Global Fandom Jamboree Conversations: Jennifer Duggan (Norway) and Akiko Sugawa-Shimada (Japan) (Part One)

Akiko Sugawa-Shimada [AS]: Jennifer, thank you so much for sharing your research. SKAM was a hot topic here in Japan too, although I think it's not accessible in the same way you do there in Norway, of course. It's just like a concept of "2.5-D" that I have conceptualized and am doing research on. I'm interested in the use of media. I wonder if what platforms do fans of SKAM usually use to post their fanfic. And are there any difference between generations (groups of people by age differences)?

Jennifer Duggan [JD]: Thank you, Akiko. I am really interested in your concept of 2.5-D fandom—that is, linking fictional worlds to real life in productive and entertaining ways. I think that fiction always has a great impact on reality but that we are seeing its impact more often and more profoundly now. Or perhaps, we are paying closer attention to the implications of the interplay between fiction and reality now. But that isn’t to say that these convergences weren’t visible in the past: I came to fandom studies by way of Victorian studies and am fascinated by, for instance, the celebrity fan cultures surrounding canine actors from Victorian dog dramas (Featherstone, 2016) and the material fan cultures of works of literature that resulted in the creation and sale of literary merchandise. For example, Wilkie Collins’s 1859 novel The Woman in White was merchandised due to its popularity: one could buy Woman in White hats, clothing, and perfumes (Wynne, 2001). And Victorian fans enjoyed performative fan cultures of their own, such as Londoners’ mass protest over the death of the fictional character Sherlock Holmes, during which they wore mourning bands, penned and published obituaries, and gave up their subscriptions to Strand Magazine in an effort to pressure Conan Doyle into resurrecting their favourite fictional hero. The impulse to express ourselves through fandom, then, and together with other fans seems to be an impulse shared across genres, geographies, and generations.

As for the platforms that SKAM fans have used, there were a wide variety: the official website was popular, as were social media sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube, in addition to fandom-associate sites like AO3. It was popular across age groups, in part because it combined a transmedia, innovative format, intended to engage youth, with a more traditional “summary” episode every week, which engaged older audiences. Vilde Schanke Sundet has published a number of articles on SKAM and its spread (e.g., Sundet, 2019) if you are interested in reading more. I cannot see that there was too much of a difference between where fans of various generations posted their SKAM fan fiction, but that is not something I have focused on in my research.

I think SKAM does have some interesting implications for your interest in the interplay between real and fictional spaces, because it worked so hard to appear ‘real.’ This meant that fans of the series visited the very real school the series’ characters attended, for example, and were able to follow the characters social media accounts and comment on their posts, which blurred the boundaries between what was fiction and what was not (e.g., Duggan, 2020). The series’ success also hints at the mainstreaming of yaoi/slash, because the most popular season, season 3, focused on a male–male romance. Certainly, the show was very popular in local and international LGBTQ+ circles across generations and has been regarded in Norway as an important step towards normalizing nonheteronormative desire.

I’ll stop here before I begin to ramble too much....

References:

Duggan, J. (2020) Revitalizing seriality: Social media, spreadabilty, and SKAM’s success beyond Scandinavia.Journal of Popular Cultures, 53(5), 1004–1022.

Featherstone, A. (2016, July 15). Sagacious canines and brave brutes: Re-discovering the Victorian dog-drama [Keynote presentation]. Victorian Authenticity and Artifice, 7th Annual Conference of the Victorian Popular Fiction Association Conference, University of London.

Sundet, V. A. (2019). From ‘secret’ online teen drama to international cult phenomenon: The global expansion of SKAM and its public service mission. Critical studies in television, 15(1), 69–90.

Wynne, D. (2001). Wilkie Collins’s The woman in white in All the year round. In The sensation novel and the Victorian family magazine (pp. 38–59). Palgrave Macmillan.

AS: I think the case you told about SKAM can be taken as the 2.5D, although the 2.5D I have examined is almost always anime/manga/game characters involved.

I’m especially curious about what you said “This meant that fans of the series visited the very real school the series’ characters attended, for example, and were able to follow the characters social media accounts and comment on their posts, which blurred the boundaries between what was fiction.” So, fans could visit actual schools they saw in SKAM, which we calls “contents tourism” (Seaton et al, 2017). It is also interesting that the characters have social media accounts. I wonder if those who make comments on fans’ posts are staff of SKAM, not actors, right? Here in the 2.5-D culture I mentioned, anime characters often have their social media accounts, too. But those who post and replay are, of course, staff of the programs. In the 2.5D theaters, it’s being a bit complicated: the actors who play roles of anime characters sometimes post messages through their social media as the characters, and sometimes post messages as actors themselves. Those interplay between characters (fiction) and actors (reality) also appeals to fans, although it means the reality intervenes in the fiction and vice versa.

I wonder how the actors/actresses of SKAM use their social media. They comment on the role they play from the third party’s view? Or they avoid doing it? It particularly matters when the actors play the roles of homosexual characters that you mentioned. If they are heterosexual in real life, are there any conflicts or debate going on? (I’m afraid I cannot get access to SKAM yet, which only one platform dominantly offers. I don’t subscribe it.)

References:

Seaton et.al, 2017. Contents Tourism in Japan: Pilgrimages to Sacred Sites of Popular Culture. London: Cambria Press.

JD: Yes, the comments were posted by staff, not actors, to the best of my knowledge. But those who commented on the posts were both “other characters” (aka staff) and fans, and the “characters” (staff) would sometimes reply to and interact with fans, so it really blurred the boundary between the real and the pretend. This was certainly appealing to fans, and they increased fan-“character” (staff) interactions in later iterations of SKAM, such as the German version, Druck.

There has not been too much debate or commentary about the actors in Norway aside from happiness over an increase in visibility for LGBTQ+ characters, but in other countries, fans did comment on the actors’ sexualities. I think it is more accepted in Norway that actors play roles across a variety of identities than it is, for example, in the US.

Is this topic one of debate in Japan?