Fan studies 101

This originally appeared in SFRA Review No. 287 (Winter 2009) as part of the “101″ series, which seeks to provide a broad contextual overview to various fields of interest to SF scholars. The complete issue is available for download here.

The recent explosion on the Internet of fanlike activity has given fans and fan studies a higher profile. When journalists and media studies scholars speak about fans engaging on the Internet, high school students spending their time on FanFiction.net, or fans of soap operas gathering at an online forum to discuss their favorite plotlines, they are engaging in fan studies, even if they don’t seem to know it. Web 2.0—that is, an interactive, networked Web, not a static, read-only Web—lends itself well to visible fan participation, and thanks to an explosion of copyright-ignoring, music-downloading, remix-happy Gen N–ers, interactivity of fans within and outside communities has generated a lot of journalism and scholarship. Fan studies as a field is still scrambling to catch up. It’s done relevant work on fan-created works and fan communities over the years that is being ignored by current scholars, and those in other fields who tangentially run across fans seem unaware that an entire body of scholarship already exists to study fans and fan artifacts. In a parallel activity, women-dominated, old-style active fans and their contributions are now in the process of being erased by studies of (male) online fandom, although recuperative work is underway to write histories of these fans and preserve their artworks.

SF fan wikis: source, reference, world

[0.0] SFRA 2008 was in Lawrence, Kansas, this year, and I was head of the academic programming. Sadly, I was kept so busy that I only managed to attend paper sessions and roundtables that I was on, but I enjoyed meeting all the people I’d corresponded with. My paper, entitled “SF Fan Wikis: Source, Reference, World,” was really the only fan-oriented paper at SFRA, although one of SFRA’s recent goals is to respond better to the needs of scholars in nonprint media. Meanwhile, here is a short recap of the high points of my talk.

1. Wikis and fans

[1.1] “SF Fan Wikis” discussed fans as one subset of the communities comprising Web 2.0—that is, an interactive web focused on participation and communities, as Tapcott and Williams note in their definition of the old Web versus Web 2.0 in Wikinomics (2008 rev. ed.). It’s important to realize that the reason fan studies is becoming such a hot topic is that interactivity on the Web is now far more mainstream, and is thus attracting more attention, particularly in terms of copyright violation. Much of the scholarly work done on fans is applicable to other groups who are now congregating online, and even if the sense of the word fan doesn’t quite fit my understanding of what they do, it’s clear that they’re engaging in ways that I’d describe as fannish.

[1.2] Much has been written on fans who publish fanfic in zines or on the Internet, and about fans who blog, particularly in the LiveJournal blogsphere. However, less work has been done on fans who engage with their source material via wikis. Wiki collaborative software permits group authorship, usually of a site that organizes factual information. Wikis are useful because they shield users from code but result in a nice product, and it’s easy to cross-reference and hotlink. In addition, wiki software tracks changes, so it’s possible to negotiate edits. Wikipedia is the most famous example of a repository of factual information, and it resonantes beyond its genre: encyclopedias, with its attendant rules about documentation, disinterested author stance, and lack of bias. So ubiquitous is Wikipedia that the look of a wiki immediately implies factual information, which makes parody sites, such as the Fandom Wank Wiki, all the more amusing by the mere juxtaposition of form and content.

[1.3] The essence of the wiki is facts by consensus. This is discussed in Wikinomics (and the authors explain why this actually works), but it was more famously emphasized by Stephen Colbert, whose notions of truthiness (“knowledge ‘from the gut’ without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual explanation, or facts”) and Wikiality (“together we can create a reality that we all agree on—the reality we just agreed on”) emphasize the slippery nature of truth and the danger of agreeing on something when perhaps it has no basis in fact.

2. How fans use wikis

[2.1] I had hoped to find examples of fans using wikis to create fiction. I envisioned a fabulous shared world, with many authors contributing to a sprawling story that was meant to be read not vertically but horizontally, with hyperlinks taking you from one place to another in a meandering version of a choose your own adventure story, but without explicit cues to jump to a new page. However, I only found a single example of this: P/Virt. Even more disappointingly, the wiki was set up by a hopeful soul in December 2007 and then not populated. One of the people who attended my talk suggested that this might be because there isn’t sole authorship, so people aren’t credited for their work but subsumed into a collective, and thus they are less likely to contribute. To this I’ll add the fact that there aren’t too many hyperlinked stories anyway, so hyperlinking and horizontalness in storytelling may just not appeal.

[2.2] Far more common are fan wikis used to organize factual information. Good examples are the Battlestar Wiki, which gathers together information from both versions of the show; the Stargate Wiki, for which I volunteered under my fan name; and Memory Alpha, the best-known fan wiki in Star Trek fandom. (For those wondering whether an alpha implies a beta, yes: there is also a Memory Beta for licensed Star Trek products, such as games, novels, and comics.)

[2.3] Although the flattening of authority is a mark of wikis, with all contributors treated more or less equally in that all have posting and updating privileges unless they get themselves banned or unless the page is locked, status can still be conferred on posters by contributing excellent articles and usefully updating existing ones, with this information all tracked through the wiki software. Fans whose pages are rarely reverted are reliable posters. Fan wikis will never officially have true authority; only a producer associated with the program will have that. (Some TV shows are now setting up wikis for fans to contribute to; one particularly interesting one, because of the confusing lack of parallelism between truth and fiction, is dedicated to The Tudors.) However, for fan wikis, authority is generated by faithfulness to canon, thus permitting the main criterion for judging the content. A wiki contributor’s depth of canonical knowledge through close readings of the source text will be rewarded.

3. How do wikis fit into fan culture?

[3.1] I have identified three important ways that wikis fit into fan culture. First, of course, is the sheer usefulness of providing canonical information in an easy-to-navigate way. Fanfic writers will use wikis to fact check details of their story, from spellings to the color of someone’s eyes. Second is the privileged place accorded by the community to those who collect factual information about a source text: it’s useful information, and the community will reward it, primarily by visiting the wiki and increasing the hit count, but secondarily by linking to the wiki from their home page or crediting it in a story’s header. And third, providing this information better permits meta (thinking about thinking) to be generated by the community, so it provides a factual base for interpretation, although fan wiki entries themselves rarely engage in interpretation.

[3.2] Wikis have at their core the idea of fact. However, of all the fan wikis I looked at, Memory Alpha is the most interesting because it took this idea of fact and took it one step further, into the realm, I submit, of the creative:

[3.3] Memory Alpha’s primary point of view is that of a character inside the fictional Star Trek universe—an archivist at Memory Alpha, the Federation library planet.

Star Trek universe articles should be written as if the described person, object, or event actually existed or occurred, exactly like in a normal encyclopedia, but with an omniscient writer. Think of Memory Alpha as an encyclopedia that exists in the Star Trek universe. [source]

[3.4] Contributors are thus invited into a future world, one looking back on the events of the Star Trek universe as though they really happened, taking on the point of view of a disinterested observer examining long-dead people and events and reporting on them. By taking this stance, Memory Alpha becomes a far-flung fictive text meant to be read not as a story but as a collection of facts that, taken together, create a world. Maybe instead of seeking fiction in wiki through creation of something wholly new, like in the P/Virt universe, we ought to seek fiction in all wikis through the creation of a set of bits of information presented factually, and as we sort through them, the mental construction of the world by contributors and by readers becomes the creative act.

SFRA 2007: Kansas City

What follows is a summary of the papers I heard at the 2007 SFRA meeting in Kansas City. I’ll blog separately about my own paper; and about my thoughts about reimaging and repurposing old texts, and whether or not doing that is worth our time.

This entry is cross-posted at LJ here.

July 5, 2007: Plenary Session: The Importance of Robert A. Heinlein (Goonan, Gunn, Pohl, Steele)

The distinguished authors briefly spoke before inviting discussion. The importance of Robert A. Heinlein (RAH) reached consensus: as Pohl put it, RAH was important because Heinlein put together all the elements of other SF (Smith’s far-flung space opera; Weinbaum’s alien aliens; van Vogt’s alien POV) and made all these astounding things seem normal. Steele noted that RAH was one of the four greats (along with Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke), and he was to SF what Hemingway was to 20th-century American literature: after Hemingway, you couldn’t read or write the same way any more, and with RAH, itw as the same way.

RAH was also important because his work, particularly his juveniles, provided a broad entry into SF and made it broadly appealing. He was important (as Gunn noted) in publishing because he pioneered the SF best-seller as a genre; he opened the market in the previously impenetrable-to-SF slicks; and he broadened teh market for juveniles.

Discussion touched on RAH’s libertarian political beliefs; his juveniles as sophisticated, adult SF (but without sex); his career’s rough division into early, middle, and late stages, with the middle stage being his best work; and his problems writing women characters. Discussion also indicated anecdotally that RAH juveniles no longer serve as an entry text into SF for today’s adolescents, because his work strikes adolescents as less relevant.

July 6, 2007: Fighting Futures (Sharp, Yaszek)

Patrick Sharp, in “Monsters from Darwin’s Id,” talked about gender and Darwinism in 1950s SF films, concluding that Darwinism was applied by the films’ creators to argue that the evolution of the use of technology would permit humanity to survive. The threat of the atomic bomb, these films argue, can be defused by rational, science-based society. Women contribute via male selection and do not themselves upset the patriarchal order. Savagery is implicit in a matriarchal structure (as in giant ants); if a woman is in charge, then things are in dire straits indeed.

Lisa Yaszek, in a paper about adapting Golden Age SF written texts to the screen, discussed Judith Merril’s Shadows of the Hearth, which was turned into a film called Atomic Attack, in terms of the change in the role, from word to film, of the female protagonist. The text version focused on the female protagonist’s being thrust into a position of power because of her rationality and her ability to get things done. In the film version, the heroine was subsumed to the civil defense hero, and the heroine ends up going back into the kitchen. Yaszek noted we still judge SF storytelling by the criteria established during the cold war, and that the films created at the time were often helped out (stock footage, or financial support) by the U.S. government in exchange for positive portrayals of the military and the government.

July 6, 2007: New Critical Perspectives on SFTV (Maus, Stannish, Doran, Spirko)

Derek Maus, in “Megaparodies of Fan Culture in the Revived Doctor Who Television Series,” discussed the text’s parody and play with fan culture, where fandom is both warned of the dangers, and celebrated. The Series 2 episode “Love and Monsters” was closely analyzed. Maus also noted that the series used alternative media (Martha Jones’s blog), which connected to the fan base; and also noted that the new show comments directly on current events, further parodying today’s world. He concludes that DW is telling us to pay better attention to what’s important around us: the world is so much darker, madder, and better.

Steven M. Stannish discussed “Orientalism, Egyptomania, and ‘The Pyramids of Mars,’” the latter a 1975 Fourth Doctor adventure. He used Said and other Orientalist theory to argue that the stereotypes presented are comfortable to the viewer by presenting Egyptians and Middle Easterners as a reflection of anxiety. The script and language (including bogus hieroglyphics), as well as the use of modern-day Arabic (subtitled in English) presented as ancient Egyptian create an atmosphere that doesn’t attempt to be realistic, but that this kind of stereotype was comfortable to the viewership, creating a kind of coded shorthand; yet the show was aware of this and likely manipulating these symbols directly.

Christine M. Doran, in “Farscape: The Domestic in Danger,” used criticism on domestic theory to inform a discussion of the character of John Crichton, arguing that Crichton sought to defuse threats to the domestic by turning the alien into a friend, who may then be brought into the family. Farscape is interesting because the one who must change (Aeryn) is female, and a male figure becomes the domesticating force, an interesting gender reversal. The theme of the show is, “Will John humanize the aliens?”

Robert Spirko, in “Cylons vs. Cybermen,” talked about a posthuman world without humans. Media SF is often technophobic; it fears the loss of the human body. Yet Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica present compelling images of the rise of the machine and of new views of humanity. Spirko linked this to the Singularity: the desire to transcend the human body, which may end up going horribly awry, with transcendence resulting in inhumanity.

July 6, 2007: The Golden Age of SFTV Is Now (Rodrigo, Hellekson, Jacobsen)

This mini-panel featured brief sketches of ideas by the three presenters, followed by longer discussion with input from the audience. Shelley Rodrigo discussed technofetishism in techology-based procedural shows like CSI and Bones, which she argues are a kind of revamped SF that ultimately argues that rationality and science will answer all questions and catch the guilty. Karen Hellekson discussed the repurposing and intermixing of the old and the new in such TV shows as Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica (both recently revived) and Life on Mars (set in the past), concluding that the old texts are being tweaked to appeal to a new audience in terms of gender, race, class, and genre expectations. Craig Jacobsen talked about a kind of chimerism of narrative, with a huge number of densely interweaving texts (a trilogy of movies, a trilogy prequel, novel tie-ins, fan fiction, novelizations, DVD commentary, rereleases, etc.) creating a large, unruly whole that problematizes the whole notion of the text or what is available to study—or appropriate to study (what is canonical?).

July 7, 2007: Giant Fallout (Goodridge, De Los Santos, Rockwood)

Kelly L. Goodridge, in “Pacificism and Paranoia in The Day The Earth Stood Still, discussed this important cold war–era film in terms of increasing anxiety. A peaceful alien comes, yet no one will listen to him, and in fact, they seek to destroy him. The film depicts a kind of top-down paranoia, with the fear coming from above: the military. The message, however, is that unity is necessary for humanity’s long-term existence, and that individuals can make a difference in the world.

Oscar De Los Santos, in “Extra Large: Exploring Giant Creature Cinema,” linked films that feature giant creatures (lizards, ants, spiders, etc.) to the anxiety of the bomb and to war. He linked the cold war to the war on terror; the giant creatures mirror the political climate. The cratures embody the anxiety (war, nuclear bomb, epidemic), and the people around it reflect the criticism the film makes (apathy? indifference? agency?). Discussions of The Host (2007), a Korean film inspired by the SARS epidemic, and Transformers, an American film that reassuringly glorifies the military, show that the formula is still active.

Bruce Rockford, in “Heinlein’s Starship Troopers,” discussed both the text version and the film version and overtly linked the hivelike unity of the miltary with the very bugs they are fighting. Citizenship is granted via military service, interestingly linking these two concepts. Rockford noted that the old 1950s films now resonate in a new political climate. Starship Troopers is interesting because the struggle is all; the war is never really won. It results in a stratified society engaged in endless war.