Showing posts with label website. Show all posts
Showing posts with label website. Show all posts

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Michel de Certeau part 1: the Wiki-Nutshell

Referenced by many many fan scholars. Michel de Certeau


The Practice of Everyday Life is a book by Michel de Certeau which examines the ways in which people individualise mass culture, altering things, from utilitarian objects to street plans to rituals, laws and language, in order to make them their own. It was originally published in French as L'invention du quotidien. Vol. 1, Arts de faire' (1980). The 1984 English translation is by Steven Rendall. The book is one of the key texts in the study of everyday life.
The Practice of Everyday Life re-examines related fragments and theories from Kant and Wittgenstein to BourdieuFoucault and Détienne, in the light of a proposed theoretical model. Some consider it as being enormously influential in pushing cultural studies away from producer/product to the consumer.

To date, Certeau's most well-known and influential work in the United States has been The Practice of Everyday Life. In it, he combined his disparate scholarly interests to develop a theory of the productive and consumptive activity inherent in everyday life. According to Certeau, everyday life is distinctive from other practices of daily existence because it is repetitive and unconscious. In this context, Certeau’s study of everyday life is neither the study of “popular culture”, nor is it necessarily the study of everyday resistances to regimes of power. Instead, Certeau attempts to outline the way individuals unconsciously navigate everything from city streets to literary texts.
Perhaps the most influential aspect of The Practice of Everyday Life has emerged from scholarly interest in Certeau’s distinction between the concepts of strategy and tactics. Certeau links "strategies" with institutions and structures of power who are the "producers", while individuals are "consumers" acting in environments defined by strategies by using "tactics". In the influential chapter "Walking in the City", Certeau asserts that "the city" is generated by the strategies of governments, corporations, and other institutional bodies who produce things like maps that describe the city as a unified whole. Certeau uses the vantage from the World Trade Center in New York to illustrate the idea of a synoptic, unified view. By contrast, the walker at street level moves in ways that are tactical and never fully determined by the plans of organizing bodies, taking shortcuts in spite of the strategic grid of the streets. This concretely illustrates Certeau's argument that everyday life works by a process of poaching on the territory of others, using the rules and products that already exist in culture in a way that is influenced, but never wholly determined, by those rules and products.

***Yeah I know Wikipedia isn't a reliable source, apart from the fact that it can be, I'm just trying to get the general gist and understanding of his theories so that I can see why and how fan scholars have related it to fans and fandom community. ***





Fandom: Identities & Communities in a Mediated World

edited by Johnathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss and C.Lee Harrington
afterword by Henry Jenkins
New York University Press, 2007

"Most people are fans of something. If not, they are bound to now someone who is...fandom matters because it matters to those who are fans. However beyond this, the contributions fan studies have made varied in the course of what we, in retrospect, can summarise as three generations of fan scholarship over the past two decades."

First wave: power, inequality, discrimination

  • de Certeau's theory (1984)
  • John Fiske - fans are "associated with the cultural tastes of subordinated formations of the people, particularly those disempowered by any combination of gender, age, class and race"
  • Bi-polar struggle between hegemonic culture industries and fans
  • FANS IN MAINSTREAM
  • Era of broadcasting changed to narrowcasting (niche marketing, target marketing; dissemination of information to narrow audience, no general public. Includes television and radio. Aiming media messages at specific segments of the public defined by the values, preferences o demographic attitudes)
  • Deregulation of media markets and reflected rise of new technologies, the fan as a specialised yet dedicated consumer has become centrepiece of media industries' marketing strategies. Rather than ridicule, fan audiences are now wooed and championed by cultural industries. 
  • Mainstream appreciation of being a fan
  • Changing representation of fans in mass media
  • Became more than mere act of being a fan of something, it was a collaborative strategy, a communal effort to form interpretive communities
  • Fan studies: negative protrayal/imagery/stereotype of fans by authorities, media and other non-fans. Low on social/cultural hierarchy
  • Tactics of fan audiences in their evasion of dominant ideologies
  • Camille Bacon-Smith, Henry Jenkins, Roberta Pearson, Constance Penly, John Tulloch
Second wave:
  • Leitmotif in the sociology of consumption by PIERRE BOURDEIU
  • Replication of social, cultural hierarchies within fan - and subcultures, as the choice of fan objects and fan practices of fan consumption are structured through out habitus as a reflection and further manifestation of our social, cultural and economic capital
  • Interpretive communities of fandom (as well as individual acts of fan consumption) embedded in the existing economical, social and cultural status quo. 
  • Gender, the taste hierarchies among fans themselves are described as the continuation of wider social inequalities. 
  • Conceptual shift of fan studies to fans seen as not a counterforce to existing social hierarchies and structures but, in sharp contrast, as agents of maintaining social and cultural systems of classification and this existing hierarchies
  • Bourdieuvian perspective to unmask false notion of popular culture as a realm of emancipation

  • 1&2 wave = focus of particular audience groups: fan communities, subcultures, interaction between members of such group either as interpretive and support networks, on in terms of cultural hierarchization and discrimination through distinction. Focus primarily on only one, possible the smallest subset of fan groups on wide spectrum spanning regular, emotionally uninvolved audience member to petty producers. 
3rd wave:
  • Increasingly diverse in conceptual, theoretical and methodological terms. 
  • Fans = common mode of consumption
  • Cyberfandom (online) is the shift/migration to the internet for fans and fandom. Specialised sites for specific fandoms, congregational sites for multiple fandoms in one (Television Without Pity; TWoP), accessible via Blackberries, iPods/iPhones, PUPs, laptops and cell phones
  • Off the web: celebrity, television and film gossip magazines, entertainment programs on television for people who want latest news and updates (cable, radio, satellite channels)
  • Chnging communication technologies and media texts contribute to and reflect increasing entrenchment of fan consumption in structure of our everyday life
  • MICRO = fan, intrapersonal, pleasures & motivations, relationship between fans and fan objects
  • MACRO = readings, tastes and practices are tied to wider social structures yet extends the conceptual focus beyond questioning of the hegemony and class to the dearching social, cultural and economic transformations of our time. (dialect between global and local; rise of spectacle and performance in fan consumption)
  • Fan patterns, behaviour, types of consumption and interaction are becoming more integrated/integral in every day life in modern societies (global phenomenon)
  • Sybiosis: cultural practice and perspective of being a fan + industrial modernity at large
  • Fan studies = key mechanisms through which we interact with the mediated world at the heart of our social, political and cultural realities and identities. 


Thursday, June 21, 2012

Tutorial #4

A long overdue tutorial with the teacher saw me panic and cry on the inside.

I was initially excited to present all the primary research I've done. My focus group, the questionnaire and the convention. I was pretty progressive.

And then I realised I didn't have a proper question. I thought I did. But I don't. So pretty much I am screwed. I have 7 weeks to research, analyse and write up a 7000 report.

The good news is I found what I need to do within the next week and a half. Bad news is I have to do it within a week and a half. So I will definitely be just focussing on this for a while.

I was explaining to teacher everything I could about fandom and in the end I just wanted to show how crazy it can make people and what extents it makes people go to. This is all mumbo jumbo right now. A constant stream of consciousness. It was quite hard explaining fandom to a person who claims to have no obsessions in life.

So main focus from now on = HYPER REALITY. A theory/term developed by Jean Baudrillard in 1980s. Going beyond popular culture, the new level in which we reach that not only blurs the line between fantasy and reality but where fantasy nearly overtakes the aspects of real life.

Makings of a question:
To Infinity and Beyond!
Fandemonium and Hyperreality
The evolution of popular culture into the realms of fandom and the influence of cyber-community life on fans 

To what extent does "hardcore" fandom inflence the lives and identities of fans?
Hypothesis: That "hardcore" fandom significantly blurs the distinction between hyperreality and "real" reality

Chapter 1: "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away" (Star Wars)
The definition of fandom, the fans and the history of fandom studies. The move to cyber-fandom. Pop Culture evolution, birth of fandom. 

Chapter 2:
Living a life through fiction. Fandom Addiction. Beyond escapism. 

Chapter 3: 
Worlds within worlds: Baudrillard meets Joss Whedon. The theory of hyperreality and it's application to fandom today. 

Google: Fandom Addiction
People to e-mail and interview: http://fanstudies.wordpress.com/about/ and Adam Possamai

Monday, June 18, 2012

Girls who like Boys who like Boys – Ethnography of Online Slash/Yaoi Fans


Red went on to tell me that all of the fans described in this piece did something “higher” with it. Gesticulating, she painted the picture of an ordinary American girl liking the TV-show Angel, and watching it every time it is on TV. This girl could be called a “fan.” But the fans, I was working with and writing about, including myself, had “made it part of identity” to such a degree that we thought about it outside of the times shown on TV, to the extent that “being a fan” pervaded other aspects of our lives.

....This text is, essentially, an ethnography of what it means to be an online fan. In order to underline what I wanted to translate, I would have had to offer a moment of ethnography alien enough, yet understandable enough, to introduce an unfamiliar audience to the topic. Yet, such a single ethnographic moment does not exist. All of the scenes depicted above are, after all, not simply moments of ritual or hobby, but moreover are infused with a certain mode of identity. Beyond serving an introductory function, they urge you to immerse yourself into a world that will seem alien at best.





Thursday, June 14, 2012

Update


I haven't made a post in a while but that in no way means that I've been neglecting my PIP. I've actually completed 2 processes of primary research which I'll post more on later. I am also going to be a participating observer at SupaNova on upcoming Sunday and so I'm pretty excited. I'll do another post for that too.

I've just been lacking in the secondary research department and I need to find a specialist of some kind. I'm thinking of trying to contact Henry Jenkins, one of the famous scholars, specialists, professors of fandoms in our time. He has a website http://www.henryjenkins.org/ which is highly informative and contains amazing sources such as interviews with other scholars of people he considers to be contributors to fandom studies and culture. Read some of his works first before I actually attempt contact so I don't look like an ass in front of him by asking stupid questions he's probably already answered in his thorough works of studies. I JUST WANT A LENGTHY FRIENDLY CHAT WITH THE MAN. FOR A WHOLE DAY. AT LEAST.

Andddddd when excitement all caps comes on, it's my cue to sleep. 

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Websites to take note of:

Dr Gafia's Fan Terms:
It's pretty much as the title says
http://www.fanac.org/Fannish_Reference_Works/Fan_terms/

The definition of 'Fandom':
Notice how it was first known to be used in 1903 and the comments section
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fandom

"Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars?: Digital Cinema, Media Convergence, and Participatory Culture"
By Henry Jenkins:
Online gold
http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/starwars.html


Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet
By Kristina Hellekson and Kristina Busse
Interesting and awesome, a contemporary take on cyberfandom. 
http://karenhellekson.com/?page_id=38




Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Spaceways - Harry Warner Jr.

I found a site online which offers the contents of Spaceways, one of the most early and influential fanzines in science-fiction fandom history. It was created by the noted fandom historian of that time, Harry Warner Jr, whom I mentioned in my summary of

The Communication of Fan Culture: The Impact of New Media on Science Fiction and Fantasy Fandom by Betty Gooch. 


Saturday, April 28, 2012

http://thebuffster.tumblr.com/


I'm a Buffy psychofan and so I follow up about 3 Buffy blog religiously. Came upon this and thought it related a lot to the appeal of online fandom. That sense of community and belonging where it is based on something you and complete, total strangers have a common love for. A something that would render you strange, weird and uncool in Real Life.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Do Nice Guys Lose and Bad Boys Win?

I love this site. It inspired the previous post. Brought a lot of characters from past eras up which helped. I mainly love it because it led to a page about the "Byronic Hero". It talks about how the bad boy image was created in the 1900s by the notorious poet Lord Byron. It then proceeds to list examples from the past (Shakepeare era) to present (I love how they list characters and then just name the actor Alan Rickman as if the man himself was to just a natural brooder and just gets the roles).

Good finds. As soon I look into this more and try to find a few more things, I'll get right into the primary.

Do Nice Guys Lose and Bad Boys Win?
http://enlightenedwomen.org/do-nice-guys-lose-bad-boys-win/

Friday, March 23, 2012

The Men of Brooding

The Men on Brooding
Tumblr

A whole tumblr devoted to images and videos of brooding men, including a picture of Robert Pattinson (plays Edward Cullen), multiple images of Austen men and a Raining men montage. Along with pictures of  good looking actors who, no matter how happy their persona are, are staring deeply and troubledly into the camera.

Love ittt.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Is Edward Cullen the new Mr. Darcy?

Courtesy of SAC Teacher
Love Romance Passion

Is Edward Cullen the new Mr. Darcy?

by Keira 


edwardcullen
In the fashion that orange is the new pink, is Edward Cullen to be touted as the ideal man for future generations in the same manner Mr. Darcy has been glorified? I’m not saying that Edward Cullen is a Darcy Double or Darcy Reincarnated or even a Darcy Sequel. Edward Cullen is as far from Darcy as a literary romantic hero can be – he’s the undead after all.
Women of all ages and ethnicities have fallen at the feet of the passionate and feral Edward Cullen. He is as impossible a character as Mr. Darcy with his moodiness, aloofness, and let’s face it overbearing behavior. Elizabeth Bennet would not have stood for it, but Bella is enchanted by it. What Edward Cullen can get away with on paper no man in his right mind would try in real life. It is one thing to love Edward’s protective stalker tendencies and quite another to experience it first hand. I’ll be the first to admit I love every aspect of Edward Cullen’s character, so by pointing out the obvious I’m not dismissing his infinite appeal.
Edward Cullen watches over Bella Swan in a similar manner that Angel watched over Buffy in season one. Of course when Angel loses his soul in season two and hovers over Buffy while she sleeps it’s seen as creepy and more than slightly unnerving. Naturally, there is a dramatic difference between being watched over by a protective presence than a sinister one. I’m quite sure Buffy would not have minded Angel watching her; it was Angelus that was the demonic and unwanted presence. Edward does not behave like Angelus and of course Bella wants him around. She thrives off his very presence and noticeably misses his absence awake or asleep. It also helps that as the reader we are enlightened to Edward’s true motivations and can be sure of him. Edward is seen as a guardian angel… and who would tell a guardian angel to go away? That would indeed be madness.
mrdarcySpeaking of madness, this brings me to the next point; to be desired as Bella or Elizabeth is every woman’s secret fantasy. Darcy loved Elizabeth ardently; Edward loved Bella fiercely. It is a heady thing to be wanted so much that to be parted from you is sheer agony of spirit and body. Darcy would do anything for Elizabeth, including reunite her sister with the man she loved or patch up one seriously incriminating scandal; Edward would kill for Bella… he would even leave her if he thought it best… and he did. Both. Edward even tolerated the presence of his competition, Jacob, because to do otherwise caused Bella great distress.
Darcy and Edward share many characteristics, being men born to a similar time. They are strong-willed, powerful, imposing and dependable. Despite their good qualities, both literary heroes exhibit some very negative qualities that at the whim of one stroke of a pen or tap of the keyboard could easily have alienated them permanently from their loves. Including a severe lack of the society grace for small talking, Darcy showed the character flaws of pride and prejudice. Also suffering under a lack of social graces, Edward’s more serious flaws are arrogance and a stubborn certainty that he is always right. He is so determined to protect Bella from himself he fails to admit her feelings or opinions have merit. This grossly unacceptable behavior throws the star-crossed lovers into intensely charged conversations and months of grief stricken paralysis, where both are unable to function because of their emotional wounds.
Luckily for both men they get out of their own way and win against all odds love, happiness, and peace. Nothing could be sweeter to readers or more potent. As I’ve demonstrated, Edward while similar to Darcy is distinctly set apart and it’s not just because he’s immortal. His very presence has rocked the foundations of the great romantic literary heroes and they have shifted aside to give him space. It’s yet to be seen if Edward will match Darcy’s fame in the generations to come or perhaps to even eclipse the brooding figure all together.
For those who have read both love stories what are your thoughts on the subject? If you haven't you need to read them right away!
So I was absolutely delighted when I received this in an email from my teacher. It was exactly what I needed to get started and I love the fact that it refers to the three male characters I was thinking about. It points out the aspects of each character (both similar and different) that are positive and appeal to the female audience: the fierce love, devotion, tolerance, protectiveness, powerful. And also the flaws of the characters: danger, arrogance, pride, prejudice (hah), overbearing. I also tried to find out more about the author of this article to check reliability, her other works and such. Here's what I found:
And on the very very top of her list of Turn Ons is:
"Blind, wounded, emotionally embittered, scarred and damaged heroes. Need I go on?"

If you click on that link, it'll lead me to my next post