I had to read Jenkins' Textual Poachers for my PhD comprehensive exams, and checked out Fans, Bloggers and Gamers and Convergence Culture after that. He gets a better and more up-to-date with each book, but I find his "critical utopian" stance still tends to veer more utopian than critical, while I try to seek a balance. You should definitely check his work out, though! At least it'll be easier reading than Deleuze and Guattari, who are right up there with the postmodernists and some postcolonial critics (Bhabha, Spivak) for dense, difficult prose.
<<--taking the case of Star Wars, for example, I definitely think that there's an overarching narrative that fans buy into at the most basic level and then go on to create multiple small narratives out of other facets at the universe, both from that universe's elements and, crucially, from the fannish database of fan tropes that transcends any single fandom--like, say, the "five things" fanfiction meme. Or cabin!fic.>>
Ah, I hadn't thought of it that way! From the Dejiko example, I understood database elements to be more the specific images fans recombine, rather than the memetic structures they use to do it. I would have thought the kinds of things listed on the TV Tropes website -character types, stock situations, props, etc.- were more the Western equivalent of Azuma's moe elements.
That said, I really like the idea that fans also have a database of tropes and practices to draw on beyond the images provided in media texts. It could be a good way to look at what's shared (and what isn't) between fans on a global scale. I notice that Hetalia fans from around the world, f'r instance, seem to share a similar fannish approach. I can watch a Japanese Hetalia AMV on Nico Nico video without understanding a word of the song, and still get that it's doing a hurt/comfort scenario or whatever. Very interesting...
Also, what's up with Kripke? I have a friend who's a HUGE Supernatural fan, and, having watched the first three seasons (so far) with her, I got the impression that he was quite fan-friendly, just from the references in the show.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-11-30 05:25 pm (UTC)<<--taking the case of Star Wars, for example, I definitely think that there's an overarching narrative that fans buy into at the most basic level and then go on to create multiple small narratives out of other facets at the universe, both from that universe's elements and, crucially, from the fannish database of fan tropes that transcends any single fandom--like, say, the "five things" fanfiction meme. Or cabin!fic.>>
Ah, I hadn't thought of it that way! From the Dejiko example, I understood database elements to be more the specific images fans recombine, rather than the memetic structures they use to do it. I would have thought the kinds of things listed on the TV Tropes website -character types, stock situations, props, etc.- were more the Western equivalent of Azuma's moe elements.
That said, I really like the idea that fans also have a database of tropes and practices to draw on beyond the images provided in media texts. It could be a good way to look at what's shared (and what isn't) between fans on a global scale. I notice that Hetalia fans from around the world, f'r instance, seem to share a similar fannish approach. I can watch a Japanese Hetalia AMV on Nico Nico video without understanding a word of the song, and still get that it's doing a hurt/comfort scenario or whatever. Very interesting...
Also, what's up with Kripke? I have a friend who's a HUGE Supernatural fan, and, having watched the first three seasons (so far) with her, I got the impression that he was quite fan-friendly, just from the references in the show.