McClain: "fan magazines, narrative, and spectatorship"

Entdeckt in der Routledge-Zeitschrift New Review of Film and Television Studies, Ausgabe 7 (2009) 4: "Film-fiction: fan magazines, narrative, and spectatorship in American cinema of the 1910s" von William McClain. Abstract: "The presentation of film texts as short stories in early motion picture fan magazines has long been treated as a sort of antiquarian curio, and has usually been discussed as simple synopsis of the films in question. In fact, close examination of these 'fictionalizations' and comparison across magazines and between fictionalized and film text suggests that these stories do not simply re-present or expand on the films - they transform them into an aesthetic distinct from that of the transitional film era and more in line with classical Hollywood norms. In doing so, they suggest that films were not treated by readers as 'master texts' from which other forms merely derived, but as contingent incarnations of a story world presumed to be behind the films. In doing so, they suggest that readers of early fan magazines may have had a similar relationship to filmic and literary texts, and a similar understanding of fandom, as has been found in studies of more contemporary fan cultures" ((c) Taylor & Francis).

zwei DVDs hereingeflattert

Habe mir zwei Filme über Star Trek-Fans gekauft und hoffe, sie mal mit der fedsig-Gruppe anschauen zu können:

Trekkies. A hilarious look at the universe's most fervent fans, Regie Roger Nygard.

Free Enterprise, Regie Robert Meyer Burnett.

Probezugang zu Media Journals

Sage Publishing bietet gerade einen kostenlosen Probezugang zu allen Journals im Bereich "Communication and Media Studies" - da ist natürlich jede Menge für mich dabei, z.B. die Zeitschriften "Television & New Media", "Games and Culture", "Media, Culture & Society", "New Media & Society" und "Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies".
Ich bin zum Beispiel auf den Artikel "Cyber-Slaying Media Fans: Code, Digital Poaching, and Corporate Control of the Internet" von Mia Consalvo gestoßen. Abstract: "This article examines media fans' Web sites devoted to Star Trek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to determine how the code of the Internet allows fans some creative control over media artifacts of interest to them and how such actions pose a challenge to media corporations and their copyrights. However, this challenge is also limited by the changing code of the Internet, at varying levels, as corporations seek to change open code to closed-proprietary code and limit such actions. Thus, this article explores the resistances of fans to corporate actions and how the code of the Internet is gradually changing into a system more conducive to corporate capitalism than community creation or any other transformative space".
Consalvo hat 1999 ihren PhD in Mass Communications mit der Arbeit "The Best of Both Worlds? Exploring Bodies, Technologies, Gender and the Borg of Star Trek" geschrieben und 2007 das Buch "Cheating. Gaining Advantage in Videogames" bei MIT Press veröffentlicht.

The Borg as Vampire

Gerade entdeckt über die Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database: Justin Everett: "The Borg as Vampire in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994) and Star Trek: Frist Contact (1996)". In: John E. Browning / Caroline J. Picart (Hrsg.): Dracula, Vampires, and Other Undead Forms. Essays on Gender, Race and Culture. Lanham: Scarecrow, 2009, S. 77 - 92

Overload

Ich hab gerade drei neue RSS-Feeds abonniert: "ephemeral traces", das Weblog von Kristina Busse; Fandom Research, "an index of (f)anthropological surveys, studies, and science"; und das Weblog von Karen Hellekson. Wäre wohl an der Zeit, das manische Sammeln von Sekundärliteratur - das mir als Bibliothekarin halt auch im Blut liegt - zu reduzieren und endlich mit dem Schreiben des theoretischen Teils zu beginnen, für den ich schon weit mehr Material habe als notwendig. Irgendwann muss man stopp sagen. Witzig, dass ich das, was ich meinen Diplomandinnen und Bachelorarbeitsschreibenden immer predige, selber so gar nicht befolgen kann ;-)

Cinema Journal mit Fandom-Schwerpunkt

Wie ich einem Hinweis aus der Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database entnehme, hat die Ausgabe 48 (2009) 4 der Zeitschrift Cinema Journal als Schwerpunkt "Fandom and Feminism: Gender and the Politics of Fan Production". Folgende Beiträge sind enthalten:

Introduction / Kristina Busse

A Fannish Taxonomy of Hotness / Francesca Coppa

A Fannish Field of Value: Online Fan Gift Culture / Karen Hellekson

Should Fan Fiction Be Free? / Abigail De Kosnik

User-Penetrated Content: Fan Video in the Age of Convergence / Julie Levin Russo

Living in a Den of Thieves: Fan Video and Digital Challenges to Ownership / Alexis Lothian

Fanaktivität = Einschaltquoten

Eine Studie von fanhistory.com stellt einen Zusammenhang zwischen Fanaktivität und Einschaltquoten einer Serie her: "Fan fiction is a really popular outlet for fan expression of interest in television shows. The stories are creative, explore plot lines in the show and, according to many fans, help market a series in a positive way. Fans often argue that their activities mirror larger interest in a show, and that producers should pay more attention to them and cater to their fannish interests as the example provided seems to demonstrate. (...) The results confirmed what many fans already suspected: Levels of fan activity, specifically in terms of the production of fan fiction, mirrors interest specific episodes of television. Fan fiction can be used to predict Nielsen Ratings". - Quelle: Online PR News vom 25. September 2009.

"The scene that smells of zine spirit"

Jessica Bateman berichtet im Independent vom 25. September unter den Titel "The scene that smells of zine spirit" über Fanzines: "It should have died out with flexi discs and VHS, but now a new generation is embracing the DIY world of the fanzine".

Buchpaket :-)

Bei betterworldbooks (ein US-amerikanischer Buchversand, mit dem ich bisher nur gute Erfahrungen gemacht habe) bestellt und vor wenigen Minuten aus dem Postkastl geholt:

Frances Early, Kathleen Kennedy (Hrsg.): Athena's Daughters. Television's new women warriors. New York: Syracuse University Press 2003 (enthält unter anderem den Aufsatz "Tall, dark and dangerous: Xena, the Quest, and the wielding of sexual violence in Xena on-line fan fiction" von Helen Caudill)

Lincoln Geraghty: Living with Star Trek. American culture and the Star Trek universe. London/New York: I.B. Tauris 2007 (enthält unter anderem den Abschnitt "A network of support: identification and emotion in Star Trek fan letters")

"Slashfic perverts the source material"

"Slashfic intentionally perverts the source material, in the sense of an enjoyment in subverting mundane norms one doesn't respect, along homosexual and homosocial themes".

Aus: Steve Abrams, Smaragd Grün: "Mundanes at the gate... and perverts within: Managing internal and external threats to community online". In: Tyrone L. Adams, Stephen A. Smith (eds.): Electronic tribes. The virtual worlds of geeks, gamers, shamans, and scammers. Austin: University of Texas Press 2008, S. 211

Fanzines - "being killed by the Internet"

Unter "50 things that are being killed by the Internet" reiht ein Artikel in den Economic Times u.a. "Listening to an album all the way through", "Letter writing/pen pals", "Geographical knowledge", "Privacy" und "Footnotes" auch "Fanzines".

Fans "are not your lab rats"

"Fandom to researchers: We are not your lab rats", titelt Yonmei im Feminist SF-Weblog und fährt fort: "The problem people have who decide to 'study fandom', if they do not do sufficient prior research, is that they frequently underestimate fannish intelligence. (...) Anyone smart enough to successfully do scientific research inside fandom will be perfectly aware that fandom will likewise be researching them". Ich hoffe ja, bei meiner Diplomarbeit als langjähriger Star Trek-Fan genügend Wissen und als Nicht-Fanfiction-Schreiberin genügend Distanz mitzubringen, aber das ist auf alle Fälle ein sehr wertvoller Hinweis.

Call for Papers: Fan works and fan communities in the age of mechanical reproduction

Im Frühjahr 2011 wird ein Sonderheft der Zeitschrift Transformative Works and Cultures zum Thema "Fan Works and Fan Communities in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" erscheinen. Herausgeberinnen sind Nancy Reagin und Anne Rubenstein. Einreichfrist war leider schon im Mai, aber hier ein paar Informationen über das, was uns erwartet (hoffentlich bin ich zum Zeitpunkt des Erscheinens schon mit meiner Diplomarbeit fertig...):

"Scholars of literature and popular culture, along with ethnographers and sociologists, have produced a rich and sophisticated body of literature about fan communities and creativity over the last twenty years, but most of this work has focused on groups of fans who have been active since the 1960s, and very little of it has been produced by historians. This special issue will focus on the rich history of fans and their engagement with a variety of objects of fandom. We seek to expand the range of topics and methodologies available to studies of fans and their communities, and we hope to understand fans better by studying them in their historical contexts.
We invite contributions that focus on fan works and/or fan communities from any place and time since the late eighteenth century. This periodization is informed by Walter Benjamin's idea that—thanks to the invention of lithography—the original artwork, with its unique aura, came into being at that point precisely because of the availability of cheap copies. He argued that the distinctions between original and mass-produced commercial art and media created the boundary between high and popular art, and between mass and bourgeois tastes. We wonder whether the historical study of fans and fan works might modify Benjamin's formulation of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Does the long-standing existence of fan fiction, fan art, and other forms of community-generated fan works clarify or muddy his argument?
The special issue will be divided between scholarly contributions of 4,000 to 7,000 words, and oral histories of older fans. We will seek to include scholarly articles and oral histories that can be read against or with each other. For example, an interview of a present-day cosplayer might be juxtaposed with an article on nineteenth-century amateur drama".

Technovelgy

Eine Seite, auf der Science Fiction-Fans Stunden zubringen können, ist Technovelgy von Bill Christensen: "Explore the inventions and ideas of science fiction writers". Für mich als Bibliothekarin ist die Kategorie "Data storage" besonders interessant, aber auch Einträge wie "micro book", "electronic paper" und "robot librarian". - Die Seite verzeichnet nicht einfach nur Technologien, die von SF-AutorInnen ersonnen wurden, sondern ergänzt diese Vorstellungen durch Links zu Medienberichten über tatsächliche Erfindungen und Entwicklungen (ein simples Beispiel wäre Kommunikator > Handy).
Suchen und Browsen sind nach Kategorie (von Armor bis Work), Timeline (beginnend mit Schwerelosigkeit - Kepler 1634), AutorIn (von Adams bis Zelazny) und Buch möglich.

Star Trek "K/S" Fanzine Auction

Aus der Beschreibung: "Virginia 'Bitterwind' Smith discusses her experiences as a writer and artist in Star Trek fandom, and her extensive collection of 'K/S' erotic fanzines".

Fanzine über "Why I Am a Fan"

Der Fanclub Las Vegrants feierte die vierte Ausgabe des Fanzines "Idle Minds" mit "a 54-page issue devoted to the theme: 'Why I Am a Fan.' Nearly 50 fans have contributed to make this project a success". Abzurufen auf efanzines.com.

Neu auf der Literaturliste

Wertham, Fredric: The world of fanzines. A special form of communication. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press 1973

Hills, Matt: "Patterns of Surprise. The 'Aleatory Object' in Psychoanalytic Ethnography and Cyclical Fandom". In: American Behavioral Scientist 48 (2005) 7, S. 801 – 821

Chatelain, Julianne: "Learning from the review culture of fan fiction". In: Journal of Digital Information 3 (2002) 3

Rehak, Bob: "Mapping the bit girl: Lara Croft and new media fandom". In: Information Communication & Society 6 (2003) 4, S. 477 - 496

Filk, Gender und Copyright

Gerade entdeckt: Melissa L. Tatum / Robert E. Spoo / Benjamin Pope: "Does Gender Influence Attitudes toward Copyright in the Filk Community?". Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 09-21, 23. April 2009.
Aus dem Abstract: "While many filk songs are original lyrics set to original music, many more filk songs consist of lyrics written to existing music and/or lyrics based on characters/worlds created by other people. These practices potentially create problems in light of existing intellectual property law. In this paper, we explore those issues and whether a filker's gender influences his or her attitude towards intellectual property law. After setting out a basic explanation of filk and the intellectual property issues, the article details the various statistical results generated from the databases we built (one objective and one subjective) and draws some conclusions about gender and filk".

Teach yourself cultural studies

Ich lese gerade die Einführung in "Cultural Studies" von Will Brooker, die 1999 in der "Teach yourself"-Serie erschienen ist. Das Buch enthält auch Kapitel über John Fiske und Henry Jenkins, an denen ich bei meiner Diplomarbeit wohl kaum vorbeikomme(n möchte).

random fandom links

eFanzines.com: hosts and lists science fiction fanzines on-line (RSS and mailing list available)

Fanac Fan History Project: "devoted to the preservation and distribution of information about science fiction and science fiction fandom. Here you might find your favorite fanzine, pictures of Walt Willis in Ireland or Harlan Ellison at the 1955 Worldcon. You can also find the words to an early filk song, information about an SF con near you AND all sorts of strange and wonderful information about fandom's past. And the present, too, because that's tomorrow's past"

Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database: "on-line, searchable compilation and extension of Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index 1878-1985, Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index 1985-1991, and Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index 1992-1995, including material located since publication of the last printed volume" (RSS available)

The Voices of Fandom: "Our continuing 'mission' is to collect audio interviews and audio clips, either newly recorded or historic artifacts, spoken word or music, for the entertainment of interested science fiction fans everywhere! The site includes rare clips, interviews, stories of 'fan history', readings of fan writings, music, filk room recordings and voices of fans in the ongoing Fandom Oral History project" (RSS available)

MidAmerican Fan Photo Archive: "a gallery of over 8,000 photographs of science fiction fans and professionals taken at science fiction conventions and events around the world"

International Association of Audience and Fan Studies: "this new organization will promote cross-disciplinary communication, activities, and scholarship through traditional academic venues"