anzca - fan video editors and the television metatext

“The best stories come out of frustration”Fan video editors & the television metatextKatharina FreundUniversity of WollongongAustralia

What are vids?

•Fan-made remix videos •They appropriate pre-existing film and

television texts and edit them to music•Vids often convey meanings not intended

in the source material

Who are the vidders?• Over 90% female• Over 82% aged 18-35• Media fans• Most probably white, English-speaking, and

from the United States, United Kingdom, or another Western/European country

Struggle Over Meaning•Media-savvy female audience consuming

media products mostly created by men•How the text does or does not provide

pleasure / conform to audience desires•“Ongoing struggle for discursive

dominance” between fans and producers over control and desires for the text (Johnson 2007; also Jenkins 1992)

•Fans adapt the text to suit their unique interpretations and interests

Asserting Control• “Open-source text” (Hellekson & Busse 2006)• Taken up and reworked in a postmodern,

multivocal and intertextual fashion (Stasi 2006)

• Vidders use their tech savvy and extensive pop culture literacy to:▫Invent subtext▫Restructure the narrative ▫Create a narrative from the paratext▫Explore the fandom metatext▫Engage in criticism▫Highlight intertextual connections

Supernatural (2005 – present)

Inventing SubtextHere in Your Car by dayln03• “Slash” video• Romantic pop song• Uses familiar television

conventions to suggest relationship

• Advanced video manipulation

Restructuring NarrativeImpulse by NYCalls0909• “Alternate Universe”• Creating a new story

using existing footage• Clips used out of

context• “Art is in the mix”• Pleasure for audience in

seeing how clips are misinterpreted in the narrative of the vid

Creating a Paratextual NarrativeDocumentaryby fabella• RPS AU• Expanding slash

narrative beyond source material

• “Behind-the-scenes”• Presumed relationship

between shots

The Fandom MetatextLuv Songby Danegen• Meta RPS• Direct commentary on

online constructions of pairings

• “Hey fandom, there goes your boyfriend.”

• Addresses established “fanon”

Criticizing the TextWomen’s Work by Sisabet & Luminosity• Frustrated response to

text• Critically examines

representations of women: victims, sexual objects, martyrs, monstrous

• “Hopeless feministic impotence”

• “I love the show, but I’m not blind to its faults”

Intertextual CommentaryChannel Hopping by Ash• Draws parallels between

SPN and TV as a medium• Vidders extremely media

literate and genre-aware• “Flow”: TV flows from

series to series rather than being discrete, unique programs

• Engaging with the “mediascape”

Thriving Interpretive Community•Vidders consume media, make thoughtful

commentary on it, and share their insights with a specific audience

•Specific interpretive community with unique reading practices, aesthetics, and traditions

•Playful, well-informed, and creative / critical with industry conventions

Thank you very much!Are there any questions?

References• Appadurai, Arjun (1990).  Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy. Public Culture 2(2): 1-24• Allen, Robert C. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.• Ang, Ien. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London: Routledge, 1982.• Bleich, David. “Gender Interests in Reading and Language.” in Flynn, Elizabeth A., and Patrocinio P.

Schweickart, eds. Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.

• Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. 7th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004.• Bury, Rhiannon. Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online. Digital Formations. Ed. Steve Jones. New

York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2005.• Gorbman, Claudia. Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987.• Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse, eds. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities on the Internet: New Essays.

Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006.• Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.• Johnson, Derek. “Fan-tagonism: Factions, Institutions, and Constitutive Hegemonies of Fandom.” in Gray,

Jonathan, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington. Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. New York: New York University Press, 2007.

• Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004.• Stam, Robert, Robert Burgoyne, and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis. New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics:

Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and Beyond. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.• Stasi, Mafalda. “The Toy Solider from Leeds: The Slash Palimpsest.” in Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse,

eds. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities on the Internet: New Essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006.

• Williams, Raymond. Television, Technology, and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books, 1975.