fanfiction communities can be seen as petri dishes for the Internet as a whole. Small groups, high interaction and engagement, seriousness and passion, but also the ugly sides like extremism, conspiracy theories, racism, shitstorms. Research of fandom and fanfiction communities is research into the creativity and passion of people, showing what fandom can provide for fans, but also, and maybe more importantly, the negativity which is the darker side of fandom–and which might give a glimpse of how and why the design of platforms can be seen as a solution to some of the problems we encounter on the Internet these days.

The Hogwarts Express at Magical Days in Odense, Denmark, 2019. The one week long festival started as a Harry Potter reading event at the Odense Libraries in 2016.

Thessa Jensen, PhD, associate professor at the Department of Communication and Psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark.
The focus of her research is on the emergence and development of fanfiction communities on online platforms. Based on K. Løgstrup’s ontological ethics and A. Honneth’s theory of recognition, she explores the possibilities and challenges faced by fans within these online communities. She reads and writes fanfiction, and maintains a Tumblr blog.

NOTES
(1) The crossmedia content quadrant was developed with my colleague Peter Vistisen, PhD, associate professor, Aalborg University, Denmark. Together, we have explored fanfiction, designers as fans, and lately looked into the field of design fiction, fictional accounts of emerging technologies and diegetic prototypes, set in the near future.

Jensen, T., & Vistisen, P. (2013). Tent-Poles of the Bestseller: How Cross-media Storytelling can spin off a Mainstream Bestseller. Akademisk kvarter / Academic Quarter, 7, 237-248. http://www.akademiskkvarter.hum.aau.dk/pdf/vol7/16a_TjensenPVistisen_TenPoles.pdf

Jensen, T., & Vistisen, P. (2017). Ethical Design Fiction: Between storytelling and world building. In ETHICOMP 2017 Conference Proceedings: Values in Emerging Science and Technology (2 ed., Vol. 1). Ethicomp https://doi.org/10.29297/orbit.v1i2.56

(2) Jensen, T. (2013). Designing for relationship: Fan fiction sites on the Internet. In H. Nykänen, O. P. Riis, & J. Zeller (Eds.), Theoretical and Applied Ethics (1 ed., Vol. 5, pp. 241-255). Aalborg Universitetsforlag. Applied Philosophy / Anvendt Filosofi Vol. 5 No. 1 http://forlag.aau.dk/Shop/laering-og-uddannelse/theoretical-and-applied-ethics.aspx

(3) Jensen, T. (2017). On the importance of presence within fandom spaces. Journal of Fandom Studies, 5(2), 141-156. [1]. https://doi.org/10.1386/jfs.5.2.141_1

(4) Together with my colleague Bo Allesøe Christensen, PhD, associate professor, Aalborg University, Denmark, I have been working on understanding the social, philosophical, and ethical implications of online fanfiction communities. We are currently working on an elaboration of positioning theory to explain how online media and platform design influences communities.

Christensen, B. A., & Jensen, T. (2018). The JohnLock Conspiracy, fandom eschatology, and longing to belong. Transformative Works and Cultures, 27, [2]. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1222

(5) Jacqueline Meintzinger, independent researcher, is a fandom friend and co-author, who provides valuable insights into the life of online fandom, as well as a profound knowledge about fandom history.

Jensen, T., Christensen, B. A., & Meintzinger, J. (2020). Positionierung und Kooperationspraktiken in Fanfiktiongemeinschaften. AugenBlick - Konstanzer Hefte zur Medienwissenschaft, 78/79, 141-157.

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Global Fandom: Libertad Borda (Argentina)

A handwritten note (The Peronist Box) advertising cheap items in an anime convention in Buenos Aires (Photograph: Gerardo del Vigo).

Although it has become more and more difficult to establish a clear correlation between fandoms, practices and national roots, mainly for online researchers, I am going to speak from the perspective of the Argentine context. But in the first place, I would like to summarize the hypothesis built in my PhD dissertation (2012), which was a theoretical input for other researchers whom I was honored to tutor in their graduate and postgraduate works. In dialogue with the different trends within fan studies literature, I ventured the idea that the fan phenomenon [fanatismo] has become a true pool of diverse resources (comprising attitudes, expectations, practices, and relational modes between peers and with institutions) which increasingly contributes to the creation of individual or collective identities. I borrowed this expression from E.P. Thompson (1990) with the intention of addressing some of the criticism directed at previous academic approaches and moving away from the reference to a condition corresponding to a certain “type” of consumer. In these observations I made a provisional list of the items in that pool, which is constantly growing or being restructured. Among many other items, the list included elements such as enunciative and textual productivity, the building of community and reciprocal ties, modes of performance.  The main objective of this enumeration was simply to highlight the fact that there were no a priori hierarchies among items: against any prescriptive or normalizing notion of fans, this hypothesis proposes that we cannot predict whether they will be “textual poachers” like the DeCerteausian consumers, industry watchdogs or any of the multiple possible grades between the two. 

Which will be the combination of ítems and the direction the fandom or fan in question will go? Will they appropriate the text in an escapist way? Will their reading be resistant? Will they form a subculture with their peers? Will they be functional to industry interests? Will they generate new practices opaque to the eyes of that same industry? There are no answers previous to field analysis, as it will all depend on the specific configuration of the historical context, industry conditions, former fan experience of the members and, very importantly, some other cleavages like gender, class, or race. 

Another key aspect of this proposal is that though this pool of resources was firstly sketched by fan actions, today it is also available for the industry itself.  Industry always took fans into account, providing them with material and taking advantage of their networks. However, this was a relationship with fans who were already self-identified as such, because the main aim was to gain bigger and bigger mass audiences, and they considered fans as enthusiastic, though eccentric, disseminators, who helped in this process.  

Today, though mass production is still an intrinsic drive for industry, fans clearly stopped being the marginal helper who knocked at the back door to become a key word in marketing lingo, not only in entertainment but also in all economic fields (“turn customers into fans” is today’s marketing mantra). Thus, fanification of audiences is another step in the process of commercialization. Industry strategically selects resources, discarding those which do not guarantee control over the activity they encourage. 

As from this general theoretical basis, my research group has been able to find common grounds for local studies on very different fandoms such as music fandoms (cumbia and romantic music fans), media fandoms (comprising such diverse objects as global franchises and local TV genres), and soccer fandom. 

Now that I have outlined theses general premises, I would like to make three specific observations:

1) Nominalization issues: In the so called peripheral countries (as opposed to central ones,  but mainly to US central position), fan studies researchers experience an extra challenge which is the linguistic mismatch as regards English lexicon. For decades, in Argentina the term used was “admiradores” [admirers], and when “fan” began to get used, it was only restricted to club membership. To add further confusion, “fanático” was also used, and this probably contributed to fuel both the religious overtones in media representations, stressing the negative aspect of the practices.  It was approximately around 2000 that “fan” started to encompass a more neutral meaning. In the sports field this mismatch is even larger, because “fan” was only incorporated in recent years and its use is still limited. Soccer fans (Argentina’s most popular sport) are named “hinchas”, and the fandom is “hinchada”. These terms tend to refer more to bodily practices and do not easily travel from offline to online. This fact may have influenced the special isolation of scholars who study soccer fans (a field with an important development in Argentina. Pablo Alabarces’s work, for instance) from other fan-related object researchers. Up to a point, the rejection of many soccer fans to be named as such is also found in scholars of that area, who avoid interacting with fan studies literature. We could also hypothesize a gender bias here, because “passion” for soccer is seen as a legitimate feeling whereas “adoring” a singer or an actor is still rejected as teen feminine irrationality (though with much less aggressiveness today) and, much more often, unproductive expenditure. 

2) Transformation of objects and fandoms: Fandoms have always been prone to change, but sometimes the change in fandoms derives from transformations in the object itself. Such is the case of the Latin American TV genre knows as telenovela.  As it has very often been remarked, melodrama is the Latin American cultural pattern par excellence, permeating languages, genres and even political and religious discourses. Telenovela has been its main exponent for decades and the online reactions of its audience was the focal point of my PhD work. Years ago telenovelas showed locations of nearby countries, such as Brazil, México or Colombia, and old telenovela fan forums (today practically non-existent due to new social networks such as Facebook or Twitter) brimmed with questions on the meaning of certain words not used in Río de la Plata (Argentina and Uruguay) Spanish, or of slightly different local habits. Currently, this situation has changed, mainly in Argentina, where very few telenovelas are produced today (even before pandemics) and the genre is no longer the transgenerational object it used to be–now it is relegated to lower income, older demographics. To make matters worse, new industry players made their way into the market, such as Turkey (today you can watch four Turkish soap operas a week in Argentine broadcast TV, and none from Argentina). So the old melodrama has moved to some very restricted spaces within streaming platforms, mainly Netflix. These platforms have a much lower share among the lower income sectors, which traditionally formed the core telenovela audience even when it was watched across different social sectors. On the other hand, the panorama of streaming platforms is completely different from that of television. US and other central countries shows take up the overwhelming majority of the options available, and local offerings face a David-Goliath fight, so they have to adapt to different production modes from those of the old national products. Thus, one of challenges facing melodrama fan researchers is to enquire how the sociocultural profile of this new fan has changed and which of the old fandom practices still prevail. 

3)              National peculiarities. Whereas fandoms tend to have common features worldwide, there are always peculiarities. Argentinians are often considered very politically minded, and youth plays an important part in political participation. So (party) politics is part of everyday social discourse and consequently it can crawl its way into many situations involving fan practices. For instance, six years ago when a new telenovela was announced starring actors and actresses who sympathized with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (aka CFK, former President and today’s Vice-president), many genre fans who hated her announced an anti-fan campaign against the telenovela. So many CFK supporters took it as a sort of duty to watch it as part of its political obligations, and to advocate it in Facebook and Twitter. Unknowingly for most, they acted like a very vocal fandom. 

To give an example from a very different fandom, we can see party politics also making its way into local anime conventions. The use of Peronism as a synonym for cheap and popular (image 1), or the offer of “Otaku and Peronist” pins (image 2) are indicative of tensions within society in general but also within this fandom, which has, in the last two decades, witnessed the surge of new fans from a different social sector than that of upper and middle classes who used to form most of the fandom. This use is probably ironic for most Otaku, but there might be newcomers sincerely identifying themselves as Peronist. 

Paradoxically, mainly due to the fact that fan studies are only beginning in Argentina, the questions posed by the link between fandoms and party politics, which are arising in other parts of the world, are still an unexplored field. 

Libertad Borda holds a degree in Communication Sciences (Universidad de Buenos Aires, UBA) and a PhD in Social Sciences (UBA, 2012). Since 1998 I have been a faculty member in UBA, where the course name is Popular Culture and Mass Culture. The title of my doctoral dissertation was Bettymaníacos, luzmarianas y mompirris. El fanatismo en los foros de telenovelas and I coauthored with Federico Álvarez Gandolfi a collection of research works on fandom (Fanatismos. Prácticas de consumo de la cultura de masas, Editorial Prometeo, in press). 

A pin sold in an anime convention in Buenos Aires. 

Global Fandom Jamboree: Wikanda Promkhuntong (Thailand)

An image taken at Angkor Wat in 2019 at a possible spot where Chow Mo-wan (Tony Lueng) whispered his secret into the wall.

My engagement with fan studies began with an exploration of contemporary auteur culture, in which crossover fans play a key part in sustaining the reputation of East Asian transnational filmmakers such as Wong Kar-wai. With the revival of cinephilia and the diversity of works in fan studies, I have been interested in the meeting point and divergence between these two strands of thinking. In 2016, I presented a paper at the Association for Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference in Malaysia on cinephile pilgrimage to Angkor Wat featured in the final sequence of In the Mood for Love (2000). A magic moment happened during the Q&A as a professor in Theology stood up to share his experience of doing a reenactment in Cambodia just before the conference. From there, I had an opportunity to co-edit a special issue on Fandom and Cinephilia in Southeast Asia for Plaridel, a Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society, with the help of Dr. Bertha Chin. With these beginnings, below is my humble reflection on fan studies in Thailand where I am now based.

1.     When we set out to gather works for the special issue in 2017, I thought we would be flooded with submissions. What I soon realized was that despite the public and academic interests, not many had existing research ready to publish. There were a number of Master’s students in Anthropology writing about specific fandoms but it would take some time to develop their papers in English. At least two works I encountered at local conferences also did not engage with theoretical development in fan studies at all. Having asked around for any books related to fan studies in the Thai language, Assoc. Prof. Natthanai Prasannam, who was writing his own monograph on Thai yaoi fandom at the time, pointed me to an edited collection published in 2015, with a chapter suggesting the arrival of fan studies in the country. The chapter by Assoc. Prof. Kanchana Kaewthep is important in at least two ways. First, it introduces fan studies to Thai readers, with references to Jenkin’s works amongst others. Second, the writer includes a list of 40 theses published between 1992-2010 that reveal the transition from audience studies to the interest in fan cultures from around 2006 onwards. From Kaewthep’s list, there are works that explore fans of different television programmes (several theses focused on fans of the singing contest/reality TV called ‘Academy Fantasia’ broadcasted in 2004-2015). As expected, there are works on fans of South Korean and Japanese popular culture, football fans and fans of local singers. Apart from these, a particular account that stands out for me is a comparative study of ‘mae yok’ in Bangkok and Phitsanulok (North of Thailand). The term mae yok is commonly used to describe female fans of local staged performances (mae means mother and yok means to lift up something). In my memory of growing up in the South of Thailand, mae-yok were/are ladies who buy garlands to offer to the performers during the shows and offer monetary support to their favorite performers. The reference to the mother-child relation also suggests the role of these fans in nurturing young talents. 

2.     Reflecting on the use of local terms, I am also reminded of works on transcultural fandom that unpack different types of fan culture through cultural-specific terms such as idol (aidoru) and otaku. Kaewthep’s chapter is titled Fan jah chan ma laew ja or I’m coming, my fan. The phrase is from a well-known song ‘Fan jah’ (2002) by one of the Thai legendary pop singers. In this song, the term ‘fan’ refers to a common English word appropriated by Thais to describe someone as a boyfriend/girlfriend (sometimes to casually refer to a husband/wife). The double meanings of ‘fan’ as being a media fan and someone in a relationship means that Thais often use other related words to talk about being a fan/part of a fandom. In the early 2000s, the term fan pun tae or an absolute fan was used to refer to someone who is a serious fan of something. The term came from a TV show, which contestants have to answer questions to show their expertise on a particular subject to win prizes. At the height of the popularity of South Korean TV drama, the word thing was used in the media as a pathologizing way to describe young female fans who were ‘crazy’ about Korean related-things. The term thing, in this context, is shorten from thing-hu or the edge of ear lopes, a required length of haircut that public Thai high schools girls have to comply to. Countering this generalized view on fans, Mary Ainslie’s article on Thai fans of K-drama (2016) importantly highlights the use of Korean associations as a way for young Thai fans to assert their own sense of selves within the dominant Thai identity. To date, the term thing has been replaced by ‘dom’ or ‘fc’ which does not have such negative connotation. 

3.     It is important to note that since the 2014 coup d’état and the growing totalitarianism in Thailand, fandom has been associated with youth democratization movement and regional solidarity. The notable case is the #milkteaalliance, which started in 2020 in relation to a Thai boys’ love TV star, Vachirawit ‘Bright’ Chivaaree, who liked a tweet containing images of cityscapes in different places with the description indicating that Hong Kong is a country. This led to strong negative reactions from his mainland Chinese fans, and further criticism towards his girlfriend ‘New’ who, at some point, made a remark deemed unfavorable towards China on social media. As these stars faced intense situations, fans from Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan (places that commonly drink tea with milk) subsequently ‘united’ to express solidarity to Bright and New. The hashtag #milkteaalliance has since been used to show solidarity with those going through political struggles against repressive regimes (the subject which a Thai colleague Metaveevinij is working on). With the pandemic and public enquiries on the management of the situation and the vaccine procurement plan, there has also been demands by fans of film stars/celebrity figures to ‘call out’ and put pressure on the military-led government. Hence, the previous circumstance in which Thai stars rarely expressed political views for fear of losing their fan base has drastically changed. This development also coincides with the growing micro-celebrities via Facebook and TikTok whose political commentaries attract extensive fans/followers and sponsorship from pro-democracy brands. The relationship between media fans and activism also extends to different forms of participatory culture. Notable examples are the use of The Hunger Games’s (2012) three-finger salute and the use of the term ‘Parasite’ with and without a direct reference to the South Korean film to express discontent with the socio-political situations. 

: A photograph taken a university rally in 2020 before the Covid-19 pandemic to express discontent with the current repressive political regime. Many references to popular culture were used to express fannishness and solidary including the Hunger Games’s three-finger salute.

4.     Apart from these developments, there are many types of fan engagements in Thailand that would benefit further exploration and the exchange of frameworks with colleagues outside the country. In relation to Thai cinema, the Thai Film Archive has been doing great works in bringing inter-generational fans of legendary film stars together to celebrate anniversaries, discuss their memories, exhibit archival finds that could generate further research. In my brief exploration into fans of the 1960s Thai actor Mitr Chaibancha, I was made aware of many different fan groups who celebrated Mitr’s legacy in many ways. The figure of Mitr as a legendary national star resonates with Trinidad (2021) work that explores fan-star relations in the history of Filipino cinema that worth a cross-cultural exploration. In terms of historical transcultural fandom, prior to the phenomenon of Japanese and South Korean popular culture, the star-fan relations between Thailand and Hong Kong and Thailand and India is another large area to explore, along with reflections on inter-Asia cultural links via migration and film/media distribution networks. With the revival of classic films through online streaming platforms, conversations on long-term/former fans of various imported movies have also emerged.

Guests attending the ‘Mitr-Mythology’ exhibition at the Thai Film Archive. The legendary Thai actor Mitr Chaibancha (1934-1970) has extensive inter-generational fans who gathered annually to celebrate his life and work. The screen in the photograph projects footage from the star’s funeral, where hundreds of thousands gathered to mourn the death of their beloved star, who tragically fell from a helicopter while shooting the movie he also directed. The memory of the funeral has since been revisited in the film October Sonata (2009). There has also been various shrines set up with his statues. 

As media and film studies in Thailand are largely part of Communication Arts faculties (with the focus on practical side of things), there are a lot of room to grow fan studies (as well as critical studies of film/media/screen cultures itself), both in terms of supporting emerging scholars and bridging interested parties (including the growing network of cinephiles, artists, curators and critics) interested in the subject together.  

The house of one of Mitr’s long-term fans at Petchaburi’s province where Mitr came from. The owner turns his personal memorabilia into a mini exhibition for interested tourists

After completing her PhD from Aberystwyth University, Wales, Wikanda Promkhuntong joined the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia, Mahidol University, Thailand where she teaches in the Cultural Studies programme. She has published on auteur stars and their fans and different aspects of film cultures related to transnational East Asian cinema. In recent years, she has been exploring the subject of fan tourism/cinephile pilgrimage in relation to vernacular cultural memories and local/regional politics of space. Her engagement with fan studies is a hybrid between auteurs and fans, paratexts and palimpsests, digital engagements and physical cultural sites. 

Global Fandom Jamboree Conversation: Camillo Diaz Pino, Dima Issa and Wikanda Promkhuntong (part 2)

Camilo Diaz Pino

Round 3

Dima, I think your noting of the idea of “normalcy” is fundamental for our field to grapple with. Because while as investigators it is often incumbent on us to emphasize the “news” – that is to say, the novelty – of either the phenomena we are investigating or the angles we are investigating from, part of what I’ve been consistently impressed by in my own experiences looking at the Chilean and wider Latin American media landscape is precisely how normalized these diverse trajectories of media flow have become. And likewise, it is in instances such as these that what we might assume are idiosyncratic processes can be seen likewise as more “normalized”. I find your mentioning of  Grendizer’s popularity and use as a means of illustrating debate surrounding the Syrian war fascinating insofar as it corresponds with what I’ve seen as a terrible oversight in the dominant narratives surrounding anime’s broader global history. Namely, that anime’s circulation as a “cheap” alternative to animation from the US and Europe made it incredibly spreadable throughout the Global South (and beyond the Iron Curtain) to an extent that we could consider Japanese animation’s global, transnational circulation a precedent to a whole variety of contemporary media phenomena that are considered otherwise unprecedented.

From my own perspective as a scholar of anime’s global circulation in Latin America, I would be very interested to see and participate in more transversal scholarship that emphasizes anime’s global cultural impact before and outside its eventual integration with mainstream Anglo-American pop  culture. I see this as a line of investigation that, while not ignoring or downplaying Japanese animation’s  transnational ties with the Anglo-American sphere, can also speak to anime’s popular history from the imaginaries of the global south. 

To this end, and also in accordance with what you’ve touched on, Dima and Wikanda, I was also wondering if you could speak a bit to how the transnational nature of the media phenomena you study corresponds with other parameters of popular quotidianity. For example, while K-pop’s popularity in Chile has been discussed as a broadening of the popular imaginary breaking with certain Anglo/Eurocentric principles (I myself discuss this in my own work as mentioned above) there also something to be said about how such shifts intermingle with entrenched ideologies and demographic tensions.

As noted by Wonjung Min for instance (“Mis Chinos, Tus Chinos: The Orientalism of K-pop Fans”, International Communication Gazette, (83)8, 2021, 1-19) K-pop’s success in Chile, while broad, has done little to either minimize the exoticizing and/or othering of Korean Chileans, nor has it really affected the all-too common conflation of all East Asians in the region colloquially as “chinos” (Chinese).

Along similar lines, the integration of Turkish TV (Fig. 1) throughout Latin America, while indeed making many Chileans more interested in Turkish culture itself, has arguably only further confused things with regard to the broader population of Chileans with Middle-Eastern roots. As with the synecdoche conflating Chinese people with all East Asians, Middle Eastern people in Chile are often referred to universally as Turks – a confusion first created by a wave of Palestinian immigration that arrived in the country in the early 20th century bearing Turkish passports. As with your noting of Shakira as an unacknowledged Lebanese global icon Dima, I’m wondering where we may see the “limits” of the phenomena we are looking at, and how we can go about understanding, negotiating and integrating these into our perspectives of them?

Fig. 1 - Chilean ad for the Turkish drama Is it Fatmagul’s Fault? (2010)

References

Min W. “Mis Chinos, Tus Chinos: The Orientalism of K-pop Fans”, International Communication Gazette, (83)8, 2021, 1-19

Wikanda 

Camilo and Dima, I really enjoy learning about the Latin American and Arab contexts of media flow and fandom from your exchanges. I have limited knowledge on these geographies, except in certain areas of cinema that I came across via my work on transnational film reception and authorship (i.e. the reception of Indian and some Thai martial-art films in the Arab world or the shared situation of film festival funding for independent cinema in the case of Latin America.)

Camilo asked me about notions of cultural proximity and history that might have shaped the landscape of media flow in the context of Thailand. The areas of historical fandom and transnational media distribution should definitely be expanded more from research on Thai fandom which focus largely on the fan phenomenon of the day. I think the historical aspect and cultural proximity can be explored in terms of the cultural ties shaped by stages of political domination by various hegemonic powers. There are some interesting work that are related to this i.e. Thanes Wongyannava’s (2009) discussion of hybrid Italian food in Thailand and stages of cultural contact.

In the area of film and media distribution, scholars have begun exploring the localization of Indian films in Thailand through various methods. In the Cold War period, the first wave of Indian Films were dubbed with added local poetic style as well as political ideology (see Ingawanij 2012). The second wave emerged recently with the growth of digital TV. Interestingly the majority of content is highly curated by distributors with the exclusion of musical sequences and the selection of well-known religious myths and classical epics (see Suwansukhum 2018).

One of my students is currently looking at the import of Hong Kong films to Thailand and the mediated roles of dubbers in the 1990s in making these content nationalistic (changing the jokes and contexts in the films to the local ones). In the process, the dubbing can also reveal a kind of internal class resistance that responds to internal colonialism. In the case of diasporic Hong Kong media fans, the reception and appreciation of Hong Kong 1980s and 1990s stars has recently emerged via social media. This coincides with the circumstances of changing policy, economic success of the Chinese diaspora and cultural acceptance that led to the revisit of various subcultures.

A poster of the 1965 film Black Dragon, a Thai-Hong Kong co-produced film.

Through Camilo and Dima’s exchanges, I’d also like to reflect on something which has been in my mind. It is about the way fans of Japanese/Korean media I came across sometimes used their interests in Asian/Eastern popular culture (primarily Japanese, Korean, Chinese) and their desire to learn the associated languages and cultures to counter the frustration/limitation with the English language and Western ideologies. There seems to be a divide in the sense of self formed through the West (largely American cultural products) and the East (Japanese and Korean culture). Hence, there is almost a kind of personal chosen center(s) adopted to navigate one’s own identity. I like the quote Camilo mentioned from Hamid Dabashi. I think with the media landscape today, there are definitely coexisting multiple centers at once and the colonized world has been navigating it, not only from the macro political level but also the micro identity politics.

Dima, thank you for your reflection on mae-yok. I agree that the term allows us to expand from limited perceptions on fandom when thinking through English-language terms such as groupies. Your discussion of the case of the October 17 uprisings and the soundscape in Lebanon is fascinating! Apart from the borrowing of Japanese and American popular culture, the recent political movement in Thailand is also driven by music and performance arts. The band ‘Rap against Dictatorship’ is one of the leading groups which has been incredibly active in releasing their works and performing at rallies. Their single Prathet Ku Mee 🇹🇭 (My Country Has) was made inaccessible on YouTube if viewing from Thailand, but was later made available again, now with over 100 million views.

The band and their songs have also gained international recognition; receiving the 2019 Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent in Oslo. Responses through audience comments also reveal praises and solidarity from Myanmar, USA, India, Bhutan, Australia amongst many countries. Prathet Ku Mee’s music video, which reenacts a scene of a lynch mob, draws connections between the current struggle for democracy with the struggle by a collective of students, farmers and workers, which led to the 6 October 1976 massacre by the authoritarian government. Remnants of the Cold War soundscape also come back today with the military-led government releasing their own songs and commissioned new cover of old nationalistic tunes. This has led to mockery comments by netizens as well as the repercussions of deporting a long-term expatriate, a French singer/business owner who created a parody version of a junta song.  

On a final note, I’d like to make a point on the need to include the notions of the global south, inter-regional and cross-cultural links via media flow as part of Thai education. When I was growing up, kids learned to navigate English vocabulary in everyday names of things and Japanese culture with manga and animation. Yet, the school-level curriculum was (and still) highly nationalistic (shaped by the historical context of the country insistence on having never been colonalized, although various accounts have explored how Siam/Thailand was part of the colonial economy and adopted its own version of internal-colonialism led by the ruling class). Apart from the dominant nationalism, there is also a complex relation of positioning the global north of America and north Asia (Japan, Korea, China) at the center of cultural and ideological power when they are seen as the successful Other, which led to privilege and stereotypes. While there has been a media campaign of #realsizebeauty and #reallifebeauty, the ‘white’ skin beauty is still the standard promoted in commercials and celebrity culture, which shifted from the 1990s Thai-Western mixed look aka Luk khrueng to today’s ‘Japanese’ or ‘Korean look’. 

Upon entering Thailand at the Suvarnabhumi International Airport in 2017, the Korean Snail White whitening skin cream can be found greeting passengers.

Hence, in the context of Thailand, fandom for empowerment (through the appropriation of their objects of interest for identity negotiation and political expressions) also exists hand in hand with the trade and commerce targeting media audiences and fans that continue to reproduce certain problematic ideologies.

Dima

Camilo and Wikanda, I have really enjoyed these rounds of discussions, as they open up so many interesting topics that allow for a more transnational and cross-cultural understanding of fandom. At times these topics diverge, but quite often experiences seem quite similar. This ‘countering frustration’ with the English language and Western ideologies is something that you speak about Wikanda and is also something that I have found in my years of research. Funnily enough Camilo, my Master’s thesis was on Turkish soap operas and the lives of Arab diaspora in Doha and in Peoria, Illinois a, town in the US and so I just want to bring that up, because it touches upon some of the points you both made in the last round.

Firstly, Turkish soap operas were and are still popular across the Arab world and in my conversations with participants; I found that it was mostly because their plotlines appealed to more conservative audiences. This cultural proximity that you spoke about Wikanda was prevalent. The people I interviewed made references to the commonalities in culture and this focus on the family unit, whereas they saw Western soap operas as removed from quotidian experiences. I remember speaking with an eighteen-year-old girl, who was just starting college. As someone who was from a Muslim background, she was really struggling to position herself among the sorority college life of drinking and casual sex. So the soap operas allowed her to feel a sense of belonging that she otherwise did not feel in her environment. Another interesting example is when I spoke to two women from Armenian backgrounds who were fans of the Turkish soap operas, although as Armenians they harboured political tensions with Turkey. The women brought up the cinematography and framing of the landscape and how it reminded them of Armenia, something they felt was enjoyable to watch.

Main characters from one of the first Arabic-dubbed Turkish soap operas Noor (Gumus)

Secondly, even though a number of soap operas are produced in the Arab world, namely in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, they found the production quality of the Turkish soap operas were at a much higher standard. They were also impressed with the acting and the costumes. Thirdly, these soap operas are dubbed in the Syrian dialect, which made it appealing for pan-Arab viewers, since they felt the language was easy to understand and listen to.  

Camilo I also wanted to quickly touch on what you were saying regarding anime and how it is overlooked in much Western research. Anime was a huge part of our lives in the Arab world. I mostly grew up in Qatar and my husband grew up in Lebanon. Anime took over most of our afternoons after school. The shows were dubbed in Arabic and at times they were the only forms of animation we were exposed to and so I completely agree with the fact that they need to be given importance, especially in terms of cultural identity and global impact. Unfortunately, I don’t have much data regarding K-pop and its influence in Lebanon, since it is a relatively new phenomenon, but I do agree that it is something that should be looked into and researched. When my students talk about K-Pop it’s mostly contextualised within their general acquisition of popular culture, but there have been cases where they have used K-pop as signifiers to navigate certain gender and sexual dynamics.

 Navigating gender and sexuality through K-Pop 

Finally, I just wanted to clarify my point regarding Shakira. Shakira is definitely recognized as Lebanese and the Lebanese are proud of her accomplishments. However, unlike Fairouz she is not seen as a pan-Arab figure, most likely because she does not appeal to the more conservative audiences in the Arab world.

Global Fandom Jamboree Conversation: Camilo Diaz Pino, Dima Issa and Wikanda Promkhuntong: (part one)

Wikanda Promkhuntong:

I am thrilled to read Camilo Diaz Pino’s reflection on the Japanese media flows in Latin America. The situation very much resonates with the case in Thailand where Japanese popular culture has also become ‘the quotidian reality’. When I grew up in the 1980s-90s, the J-Wave hit the teen markets with shops of manga cartoons for rent in every city, along with dedicated TV programmes of Japanese cartoons and all kinds of merchandise. I remember that a group of high school friends traveled to an island to follow their favorite Japanese singers during their stay in Thailand with many stories to share at school. The phenomenon resonates with the growth of K-pop stars in recent years. 

What is interesting in the case of Japanese media flow is that this early fandom has evolved into everyday culture. Today, one can find modified/localized versions of Japanese food (sushi, Takoyaki, Japanese green tea) in local markets similar to the local version of French fries, steak and spaghetti. This localized dimension and the way American and Japanese popular cultural products exist alongside one another resonates with Camilo’s remark on the process of localization to the extent that audiences view the imported products on the same level as local media/pop culture. 

Old LPs and film posters of imported products that were popular in Thailand in the past, taken at Suksasom Museum, one of several collector-owned pop culture showrooms that opened to the public in the last two decades around the edge of Bangkok.

Captain America toy/decorative shield is amongst other everyday items that can be found at local night markets. Image taken at a Khon Kaen Night Market in Northeast of Thailand. 

The integration of imported media content and popular culture into dimensions of everyday life including political protests can also be found in the case of Thailand. This includes the use of the Thai version of Hamtaro manga series soundtrack by high school students in 2020 to protest the military-led government. The Thai lyrics of the manga was modified to address the exploitation of tax money while the gesture of a hamster running is adopted into a performative protest run. Another manga called One Piece and the South Korean film Parasite were also drawn on by protesters to criticize the position of elite groups who sided with the military-led government. One of the key figures that pushes for public dialogue on reforming the constitution and monarchy is a human rights lawyer currently under arrest. His performance and speech at a Harry Potter-themed protest is one of the widely-discussed moments of the Thai democratic movement in recent years. The street protests that took place in 2020 in Thailand were multicultural in nature similar to that in Chile with transgender groups, indigenous rights and feminist protesters alongside one another. While the mood and momentum of the protest has shifted with the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, local popular culture and imported ones remain the source for creative civic engagements amongst young people. 

Dima Issa’s opening statement on the fandom of Fairouz is also fascinating in many ways. The importance of Fairouz as a public figure reminds me of certain cases associated with fandom in the context of Thailand and Asia. With the growth of East Asian cinema in the global context, the figure of Wong Kar-wai has been the subject of my interest for several years. A number of fan works from different countries have revealed the impact of his films for a range of communities from pan-Asian artists, diasporic Chinese communities and those associated with the sense of alienation and loneliness in global cities. Around the 2010s when I was writing about Wong Kar-wai fans on YouTube, one of the most recurring types of videos found were mashups of sequences from his films with indie music tracks from bands based in the U.S., the UK and Europe revealing the kind of transnational taste homology. In other cases, the association with Wong Kar-wai evolved based on specific geographical contexts of fans. In Thailand, the period of time after the coup when the military was drafting a new constitution and postponed the general election, the term kra-tum-kwam-wong or doing Wong was adopted to describe the mood and feeling of being in a Wong Kar-wai universe with cyclical time and uncertain future. A Facebook page with the same name was created with the mood shifting from expressing individual loneliness through photographs in sepia tone or saturated colors and dim lighting to expressing political discontent.

A pre-screening talk discussing kra-tum-kwam-wong at House cinema in Bangkok before the sold-out screening of the 4K re-release of Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love.

The sense of occupying different spaces and in-betweenness that Dima mentioned also resonates with a recent revisit of Wong’s film texts by a group of artists in Australia through an online stage performance ‘In the Mood: A love letter to Wong Kar-Wai & Hong Kong’ which weaves together the themes of cultural heritage and ‘ancestral homeland’ and the sense of longing and intimacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Affective fandom can stretch across times and spaces, as Dima mentioned in terms of the visit to Fairouz’s home by French President Macron after the port explosion in Beirut. In recent years, I have also delved into the subject of auteur, cinephile and fan pilgrimage which centers on the idea of affective engagements and socio-cultural implications of specific star-auteurs over time. The cross-over subjects of fans, stars and public memory is fascinating, particularly in the era where the past can be collectively retold and reshaped much easier than before.

Camilo Diaz Pino

Thank you Wikanda and Dima for this glimpse into your work and the overall areas of investigation you have been delving into! I’m struck by the many continuities and parallels our perspectives share across the sites we’ve been looking at. Most of all, I’m interested in talking about the ways in which the particular “objects” of fandom mentioned have been contested and/or mobilized within the wider movements, conflicts, and cultural contexts we’ve been looking into. Dima, as the investigation you cover focusses in particular on the work and public presence of a singular artist/persona, I was wondering if you could speak a little more into how Fairouz’s fandom has been negotiated by the political/cultural actors you’ve been looking at? That is to say, given her quotidian pervasiveness, how exactly are different agendas and groups ‘claiming’ Fairuz and her work as their own? Similarly, What rhetorical angles and justifications are given for their claims over her? Do you see some groups as having more of a legitimate claim than others? I ask these questions because I find your description of Fairouz’s impact in the Lebanese and wider Arab diaspora’s cultural/political landscape fascinating for the ways in which it appears to be significant cultural object of political/discursive identification and consolidation, and yet similarly “up for grabs” as it were by virtue of her widespread adoration and quotidianity. I am compelled to think in your description about the ways in which, during the 1970s, 80s and Early 90s, Latin American dissidents were suddenly turned into a transnational diaspora by the wave of CIA-backed dictatorships that overtook the region. During this time, the work of exiled, assassinated, and otherwise censored popular and folk music artists such as Mercedes Sosa (Fig. 1), Inti-Illimani, Victor Jara (Fig. 2) and Silvio Rodriguez were shared as common currency by dissident diasporic communities from Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, among others. Even with the return of formal democracy to much of the region in the 1980s and 90s, love of these artists’ carries with it a distinct political fingerprint that cannot so easily be claimed by those not visibly affiliated with Latin American leftist circles. This is true to such an extent that even covering or collaborating with these artists demarcates affiliations that are just as much political as cultural (see for instance Shakira’s duet with Mercedes Sosa, covering a song by Silvio Rodriguez in 2008: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxzPPQvHIZo). Given this situation in Latin America, I’m fascinated by the very different, but related scenario you describe, and the relative polysemy you identify with respect to Fairouz.

Fig. 1: “Google Doodle” paying homage to Mercedes Sosa, 31 January 2019

Fig. 2: Homage to Victor Jara in leftist Chilean Street art

Wikanda, thank you for speaking to such distinct and concrete points of affinity with regard to our research agendas and the objects, behaviors and movements we are looking at! I’m particularly interested in the ways in which you describe how these cultural objects/commodities from Japan and Korea have become aspects of everyday popular culture in Thailand, as well as how they have been so pointedly mobilized as aspects of locally-oriented activism. I wonder to what extent the negotiations and friction (to borrow the term as conceptualized by Anna Tsing) involved in such flows and processes of transculturation are affected by notions of cultural proximity and history. With regard to the Latin American context for instance, part of what I’ve been trying to highlight in my own work is the growth of an increasingly multi-polar transnational media landscape in the region. While certainly still existing within the parameters of a global neoliberal system predominated by Anglo-American actors, the interaction of media vendors and distributors who operate at a “secondary” level in the global media market has made it so that Latin America has in the lat 30 or so years experienced an explosive level of cultural exchange, interaction and hybridity with regard to the flow of cultural commodities and their integration into local popular imaginaries. By this point I would indeed argue that Latin America’s quotidian media landscape is far more cosmopolitan than that of the still relatively insular and largely “self-sustained” Anglo-American cultural landscape. To reiterate and recontextualize Hamid Dabashi’s eloquent observations with regard to the effects of colonialism on the wider world, subjects in the colonized world

[...] grew up compelled to learn the language and culture of our colonial interlocutors. These interlocutors have never had any reason to reciprocate. They had become provincial in their assumptions of universality. We had become universal under the colonial duress that had sought to provincialise us. (Dabashi, “Fuck You Žižek!”, https://artafricamagazine.org/fuck-you-zizek/).

It is with these asymmetric relationships in mind – those that allow and oblige the margins to be well aware of the center while the center can choose to ignore the margins – that quotidian meaning-making becomes so important to take into account when attempting to grapple with how neoliberal globalization has both cemented and exploded these dynamics. The question that I keep coming back to however is what supposed margins (and aspiring “centers”) make of each other when compelled (for whatever reason) to interact amongst themselves?

I’m curious to what extent comparable levels of cultural interaction, hybridity and syncretism are at play in Thai experiences with the media imports you mention. Because while I imagine Thailand must surely share many continuities with other South-East Asian states with regard to the influence of Japanese, Korean and Chinese actors, it has also undergone an entirely unique history with the European colonial project and its continuities in the contemporary global landscape. As such, there is probably much to be said about how processes and effects of media globalization have manifested there.

References

Sosa M, and Shakira, “La Maza” Concierto ALAS, 16 September 2008 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxzPPQvHIZo

​​Dabashi H. “Fuck You Žižek!” Art Africa

https://artafricamagazine.org/fuck-you-zizek/

Dima Issa

Round 2

Camilo and Wikanda, I really enjoyed reading both of your statements, they open a number of trajectories that tackle fandom identity and positioning amidst ‘glocalised’ dynamics.

Camilo, your research on Japanese cartoon media flows is so relevant especially with the increasing diversity of media content that is shifting from ‘Western’ dominance, or media imperialism. Your discussion on Dragonball 2 in context with a collective political agenda reminded me of the use of the animated show Grendizer[1] (an anime character popular in the 1980s and 1990s) to narrate the struggles of the Syrian war[2], further research on this has been done by Omar Ghazzi, who looks at the shows as a form of ‘nostalgic defiance’[3]. 

Grendizer

This appropriation of anime to tackle and understand events that deviate from the banality of the quotidian, such as times of war and violence, but at the same time, the way these texts have ‘integrated into Chile’s popular imagery’ and the way they ‘comingle and coexist’ provides an almost paradoxical dichotomy that showcases the ways in which fandom allows for a sense of comforting normalcy. These ‘intimate’ understandings of texts are essentially affective, drawing on individual and collective interpretations that are intergenerational.

Your discussion on K-pop really struck a chord with me (no pun intended). I have been lecturing in Lebanon for almost ten years now and the number of students who are obsessed with K-pop is increasing exponentially. It was mostly evident in my race, gender and sexuality class, where students looked at K-pop as a lens through which to explore and understand sexuality. The presence of these transnational groups provides for a different understanding of sexuality that moves beyond Western perspectives and allows for a less invasive and polarizing definition of sexuality that students from younger generations can identify with.

Just to quickly answer your questions Camilo, with regards to Fairouz and her music, this negotiation of meaning is very dependent on the political groups that listen to her. Through her music and her sheltered persona, Fairouz is able to straddle multiple political and cultural identities, because she has not affiliated herself to just one ideology. Her stance on Palestine is a key constituent and places her at the helm of understanding ‘Arabness’, but even then she never explicitly mentions the Palestinians by name, so her listeners are able to interpret her songs freely. As a ‘figure’, Fairouz takes on multiple meanings. There is a fluidity to her songs, which allows for a relationship with various vantage points.  It is also interesting that you mention Shakira, because I discussed her in my PhD thesis. There is an article by Maria Elena Cepeda, who talks about Shakira as a ‘transnational citizen’ who exudes ‘Latinadad’, allowing for South American diasporic audiences to connect with her. It is significant to note that while Shakira is half Lebanese, she is not seen as an ‘Arab’ singer. Obviously, this may be for many reasons, from generational to ideological, but it brings to the forefront this notion of identification and representation in forms of fandom that are founded in culture and beliefs.

Screengrab of Shakira from her halftime show (via https://www.arabamerica.com/shakira-personifies-a-multicultural-identity-in-a-globalized-world)

Wikanda you have given such wonderful insight into different types of research going on in Thailand. I especially loved your explanation on the terminology used among fans, creating this sense of ‘solidarity’ among them. I also found the definition of ‘mae-yok’ extremely interesting in terms of gender politics and the way music fandom translates according to culture. Initially, I thought you were talking about what the Western world would call ‘groupies’, but the maternal and nurturing attributes assigned to the term highlights this shift in understanding forms of fandom that move away from the sexual implications associated with ‘groupies’. The ways in which ‘mae-yok’ are depicted as supportive and cognizant of talents is almost selfless.  It is also interesting to see how fandom is linked to ‘youth democratization and regional solidarity’ and the utilization of the ‘#milkteaalliance’ hashtag to draw supporters. I found that not only fascinating, but incredibly witty of the youth who organized and put that together. It also brings to surface notions of inclusivity versus exclusivity in fandom, especially with the involvement of politics.  In Lebanon, music played a huge role during the October 17 uprisings and the soundscapes heard across the country. This was significant on a number of levels. Firstly, older music by more classical artists were sampled, mashed up and juxtaposed by activists on social media platforms and by DJs on the streets during the protests. These were younger perspectives on notions of identity that at times deviated from those of older generations. The biggest example is when the local Lebanese death metal band Kimarea covered a famous Lebanese song by Majida Al Roumi, ‘Beirut Set El Donya’[4], (written by Nizar Qabbani), causing controversy among Al Roumi’s management and fans who were appalled by what they labeled a ‘blasphemous’ take on the song with its ‘death metal fundamentals’. These sonic disputes highlight themes revolving around nationhood and its representations among different generations of fans. Secondly, the soundscapes during the uprisings were also contested, further showcasing the lack of ‘unity’ among the protesters. As a country divided on so many religious, political and ideological fronts, Lebanon is unable to unite under a common narrative and the way that this is evident, is by exploring the ways in which various forms of fandom intersect, collide and oppose each other.    

Death metal band Kimeara featuring Cheryl Khairallah performing “Ya Beirut”

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibaeQieYFdo

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36884058

[3] Al-Ghazzi, O. (2018). Grendizer leaves for Sweden: Japanese anime nostalgia on Syrian social media. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 11(1), 52-71.

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc2OmHp5V9U

 Gk

Global Fandom: Dima Issa (Lebanon)

Fairouz street art in Beirut

The thing with Fairouz is that you can never really pinpoint the exact moment in time when you become a fan of her work. She seems to have always been there, lurking in the shadows of your morning coffee, or on the radio as you commute through the streets of Beirut or blaring from the old transistor your dad used to listen to during the war that has miraculously found its way unscathed to the kitchen of your house. In whatever way, Fairouz has always been part of your life as an Arab, whether you were conscious of her presence or not. Although my research has primarily focused on Arab diasporic responses to Fairouz and her music, her impact and relevance within Lebanese households and across social media platforms cannot be ignored and must be discussed before delving into her role as an icon among broader Arab audiences. 

Image 2: French president Emmanuel Macaron meeting with Fairouz at her home after the Beirut port explosion. Photograph: Soazig de la Moissonniere / Présidence de la République

 After the Port Explosion in Beirut on 4 August 2020, which killed over 200 people and displaced thousands, French President Emmanuel Macaron paid a visit to Lebanon, already reeling from years of corruption and political turmoil. One of the first places he went to was Fairouz’ home[1] where he bestowed upon the singer France’s highest award, the Legion of Honour. Social media was aflutter with images of the visit, mostly because of the rare sighting of Fairouz, who is known to be elusive and private. Macaron’s visit was no accident, as he relayed to the press the symbolism of Fairouz for France and what she represented to the former colonizer, the so called ‘golden era’ of Lebanon, which was flourishing, economically, socially and culturally. 

 It is important here to turn to John Fiske’s concept of the ‘figure’. According to Fiske (1994), a ‘figure’ is a ‘human simulacrum’ (p. 68). It is the notion that certain people transform into ‘hyperreal’ versions of themselves (Fiske, 1994, p. 69). As a ‘figure’, Fairouz possesses ‘infinitely reproducible signifiers’ (Ibid.), which can be interpreted by her fans and non-fans alike in various forms. Those ‘signifiers’ are based on ‘historical fortuitousness’, but are not necessarily produced solely through the actions of the ‘figure’ (Ibid., p. 72). As Fiske (1994) argues, ‘the body of the individual is comparatively powerless in determining the way he or she is to be figured’ (p. 71). Although it can be argued that Fairouz’ ‘figure’ was one which was strategically created and produced by her writing, management and production team, she has transcended beyond those constructs through the versatile reception of her music and also by the ‘social structures and cultural practices’ of a ‘participatory culture’ (Jenkins, 2019)[2].

Fairouz has never meant only one thing. The best example of this is the ability of a politically polarized country like Lebanon to appropriate her music equally with each party claiming her songs as their own. In addition, and through my research among members of the Arab diaspora, Fairouz as a ‘figure’ signifies a range of things that move beyond her nationality as a Lebanese singer. Linking this with Walter Benjamin’s (1935) concept of ‘aura’ is important here. Benjamin asserts that due to the development of mechanical reproduction technology, works of art have lost their ‘aura’ because they are no longer experienced in the physical and temporal environments that are encapsulated in. However, I argue, through the framework of fandom and with the increase of visibility and availability, the ‘aura’ of Fairouz takes on different forms and is strengthened among her listeners in the diasporic community, away from the environment in which she is commonly associated with. In other words, Fairouz is not only significant in Lebanon, but her ‘aura’ is fortified in spatio-temporal settings that move beyond the borders of Lebanon.

Image of the port after the explosion alongside a statue showcasing a Lebanese immigrant

A poster of Fairouz by artist Achraf Amiri seen on the streets of London

 With the expansion of social networking sites and the increase of content creation among users coupled with the uprisings and revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa, since January 2011, Fairouz, her music and her videos, have gained diverse contextual visibility. At the onset of the uprisings in January 2011, I was a graduate student at the University of Southern California. Geographically distant from Tahrir Square and Sidi Bouzid, I spent a lot of time consuming news sites, contacting friends, and trying to access any information I could find.  It was my Facebook page that mostly caught my attention and specifically the newsfeed, which was decorated with Fairouz images, lyrics and songs. Videos of the protests from around the Arab world were edited, using her songs as the audio track. Scenes from some of her plays were also uploaded, as were verses from her songs.

Regardless of the format, the presence of Fairouz as an aural and visual narrator at such a pivotal moment in the Arab world is significant. Although her songs about patriotism and resistance are decades old, fandom in this context needs to be seen as what Tarik Sabry (2012) calls ‘territorialisation’ and ‘deterritorialisation’. It is the ability of Fairouz to ‘dislocate’ from a certain ‘discourse’ and to occupy another (2012, p. 13). It is a way in which through fandom, Fairouz can shape shift to take on new contexts and exert new meanings. It can be argued that this fluidity Fairouz possesses is catalysed through her ability to create and occupy affective space. For Tomkins (1982), affect is the ‘primary innate motivating mechanism’ in the human body (in Scherer & Ekman, 2009, p. 163). It is the instigator, which triggers a consequent response in the ‘midst of inbetween-ness’ (Gregg & Seigworth, 2010, p. 1; emphasis in original). In parallel, this ‘inbetween-ness’ gives way for the affective-ness of Fairouz, the voice of familiarity, to take shape, since it is dependent on socio-political, cultural and economic dynamics.  

 During the October 17 2019, uprisings in Lebanon and after the August 4 2020, port explosion, it was Fairouz who provided the soundtrack to cater to the helplessness of the situation, while also providing the voice of hope. This is an affective form of fandom. Similar to the way in which superheroes are called on in times of distress, Fairouz is there with her nostalgic melodies fighting for accountability of those in power and describing a more peaceful time. It is as Ahmed (2004) writes an ‘affect of the circulation between objects and signs’ (p. 120). This ‘circulation’ of ‘signs’ allows for the ‘aura’ to ‘dislocate’, creating a ‘figure’ of Fairouz that is malleable and discursive.

 Fairouz has been around even before newer technologies took over soundscapes, her music has been remixed and reworked for years in nightclubs, bars and sound studios across the world. However, newer technologies have given opportunities for her music to be shared and appropriated to a wider generational and globalised audience. Talking with communities that varied nationally, spiritually, circumstantially gender and circumstance, themes of identity and social positioning showcased how Fairouz was able to transgress boundaries of nation, religion and political affiliation to create space that was affective and accessible to her listeners and fans. 

 Although these new technologies allows for Fairouz to centrifugally navigate across a spectrum of audiences, it can be argued that her music also operates at a centripetal level, especially in discussions with diasporic audiences. Drawing on Heidegger’s concepts of ‘Worldliness’, as a ‘totality in which media is constituent’ and an ‘ontological experience of being-in-the-world’ and ‘equipment’, as an order of examining ‘the total system of equipment and practices which gives sense to…Worldliness’, Sabry and Mansour (2019) explore how, through ‘equipment’, such as media technologies and programming, children are able to ‘extend’ the ‘spatial, the temporal and the imagination’ (Sabry & Mansour, 2019, p. 99). Using these notions of ‘Worldliness’ and equipment, it can be argued that Fairouz offers such an extension. As equipment, Fairouz is the soundscape of ‘being-in-the-world’, but also she is able to transport audiences spatially as well as temporally, she is a reversion back to ‘Worldliness’ through an acknowledgement of its existence in its current form, an almost paradoxical inward globalisation that her audiences refer back to through affective fandom.

References

Ahmed, S. (2004a). ‘Affective Economies’. Social Text, 22(2), 117 – 139.

Benjamin, W. (1935). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Retrieved on 2 May 2011, from http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Fiske, J. (1994). Media Matters: Everyday Culture and Political Change. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. 

Gregg M. & Seigworth, G. (2010). ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’. In Gregg M. & Seigworth, G. (Eds.), The Affect Theory Reader (pp. 1 – 25). USA: Duke University Press.

Jenkins, H. (2019, September 4). Back to School Special: Fandom, Participatory Culture and Web 2.0. Confessions of an ACA-Fan. Retrieved on 4 September 2021, from http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2019/8/28/back-to-school-special-fandom-participatory-culture-and-web-20-h66e3

Sabry, T. (2012). ‘Arab Cultural Studies: Between ‘Reterritorialisation’ and ‘Deterritorialisation’’. In Sabry, T. (Ed.), Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field (pp. 1 – 31). London, New York: IB Tauris 

Sabry, T. & Mansour, N. (2019). Children and Screen Media In Changing Arab Contexts: An Ethnographic Perspective. London: Palgrave.

Tomkins, S. (1982). ‘Affect Theory’. In Scherer, K. & Ekman, P. (Eds.) (2009), Approaches to Emotion (pp. 163 – 194). USA: Psychology Press.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/01/emmanuel-macron-visits-lebanese-singer-fairouz-in-bid-to-change-political-soundtrack

[2] http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2019/8/28/back-to-school-special-fandom-participatory-culture-and-web-20-h66e3

Global Fandom: Camilo Diaz Pino (Chile/New Zealand)

My interest in fan studies in particular first came from necessity: I was trying to understand the industrial impact of Japanese cartoon media flows in Latin America’s media production cultures. I had for a while been able to get a good read of these dynamics as they applied to the Anglo-American and European mediascapes by looking at a combination of industrial phenomena and lay media discussions, as well as through textual analyses of Western creative works influenced by Japanese and other East Asian media. When it came to the impact of similar flows of Asian media in Latin American popular cultures however, audience and fan dynamics suddenly became much more central to the discussion. Most of what I wanted to understand was happening away from the “mediated center” (to borrow Nick Couldry’s terminology - Media Rituals: A Critical Approach , London, Routledge, 2003, pp.41) represented by media industries, news coverage and the emergence of anime-influenced Western works. Anime and Japanese media were indeed having a tangible impact in Latin America’s popular spheres, but this influence was largely latent, and was only legible visible through a different perspective. 

While Latin America’s “otaku” Japanophile fan communities were active in similar ways to those embedded in the Anglo-American popular sphere, there was also a different, wider ¾ and to my mind more pervasive ¾ set of transcultural influences at play. I came to see the dominant analytical frameworks of transnational Japanese media fandom, entrenched as they have been in Anglo-American (and European) understandings, as inadequate for understanding the artform’s impact in Latin America. This was for two primary reasons. The first is concerned with the fact that Japanese media fandom in the Anglo-American sphere necessarily occurs within the wider landscape of the latter’s extraordinary insularity and solipsism. The importation of media from other languages and cultures is an exception in the Anglo-American mediascape, rather than the quotidian reality it represents in Latin America ¾ and the majority of the rest of the world for that matter. Anglo-American (and to a lesser extent, European) anime fans have historically been marked as engaging with objects seen as distinctly foreign, exotic, and often esoteric and/or even transgressive, even as they are often infantilized in their association with cartoon cultures. While Latin American Japanophile media fandoms do share some similar histories in this regard, they are also engaging with media that exists in a field in which foreign media imports are ubiquitous, even and especially now from the wider Asian mediascape, with anime currently coexisting in Latin America alongside Korean and Turkish TV dramas, Indian films, and of course K-pop, which for its part may be seen as having a longer popular history here than in the English-speaking world (For some more detailed discussion of this, see Min W, Jin DY, Han B, “Transcultural fandom of the Korean Wave in Latin America: through the lens of cultural intimacy and affinity space”, Media, Culture & Society. 2019, 41:5, 604-619).

The second factor involves the role of standardized language in Latin America’s (Spanish speaking) mediascape itself. Despite incorporating a variety of national and regional dialects, Latin America’s Spanish-speaking countries are pervaded by a standardized form of neutralized Spanish that is ultimately placeless, belonging only to the wider region’s media itself. This is the language of the vast majority of locally produced TV, radio, and film content aimed at a regional audience, as well as that of the region’s multiple capitals of media importation, redistribution, and dubbing ¾ a process itself which virtually all media undergoes when imported to Latin America through official channels. This process thus has two notable consequences, on the one hand making it so that anime feels less distinctly “foreign” to audiences (not just being spoken in Spanish, but a Spanish that feels like it could be from anywhere in Latin America given its neutrality), but also less distinct from media imported from other countries as well. After all, the same person voicing any given anime character may just as easily be heard as the voice of a Western cartoon character, or even live-action TV shows and films dubbed for Spanish audiences.

The dimensions of Asian media fandom in Latin America I was looking at then were not those of the Japanophile, “otaku”, or even necessarily people who would identify themselves as fans strictly speaking. Rather, I found myself interested primarily in the types of latent social affective relationships people have with media that occur in communal quotidian life ¾ common cultural references, familiar narratives, and shared verbal and iconographic lexicons. For me, what was interesting about anime’s fandom in Latin American popular cultures then was how anime characters, narratives and other references were so easily integrated into both popular culture and “ownership” as it were, to the extent that, for example, any given soccer team merch  sold on street corners (non-official of course) may just as well include Pikachu or Goku as Homer Simpson or Spider-Man (Fig. 1). This syncretic “flattening” of anime alongside Western media into popular control may also certainly be seen in Anglo-American popular culture as well, but Latin American audiences did it earlier, and more integrally. My mother’s family, including her parents and adult brothers, would gather together every Sunday during the original Chilean run of Heidi, Girl of the Alps (Arupusu no Shōjo Haiji) in the late 1970s. And this was not exceptional. Heidi and its anime contemporaries were often seen as appointment television, understood both by distributors and the public at large to exist on the same level as any local telenovela. 

Quotidian dynamics such as these often elide the boundaries of fandom as it is often studied ¾ particularly when discussing media such as anime, which is so often discussed as a disruptive influence, whether it be to dominant media flows (to use the term as coined by Daya Thussu – “Mapping global media flow and contra-flow”, in Daya Thussu (ed.) Media on the move: Global flow and contra-Flow, 2007, London, England: Routledge. 11–32), the “centrality” of Western culture and industries, or as a boogeyman exposing Western children to different standards of violence, sex, and/or sexuality. They can be difficult to study, because their impact is often latent, with the depth of their influence only becoming visible when they are called upon to consolidate wider cultural identities and agendas. My last two publications (“Weaponizing collective energy: Dragon Ball Z in the anti-neoliberal Chilean protest movement”, Popular Communication, 2019, 17:3, 202-218 and “K-pop is Rupturing Chilean Society”: Fighting With Globalized Objects in Localized Conflicts, Communication, Culture and Critique, 2021, tcab047) focused precisely on the latent dimension of Asian media’s integration into Latin American (specifically Chilean) popular imaginaries, and how these are evoked. Both dealt with the ways in which Asian media integrated anti-neoliberal activism in the last decade. In the first case study I looked at how a massive 2011 student-led protest demanding an end to the Chile’s educational privatization used a climactic moment from the anime series Dragon Ball Z to narrativize the collective political agenda and add an element of nostalgic play to the event (Fig. 2).

What was most notable to me about this particular performance was how it both expected and received widespread popular recognition of a very specific narrative moment in this show, which may have indeed been popular worldwide, but which was also clearly intimately understood by the wider Chilean popular sphere to the same extent that something like Star Wars would be in the US. To me this evidenced the depth of this texts’ integration into Chile’s popular imaginary, and by extension the extent to which it can now be seen to “belong” to these popular subjects. My second and most recent work on this topic focusses on the ways in which, in the face of continued and even more wide spread anti-neoliberal dissidence, the Chilean government attempted to externalize the issue and blame Chile’s social rupturing on K-pop as a foreign entity, only to face both widespread mockery and the appropriation of K-pop as a symbol of Chile’s vast, syncretic activist movement. This movement for its part has grown rapidly to embody not only anti-neoliberal reforms, but also incorporates long-overdue feminist, transgender, and indigenous rights agendas. By assuming popular ownership of K-pop music and idols alongside such figures as Pikachu, “Pareman” and “Stupid Sexy Spider-Man” (look him up, he’s great), Chile’s activists are again demonstrating not only the extent to which these objects coexist and comingle in the wider imaginary, but also the ways in which their popular significance is something that can (and should) be participatory in nature, just as much a “collective” resource as ones being debated in the political realm (Fig. 3). 

Camilo Díaz Pino is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Media at West Chester University. He holds a BA and MA from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His research interests include peripheral media flows, activist cultures of the Global South, transperipheral cultural hybridity, emergent production cultures, kids media, and cartoon cultures. His current book project focuses on Japanese media’s history to and throughout Latin America, and how these flows have influenced Asian media’s wider cultural presence in the region’s contemporary popular culture.

Global Fandom Jamboree Conversation: Clara Cisneros Hernández (Mexico) and Pablo Escandón Montenegro (Ecuador) (Round Two)

Replay 

Pablo Escandón Montenegro - Quito, Ecuador

The Mexican and Ecuadorian communities show similarities regarding their dynamics, since the calls to action have to do with corporate proposals, that is, to reinforce or grow the community itself and its activities, but not as proposals to follow a thematic or discursive line in which its own members can deepen or develop as individual subjects, since in this way, they generate competition or rivalry between digital spaces and their administrators.

The use they make of the different media and platforms is limited, since they are exclusively centralized on Facebook and do not have web spaces, but their activity address is the fan page. From there the administrator proposes topics and activities, which makes their Followers participate to some extent. The fandom culture is not so free and is completely nucleated by administrators, who work under a traditional media publishing logic, since digital culture is important for the dissemination of content, but not for the creation and cohesion of new audiences.

In this sense, the generational difference in the use of platforms is decisive, since with them the intentions of control and administration of content and knowledge between members can be seen, which does not prevent the exchange of knowledge, but does limit the initiative to build new complementary spaces that converge in the centralized one.

Replay – Round 2

Clara Cisneros Hernández – Mexico City

It can be affirmed that the participation in social networks of followers and fans of both Ecuador and Mexico for select niches, have managed to preserve these virtual spaces in order to share affinities, as well as learning about cultural and media content. The digital public space on ocial networks such as Facebook, summon similar profiles that find convergence from a reinforcement of value systems and recreational motivators.

In the case of Mexico’s La Frikiplaza, applied advertising maintains a huge interest in preserving the flow of users in its networks. Therefore, the segmentation of themes has always had as a target audience various social groups such as gamers, otakus (fans of products derived from Japanese culture), geeks (people who focus their interest on technology and digital devices) , cosplayers (subjects dedicated to the creation and use of costumes for the representation of fictional narrative characters) as well as fans of the Asian music industry and collectors of any plurality of consumer goods from the global content industry.

As described, this legitimized space seeks to reinforce the links and interests of the user, without neglecting effective solutions to make visits to the site, as a necessary variant to stimulate commitment and broaden the spectrum of commercial transactions, which is why the administrators direct their advertising to praise the consumer goods attached to the square.

 Another motivator to keep users encouraged to visit is the offer of free workshops open to the public — for example, sessions to practice the illustration of various visual styles or the teaching of basic levels in the interpretation of languages, as well such as the organization of cultural events with media figures, or the realization of tributes to authors of the popular content industry. In the same way, this space gratifies and grants a space for the relief of social practices, through contests aimed at gamers, cosplayers and choreographic groups, as well as amateur karaoke singers, among others, that manage to encourage free competition, formats cooperation and recreation.

In conclusion, in Mexico it is observed that the practices of followers and fans, specify the social affinities online that, transform the captive socio-cultural exchange in digital activity, are transferred to a landscape of physical social interaction in a very similar way to Ecuadorian photography groups on social networks, which have taken advantage of the Facebook group space to establish learning communities that also manage to break the virtual barrier from coexistence in guided tours of the city of Quito, as previously explained.

In both countries, despite the difference in practices and interest in hobbies, proactive and recreational interaction has been achieved beyond the social environment, giving space to the manifestation of artistic practices in a collective and collaborative way (online and offline) that enable creative expression, knowledge enhancement, and personal transformation.

Global Fandom Jamboree Conversation: Clara Cisneros Hernández (Mexico) and Pablo Escandón Montenegro (Ecuador) (Round One)

Replay 

Pablo Escandón Montenegro - Quito, Ecuador

The fandom culture, who participate in the creation, transformation and dissemination of cultural or media content, in Ecuador is completely linked to the participation of users who contribute to social memory with their knowledge and life stories around the possession of a photograph, knowledge of the scene or the recovery of material that becomes patrimonial, when valued by users.

In social media, mainly on Facebook, there are more than twenty spaces dedicated to the recovery and dissemination of old, historical and everyday photographs and images, which are shared on the pages created for this purpose. On more than one occasion, the same image has recirculated between several pages, because those who make up the community of that digital space, also integrate the others and consider that this contribution should circulate between the different pages in which they are registered and actively participate.

Digital communities, such as Cita con la Memoria, a fan page with restricted access, and managed by a university professor of more than 60 years from the city of Portoviejo, on the country's coast, and the Quito fan page Quito de aldea a ciudad, a free access page, managed by a retired high school teacher of more than 60 years, maintain an authority structure. The administrator is the one who authorizes, guides and promotes user conversations through questions about graphic content.

User participation is relatively frequent. Once the characters or locations of the city are identified, mainly, users stop contributing, and administrators do not generate more comment to revitalize contributions; then they generate a new publication, with the same dynamics.

It is important that the photographs and graphic resources disseminated in these spaces attract the attention of users, who not only share in other groups, but also, in many cases, redefine the graphic document with colorization, if the photograph is black and white, or they tell anecdotes that are related to the official story but delve into the stories lived by the users, or they recover the collective memory, with allusions to stories told by grandparents or relatives.

In this way, the Facebook space becomes a mini learning room about the daily history of a city, its people and the families that are still summoned from the anecdotes in common.

It is important to highlight that Cita con la Memoria, being a restricted group, has a participation of older adult users, on average; while Quito de aldea a ciudad has convened various age groups, since it also promotes guided tours of the city of Quito, with non-tourist circuits, which generates family interest beyond participation in the social environment.

In this way, the communities provide unofficial information about events, people and places that make up the past of Quito and Portoviejo.

Replay – Round 1 

Clara Cisneros Hernández – Mexico City

The communities of followers and fans online for the Mexican Republic, working in a very similar way to how it is assigned in Quito, formalize in social networks a useful and indispensable tool in the dissemination and promotion of virtual spaces for public use that have allowed the linking social and identity affinities in parallel to processes of creation, recreation, socialization and consumption.

Specifically, La Finisterra as a group of researchers dedicated to the creative industries in Mexico City have followed up on the public urban space recognized as the Frikiplaza, a specialized commercial area that, for more than fifteen years, has been positioned as a place of mercantile activations open to the general public in more than 20 states of the country, where young Mexicans meet to share multiple interests and hobbies, enabling the construction of identity values ​​and rituals that consumers adapt to their daily lives.

With the arrival of the pandemic and after the closure and subsequent reopening of public venues, Frikiplaza has given priority to maintaining niches of consumption, identities and cultural processes based on management of various activations in social networks. The physical space expanded to the virtual environment, giving rise to the extension of the identity experience.

Facebook and Instagram are established as the most confluent social networks in the area that, through the use of advertising and marketing models, have allowed the expansion of symbolic systems established as buying and selling models, based on sectors such as video games, animation, comics, music, film and television industries, among others, which provide various commercial supply-demand paths.

In this way, the commercial area is extended to promote a virtual comnunities, where the organizational administrators of the Frikiplaza encourage feedback, providing a continuous communication channel with young consumers between 10 and 35 years old. In their daily activity of expression on these platforms, they help to provide reaction analytics within topics of interest among hobbies and products disclosed by the merchants of their structure. Due to this organizational scheme, the administrators manage to obtain immediate answers to resolve the needs of each of the confluent social groups of the campus. In this way the "collective physical space" breaks limits and is dimensioned as a "virtual public space" that is kept supplied from the advertising application.

Young people prevail as catalyst agents of recreation that carry out the appropriation of symbolic systems in the practice of consumption and socialization,. Decanted through their hobbies, these participants will arrive at a format of convergence of cultures, fostering a space of multicultural convergence. The means of communication, therefore, in the virtual space is triggered by advertising directed at multiple confluent niches, where individual consumers in a dynamic flow re-signify and adopt culturally. In this phenomenon, users and fans in turn can generate a confrontation in consideration of their own culture, where it could be rejected, hybridized or resignified.

As Gilberto Giménez (2000) points out, identity requires a subjective re-elaboration of existing cultural elements. To achieve a social construction, the individual needs to carry out a negotiation with the environment, otherness and its symbolic frameworks, in where it makes a dynamic self-affirmation opposed by external actors and situations, both physical and virtual.

Thus, these enclosures within the most important cities of the Mexican Republic allow the reaffirmation of various social identities. Organizational strategists build specific areas for the construction of activations where local socialization practices are dimensioned that allow the ritualization and manifestation of daily habits of expression, lifestyle and consumption. In this case, the advertising model available in its social networks constantly reaffirms and legitimizes to keep diverse fandoms, recurring users and identity groups paid.

In both Quito and in Mexico, digital spaces aimed at select niches in some way need to be guided by an administration that promotes conversation and that in a certain way facilitates the pathways to address the identity, reaction and cause. of socialization in order to promote feedback, being an essential element to ensure and maintain in the long term, the confluence and the community activity. It should not be overlooked that virtual spaces must maintain constant gratification or motivators that allow the like-minded communities to be maintained.

In turn, it is observed that visual resources for online communities are manifested as symbolic axes necessary to generate responses, as well as guidelines that allow meaning, appropriation and resignification that in parallel derive in the release of intellectual, recreational and learning activities collective that are established as motivators that allow to preserve the recurrent activity of the user.

Global Fandom: Pablo Escandon (Ecuador)

Ecuador, fandom and participation around ancient photography

The study of online communities is important to know the causes and motivations that summon a group of people in a digital space: how is their relationship, how is the way they consume and disseminate information and what are the contents and their dynamics of interactions, but it is also important to know the ages of the members to know how they take on the platform and its relationship with media education. It is also necessary to know how fans feel around a communicative topic, action or product.

Although fans of TV series, movies, music or audiovisual series, as well as video games, are identified and fragmented, the massive number of fans around football and historical photographs on Facebook is not, understood as memory retrieval practices and recirculation of popular knowledge, without the mediation of a curator or gallery owner, much less a museologist or historian, to edit or moderate the discourse.

The dissemination of old photography is a very common practice on the Facebook network and users in Ecuador have made this platform the ideal space to share centralized stories based on the dissemination of archive photographs that administrators of pages such as Quito de aldea a ciudad, Cita con la memoria, Fotos antiguas del fútbol ecuatoriano, Recordando a Quito, Los ladrillos de Quito, among others, are carried out among their followers, with which they propose challenges of identifying spaces, characters, years and practices.

Since 2018, the forms of collaboration, moderation and participation in these digital spaces have been observed, which are managed by people over 60 years old and who have a photographic and newspaper archive, which could well be in a historical archive or as a background of a local museum, but that has decentralized from the formal exhibition and has found in social media the appropriate way to share stories and recreate historical moments, not only with the comments on the platform, but they go further with the proposal of Guided walks through the city, in order to appreciate the urban transformation, as Quito does from village to city, or the radio encounters that Cita con la memoria does, in the city of Portoviejo, to talk about everyday issues of the city, from the photograph of the memory.

The fanatics are in the 40´s and 50´s age. The teenagers or young adults are not the objective public of these digital spaces, because the physical exhibitions can convocate families and schoolars with teachers in urban places where the photographies are displayed.

Likewise, football history spaces resort to the exhibition of photographs taken from printed media and their own files to dialogue with fans about players, stadiums, results of championships and clothing.

This work is about how Facebook pages have become relatively cybermuseums, central containers for various digital and non-digital activities, which enhance the physical visit to a heritage space, mainly the urban one, to verify its transformation. One of the important characteristics of the cybermuseum is to create community and generate forms of appropriation of heritage, from an aesthetic characteristic of the community where it is settled, and that from the evocation generates its own poetics in its speeches.

The generation gap is important when creating content and positioning them on platforms, since the consumption and forms of relationship are different because the administrator marks his identity and has created a particular sociability with the members, which results in share similar aesthetic processes and consumptions, which do not require younger generations or age groups.

The administrator of a page on Facebook sets the aesthetics and rhythms of participation, to which users are assimilated. Therefore, the reputation of the administrators or guides is shaped by the input, moderation and knowledge that they demonstrate in the community. The members contribute to the construction of the story proposed by the administrator, granting it the authority to disseminate and generate content based on the established guidelines, which makes the community have a hierarchical relationship with the administrators of the spaces.

The configured communities look for authority figures who channel their interests, who deliver other types of content that they cannot find in official spaces, for this reason they look for factual constructions that are closer to the aesthetic-poetic that appeals to their subjectivity, that removes their memories and do not stay in nostalgia.

It is important to note that many of the members of each community integrate several spaces, since they find in them the complementarity of information and formats, supported by a methodological similarity in the activities of routes and walks. Therefore, it is thanks to this diversification of members in relation to belonging to networks and communities, that a polarized network structure is presented, which has similar intersections or encounters due to the presence of users in each community.

The online users find that Facebook is the best "medium" for exchange and dissemination, as well as meeting, but they requires more audiovisual content that motivates their consumption, that is interactive and generates interaction between members of the communities, actions that are important to maintain the curiosity and participatory spirit of those who are interested in these topics, with which the proposal hypermedia is aimed at motivating users to establish new walking routes within the city, under a random and / or thematic scheme outside the official tourist conventions.

The fandom culture as we traditionally know it around DC comic productions, Marvel or Disney audiovisual productions have their followers, but they are expressed in the purchase and marketing products, not in permanent or organized communities. The Comic Con is a meeting that takes place in the portuary city of Guayaquil, as an opportunity to generate business among the stores that sell products like merchandising.

Quito de aldea a ciudad: https://www.facebook.com/quito.aldeaaciudad

sell products like merchandising.

Quito de aldea a ciudad: https://www.facebook.com/quito.aldeaaciudad

Ecuador: fotos antiguas colorizadas.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/316318006036425/?hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen&multi_permalinks=616290999372456

Fotografías antiguas del fútbol ecuatoriano

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1063318734047308

Pablo Escandón Montenegro

Professor at Simón Bolívar Andean University of Ecuador, academic coordinator of posgraduate program in Digital Communication, narrative transmedia researcher and writer of hipermedia.

pablo.escandon@uasb.edu.ec

Global Fandom Jamboree: Clara Cisneros Hernandez (Mexico)

In Mexico City, within the Center for Studies in Communication Sciences of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National Autonomous University of Mexico a.k.a. UNAM), has been created a space for young researchers for academic discussion and the study of international creative industries, under the name “La Finisterra”, originated on May 14th, 2015. The research focuses are transmediation processes, the study of videogames focused on fandom from e-sports to serious games, geek culture, anime, manga, comics and Lucha Libre mexicana (Mexican wrestling).

The organization was founded by José Ángel Garfias Frías, David Cuenca Orozco, members of the National System of Researchers, and Roberto Carlos Rivera Mata, specialist in Serious games. Also the young academics members are: Clara Cisneros, specialist in anime and transmediation processes; Yisel Caballero, specialist in genre and video games; Emmanuel Galicia, specialist in advergames, Jetzaí Velazco, specialist in audiovisual products; Adolfo Gracia, specialist in communities of gamers; and Patricia Celis Banegas, specialist in Lucha Libre;  among other collaborators; all with postgraduate studies and professors from UNAM.

So far, we have finalized five collective research books with double ruling from other formal academic institutions, being the case of the texts: “Creative industries, Imaginaries, values ​​and ideology in animation and videogames”, (UNAM, 2021); “Creative industries and transmediation processes. Streaming videogames and audiovisual culture”, (UNAM, 2020); "Contributions for the construction of videogame theories volume 1 and 2" (UNAM 2018 - 2019); "Analysis of audiovisual languages ​​in the digital age" (UNAM, 2018). And there are two more books to be published: "Electronic sports. Theoretical approaches to its origin and evolution ”, and “Manual of scripts for video games with a focus on communication ”.

Similarly, we have published in other collective texts such as: "Leisure and entertainment in the digital context", Gedisa, 2021; under the coordination of Roberto Alejandro López Novelo; “Critical digital literacies. From tools to communication management ”. UAM - Editorial Juan Pablos, 2019; among other publications and journals.

Our mission is to position the study of the creative industries and the reception of fandom on the agenda of Mexican academic research, in order to develop research from a multidisciplinary perspective and contribute to the development of national production with applied social sciences.

A broad United Nations definition of Creative Industries specifies that (Unctad, 2008) “they are cycles of creation, production and distribution of goods and services that use creativity and intellectual capital as primary inputs”. In addition, they constitute a set of knowledge-based activities, focused on, but not limited to, culture and the arts, generating income from trade and intellectual property rights. They also include tangible products and intangible intellectual or artistic services with creative content, economic value and market objectives; they are a cross between artisan, service and industrial sectors.

Our research follows fandoms from the creative industry, since we are the Latin American country with the most specialized urban spaces dedicated to commerce and recreational activities in relation to cultural products such as videogames, comics, music industry, television series, animation and anime; among other sectors of international scope. Specifically, we monitor urban spaces that promote geek culture within Mexico City, such is the case of shopping and socializing places such as Frikiplaza, Fan Freak Center, Pikashop and Comic Rock Show, whose particularity is to provide a safe and comfortable environment for the constitution of communities according to hobbies, abilities or interests of various kinds, where individuals have direct exposure to a wide diversity of cultures and signatures to develop a sense of belonging. We also monitor online and offline communities, based on institutional research projects and thesis.

Conference at "La frikiplaza", a specialized shopping place in Mexico City.

Another line of studies predisposes the monitoring of transmediation processes, recognized as the construction of narrative experiences deployed through various media or platforms (Jenkins, 2003). The applied reception process focuses on video games, animation and lucha libre, which are the industries that we have detected, interweave expandable meaning webs within different information systems that surround a nucleus of meaning. Transmediation processes are essential for the study of creative industries since they assemble and design discursive and technical operational problems in order to open their meaning systems in a hypermedia environment, where the axis of action is Storytelling.

 The transmediation processes allow us to define how the fan, the user, the player, reader and perceiver, access not only other platforms to complete the story, but also involve themselves in order to develop with their actions and decisions, the discursive core and meaning that allows immersion, interactivity and a technocultural engagement, which remains based on motivators and gratification formats.

Mexico needs to be up-to-date in video game research, primarily due to its status as the main consumer of such technologies in the Latin American region. The territory also remains the tenth largest market in the world in the consumption of videogames, being the majority in the region with estimated revenues of approximately 2.3 billion dollars for 2021 (Statista, 2021). The Mexican territory is a representative sample, because more and more independent videogame and digital animation productions are being created within our country. Mexico is already beginning to produce its own videogames.

Although we study various styles of animation, we mainly monitor anime and its direct relationship with gamified formats in their transmediation processes, since Mexico remains one of the ten countries with the highest global consumption by the industry (Google Trends, 2020).

We integrate Lucha Libre mexicana into our research agenda, since it is a creative industry of indigenous international scope. Likewise, in 2018, Lucha Libre was declared a cultural heritage of Mexico City, established as a sports activity that encompasses intellectual creation from the continuous generation of new shows, characters, masks, rivalries and fighting skills. The sector involves a formal and informal economic development of great importance for the country, Lucha Libre in Mexico is an activity that is between sport and ritual, where there is a mixture of all these genres, but there are a number of theatrical elements basic, such as the mask, the costumes and the characters who stage dramas (Möbius, 2007).

Conference at National Autonomous University of Mexico a.k.a. UNAM.

Our academic research is committed to the investigation of different media productions, where even the participation of users becomes decisive from its reception, appropriation of meanings, communicative practices and user-generated content. In this way, some companies see the fan as a creator and promoter of cultural products, a cultivator of a true transmedia culture, where the important thing is to generate value from the fact of spreading on the network of users or consumers, since a certain content "If it doesn't spread, it's dead" (Jenkins, 2015: 25).

In summary We study the phenomenon of the creative industries meticulously through three levels:

1. Review of who produces the content, delimiting the intertwined distribution and consumption formats.

2. Analysis of the changes in the narrative structure within hypermediation and transmediation processes.

3. Monitoring of consumers at their reception, studying the forms of appropriation, participation and derivative communication practices.

The three levels are applied to the mexican context from a multidisciplinary approach, taking into account theories and methodologies that range from political economy, to investigate the power relations between media, to the reception and consumption processes, where we investigate the way in which international creative industries are appropriated by consumers, and how they continue to redefine their value.

Our approach defends the cultural perspective, where creative industries are understood as symbolic constructions, which are consumed by users who are subject to their structure, within a media environment where symbolic products are materialized and where symbolic goods are culturalized in a common space (Lash and Lury, 2007).

The analysis of these industries are in relation to the context of production, where the central axis takes into analysis the themes and exchanges between fans. The research we carry out is predominantly from a participatory approach, supported by a process of interpretation with a qualitative and hermeneutical methodological basis in the explicit lines of research.

The analysis of these industries places emphasis on the context of production, where the central axis takes into account the themes and exchanges between fans. The research we carry out is predominantly from a participatory approach, supported by a process of interpretation with a qualitative and hermeneutical methodological basis in the explicit lines of research.

References

Jenkins,  Henry (2006). Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York University Press. 

Jenkins, H.; Ford, S. & Joshua Green (2013) Spreadable Media. New York University Press. 

Lash, S., & C. Lury (2007). Global Culture Industry. The Mediation of Things. Polity. Cambridge. 

López Novelo, R.A. (coordinador) 2021. Ocio y entretenimiento en el contexto digital. Aproximaciones desde la academia. México,  Gedisa.

Möbius, J. (2007). Y detrás de la máscara...el pueblo: Lucha libre, un espectáculo popular mexicano entre la tradición y la modernidad. unam. México.

United Nations (2008). Creative Economy Report, 2008. UNCTAD.

Statista. (2021). Statista.com. Link: https://es.statista.com/grafico/25685/los-principales-mercados-de-los-videojuegos/

Clara Cisneros Hernández – Mexico City

PhD student  in Communication from the Graduate Program in Political and Social Sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Subject professor at the Faculty of Political and Social Science. Subjets of investigation: Videogames, Transmedia, fandom, creative industries, anime and manga.

Email: clara.cisneros@politicas.unam.mx

La Finisterra is a community of young researchers within the Center for Studies in Communication Sciences of the Campus for the Political and Social Sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, originated since 2015 for academic discussion, the creation of their own theories and methodologies for the study of the mexican fandom, videogames, animation, comic and wrestling industries. So far, we have finalized five collective research books with double ruling from other formal academic institutions, being the case of the texts: “Creative industries, Imaginaries, values and ideology in animation and videogames”, (UNAM, 2021); “Creative industries and transmediation processes. Streaming videogames and audiovisual culture”, (UNAM, 2020); "Contributions for the construction of videogame theories volume 1 and 2" (UNAM 2018 - 2019); "Analysis of audiovisual languages in the digital age" (UNAM, 2018).

Clara Cisneros Hernández – México City: PhD student in Communication from the Graduate Program in Political and Social Sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Subject professor at the Faculty of Political and Social Science. Subjets of investigation: Videogames, Transmedia, fandom, creative industries, anime and manga.

Global Fandom Jamboree Conversation Series: Hadas Gur-Ze’ev (Israel) and Miranda Ruth Larsen (Japan) (Part Two)

Fans write messages to K-pop artists performing at KCON LA 2017. (Author's photo, 2017)

Miranda Ruth Larsen: Many thanks for your participation as well, Hadas. I absolutely agree with your point that physical distance is as vital as symbolic distance, and that the realities of fandom are better illustrated with a rich understanding of particular contexts.

As to your question about K-pop fans in Tokyo versus Los Angeles – my response would be that while someone in each locale may be a fan of the same idol group, it is imperative to recognize differences in access, proximity, and so forth. Everything should, in an ideal mode of both academic and fannish engagement, be viewed as interconnected but localized. In other words, only certain statements should fit the bill of “global K-pop fandom,” and even the monikers “Japanese K-pop fans” or “Anglophone K-pop fans” must be broken down further for an accurate representation of how these fans are fans. In doing so, we can do as you suggested – have open conversations about the plasticity of boundaries and the fact those boundaries are often more like a disorganized Russian nesting doll.

I think your study of The Geekery offers an excellent point of analysis, beginning with its platform structure via Facebook. I’m interested in the types of posts shared there, particularly if you’ve noticed patterns as to certain fans taking on defined roles. In many bounded communities, established BNFs might rise to prominence because they always share the latest news, post the most photos, have the most incendiary discussions, and so on. Do you see this on The Geekery? Are Israeli comic fans claiming niche brands for themselves within this community, and do those niches point to the struggles of marginalized members?

I believe that your experiences with The Geekery can also speak well to COVID-19, given that online connection has become a central point of engagement for many fans during the pandemic. In my research, co-presence is not necessarily physical presence; in fact, co-presence is difficult to accurately measure because it forays into the realm of affect. What’s important is the opportunity for that affect. For most fans – but not all – this points to the physical, but there are other means to connect, depending on the context.

Your final question is a tricky one, as it widens out our discussion to transcultural fandom as a whole! Of course the factors of physical location, country of origin, and culture impact ability to take part in global fandom. So do practical factors like internet speed, disposable income, and proximity to a well-stocked library. Wholly acknowledging these factors is a vital framework that must be integrated with every fan studies engagement. Without them, we run the risk of making romanticized generalizations and commit a disservice towards other academics, fans, and students.

ICon 2017

Hadas Gur-Ze’ev: I think we both agree and recognize the plasticity of boundaries that constitute and define fan identity (or opportunities to participate in fandom). With this in mind, we can also ask about the particular power-struggles that shape the boundaries and the biases they hold—ones that stem from practical factors like distance or socio-economic status, but also symbolic struggles over resources and authority between different fans. This will require to look not only at broader interconnections within global fandom, but also how these struggles respond to changing contexts and trends in global popular culture (e.g. representations of gender, race, minority groups and inequality in general). 

Responding to your questions, the platform of Facebook is indeed an interesting space for negotiations around fan identity construction—where participants’ posts often serve, consciously or unconsciously, to define self /in-group identity as a “true” fans. While some users are more active than others (as you would expect on digital platforms), I wouldn’t say it is certain (individual) fans taking on defined roles—but rather a certain type of fans that showcase their prominence by the use and control of the “correct” insider-knowledge. These, as I see it, are again questions of boundaries—and a conflict including specifically gendered aspects (that are both local and global in nature). While some attempt to protect rather limited boundaries and reinforce (masculine) canon, other voices in the group attempt to incorporate new perspectives and audiences, presenting female/feminist voices as equally “authentic”. 

In my study of The Geekery I focused on the struggles of marginalized members based on gender, which is especially crucial in the case of the identity-label “geek” (for its previously perceived masculine hegemony). In this group, claiming ownership/knowledge of “correct” (canonic) niche brands translates into “fan-credit” and helps ensure the exclusivity of those already in power position. Yet, in the current cultural moment we may be witnessing a battle for these positions of power, and a sort of “opening-up” of fandom for more diverse audiences.

Asking ourselves about the factors (and biases) that impact the ability to take part in a global fandom, should we be able to recognize common dominant struggles for representation or participation? And if we do see some former-marginalized members reclaiming a position of power, who are the others at the (new) margins whose voices we might be missing, both at the local and global levels?

Fans watch requested videos in a K-pop cafe in Shin-Ōkubo, Tokyo. (Author's photo, 2016)

Miranda Ruth Larsen: I believe this has been a fruitful exchange; as I’ve expressed to Hadas, I’m quite sure we could continue indefinitely given the fascinating touchpoints between our two perspectives and areas of fan research.

My initial entry for this project was, admittedly, more of a manifesto concerning fandom and fan studies as a field. Throughout our exchanges, Hadas and I have drawn on our research in geographically and linguistically demarcated fan spaces. In doing so, we have both pointed to the vital importance of context and recognized that even those contexts carry limitations; whether it be the platform boundaries of Facebook or the winding streets of Shin-Ōkubo, these settings both inspire networks and bring access into question.

Moving forward, I hope that more fan studies work recognizes the affectively messy, experiential, nuanced, and unequal operations of fans and fandoms. We cannot ignore that fandoms take place under capitalism, that affect drives both collaboration and division, that ‘fans’ as a label often glosses over crucial markers such as race, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, age, and so on. Additionally, the digital platforms and physical spaces where fandoms happen are subject to numerous influences.

The observations Hadas and I have raised in our discussion are proof that fandom contexts provide challenges even to a well-informed researcher. The next step – getting our work ‘out there’ – also offers distinct challenges. I would like to conclude by stating that recognizing ourselves in our research remains a divisive topic in fan studies. Academic climates, like fandoms, are also nuanced (nuanced, here, is an attempt at diplomacy). In some circles, identifying oneself or one’s work as fan studies is actively discouraged. I hope that the aca-fan position becomes more accessible and acceptable given the current nature of the world falling apart. As COVID-19 continues to deepen concepts like access, borders, and cultural flows, diverse and outspoken aca-fans are needed to make sense of how and why people connect with media and each other.

Hadas Gur-Ze’ev: This has been a great conversation! We could definitely continue our discussion infinitely, seeing that context and limitations are always relevant and constantly changing. In a way, I think both our perspectives posed questions about the centers and peripheries in fandom; perhaps our exchange can shed light on the common/specific biases for different fan spaces, each with its own center and periphery.

I find these questions particularly interesting at this cultural moment, where struggles of access in fandom can be seen through the lenses of globalization, capitalism, a global pandemic, or worldwide influential movements for more equal opportunities (#MeToo/BLM?). In this broader context, we might even consider our conversations as part of a whole set of new perspectives that are claiming more dominance at the center/mainstream of fandom (and possibly fan studies?)—ethnicities, genders, sexualities, disabilities, minority groups, and diverse identities.

I thank you again for the opportunity to think more about our shared areas of research, and can’t wait to see where else this is going in the future (for fans, aca-fans, and global culture as a whole)!

Global Fandom Conversation Series: Hadas Gur-Ze’ev (Israel) and Miranda Ruth Larsen (Japan) (Part One)

Hebrew section in Israeli comic shop

Miranda Ruth Larsen: As I read Hadas’ introductory statement, I found myself attempting to reconcile the two spaces she so keenly addresses: the physicality of conventions and the digital reach of online fandom communities. Though geographically separated, the resonance between her study of Israeli comics fandom and my own work addressing K-pop in Japan is clear.

Hadas’ consideration of Israel as a fandom context is vital here, one of the place-centric engagements that contributes to the richness of transcultural fan studies. We can read Hadas’ introductory statement as an echo of numerous threads in fandom and fan studies, namely: 1) the ‘purity’ of texts 2) fans versus non-fans 3) localization and globalization 4) gendered fandom practices. The issues themselves are not new, but every permutation of them matters; how we discuss them now will shape future perceptions of media consumption and enjoyment.

I’m curious if The Geekery functions as a fandom police, given the centralized structure of consumption: what of the fans who cannot easily access Facebook, the ones left out of the loop? Are fans on this platform utilizing their real names and identifiable images of themselves (in and out of cosplay), or is a degree of obfuscation employed? Additionally, given Hadas’ observation that fan practices at ICon are gendered, I can’t help but wonder if they’re also generational – are the fans of untranslated, “raw” texts younger, and do they harass older fans for their engrained consumptive habits?

:A rookie K-pop idol group promotes their concert by distributing fliers outside Skinholic, a Korean cosmetics shop. (Author's photo, 2016)

As I’ve written elsewhere, the politics of naming a fan/otaku/fujoshi/pen in Japanese is a paramount linguistic decision (Larsen 2018, 2020). Going beyond K-pop, the employment of one of these labels to describe oneself or others is contextual and often highly gendered. (Fujoshi in Ikebukuro does not land the same way as it does in Akihabara; to use the Korean-derived suffix pen outside of known Korean Wave enthusiasts can result in blank stares.) These terms are, critically, not universally interchangeable or acceptable. There are social consequences for using these terms, even when definitions are agreed upon by friendly parties.

This ties into Hadas’ observation that ‘geek’ offers a particular label for comics fans in Israel, a conscious demarcation to those that don’t “get” fandom and members of other fandoms as well. Yet geek is also a plastic term, as Benjamin Woo explores in Getting A Life: The Social Worlds of Geek Culture. Geeks and other labels “are all social types, or models that are abstracted from particulars” (46). The fans Hadas discusses apparently want geek to occupy an agreed-upon definition, a consensus social model under scrutiny, but this seems like a potent recipe for conflict. Is the “universality” celebrated in centralized Israeli comics fandom a rhetorical strategy to minimize the numerous differences of Israeli fans, like the silencing of marginalized fans by mainstream fans elsewhere?

Works Cited

Larsen, Miranda Ruth. “‘But I’m a Foreigner Too.’ — Otherness, Racial Oversimplification, and Historical Amnesia in Japan’s K-pop Scene.” Fandom: Now in Color: A Collection of Voices. Edited by Rukmini Pande. University of Iowa Press. 2020. 

“Fandom and Otaku.” A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies. Edited by Paul Booth. Wiley. 2018.

Woo, Benjamin. Getting A Life: The Social Worlds of Geek Culture. McGill Queen’s Press. 2018.

Hadas Gur-Ze’ev: Thanks for starting this conversation, Miranda! I can also see the resonance between fandom in Israel (although it still mostly describes sci-fi/fantasy geeks) and your work on K-pop in Japan, or the broader relationship between fans and idols in different locales. 

While Israel (or Koreatown, Japan or Los Angeles) is certainly a vital fandom context, it is still only one in an array of different contexts (among gender, power, or global fan traditions and practices). I agree with your statement that scholarship should better represent the realities of fandom, taking into account critical localized aspects and inequities in access to media and experiences. It seems to me that we should also consider such inequities as intersecting with others—not just a physical distance from an experience, but also symbolic distance—such as a language or cultural gap, access to resources, or, like the case of my study, a gender bias. 

And so, if K-pop fans are not offered the same proximities to their idols in Tokyo as they do in Los Angeles, could they be equally considered part of the same fandom? Do they experience their fan identity differently, and maybe try to make up for these gaps? If we see access as influenced by power struggles (whether the local/global, direct/remote, masculine/feminine, old/new), we can ask ourselves who can—and cannot—be an acceptable “fan”? And similarly, who can—and cannot—be an acceptable aca-fan? As fans and as academics, we can try to better understand these dynamic boundaries and what constitutes them in each community.

The Geekery is indeed the mainstream digital platform for fandom in Israel, and the question of border-policing in the form of access to the group (or to Facebook) is certainly important. Although there is no formal policing (the group is public, the admins present it as inclusive as possible, and participants usually feel safe to use their names and share pictures), the group must leave a lot of fans “out of the loop”. Apart from an evident gendered bias of access (with reported evidence of toxic masculinities), The Geekery also lacks representation of specific sub-groups and minorities in Israeli society (for example, from different ethnic or religious groups). This does not mean there aren’t geeks or fans elsewhere—but that many unique experiences are not widely visible on mainstream fandom circles. We can therefore ask not only how to make these voices heard, but also how to integrate sometimes conflicting values and conceptions of fandom.

I’m not certain that a “universality” celebrated in centralized Israeli comics fandom is a rhetorical strategy to exclude others, but it might provide  the structure, or boundary, in which different identities battle each other. “Geek” or “fan” (and likely, other interchangeable terms in different languages) are certainly contextual, gendered, and dynamic labels—and thus policing these identities, meanings, and borders of definitions could be seen as exclusionary rhetorical strategies. An interesting question is who do these boundaries exclude, and what valued resources are prevented from marginalized members.

Reading your introductory statement, I was particularly interested in the role of physicality in the relationship between fans, idols, and fandom. This question might even be more relevant in the context of COVID-19 and the use of digital substitutes to physical experiences (even within the same local and cultural settings). I’m curious if the co-presence specific to certain locale is necessarily a physical presence? Could there also be other options to connect with fans and idols? And to what extent do the physical location, country of origin or culture determine the ability to take part in global fandom?