Fandom

Fans & Kingdoms of fans A fandom can grow up centered around any area of human interest or activity. The subject of fan interest can be narrowly defined – focused on something like an individual celebrity – more widely defined, encompassing entire hobbies, genres or fashions. groups of people fascinated with any subject Fandom as a term can also be used in a broad sense to refer to an interconnected social network of individual fandoms, many of which overlap.

Definitions fandom can be defined or explained as the state of being a fan or all that encompasses fan culture and fan behavior in general, or the study of fans and fan behavior. the definition of an audience is: an assembly of listeners or spectators. the definition of fanatic is: marked or moved by excessive enthusiasm and intense uncritical devotion. the definition of a fan is: 1) an enthusiastic follower of a sport or entertainment or 2) an enthusiastic admirer (as of a celebrity).

Fan Activities Members of a fandom associate with one another fan conventions and publishing and exchanging fanzines and newsletters fan conventionsfanzines communications and interaction for the purpose of archiving detailed information pertinent to their given fanbase. Some fans write fan fiction, stories based around the universe and characters of their chosen fandom.fan fiction Some also dress in costumes ("cosplay") or recite lines of dialogue either out-of-context or as part of a group reenactment.costumescosplaydialoguereenactment Others create fan vids, or analytical music videos focusing on the source fandom, and yet others create fan art.fan vidsfan art Such activities are sometimes known as "fan labor" or "fanac," an abbreviated form of the phrase "fan activity."fan laborfanac The advent of the internet has significantly facilitated fan association and activities. Fandom is sometimes caricatured as religious faithreligious faith

Two images of the fan Obsessed individual & Hysterical crowd Critique of modern life Characterization of fandom as pathology – Elitist and disrespectful beliefs about common life

Fandom as pathology Literature on fandom – images of deviance Fanatic Fan – social & psychological pathologies Fandom is excessive

Fan as Creative Consumer Technology & consumption Fan as passive receiver Fan as creative consumer – Recontextualization of existent cultural products – Purchases of a commodity (cultural product) is only the first step – Means of declaring your exaggerations Elevation of consumer as creator does not deny the role of the producer

Creative Fans semiotic productivity is when fans use their object of fandom to create social meaning in their own lives (ex. a fan who gains confidence watching his or her favorite character on TV). enunciative productivity is when fans express their fandom to the outside world through speech or appearance (ex. fans wearing their favorite team's jerseys) textual productivity is when fans create texts based on their object of fandom

Theories of fandom romantic attachment Identification fantasy Fans as Tastemakers Collective support and/or admiration for… A collective celebration of mutual taste/preference in – A ritual gathering (physical or virtual)

Relationships between fans Instead of monetary reward, one of the major rewards of fan labor is the formation of relationships between fan creators and other fans. relationships created through fan exchanges are often as important, if not more so, than the products exchanged. The focus on relationships separates fandom economic practices from the capitalistic practices of everyday life. From an economic anthropology viewpoint, the products of fan labor are a form of cultural wealth valuable also for their ability to interrelate the fan works, the fan-creators, and the original media property itself through conversation and fan work exchanges. Fans, in other words, are “affines” of media property and of other fans.

Legal issues Most fan labor products are derivative works they are creative additions or modifications to an existing copyrighted work or they are original creations which are inspired by a specific copyrighted work Some or all of these works may fall into the legal category of transformative works (such as a parody of the original), which is protected as fair use under U.S. copyright law. corporations continue to ask fans to stop engaging with their products in creative ways.

Fandom a site of collective memory affective community as the center of an emotional life issues of gender, ethnicity, class, national identity, diasporic identity, transnational identity and power through global consumer culture Interpretive communities