Fandom & Textual Poaching
The first concept that we will be discussing is fandom from Henry Jenkins and Matt Hills. Hills suggests that fans are "obsessed with a particular star, celebrity, films, tv programmes, band; somebody who can produce reams of information on their object of fandom" (Hills 2002, p. Preface) whereas Jenkins suggests that fans are "like the poachers of old, fans operate from a position of cultural marginality and social weakness. Like other popular readers, fans lack direct access to the means of commercial cultural production and have only the most limited resources with which to influence the entertainment industry's decision," (Jenkins 1992, p.26-27)
When seeing both sides of the argument, both arguments are valid. Looking at Hills argument, if a person does not like a certain type of text, they are not a fan, they are less likely to be interested in the content, because fans are a community of people who are interested in the same content. Like Tarantino's infamous briefcase in Pulp Fiction (1994) that the entire film is based around, nobody knows what is in there and has not been explained by Tarantino so fans have many different theories online to share within the community, this is Tarantino allowing fans to do what they want with the content. People who are not fans will not do further research and will not put the effort into creating anything related to the text that they are not into and are not "obsessed" (Hills 2002, p. Preface) with the text so fans are obsessed as described by Hills. Moving on to Jenkins argument, fans only have limited resources depending on what the industry has to offer them. With web 2.0, it has been easier for fans to create fan fictions, fan blogs, and fan art platform and can share it with a community of people with the same interest, "create grounds for (their) struggle," (Gray, Sandvoss, Harrington, Jenkins 2007, p.288).
With the concept of Textual poaching, I will be looking at the meaning of textual poaching from Jenkin's and de Certeau's point of view. For Jenkins, fans are "active producers" (Jenkins 2013, p.23) and "own the right to form interpretations," (Jenkins 2013, p.18) whereas de Certeau argued that "fans are not unique in their status as textual poachers, yet, they have developed poaching to an art form," (Jenkins 2013, p.27)
When Jenkins suggests that fans are "active producers," (Jenkins 2013, p.23) producers can be defined as content creators. The producer and the content creator both create a form of art. The art may be a recreation of something that has already exist or entirely new, however in this context, it is based on the recreation of something based on the text that the fans are interested in. Anyone can be any form of content creators depending on an individual's personal interest. Fans recreate a form of art to fit their own lifestyle and interest, they fill in what is missing to suit their desire. Fans are fanatics meaning "of or belonging to a temple" (Jenkins 2013, p.12) which leads us to think that fans are part of a cult, a cult that shares the same interest. However when Jenkins suggested that fans "own the right to form interpretations," fans have the right to do it, however there should be an extent to how much they are allowed to interpret. The original creators have created the characters with a certain personality and look which they all fit into a story. If the fans were to change the personality of the characters or the looks of the characters, they could also easily change the name which means that they are creating a whole new content, which also means that they are not poaching it anymore because the character have a whole new look and personality. When looking at de Certeau's argument, "fans are not unique in their status as textual poachers," (Jenkins 2013, p.27) when creating content, fans will always create it to fit their lifestyle, when creating to fit one's lifestyle, it is always inspired by surrounding which means that any form of creation would be poaching therefore, de Certeau's argument stands out more because it is human nature to get inspired by other texts.
It is an interesting way to argue textual poaching by using two different points of views, which are Henry Jenkins and de Certeau, and yourself eventually suggest the one you think is more fit to the situation nowadays.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there might be an argument at the last paragraph. As you use Jenkins' concept:
'If the fans were to change the personality of the characters or the looks of the characters, they could also easily change the name which means that they are creating a whole new content, which also means that they are not poaching it anymore because the character has a whole new look and personality.'
In my opinion, there are more than two materials to create a character, or should we say create a character in a story. In other words, if a fan of Harry Potter creates a whole new character and narrative in a MAGICAL world and some of the settings are similar, people can still find the links between the fan made story and Harry Potter and argue that the IDEAS have been poached.
On one hand, it shows that how powerful the original is, because who has the ideas FIRST seems to own the whole creation.
On the other hand, it shows that how weak the fan is because most of the things they created would link back to the original and be called as fan-fiction rather than a new story.
In this case, I believe the most arguable thing would be WHO HAS THE IDEAS OF MAGICAL POWER FIRST?
(In fact, there is still another kind of magical fantasy stories you can argue back such as BBC's Merlin, which is totally different from Harry Potter except the power of magic.)
Hi Shao Yi,
DeleteI agree with the point you are making, sometimes it makes the original creator as a successful creator because they manage to get fans involvement. We are able to tell the difference between fan made content because fans share it online on fan forums whereas if the original content creator were to share something based on the text then they would share it on their official page. Sometimes where you share can change the view of the audience because as you use Harry Potter as an example, would you be more excited if someone share something on a fan forum or more excited if the official web page of Harry Potter from the Warner Brothers Bros released something on their page.