KT Torrey

Read the post here: http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2015/08/25/love-for-the-fannish-archive-fullers-hannibal-as-fanfiction/

Throughout the series’ three-season run, Hannibal showrunner Bryan Fuller has asserted that he regards the show as fanfiction: an affectionate remix of elements from Thomas Harris’ novels Red Dragon and Hannibal Rising, as well as from previous adaptations of those works. Hannibal, then, is transparent about being one of many “proliferations of shared sources” that comprise the “metaphorical archive” of the fandom’s fiction (De Kosnik 119). In positioning the series as fanfiction, and he and his team as fanfiction writers, Fuller claims the identity and ethos of not just a fan, but a feminine-gendered fan, those most maligned and oft-mocked in many media depictions of fandom. With that ethos in hand, Hannibal-as-fanfic has chosen to intertextually and ardently acknowledge both the practices and the affect of its primarily female fandom—allowing Fannibals to see some part of themselves, of their fannish identity, reflected back with love from within the series itself.

Soon after its premiere in 2005, the American television show Supernatural spawned an online fandom dedicated to ‘slashing’ the show’s two protagonists, brothers Sam and Dean Winchester: that is, to writing stories in which the brothers are portrayed as lovers. Over time, the existence of these slash narratives – affectionately dubbed ‘Wincest’ by the show’s fans – has been incorporated into the series’ diagesis. Indeed, in the wake of the programme’s repeated forays into diegetic metatextuality, some Supernatural fan writers have re-incorporated Sam and Dean’s canonized awareness of slash fiction back into Wincest stories themselves - specifically, into the subgenre of metatextual Wincest, stories that recast Sam and Dean as conscious participants in Wincest fan culture. Using Della Pollock’s notion of performative writing as a guide, this essay will explore the distinctive types of encounters between reader, writer, and text that metatextual Wincest stories facilitate. Further, the appli- cation of this critical approach to three such narratives – nyoxcity’s ‘Stranger Than Fiction’, Road Rhythm’s ‘This is All Very Meta’, and Fanspired’s ‘Conversations with Head People’ – highlights fan writers’ perception of their own creative author- ity within the ongoing process of meaning-making that continues to spin around Supernatural. Ultimately, this essay will argue that what makes metatextual Wincest stories distinct is their suggestion that only by working in concert with their fans can Sam and Dean finally write their own version of a happy ending, some- thing ‘the show [itself] eternally defers’ – even if the lasting power of the ever-after they create together remains, in the end, uncertain (Tosenberger 2008, 5.12).

From his first appearance, the character of the angel Castiel—and, by extension, Misha Collins, the actor who portrays him—has been a favorite among many fans of the CW’s [very] long-running series, Supernatural. The character’s popularity is due in part to Castiel’s intimate, awkward friendship with Dean Winchester, one of the show’s leads. Although the series does not [overtly] present their relationship as romantic, fans have made this slash pairing—often referred to as “Destiel”—the focus of intense creative production, something that Collins has acknowledged with open amusement at fan conventions and in interviews. However, this acknowledgement took a critical turn in May 2014 with the debut of TSA America, a series of three short satiric films co-written by Collins and his wife, Vicki Vantoch. In one of these shorts, titled “Just Relax,” Collins plays a TSA agent who gives a private security screening to an aggressively heterosexual, plaid-wearing Texan who bears a striking resemblance to Dean Winchester. [SLIDE] Through lingering touches and sensual glances, the screening quickly morphs into what the Texan [incorrectly] interprets as a scene of [gay porn worthy] seduction. An examination of “Just Relax,” along with its initial reception, suggests that Collins’ relationship with some of his fans can be understood in terms of a mutual seduction: that is, as an ongoing circulation of interpretation, creation, and practice that’s sustained by what Catherine Zuromskis calls the “infinite postponement of climax” around the Destiel narrative (12). Such a circulation, or ecology, acts as a “game in continuous movement” wherein questions about the interpretation of Dean and Castiel’s relationship within the Supernatural canon always remain unresolved (Baudriallard 22). As a media text, then, this paper will argue that “Just Relax” can be read as a piece of fannish production, one that constitutes a contribution to ongoing fan conversation about the series’ portrayal of Castiel and Dean. Ultimately, I’ll suggest that “Just Relax” illustrates the productive potential of the increasingly fuzzy lines between what Lyotard calls the “addressor” and the “addressee” in fan/creative relations by embodying Baudriallard’s notion that “to be seduced is to challenge the other to be seduced in turn” (22).

slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxtsZ9d-JR7nc21jLTlnX25JclE/view

This multimedia essay can be found here: https://storify.com/HarlotStorifys/encomium-on-the-overlord

As a new fan of the CW's paranormal series Supernatural, I paid little attention to actor Misha Collins outside the omnipresent trenchcoat of his character, Castiel—until a kairotic question from a fellow conference panelist pointed me in the direction of Collins' Twitter feed. I was struck by Collins’ 140-character shots of performative trolling, Tweets that sang to me in shades, gleeful rhetorical waves, of the sophists, particularly because of the actor's interest in, and unique definition of, social change.

Building on that sophistic seed, I argue here that Collins' construction of a megalomaniacal Twitter persona known as the Overlord has afforded him a particular kind of disruptive ethos, one he's used to persuade his fans to regard both "normalcy" as a social problem and acts of art and public performance as effective means of addressing that ill. Ultimately, I suggest that listening carefully to how Collins' fan community defines, enacts, and understands "social change"—rather than measuring their rhetoric against a fixed understanding of what such change can and should look like—may allow those of us outside of this community, and others like it, to add to our understanding of the "new ways of thinking about citizenship and collaboration" at work within the many, varied, and beautiful spaces of fandom (Jenkins 257).

Over the course of Supernatural’s first five seasons, Sam and Dean Winchester fought for the right to tell their own story despite the single, terrible future for which God’s original plan provided. Ultimately, the brothers’ desire to resist narrative objectification—becoming props in someone else’s story—afforded them the agency they needed to subvert the Apocalypse. However, in seasons six and seven, an unholy host of “new gods” effectively undermined that agency; a host that includes their greatest ally, the angel Castiel. This chapter examines how Castiel reshapes Sam and Dean into objects, mere parts within what the episode “The French Mistake” suggests is the “box of strings and pulleys” that make up Supernatural, unsettling the characters in ways that the show’s primary narrative has yet to resolve.