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2010 "Your Own Imagination": Vidding and Vidwatching as Collaborative Interpretation Tisha Turk
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This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty and Staff choS larship at University of Minnesota Morris Digital Well. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Publications by an authorized administrator of University of Minnesota Morris Digital Well. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “YOUR OWN IMAGINATION”: VIDDING AND VIDWATCHING AS COLLABORATIVE INTERPRETATION
TISHA TURK
For decades, scholars in the to archive, annotate, social sciences and literary, appropriate, and recirculate media and communication media content”3 and studies have demonstrated “audiences themselves that audiences are not frequently function as self- necessarily passive consumers conscious media producers of written and visual texts, and and critics.”4 that they can and do actively This essay focuses on a interpret, negotiate, and even particular genre of audience resist the variable meanings production: fan-made song encoded in those texts.1 videos, known within the Media fans were among the media fan community simply earliest spectators to shift as vids. In vids, footage from from merely reading actively television series or films is to creating texts of their own edited in conjunction with that extend or comment on carefully chosen music to the originals and constructing celebrate, interpret, critique, or communities organized subvert mass media narratives. around those creations. Fans A vid is, as Francesca Coppa were there-fore early adopters has put it, “a visual essay that of the practices that stages an argument,” but, characterize what has come to unlike academic essays or be called read/write culture2 written reviews, vids allow or participatory culture, a their creators—called culture in which “everyday vidders—to present people take advantage of new arguments in the same technologies that enable them medium as the original
88 source.5 Vidders thus position many years. Kandy Fong made themselves simultaneously as the first vid (a slideshow) in fans, filmmakers, and critics. 1975, and a relatively small Vids express what vidders find number of women, often important in the source working in groups and pooling narrative, which characters, resources, produced vids using relationships, stories and two VCRs throughout the subtexts they find most 1980s and 90s, and in some interesting and rewarding to cases well into the current examine. A vid represents a decade.6 Digital video editing close reading, and like any has made certain vidding close reading it is selective: procedures much easier and vidders can retain or subvert has enabled the use of shorter the original story, foreground clips and of digital effects a minor story element or ranging from adjusting colour character, excise the parts of and speed to masking the story that displease them, characters in and out of shots, or create a new story but the work of vidding and altogether. Vids are therefore vidwatching in the digital era opportunities to resist as well remains continuous with, if as reinscribe visual narratives. not always identical to, that of Because of the increasingly the VCR era. widespread availability both of In this essay, I argue that, in digital non-linear editing addition to being artefacts of software—nearly all new participatory culture, vids computers come with a basic represent critical engagements version of such software that both encode and demand already installed—and of collaborative interpretation. broadband internet access, Treating collaborative most vids in recent years have interpretation as a central fan been made on computers and activity allows us to distributed online. But vidding understand why growing did not begin with YouTube; numbers of fans identify it is a well-established practice themselves as fans of vids and that predates our current vidding as well as, or even conception of “new media” by instead of, specific television
89 series and films.7 As Henry are cultural narratives about Jenkins has argued, vids gender and sexuality, including “articulate […] what the fans the representation of gendered have in common: their shared bodies, roles, and choices. understandings, their mutual Although vidding is not interests, their collective inherently feminist, it does fantasies” and “focus on those offer the female spectator a aspects of the narrative that chance to talk back to media the community wants to representations of both male explore”.8 Increasingly, those and female bodies. It is shared understandings and impossible to offer a simple mutual interests transcend reason why this particular specific source material: form of participatory culture is vidders and vidwatchers are practiced so overwhelmingly fans of particular ways of by women while fan films— seeing, ways of reclaiming or perhaps the closest talking back to mass media. analogue—are typically made Vids like Luminosity’s by men; female fans create “Vogue” and sisabet’s “Ring vids about a variety of sources Them Bells,” discussed from a variety of perspectives hereafter, are not grounded in for a variety of purposes and shared understandings of a pleasures, and attempting to particular source—at least, not explain the phenomenon risks understandings worked out in homogenizing these fannish activity related differences. But, if as Julie specifically to that source. Levin Russo argues, “fans are While they might be said to appropriating the signifiers of “focus on the aspects of the mass culture in the service of narrative that the community their independent narrative wants to explore,” some of the and social needs”.9 We might narratives explored in these speculate that women are two vids are much larger than more likely than men to feel the specific films 300 (Zack that their narrative and social Snyder, 2006) and Kill Bill needs are not being met by Vols. 1 and 2 (Quentin that culture: television and Tarantino, 2003-2004); they film are not giving these
90 women enough of the stories they want, so they make those Vids are one way for women stories themselves. Vids, like to lay claim to a medium that fan fiction, can be a way of still makes little room for their simultaneously improving voices and desires. beloved but problematic This appropriation has been commercial texts and creating going on for decades, although new non-commercial texts the specifics of the practice expressly designed to fulfil a have changed over time. particular set of desires; they When Jenkins wrote Textual can also be a way of calling Poachers—for many years the attention to the elements that only published scholarship on need fixing, of registering fans and fandom to discuss anger or frustration. Vids vidding in detail—vids were show us something about an underground and highly what the vidder sees in a insular cultural phenomenon: particular media text, what she in order to watch vids, and liked about it, what she especially to get one’s own disliked, what she found copies of vids, one had to interesting or absurd. They tell know where to go and whom us something about the kinds to contact. Fans were most of stories that women want to likely to see vids for the first see, the stories that women time at a convention or in the will create out of what is home of a fellow fan who available to them. As Coppa already possessed vid notes, collections on tape; these tapes could typically be the advent of home obtained only at conventions filmmaking technology has or, occasionally, by writing to allowed women to look, the vidders to request that a judge, select, edit, and tape be sent by mail. Vids are manipulate images without still “narrowcast” rather than any of the physical or broadcast, but even social dangers historically narrowcast texts are now connected to the female widely available, if not widely gaze.10 announced, and fannish
91 infrastructures—including and production even existed, listservs, forums, and much less how to find those especially fan communities on communities. Now that those LiveJournal and other social communities are online, more networking sites—make them and more people do join not only available but easily fandom, or set up fannish accessible.11 It is now possible outposts of their own—and for a fan who discovers she many of these fans have begun likes vids to download dozens to watch vids and even to of them without ever having make them. Many—possibly any contact with the vidders. most—of these new vidders In this sense, though vids and vidwatchers are unfamiliar continue to operate in some of with the history of vids; they the ways of folk culture,12 and may have no idea, for though they are still example, that fans were profoundly non-commercial, making vids on two VCRs they are simultaneously taking decades before it was possible on shadings of mass culture, to make them on computers. something “produced at a Nevertheless, they have joined distance by strangers,” as the active audience that Richard Ohmann describes characterizes media fandom it.13 generally and the vidding These changes can be community in particular. attributed, in part, to the But if the Internet has enabled dramatic rise in the number of rapid and wide-ranging people participating in fannish circulation of artefacts of the activities. The explosion of vidding culture, the media fandom in the wake of interpretive assumptions, the Internet suggests that community norms, and there were always far more personal relationships around potential than actual which that culture has participants in the culture of developed cannot be so easily fandom; many protofans distributed. Like the largely simply did not know that male-authored digital fan films communities organized Jenkins discusses in Convergence around fannish consumption Culture, a vid constitutes a
92 “public dialogue” with its and of fannish reading source narrative.14 But, most practices as so specific to that vids are public in a specific culture that the artefacts of and limited sense: they are those practices, including vids, intended for consumption by will make no sense in a a particular subset of the fan mainstream context, and community. While the (often might therefore be dismissed, male) creators of machinima misunderstood, or ridiculed— and anime music videos have a perception that has, indeed, begun to garner attention as some historical justification.16 early practitioners of remix The occasional media video, vidders—who belong “discovery” of vids, frequently to a considerably older vids re-uploaded to YouTube tradition—have largely kept without the vidders’ consent themselves off the cultural and and circulated well beyond the academic radar, and most of originally intended fannish them continue to post their audiences, has more often work under pseudonyms.15 than not confirmed vidders’ The reluctance to go fully concerns about audience public can be attributed in part misperceptions.17 to legal concerns; because (as These concerns about of this writing) the U.S. Digital audience highlight just how Millennium Copyright Act important it is that a viewer be prohibits the circumvention of prepared to do the work of copyright protection systems vidwatching: not all vids are on commercial DVDs (most equally complex, but they all vidders’ preferred source of require certain kinds of video in recent years), the decoding. Much of the status of vids as academic scholarship in fan transformative and therefore studies has focused either on fair use has yet to be tested in developing ethnographies of U.S. courts. But vidders’ the fan community or on collective aversion to publicity analyzing fan texts, such as fan can also be ascribed to a fiction or even vids; very little community perception of scholarship has examined the fandom as outsider culture, work that fans do when
93 consuming texts by fellow conventions of reading shapes fans—a curious oversight, [our] experiences and given that such consumption evaluations” of the text.19 Any is a major component of the text is to some extent a puzzle: fan community. Vidding itself, the author supplies the pieces once one understands what it and the audience puts them entails, is easily understood as together. But a vid constitutes a creative practice, a form of a particular, and particularly fannish activity that requires pleasurable, kind of puzzle: in particular kinds of work, but the case of a vid, the viewer the status of vidwatching is must supply some of the less immediately obvious.18 pieces. If the viewer does not And yet it is precisely the collaborate—if she cannot advanced interpretive practices supply those pieces—the vid of vidwatching that render does not work the way it was vids opaque to so many designed to. It may still work; viewers unfamiliar with the it may still be interesting, genre. engaging, and effective. But it All spectatorship, of course, will be, in a very real sense, a involves some degree of different vid. A vid’s participation and meanings, then, are never interpretation: we track and located solely within the vid respond to characters, itself, but rather in the anticipate and react to plot interaction between the vid, developments, and otherwise the source, and the viewer: connect the dots that define a meanings emerge and are narrative’s line. More negotiated by the vidwatcher generally, we apply our in the gap (whether wide or knowledge of genres, the narrow) between the original aggregations and mutual narrative and the vid’s new influences of texts that share narrative. assumptions or traditions, to a When watching a vid based particular text in order to help on a source text she knows, a make sense of it; with visual fan processes multiple streams narratives, as with books, our of information at once: music, “prior knowledge of lyrics, visual images, the
94 juxtaposition of clips within construction of meaning: the the vid, the original contexts song and its lyrics provide of at least some of the clips narrative and emotional (which may allude to particular information that the audience events or even whole must decode. Claudia storylines), the meanings Gorbman has commented on assigned to those clips by the “the enormous power music song’s music and lyrics. Her holds in shaping the film response to the vid, like the experience, manipulating vidder’s interpretation of the emotions and point of view, original source, is likely to be and guiding perceptions of forged in relation not only to characters, moods, and the source but to some subset narrative events,” but argues of the interpretations already that the audience is generally circulating in her corner of not supposed to be aware of fandom: the post-episode music’s presence in a film.20 discussions, the critical In the case of vids, the power conversations, the fan fiction, of music is even more the other vids. A vidwatcher’s pronounced, because music is knowledge of the source and a vid’s most obvious and her own reading of that source essential discursive feature. inform her understanding of Vidders and vidwatchers are the vid, and her experience of entirely aware of the the vid may in turn affect her importance of music in vids; perception of the source. A in a recent documentary series vid thus encourages both the on vidding (a collaboration co-construction and re- between MIT’s Project New construction of meaning: it Media Literacies and the models a particular critical Organization for viewpoint, inviting a viewer to Transformative Works), a long solidify her position within, or series of fans identify “song perhaps to join for the first choice” as the single most time, a particular audience for important decision a vidder the source narrative. makes.21 Vidders’ use of music is Music thus plays a key role critical to this collaborative in the creation and reception
95 of vids; it structures the new film. As Bertha Chin observes, narrative and guides viewers’ films “do not possess the responses to what they see. If, same kind of ‘longevity’” as as H. Porter Abbott observes, narrative TV; “the character the burden of narration in film and plot development in a TV is “borne largely by the camera series, which can continue (the angles, duration, and over years,” make it “easier for sequencing of what it sees) fans to become emotionally and not uncommonly by attached to the show’s music,”22 then it is clear that, characters and their by adding music, vidders re- relationships.”25 Because narrate source texts: the new these characters and music functions not merely as relationships are precisely the a soundtrack for the images narrative elements that most but as an “interpretive lens” interest vidders, and because through which to view the re- of the intratextual complexity cut and re-sequenced clips.23 (and extratextual fan The song’s lyrics are the camaraderie) that a regular exposition—often, though not ongoing narrative enables, it’s always, chosen to “draw out not surprising that vids based aspects of the emotional lives on TV dominate fannish of the characters or otherwise vidding and vidwatching get inside their heads” —and experiences. In addition, the the music provides the movies most often vidded affect.24 By stripping out the tend to be series and original sound and adding franchises: Star Trek, Star music of her choosing, the Wars, The Lord of the Rings, vidder takes over a key role in the Harry Potter series, production, transforming the Hollywood versions of original source and creating superhero comics—movies something new. that inspire extensive fannish The importance of activity in other realms, such collaborative interpretation as fan fiction. also helps explain why vidders But vidders do work with have more often chosen to other kinds of films, ranging work with television than with from Duck Soup to A Scanner
96 Darkly. Vids for standalone vids can fully represent the films are typically somewhat scope and variety of vidding as more limited in scope than a whole, but Luminosity’s vids based on television series “Vogue” and sisabet’s “Ring and movie franchises; such Them Bells” illustrate a few of films offer fewer opportunities the narrative and critical to track the development of possibilities developed by characters and relationships vidders responding to films over time, examine subplots that have not generated large and secondary characters, or organized fandoms. “Vogue” (as vidder Milly puts it) simply reframes 300 as a queer dance to “play with the narrative.”26 floor; “Ring Them Bells” Movie vids not embedded in a meditates on the causes and pre-existing fannish context consequences of violence in are nevertheless made by fans, Kill Bill. Both vids are based distributed in fan networks, on gleefully violent movies and shown at fan conventions. that feature severed limbs, These vids constitute, decapitations, fountains of therefore, the rather peculiar blood—representations of phenomenon of fannish violence that tend to be activity untethered to a aestheticized, stylized, shown specific existing fandom—vids in close-up or slow motion. that are likely to be made and Both movies might be watched for reasons other described as literally than an expression of fannish cartoonish: 300 is faithfully investment in particular adapted from Frank Miller’s characters, storylines, or graphic novel, while Kill Bill: themes. This phenomenon Vol. 1 shifts from live action makes sense when we recall to animation for one of its the increasing tendency to most bloody sequences. In treat vidding as its own contrast to Annette Kuhn’s fandom, intersecting with but analysis of gendered not wholly contained by spectatorship in relation to fandoms for shared source “women’s genres,” these vids narratives. represent instances of women No single vid or even pair of watching bloody action
97 epics—films that are decidedly our look is “heavily mediated not supposed to be women’s by the looks of the characters genres—and reconfiguring involved. And those looks are those films for their own marked not by desire, but interpretive purposes.27 rather by fear, or hatred, or Luminosity has been quite aggression.”30 But Luminosity explicit about her intentions in uses the lyrics of “Vogue” to making “Vogue”; as she force us to recognize the explained to Logan Hill of possibility of seeing the bodies New York Magazine, “It was onscreen as “objects of erotic my chance to do a bait and display.”31 The vid’s humour switch, and turn the ‘male is grounded in the tension gaze’ back onto itself.”28 between this possibility and Easier said than done, of the movie’s refusal of it; that course. Mary Ann Doane, refusal is framed as both after asking how such a anxious and pointless. reversal or appropriation “Vogue” may not be quite might work, concludes that the “counter-cinema” that the effort is stymied by the Claire Johnston called for, but fact that any male body it does “[disrupt] the fabric of available for the gaze is the male bourgeois cinema” to marked as an “aberration.”29 great effect: with the Steve Neale observes of the recontextualization provided epic—the genre to which 300 in the vid, these images yield clearly aspires—that quite different meanings than they did in the original context we are offered the of the film. The vid opens spectacle of male bodies, with a brief split screen of but bodies unmarked as Leonidas climbing toward the objects of erotic display. oracle’s tower, but shifts There is no trace of an quickly to the writhing gauze- acknowledgement or covered oracle herself: the recognition of those bodies female character subjected to as displayed solely for the the sexual predations of the gaze of the spectator male characters and the gaze of the (presumed) male or
98 male-identified spectator. But, “strike a pose.” In case we in the context of what follows, have somehow missed that we the image sends a different are supposed to find this signal in the vid than it does in commentary funny as well as the movie: it invokes the gaze insightful, Luminosity only to refocus it on the male constructs a visual pun at the characters. opening of the first verse: Luminosity’s choice of song “Look around,” the narrator and establishment of point of commands, as a decapitated view signal clearly that she will head twirls in the centre of the not be exploring the interiority screen. Leonidas, longing to of 300’s main character. Most be “something better than [he popular songs are first-person is] today,” turns away from narratives; not surprisingly, Queen Gorgo; the Spartans’ then, most vids frame a destination—the “place where particular character as the “I” you can get away”—turns out singing the song and use that to be a dance club. narration to construct an If Luminosity’s choice of argument about what the music contributes significantly characters feel, what they to the enabling of a female want, how they think. In gaze free to roam over bodies “Vogue,” by contrast, recontextualized as dancing, Leonidas is the “you,” not the so too does her use of split “I”—the object, not the screens and her manipulation subject, of the song—and the of colour. The first chorus lyrics are thus framed as an incorporates clips from one of extradiegetic perspective on the movie’s stylized combat the text rather than an sequences, here stylized exploration or elaboration of further: Luminosity the character’s interiority. desaturates the outer thirds of With the first lyrics, the vid the screen, leaving only the cuts from the oracle first to centre in colour to focus our Leonidas and then to Xerxes, attention on the body of as the singer, in a pointed Leonidas. The second chorus comment on their masculinist takes a similar approach but posturing, instructs them to tints the outer segments of the
99 screen with blue and red. our laughter is not meant to Splitting and refocusing the be at the expense of men who screen in this way are actually gay, or even at decontextualizes the body and men who might be gay; what a emphasizes its motions—“let fannish viewer laughs at is your body move to the precisely the ease with which music”—rather than its the homophobic homosocial, fighting power. In conjunction crystallized in Leonidas’s with the speed effects in the contempt for Athenian “boy- original source, the visual is lovers,” can be read as also evocative of, if not quite homosexual despite its identical to, the voguing protests. immortalized in Paris is “Vogue” is grounded in the Burning. profoundly fannish impulse to It is worth noting that, “exceed and rework” media despite the vid’s obvious play texts, to make them show with representations of queer what we want to see; in this sexuality—voguing was made case, what we want to see is famous by Madonna, but is actually not so much a herd of practiced primarily in African voguing Spartans (although American and Latino gay this too is an entertaining dance clubs—“Vogue” is not prospect) as the creation of a a slash vid of the type female gaze, a female discussed by Jenkins in subjectivity that not merely Textual Poachers: Luminosity rejects but destabilizes the is not, in this instance, original film—having seen the constructing or implying a vid, we cannot see 300 in quite homosexual relationship the same way—and does so between two specific with considerable flair.32 Seen characters (though she does so in this light, the vid can be in many of her other vids). understood not only as a Her project here more closely comment on the movie but as resembles a queer reading of a communication directly with the movie as a whole. And the audience: “All you need is although the vid is funny, it’s your own imagination,” the important to recognize that song reminds us, “so use it—
100 that’s what it’s for.” Like any 2007.” vid, “Vogue” asks for the By contrast, sisabet’s “Ring spectator’s collaboration; the Them Bells,” a vid every bit as viewer as well as the vidder is insightful and nuanced as encouraged to adopt the “Vogue,” cannot be female gaze, to re-imagine the understood as parody. We bodies before her as objects might, indeed, read it as displayed for her pleasure, to cultural critique, as a feminist claim the privilege of looking. reinvention of Kill Bill in But the vid can also be read in which the female protagonist’s terms of non-fannish emotional arc is not paradigms, including, as I have subordinated to the demands suggested, both of a director bent on mashing literary/cultural critique and up Japanese samurai movies parody—the same category with Chinese kung fu and into which we might put the spaghetti westerns. But I wish once ubiquitous “Brokeback to suggest that it is instead a Penguin”33 and “Brokeback to different kind of re-imagining the Future”34 trailer mashups. of filmic material, a critical While reading “Vogue” merely narrative whose mode of as a parody arguably analysis is primarily affective. oversimplifies the vid, and Like Luminosity, sisabet has may flatten out its most chosen a song that does not feminist elements, such a provide the vid’s central reading does provide non- character with an interior fannish viewers with a monologue. Beatrix is the framework within which to point of identification in the understand the vid. I would vid, but the vid does not speak argue that this interpretive in her voice; instead, she is multiplicity has played a key associated with several of the role in the vid’s popularity figures in the lyrics, including outside fandom, most notably “ye heathen,” “sweet Martha,” New York Magazine’s “Saint Catherine,” and (most inclusion of the vid in its clearly) “the bride”—an “Twenty (Intentionally) instance of literalism entirely Funniest Web Videos of different in tone from
101 Luminosity’s “look around.” rehearsal, wakes from her Like “Vogue,” then, “Ring coma, fights her former Them Bells” is framed as an colleagues, and kills Bill; outsider’s rather than an ultimately, she also finds her insider’s perspective on the daughter BB. But sisabet source, but here that rebalances the film’s elements, perspective is serious and removing the bloody excess, allusive rather than playful and emphasizing emotion over ironic. Bob Dylan’s oblique action, and foregrounding the Biblical language gives the vid themes of motherhood and the feel of a parable, and redemption as well as death indeed the vid works largely and rebirth. Motherhood, in through metaphor and particular, plays a metonymy: Bill is figured as proportionately larger role in “the shepherd”; Gogo Yubari the vid than in the movie. This and the Deadly Viper shift is most evident in the Assassination Squad are “lost relative prominence of BB, sheep”; the bodies of Beatrix’s who appears in the vid more vanquished enemies are laid often than any of Beatrix’s out like “the lilies that bloom”; adversaries even though and Beatrix’s shock at her confrontations with those unexpected pregnancy is adversaries take up most of figured through her bare feet the film. By intercutting shots on the bathroom floor, a brief of BB with clips from flash of a ticking watch, a Beatrix’s fights with the Crazy lingering shot of the results of 88s and with Bill, sisabet her pregnancy test, and the recalibrates the relative lyrics “the world’s on its side.” importance of maternal Instead of constructing an responsibility and personal interior emotional life for revenge in Beatrix’s final Beatrix, “Ring Them Bells” confrontation with Bill, and in reshapes her narrative. The fact throughout the vid. The vid’s story is essentially that of emphasis on motherhood is the films: Beatrix discovers her seen, too, in the retention of pregnancy, survives the Vernita’s daughter Nicky as massacre at her wedding “the child who cries / when
102 innocence dies.” of violence, as seen in the slow The vid does not simply parcelling out of back-story convert Beatrix from an about Bill’s attack and the assassin to a mother; her implementation of Beatrix’s sword, her gun, and her hands revenge, the vid foregrounds are all present and powerful. those origins and But considering the nature of consequences without getting the source material, the vid is sidetracked by Shaw Brothers surprisingly devoid of homage: violence itself matters bloodshed; we see several clips less than the reasons for of Beatrix raising her sword, fighting and the question of but very few clips of the fights how one goes on afterwards. themselves. Instead of It is perhaps not surprising, rehashing the films’ many and then, that “Ring Them action sequences, sisabet Bells” has not garnered the organizes the vid around same attention outside nearly-still images: Beatrix fandom as vids featuring stands at Bill’s door with gun humour, violence, or what an in hand or faces off with article in the online version of ORen in the distance as a the Toronto Star coyly refers pump coughs water in the to as “naughty pairings.”35 foreground; a line of blood Nor does it fall into the other slashes across snow; a glance recognizable YouTube remix is reflected in the blade of a video categories of film sword. What we see of analysis or political criticism of Beatrix’s battles is not the film.36 For a fan of vids and exhilaration or the vengeance vidding, “Ring Them Bells” is or the blood, but the a work of tremendous determination and the aesthetic and emotional exhaustion as she steps up to power, but without an interest fight or staggers away in fannish ways of seeing on afterwards: “it’s rush hour the one hand, or remix video now / on the wheel and the for its own sake on the other, plow.” While the movie might it is hard to perceive the vid’s be described as interested in beauty or understand its the origins and consequences appeal. This type of fannish
103 video may, in fact, never go interested in seeing amateur mainstream. made [video] almost without Over time, vidding has regard to its origins or developed its own topics of genre.”38 We might hope, debate, its own communities then, that digital media and devoted to discussions of the internet will enable the process and craft, even its own spread not only of individual conventions (including works but of a culture of VividCon, at which both critical engagement with visual “Ring Them Bells” and narratives, including the “Vogue” premiered). Vidding critical and rhetorical practices and vidwatching are therefore that many vids model and not necessarily mere promote—a culture in which supplements to fannish increasing numbers of people investment in a particular text are fans of collaborative (although certainly this interpretation for its own sake, continues to be the way that in which viewers not only many fans, including many move from passive reception vidders, experience them); to active reading of visual texts these practices may also be a but seek out meta-texts that locus of fannish investment in demand still further their own right. The recent engagement and prompt attention to and interest in additional discussion. From remix videos as a form of this perspective, vidding is “user-generated content” hardly a frontier for fandom, imply that in this area, as in so but it may be the future for many others, fandom has everyone else. indeed been, as Jenkins puts it, “the experimental prototype, Bibliography the testing ground for the way Abbott, H. Porter. “Story, media and culture industries Plot, and Narration.” The are going to operate in the Cambridge Companion to future,”37 and Jenkins has Narrative. Ed. David further suggested that the Herman. Cambridge: popularity of YouTube shows Cambridge UP, 2007. that “there is a public “The Brokeback Effect: Buffy
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105 Culture, Media, Language: The Nature and Future of Working Papers in Cultural Creativity. New York: Studies, 1972-79. Ed. Stuart Penguin, 2004. Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Luminosity. “Luminosity Andrew Lowe, and Paul upgrades fan video.” Willis. London: Routledge, Interview with Logan Hill. 1992. New York Magazine. 12 Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Nov. 2007. Web. Accessed Culture: Where Old and New 15 Sept. 2009. Media Collide. Updated ed. Merton, Robert. Mass New York: New York UP, Persuasion. New York: Free 2008. Press, 1946. ---. “The Future of Fandom.” Millylicious. Comment on Afterword. Fandom: Identities “TV and Movie Vids.” Live- and Communities in a Mediated Journal.com, tishaturk, 2 World. Ed. Jonathan Gray, Dec. 2008. Web. Accessed Cornell Sandvoss, and C. 15 Sept. 2009. Lee Harrington. New York: Neale, Steve. “Masculinity as New York UP, 2007. Spectacle: Reflections on ---. “How to Watch a Men and Mainstream FanVid.” Confessions of an Cinema.” Feminism and Film. AcaFan. 18 Sep. 2006. Web. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. Oxford: Accessed 15 Sept. 2009. Oxford UP, 2000. ---. Textual Poachers: Television Ohmann, Richard. “History Fans and Participatory Culture. and Literary History: The New York: Routledge, 1992. Case of Mass Culture.” Johnston, Claire. “Women’s Modernity and Mass Culture. Cinema as Counter- Ed. James Naremore and Cinema.” Feminism and Film. Patrick Brantlinger. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. Oxford: Bloomington: Indiana UP, Oxford UP, 2000. 1991. Kuhn, Annette. “Women’s Rabinowitz, Peter J. Before Genres.” Feminism and Film. Reading: Narrative Conventions Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. Oxford: and the Politics of Interpretation. Oxford UP, 2000. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987. Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: Radway, Janice. Reading the
106 Romance. Chapel Hill: U.
107 Producer: Jeffrey Silver, Mark “The Making of Kill Bill: Vol. Canton, Bernie Goldman, and 2” Gianni Nunnari Miramax Television Director: Zack Snyder Producer: Shannon McIntosh Colour, 117 mins. Colour, 26 mins. “Vogue” (US, 2007) Paris is Burning (US, 1991) Creator: Luminosity Miramax Films / Off White Colour, 5 mins. Productions / Prestige Viddler.com. Web. Accessed Producer: Jennie Livingston, 15 Sept. 2009 Barry Swimar http://www.viddler.com/expl Director: Jennie Livingston ore/Luminosity/videos/4/ Colour, 71 mins. Notes “Ring Them Bells” (US, 2005) Creator: sisabet. 1 See, for example, Robert Colour, 3 mins. Merton, Mass Persuasion; Umberto YouTube. Web. Accessed 15 Eco, The Open Work; Stuart Hall, Sept. 2009 “Encoding/Decoding”; Janice
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249. 15 This tendency towards 7 For example, LiveJournal.com pseudonymity, coupled with the (the social hub of a significant increasing size and portion of media fandom, decentralization of fannish including much of the vidding communities, makes it difficult to community) lists 460 individuals generate accurate demographic who include “vids” as one of the data on vidders and vidwatchers; interests in their user profile, and it is to be hoped that sociologists 471 who include “vidding.” For and anthropologists within purposes of comparison, note fandom studies will take up this that 470 individuals list “Harry problem in future research. In the Potter” as an interest and 458 list meantime, it is possible to provide “Star Trek.” The LiveJournal some anecdotal information. One communities vidding and large community, or loosely fan_vids, two multi-fandom (as linked set of communities, is opposed to series-specific) venues English-based, U.S. and U.K.- for announcing vids and centric, and networked primarily discussing vid-related topics, have through LiveJournal. However, 1854 and 1167 members there are many vidders and respectively. (All statistics as of 15 vidwatchers posting and Sept. 2009.) commenting in other languages, 8 Jenkins, Textual Poachers, p. 249. notably Russian and German, 9 Julie Levin Russo, “NEW VOY both on LiveJournal and in other ‘cyborg sex’ J/7 [NC-17] 1/1: fan communities, such as forum New Methodologies, New boards (including general interest, Fantasies.” series- or actor-specific, and vid- 10 Francesca Coppa, “A Fannish centric). YouTube-based vidders Taxonomy of Hotness,” p. 112. can be more difficult to pin down 11 See John Fiske, “The Cultural and, though they do form social Economy of Fandom,” p. 39. networks, seem less likely than 12 For a fuller discussion of LiveJournal users to be hooked fandom as folk culture, see into organized communities. Jenkins, Textual Poachers, p. 268- Vidding in general is perceived 273. within fandom to be a female 13 Richard Ohmann, “History and practice, though there are a few Literary History: The Case of vidders who self-identify as male. Mass Culture,” p. 32. The vast majority of fans 14 Jenkins, Convergence Culture, p. attending VividCon, the annual 147. U.S. fan-run convention
109 dedicated to vids and vidding, are “User-Penetrated Content: Fan female and white; in 2008, 176 of Video in the Age of 181 attending and supporting Convergence,” p. 126-7. members were women, and 18 See, for example, Jonathan within the community this ratio Gray, Cornell Sandvoss, and C. has generally been treated as Lee Harrington (eds.), Fandom: typical. Ages of practicing vidders Identities and Communities in a range quite widely, from 50s to Mediated World, p. 3-4. In their early teens, and vary in part introduction, the editors note that depending on the source texts; it early studies of fandom tended to should surprise no one that fans focus on fans who produced vidding the recent Twilight movies, artifacts, such as fan fiction, for example, appear to be fanzines, conventions, or letters, considerably younger than fans and therefore left out “fans who still vidding Starsky and Hutch, merely love a show, watch it Professionals, and other television religiously, talk about it, and yet series from the 1970s and early engage in no other fan practices 1980s. It should also be noted or activities.” Vids, though not that digital vidding requires mentioned by the authors, seem specialized tools and to fit neatly into their list of equipment—editing software, artifacts produced by fans; it is processing power, hard drive unclear, however, whether the space, bandwidth—that are authors would count watching cheaper than ever before but still vids (or for that matter reading entail considerably more financial fan fiction) as fan practices or outlay than, for example, the activities. means to produce and share fan 19 Peter J. Rabinowitz, Before fiction; these technological Reading: Narrative Conventions and constraints unquestionably affect the Politics of Interpretation, p 3. class demographics to some 20 Claudia Gorbman, “Film degree. Music,” p. 43. 16 See Francesca Coppa, 21 “Good Vids, Bad Vids,” “Remixing Television: Francesca Organization for Transformative Coppa on the Vidding Works Fanvidding Series. Underground.” 22 Abbott, H. Porter, “Story, Plot, 17 For summaries and discussions and Narration,” p. 49. of one such instance, see Henry 23 Coppa, “Women, Star Trek, and Jenkins, “How to Watch a Fan- the early development of fannish Vid,” and Julie Levin Russo, vidding,” §1.1.
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24 Jenkins, Convergence Culture, p. 32 Fiske, “The Cultural Economy 159-60. of Fandom,” p. 41. 25 Bertha Chin, “Beyond Kung Fu 33 “Brokeback Penguin.” YouTube, and Violence,” p. 215. n.d. 26 Millylicious, comment on “TV 34 “Brokeback to the Future,” and Movie Vids.” YouTube, n.d. 27 Annette Kuhn, “Women’s 35 “The Brokeback Effect: Buffy Genres,” p. 437-449. and Angel Slash Videos.” 28 Luminosity, “Luminosity Whedon.info. upgrades fan video.” 36 For more information about 29 Mary Anne Doane, “Film and genres of short-form remix video the Masquerade: Theorising the on YouTube, see Michael Female Spectator,” p. 422. Wesch’s statement in Electronic 30 Steve Neale, “Masculinity as Frontier Foundation, “EFF Spectacle: Reflections on Men Exemption Request.” and Mainstream Cinema,” p. 262. 37 Henry Jenkins, “The Future of 31 Claire Johnston, “Women’s Fandom,” p. 361. Cinema as Counter-Cinema,” p. 38 Jenkins, “How to Watch a Fan- 29. Vid.”
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