Fan Culture

This paper is an English translation of my master's thesis in Cultural Studies. I've  made the translation myself, so no matter how many times I proofread it, errors may still appear.

Manga and anime, which are Japanese comics and animation respectively, have become very popular in Belgium in a seemingly short amount of time. Mainstream storechains have started selling Japanese fan objects. Comic conventions attract more visitors each passing year, and local fan communities like cosplayclubs gain new members on a daily basis. Along with this apparent popularity, a full-fledged Belgian subculture has formed around these Japanese media, in which the concept of fandom plays a central role.

This master’s thesis tries to uncover how these media have gained this much popularity in such a short amount of time, and what has triggered this boom. The starting point of this text is Club Dorothée, which is a French children’s television emission that ran in the ‘80s and ‘90s. This is followed by an overview of the history of anime- and mangafandoms in Belgium. This overview discusses topics such as Dutch manga translations, illegal fanmade publications, and local television planning.

Once these questions have been answered, this thesis attempts to offer an analysis of the subculture that has formed around these media. This analysis is based on Henry Jenkins’ theories on fandom, as this subculture comprises several different fandoms, and on Dick Hebdige’s classic subculture theory (which Hebdige originally wrote on the Punk subculture, but which can be used as a base for general subculture research). One essential part of this analysis is the comparison between the two different generations of mangafans in Belgium, which I refer to as the Club Dorothée generation and the Pokémon generation.

At the end of this thesis, several cultural phenomena that are characteristic of the Belgian mangasubculture are described, such as cosplay, and convention culture. Due to time constraints, this research focusses on Flanders rather than Belgium as a whole. However, it must be noted that Wallonia also has a crucial role to play in these events.

Note that this paper represents the situation as it was in 2014-2015.

Using notions from fan blogs and fan theory, this project analyzes the inconsistencies surrounding the phenomenon of so-called fangirls in the Doctor Who and One Direction worlds. The term fangirl is usually defined as an irrational adolescent female who is only a fan of very specific types of entertainment because of factors that are perceived by other fans as superficial and irrelevant. In contemporary music and television fandom, these fangirls are often criticized and policed by other fans, many times disregarded as not ‘true’ fans. The project studies this distorted perception and how it leads to misconceptions about the wider spectrum of contemporary fandom. The essay looks specifically at fan labor production and unpacks these inaccurate assumptions about what it is to be a fan, and how what ultimately counts as fangirl behavior actually opens up the potentialities of fan subjectivity itself.

Dans cet article, il s'agit d'examiner un nouveau type de tatouages littéraires de façon à mieux comprendre pourquoi certains adultes redéfinissent leur identité par le biais de la littérature de jeunesse. Ces tatouages se manifestent sous forme de citations textuelles ou visuelles et peuvent prendre la forme d'un autographe, d'une couverture de livre, d'une illustration, voire d'un code de classification. L'article considère que les tatouages liés à la littérature de jeunesse, particulièrement répandus en Grande-Bretagne, sont liés au statut culte de ce genre littéraire Outre-Manche. Il est également question de la façon dont ces tatouages, en se réappropriant le corps, sont utilisés comme outils de réécriture de soi. Enfin, l'article aborde la façon dont la littérature de jeunesse a récemment fait écho à cette mode en produisant une série de récits sur le tatouage pour mieux déconstruire les stéréotypes. Mots-clés Tatouage, littérature pour la jeunesse, culture fan, lecteurs, peau, incarnation, fiction culte, habitudes de lecture. Abstract This article explores a current trend of tattooing specifically devoted to children's literature, examining the

This article address the production, distribution and global expansion of the online teen drama SKAM/SHAME (2015–2017), produced by the Norwegian public service broadcaster NRK. The article combines perspectives on transmedia storytelling with production studies and studies of public service broadcasting to investigate the distinct production, publishing and promotion models underpinning SKAM, as well as its public service mission. Furthermore, it addresses SKAM’s transition from a ‘secret’ online teen drama targeting young Norwegians in season one to a global cult phenomenon with viewers and fans in all age groups and on all continents in season three and four, and relates this expansion to recent shifts within the television industry.

Studies on fandom show an Anglo-Saxon bias and most of them take gender, age, s class as the key to understand fandom. Following globalisation theory, this study arg importance to include locality as an explanatory category. Comparing fans of local st Kong pop star Leon Lai and his Dutch counterpart Marco Borsato-this study finds st differences. In general, while the Dutch fans see Marco as an ordinary human being, Kong fans characterise Leon as an extraordinary worker. The different characterisati authors argue, are informed by the dominant discourse on being ordinary, emotional humanitarian in the Dutch society at large, as well as that on being more than ordina hardworking and proud in the Hong Kong context. Music fandom is interpreted as a w locality, to provide a sense of home.

This is the original Dutch version of my thesis.

This paper is an English translation of my master's thesis in Cultural Studies. I made the translation myself, so no matter how many times I proofread it, errors may still appear. If you find any, feel free to contact me and I will rectify them.

Manga and anime, which are Japanese comics and animation respectively, have become very popular in Belgium in a seemingly short amount of time. Mainstream storechains have started selling Japanese fan objects. Comic conventions attract more visitors each passing year, and local fan communities like cosplayclubs gain new members on a daily basis. Along with this apparent popularity, a full-fledged Belgian subculture has formed around these Japanese media, in which the concept of fandom plays a central role.

This master’s thesis tries to uncover how these media have gained this much popularity in such a short amount of time, and what has triggered this boom. The starting point of this text is Club Dorothée, which is a French children’s television emission that ran in the ‘80s and ‘90s. This is followed by an overview of the history of anime- and mangafandoms in Belgium. This overview discusses topics such as Dutch manga translations, illegal fanmade publications, and local television planning.

Once these questions have been answered, this thesis attempts to offer an analysis of the subculture that has formed around these media. This analysis is based on Henry Jenkins’ theories on fandom, as this subculture comprises several different fandoms, and on Dick Hebdige’s classic subculture theory (which Hebdige originally wrote on the Punk subculture, but which can be used as a base for general subculture research). One essential part of this analysis is the comparison between the two different generations of mangafans in Belgium, which I refer to as the Club Dorothée generation and the Pokémon generation.

At the end of this thesis, several cultural phenomena that are characteristic of the Belgian mangasubculture are described, such as cosplay, and convention culture. Due to time constraints, this research focusses on Flanders rather than Belgium as a whole. However, it must be noted that Wallonia also has a crucial role to play in these events.

Note that this paper represents the situation as it was in 2014-2015.

Through the practices of the main fan of the US singer Madonna in Cuba, we investigate how cubans deal with the presence of Anglo-American icons of pop culture on the socialist island. A set of tensions about the presence of fan objects in the country is pointed out revealing a particular form of globalization that seems to negotiate the flows of transnational capital with the singularity of the Cuban state regime. From the memory of the fan, an itinerary takes us to the TV program Colorama, a kind of "cuban MTV". It postulates that the cultural consumption of Madonna artifacts on the island can be perceived as a dynamic of resistance, negotiation and solidarity of communities of fans that connect also through the social network Facebook.

This article analyzes to what extent femslash, a story created by fans that deals primarily with lesbian narratives, breaks with the classic canons of the construction of romance in fiction and proposes alternatives to overcome social stigmas around gender distinction. Through character analysis, the research identifies some of the main features of fictional structures for entertainment resulting from fan fiction. The research shows that the stories created by followers of serial audiovisual products clearly express some of the most relevant characteristics of the transformations not only of entertainment, but also of society and its heteronormative systems. This work provides valuable information on an unexplored subject and examines a concrete case study to demonstrate how the Internet can create spaces of creative resistance for minorities.

In response to the dual issues of pirating, and greater difficulties in securing a traditional record company deal, many musicians and producers are turning to fan-funding as a way to realise theirwork. Facilitated by new technology, emerging platforms such as Artistshare, Kickstarter andPledgemusic allow producers to circumvent gatekeepers and the conventional channels of distributionand consumption. On face value then, they seem to offer producers a sure-fire way to make projects happen through connecting directly with their audience. The reality is however, more complex and throws up many issues presently unexplored. For example,is eradicating the gatekeeper as attractive as it sounds, or is there a downside? Are producers interested in using these new channels to harvest (and their production be influenced by) fan tastes or are they just interested in the money? Lastly, having attained ownership and control of their work,do they display a new attitude to copyright or act in the same way that a traditional record companywould? Based on empirical research with one such platform, this paper seeks to answer these timely questions.

Throughout the last decade, the internet became an important arena for the political discourse. In this scenario, more than an expression of the digital culture associated to entertainment, the memes have became an expressive phenomena of searching for social participation, throughout interaction processes based in the production and sharing of amateur content in the web. In this work, we base ourselves in the period of the 2014 Brazilian presidential elections, for a better understanding if this humour from the memes, mixed with the criticism for the candidates, actually expands the ways of discussion and political participation of the users in social media, looking for analyse how this process happens and what it seems to show about the future of digital culture.

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Ao longo da última década, a internet tornou-se uma arena importante para o discurso público. Nesse cenário, mais do que uma expressão da cultura digital vinculada ao entretenimento, os memes vêm se tornando um fenômeno expressivo de busca da participação social, por meio de processos de interação baseados na produção e compartilhamento de conteúdo amador na rede. Neste trabalho, nos debruçamos sobre o período das eleições presidenciais de 2014, para compreender se esse humor dos memes, mesclado às críticas aos candidatos, amplia de fato os modos de discussão e participação política dos interagentes nas redes sociais, buscando analisar como esse processo acontece e o que ele parece sinalizar a respeito do futuro da cultura digital.

A fan edit can generally be defined as an alternative version of a film or television text created by a fan. It offers a different viewing experience, much as a song remix offers a different listening experience. The contemporary wave of fan edits has emerged during the remix zeitgeist of digital media and at a time when digital video editing technology has become more affordable and popular. The increasing number of alternative versions of films and the works of revisionist Hollywood filmmakers such as George Lucas have contributed to a greater public understanding of cinema as a fluid medium instead of one that exists in a fixed form. The Phantom Edit (2000), a seminal fan edit based on Lucas's Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), inspired new ranks of fan editors. However, critics have misunderstood fan edits as merely the work of disgruntled fans. In order to provide a critical and historical basis for studies in fan editing as a creative practice, I examine previous interpretations of fan edits in the context of relevant contemporary works, and I use an annotated chronology of The Phantom Edit to trace its influence on subsequent fan editing communities and uncover their relationship with intellectual property disputes.

Full text available: https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/575

Notes and addenda: https://wille.tv/2014/09/22/fan-edits-and-the-legacy-of-the-phantom-edit/

Die Produktion von seriellen Kinder- und Jugendhörspielen wurde von der Medienforschung in den 1980er- und 1990er-Jahren als wenig anspruchsvolle Fliessbandarbeit wahrgenommen. Der kulturanthropologische Beitrag möchte diese Sicht mittels eines genaueren Blicks auf die Spezifik seriellen Erzählens und Produzierens einer der erfolgreichsten und beliebtesten Kinder- und Jugendhörspielserien Deutschlands korrigieren. Ziel des Beitrages ist es auch herauszufinden, inwiefern sich der theoretische Rahmen der Serialitätsforschung für die Betrachtung der Arbeitswelt einer populärkulturellen Audioserie eignet. ...

More Info: http://www.kids-media.uzh.ch/de/1-2014.html

Esta es una presentación visual sobre un artículo que hemos presentado sobre la representación del autismo en la plataforma fanfiction.net . Este es el artículo disponible en línea: Lugo, N., Melón, M. E., & Castillo, M. C. (2017). La representación del autismo en las narrativas de fan fiction. net: los espacios de afinidad como oportunidad para la negociación de sentido. Palabra Clave, 20(4), 948-978.

Chapter in edited volume: Herbrechter, Stefan & Michael Higgins (eds.) Returning (to) Communities. Theory, Culture and Political Practice of the Communal. Amsterdam/New York, NY: Rodopi 2006

This essay is based on a reception study I have made of four Swedish men who all but one have World War II/Nazi Germany as their greatest interest. Using Fiske's concept of "shadow cultural economy" I examine what turned out to be a form of fan community around WWII. Two of these men are into WWII role-play and strategy games, meeting with other "Nazi-fans" sharing the same interests and hobbies. This means that they have been forced to consider the ethical aspects of their hobby for being able to legitimate it both to others but perhaps even more to themselves.

It’s hard to miss fans of the idol groups and singers, but Korean hip-hop (Khip-hop)  fans are much harder to find. I know they exist, but  you wouldn’t KNOW it looking at fan activity on the Internet.  There are some real reasons why they might want to think about standing up and being heard.