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Rereading the Magical World of Harry Potter: Fanfiction As an Alternative Critical Modality

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Rereading the Magical World of Harry Potter: Fanfiction As an Alternative Critical Modality Rereading the Magical World of Harry Potter: Fanfiction as an Alternative Critical Modality SUZANNE PASSMORE B.A. (HONS 1) / B.COM., THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA, 2007 This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Western Australia School of Social and Cultural Studies 2011 ii Declaration I declare that this thesis is entirely my own work and that it has not been submitted for a degree or award at any other university. To my knowledge, this thesis does not contain material that has been previously published or written by another person where due reference has not been made in the text. This thesis does not contain work I have published, nor work under review for publication. iii iv Abstract Fanfiction (stories written by fans based on and existing ‘source’ text) has been an object of inquiry since the late 1980s. Studies in this field often use fanfiction as evidence of active consumption of media by fans; however, a trend in more recent work, such as Hellekson and Busse’s 2006 collection Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, suggests that fanfiction texts may be studied in their own right. These approaches both contend that writing fanfiction is a form of critical engagement with the fan object or source text. This thesis builds on this previous work and argues that reading fanfiction may also encourage its readers to engage critically with the source text. Fanfiction can, therefore, function similarly to academic literary criticism, which encourages its readers to rethink texts in similar ways. This thesis analyses the ways fanfiction facilitates a critical reading of the ideology of the source text, through close analysis of five novel- length Harry Potter fanfiction texts. The thesis is organised into three sections which reflect the themes of the family, masculinity and the body which emerged from the fanfiction under investigation. The first chapter of each section contextualises the theme in relation to Potter, drawing on relevant criticism of Potter which highlights its ideological ‘faultlines,’ a concept borrowed from cultural materialist critic Alan Sinfield. This foundation then informs the close textual analysis of the fanfiction which constitutes the remaining chapter(s) of each section. This approach demonstrates how the fans’ rereading of the magical world of the Potter source text in fanfiction makes visible and disrupts dominant ideologies, of gender and sexuality in particular, reproduced in the source text. Successfully positing fanfiction as an alternative critical modality prompts a reconsideration of fanfiction’s literary and critical value: where traditional ‘lit crit’ is largely the province of the university educated, the alternative critical modality offered by fanfiction is more accessible to the ‘ordinary’ (untrained) reader. v vi Table of Contents DECLARATION III ABSTRACT V TABLE OF CONTENTS VII ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IX INTRODUCTION 1 SECTION I – THE FAMILY 27 CHAPTER ONE: CREATING THE FAMILY IN POTTER 28 CHAPTER TWO: DENATURALISING FAMILY IDEOLOGY IN SEVERITUS FANFICTION 45 SECTION II - MASCULINITY 71 CHAPTER THREE: PATRIARCHY AND MASCULINITY IN POTTER 72 CHAPTER FOUR: DISRUPTING THE PATRIARCHY IN SEVERITUS FANFICTION 89 CHAPTER FIVE: SEXUALITY AND ALTERNATIVE MASCULINITIES IN SEVERITUS FANFICTION 108 SECTION III – THE BODY 128 CHAPTER SIX: CONSIDERING THE BODY IN POTTER 129 CHAPTER SEVEN: CHANGING BODIES IN SEVERITUS FANFICTION 145 CHAPTER EIGHT: EMBODYING GENDER, CLASS AND RACE IN SEVERITUS FANFICTION 160 CONCLUSION 177 BIBLIOGRAPHY 187 PRIMARY SOURCE TEXTS 187 PRIMARY FANFICTION TEXTS 187 SECONDARY TEXTS 188 vii viii Acknowledgements I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the people who made this final work possible through their support, kindness and encouragement. To my supervisor, Dr. Chantal Bourgault. Thank you for your time, effort and energy throughout this process. Your encouragement, understanding and kindness helped me move through the difficult times and enjoy the good times, research related and otherwise. Your academic rigour, knowledge and enthusiasm for your work set an example that motivated me and encouraged me to do my best. This thesis would not exist without you and I am very thankful that I have had the opportunity to work with you. To my partner, Bilal. Thank you for your unfailing support. That you always believed that I could do this means more to me that you realise. Your understanding and encouragement got me moving more times than I can count. This thesis would not exist without you, word as bond. To my parents. Thank you for your love, your time, your encouragement and your patience throughout this process and through every other aspect of my life. I am lucky to have you both. This thesis would not exist without you, for so many reasons, all of which I love you for. To my brothers, Mathew and David. Thank you for letting me bore you with tales of my research and of Harry Potter for so many hours over the last few years. Mathew, your humour and composure calmed me during stressful times. David, your conversation and interest inspired me during unproductive times. This thesis would not exist without you, even if you don’t realise it. To my extended family. Your interest in my work and support for my ambitions meant a great deal to me. I look forward to seeing you all more often now! Thank you. Finally, to my friends, old and new, thank you for your interest and your encouragement at every stage of this process. I only hope I will have the opportunity to do something as invaluable for you in the future. Thank you as well to my friends and colleagues at The University of Western Australia who have supported me in both my research and my teaching. Sharing this journey with you has been a pleasure. ix x Introduction I discovered fanfiction when I was thirteen years old, searching for a script of a missed episode of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion and finding fanfiction, in script format, instead. I remember being first confused, then intrigued and then eager for more. I dived head first into Evangelion fandom and, through my gradually growing confidence on the Internet and the Web, which I had used very few times before that, I began to discover other fandoms, and realised that for almost any text I liked, there could be more out there, somewhere. At that stage, I was what Sheenagh Pugh would describe as someone who wanted ‘more of’ my source text.1 This is contrasted with fans who want ‘more from’ their source text: Pugh compares Sherlock Holmes fans who write more mysteries for Holmes to solve in his usual way, and those Star Trek fans who wanted character development and relationships that were not featured in the source text.2 As I grew older, I grew more critical of my source texts, which by now had extended from my original anime into television shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Stargate, and books like the Harry Potter series. Becoming politicised about issues of gender, race and sexuality made me realise that these texts, while still enjoyable, were often problematic in both their depictions and their silences. To continue to enjoy these texts, I increasingly turned to fandom, where fan criticism and fanfiction could offer solutions to, or at least recognition of, these issues, while also opening my eyes to the texts in new ways. It is this personal experience of reading fanfiction as a critical form that motivated this study. I argue that fanfiction can be read as an alternative critical modality to literary criticism, performing similar tasks through different means. I chose to approach the question this way because fanfiction has not been studied much as a text; rather, fanfiction has been used primarily as evidence to support arguments regarding the blurring of the lines between consumption and production of media and popular culture, or to explore the motivations of fans.3 Kristina Busse and Karen 1 Sheenagh Pugh, The Democratic Genre: Fan fiction in a literary context, (Bridgend: Poetry Wale Press Ltd, 2005), p. 19. 2 Pugh, pp. 19-20. 3 Deborah Kaplan identifies this gap in a similar way, but focuses on studying fanfiction using the tools of literary criticism, writing ‘Literary analysis of fan fiction texts for its own sake is still mostly unexplored territory; literary theorists have left the field clear for the social and cultural theorists. … The produced works themselves [fanfiction], however, are usually valued only as windows into the producers. … Fan fiction has not been studied much as fiction, as texts that, under a literary criticism lens, can be fascinating as nonfan-produced work.’ Deborah Kaplan, “Construction of Fan Fiction Through Narrative,” Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, Eds. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse, (Jefferson, North Carolina: MacFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2006), pp. 134-135. Similarly, Mafalda Stasi writes that ‘In the last fifteen years of so, a number of scholarly texts studying slash fanfiction have 1 Hellekson provide a useful and comprehensive history of fan and fanfiction studies, in which they designate three distinct approaches to research in this field: media studies, psychoanalysis and ethnography.4 I would suggest that these three approaches fall into two distinct categories. The first approach, which flows from cultural studies and media studies, has been a principle paradigm in fan studies since the early 1990s. Henry Jenkins’ Textual Poachers is an exemplar of this approach, which has been primarily focused on examining the active or productive dimensions of fan cultures.5 Later research that developed from this paradigm conceived of fanfiction as an interpretive gesture which offers the researcher insight into the fan object/text.6 The second primary approach within fan and fanfiction studies is evident in some of the earliest work on fanfiction, such as Joanna Russ’s 1985 essay “Pornography by Women, for Women, with Love,” and often focuses on female fans in particular and their relationship with their fan object or text.7 Into this paradigm I collapse ethnographic studies of fan communities, such as Camille Bacon-Smith’s Enterprising Women.
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