Fans, Media Consumption, and

Media Production
History of Fandoms
● Traces back to letter columns of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories
○ Launched in 1926
○ Letters columns: fans could make contact with each other, and it became the space for
the starts of fandoms as we know them today
■ Gernsback published fans’ names and addresses, which allowed them to
correspond with each other -- this created the first fan networks
● Fans organized local clubs, and regional conventions
● 1939: first world sci fi convention (WorldCon), held July 2-4 at Caravan Hall
in New York
○ 200 people attended
○ $1 for all three days
○ Forrest J Ackerman: sci fi writer, editor, and literary agent, and considered one of the first
cosplayers when he wears a costume to the convention designed by his girlfriend
Cultivation of Content Creators: (Women) Writers
● Sci fi fandom has helped to cultivate and support new writers in the
genre: “a nurturing space in which to develop skills, styles, themes, and
perhaps most importantly, self confidence before entering the
commercial marketplace” (Jenkins 40).
● Fans can exchange ideas and receive feedback on their work.
● Especially important for women writers, who were largely excluded from
the sci fi literary marketplace.
○ Professional sci fi male-oriented and male-dominated
○ Fanzines became places where women writers could develop their skills and support each
other
○ “Safe” spaces where women writers could be risky, could express themselves, and could
cultivate their skills
Cultivation of Content Creators: Women Writers
● 1970s: 90% of Star Trek fanfiction was written by women
● 2010 FFN breakdown: 78% female, 22% male
● Centrumlumina's AO3 census: 80% female, 6% genderqueer, 4% male, 10%
identify as other options
So…women are overwhelmingly writing fanfiction and creating fanworks in general.
Why?
● Idiom6 on Reddit: “The overwhelming vast majority of mainstream media caters
to a male audience and the male gaze; most men are satisfied with what's
published/distributed through official channels because it's all really meant for
them and they can readily find eye candy, tropes, and kinks all catered to them.
Fanfiction allows women a space to break free and explore what they want.”
Henry Jenkins: “Textual Poachers”: Important Terms and Concepts
● Active reading as “poaching”
○ Michel de Certeau (1984)
○ “Readers are travellers; they move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads
poaching their way across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy
it themselves” (174).
● Who owns a text?
○ We are taught to read for authorial intent
○ Students consume without blemishing (physical act of not even marking up books)
○ There is one Truth to a text and that is what the author intended
○ Reader as passive recipient of authorial meaning
○ Cannot deviate from the original “intent” of the text
○ Students are rewarded for “‘correctly’ decipher[ing] a text and [are penalized for getting it]
‘wrong,’ while student’s personal feelings and associations are rated ‘irrelevant’ to the task
of literary analysis” (26).
“Textual Poachers”: Authorial Intent and Ownership
● This model means that the academy gets to decide which readings are
“correct” (ie., in line with “authorial intent”) and which are not
● Respect for “integrity” of original meaning also means that oppositional
voices are marginalized, repressed, silenced
● Exclusion of oppositional voices and reception mirrors their exclusion at
production
○ Fans often lack access to commercial cultural production
○ Fans are seen as peasants, not as proprietors
● So, what do we do when we are excluded from production?
We produce the thing ourselves.
“Poaching” vs. “Misreading”
● “Poaching” as a theory of appropriation
● “Misreading”: preserves traditional hierarchy of the privileged status of
authorial meaning
○ Also suggests there proper strategies of reading
○ Mastering these strategies will lead to “correct” readings of the text
○ Using “improper” strategies will lead to “incorrect” readings of the text
○ The scholar, not the popular reader, is the one to create “correct” readings of text
○ Academic readings are more “objective”
Stuart Hall: “Encoding” and “Decoding”
● Offers a different mode of communication than the linear form of “Sender
→ Message → Receiver”
○ Sender creates message, fixes the meaning, communicates clearly to the receiver
● Hall theorizes this process is “too neat”
○ Meaning is not fixed or determined by a sender
○ The message is never clear or transparent
○ The audience is not a passive recipient of meaning
● Hall proposes there is a “lack of fit” between two sides in the theoretical
exchange:
○ “Encoding”: the moment of the production of the message
○ “Decoding”: the moment of reception
Stuart Hall: “Encoding” and “Decoding”
● “Encoding” and “Decoding” are moments of entrance into and exit out of
discourse
● Hall argues that communication takes a three-dimensional concept and
translates it into a two-dimensional one (J.L. Austin’s How to Do Things with
Words makes a similar argument), and so how do we not lose things in the
translation?
● Hall revises “sender → message → receiver” using Marxist language
Stuart Hall: “Encoding” and “Decoding”
● Sender becomes “producer”
● Receiver becomes “consumer”
● “Receive” suggests a passive relationship with the message; “consume”
suggests and active one that leads to the production, or “reproduction,” of
meaning
● Thus, meaning cannot be determined by any one point in the circuit; it
becomes recursive, more egalitarian
● How might this concept be important in the creation of fanworks?
Howard Becker (1982): “Art Worlds”
● Describes “‘an established network of cooperative links’ (34) between
institutions of artistic production, distribution, consumption,
interpretation, and evaluation” (39).
● “‘Art Worlds produce works and also give them aesthetic values’” (qtd. In
Jenkins 39).
● “Art Worlds” are systems that establish aesthetic norms, generic
convention, profession training…anything that goes into the production
and reception of artworks.
● Media fandom (both at large and individually) create their own Art Worlds,
which are beyond the control of commercial media producers, and are
founded on the production of fan texts.
Fanfiction: Layers of Adapation
● Fanfic creates new works based on previous commercially created texts
● Meta → headcanon → fanworks (but I would argue this is also recursive,
ie., Hall’s concept of “encoding” and “decoding”)
● Some fanworks creators will also build in a level of literary/film
adaptation, imaging their characters in a world similar to one that already
exists out there
● Fanworks inspired by other texts
Example: MHA as Weathering with You
“Of Jade and Lacquer”: Inuyasha and “The Yellow Wallpaper”
1. What are the main themes/issues at work in
“The Yellow Wallpaper?” How do we know?
2. What are the main themes/issues kstew (the
author) has chosen to use from the short
story?
3. AND, what are the main themes/issues she
has chosen to use from Inuyasha?
4. The big question: how does she bring this all
together in the story?
“Of Jade and Lacquer”: Inuyasha and “The Yellow Wallpaper”

1. Inuyasha and Kagome as characters: what do we know about them from canon?
And, what do we know about them from the story?
2. First-person POV: in what ways are both the narrator in “TYW” and Inuyasha
unreliable?
3. What item is the equivalent of the yellow wallpaper in “Of Jade and Lacquer?”
How do we know?
4. What is the battle that Inuyasha is fighting in this story? How does it relate to
the item?
5. What event changes Inuyasha’s perception of his wife, and also of the idea that
they need to leave? And, why is this so important?
6. Why doesn’t Kagome want Inuyasha to leave the room? And, how does this
connect to “TYW?”
7. In the end, what has happened to Inuyasha? And, again, connection to “TYW?”
Works Consulted
Budanovic, Nikola. “Hugo Gernsback, father of the science fiction genre,
launched a magazine that in its letters column created sci-fi fandom.” The
Vintage News, 25 May 2018, accessed 13 Feb. 2022.
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/05/25/hugo-gernsback/?firefox=1
Jenkins, Henry. “Textual Poachers.” The Fan Fiction Studies Reader, edited by
Karen Helleckson and Kristina Busse, University of Iowa Press, 2014, pp. 26-43.