Learning Intention: Understand the nature of Fandom as a phenomena in the Media Ecology and the ways in which audiences have been empowered by media convergence and democratisation.
Questions:
- What is the sociological function of myth?
- Myths = stories that societies hold dear because they say something important about the way society and individuals should behave.
- Who ‘owns’ the myths in modern Western societies? Here is a clue as to what Henry Jenkins thinks…
Debate: Do we think it is right for multinational media conglomerates to own the copyright to important myths that, “Give clear structure to the community by reinforcing moral order and validating the community’s standards as true and correct?” Joseph Campbell.
Henry Jenkins thinks not! He suggests that fans groups are an important balance to institutional ownership and commodification of culturally important stories.
He says that fan fiction is an attempt to redress the balance and bring the ownership of myths back to the people and society at large. Furthermore, through technological convergence and democratisation fans have been given the tools to produce and distribute their versions of these myths. He says…:
“Fanfiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by folk.”
― Henry Jenkins
Henry Jenkins on the History and Impact of Fandom
Two Case Studies:
Case Study 1 & Textual Poaching
This is how Henry Jenkins describes how fans borrow features of their beloved media texts and repurpose them to fulfil their own needs. Here is an example of wholesale textual poaching from fans who want to insert themselves into modern day myths, such as The Avengers. They also mock the narrative quite a bit, a critque?
Official Avengers (2012) trailer:
The Fan Version of the Trailer:
Case Study 2: The Harry Potter Alliance.
A group of fans bought together by their mutual love of The Harry Potter books to make real change in the real world.
Who describe themselves as: “An innovative cultural campaign that mobilized the huge Harry Potter fan-base to fight for justice, human rights, and democracy in our world, just like Harry did in his world.”
“In the books, Harry starts a student activist group called Dumbledore’s Army that wakes the media and government to Voldemort’s return. I wanted to create a Dumbledore’s Army in our own world that could wake our media and governments to stop global warming and end genocide in Darfur.” See full article here.
Research Task
Find some more examples of fan groups who are poaching from existing texts and have a real impact in the real world. See the blog page on Jenkins for some ideas.
Alternatively, think of some crowd funded / sourced campaigns which are driven by their sense of injustice in the world to create content and share their ideas with the rest of the world…think…
Jenkins would suggest that’s this is an example of a participatory audience of fans, using their cognitive surplus and converged technology, to challenge the dominant hegemonic ideology!