CHASING SEMIOTIC RABBITS: THE PROLIFERATION OF SECONDARY MEANING IN DOCTOR WHO FANVIDS E. CHARLOTTE STEVENS A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION & CULTURE YORK UNIVERSITY, TORONTO, ONTARIO AUGUST 2010 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-68308-8 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-68308-8 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduce, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada Chasing Semiotic Rabbits: The Proliferation of Meaning in Doctor Who Fanvids By E. Charlotte Stevens a thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of York University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS ©2010 Permission has been granted to: a) YORK UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES to lend or sell copies of this thesis in paper, microform or electronic formats, and b) LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA to reproduce, lend, distribute, or sell copies of this thesis anywhere in the world in microform, paper or electronic formats and to authorize or procure the reproduction, loan, distribution or sale of copies of this thesis anywhere in the world in microform, paper or electronic formats. The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the thesis nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's written permission. IV Abstract The practice of vidding, making a music video that uses existing media as source material, is relevant to a contemporary study of television and audience studies. Media fandom has a long history of embracing advances in consumer technology to interact with the objects of their fandom, but vids and vidding have enjoyed only limited scholarly attention. This thesis uses a case-study of three vids made from episodes of Doctor Who, supported by textual and visual analysis, and an examination of the nature of fandom and fan production, to explore the critical narratives constructed in the selected vids and to demonstrate one of the subcultural results of media piracy. Through an analysis of the making and re-making of meaning in fanvids, I extend Barthes's explanation of the semiotic function of captioning to describe the analysis performed by the interaction of lyrics to video clips. V Acknowledgements This thesis could not have been written without the assistance and support of many wonderful people and without much loud music. I dedicate this work to my comma-wrangling friends, to my ever-patient family, and to the endlessly-inspiring world offandom. None of this was possible without you. I also must thank Dr. Jennifer Brayton, my supervisor, cheerleader and - now -friend. Caution Although what you are about to see is a work of academic prose, it should never the less be read at maximum volume. vi Table of Contents Abstract iv Acknowledgements v Table of Contents vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Methodology and Practices 9 1.1 Research Questions 9 1.2 Selection o/DoctorWho Case Study Videos 14 1.3 Textual and Visual Content Analysis 18 1.4 Scope of Project 22 Chapter 2: Literature Review 24 2.1 The Location and Positioning of Fans and Fan Practices 24 2.2 Active Audiences and Fan Agency under Capitalism 30 2.3 The Roles of Technologies for Fandoms 44 2.4 Fan Videos and the Practices of Vidding Cultures 57 2.5 Communicating Meaning through Images 69 Chapter 3: Narrative Transformations of Three Doctor Who Videos 86 3.1 Introduction 86 3.2 Background: Selections from the Semiotic Universe o/Doctor Who 89 3.3 Case Study I: The Master as Enthusiast 94 3.4 Case Study 2: The Master as Rapper 100 3.5 Case Study 3: The Master as Predator 106 3.6 Common Emerging Themes 109 Conclusion 122 Appendix A 127 Song Lyrics 127 Bibliography 130 1 Introduction Since the 1980s, television audiences have found that developments in audio­ visual technology - from the VCR's first appearance on the commercial market through to today's powerful personal computers - have affected their relationship with the media products they consume. Traditional television theory understands flow as a linear journey, where a predetermined sequence of content captures and propels audiences (Gripsrud 1997). The digitization and subsequent commodification of previously ephemeral cultural products, and the way audiences have the ability to select, collect and manipulate only those components of the flow that attract them (and indeed can circumvent the flow entirely to obtain television), suggests that a more apt metaphor for the present state of television consumption is a dynamic archive. No longer tied to corporately-defined flood of images, this method of watching television places individual episodes in a larger archive of cultural artifacts to be received, reflected upon, and reconstructed beyond traditional understandings of television flow. This alteration in conventional methods of media distribution and consumption allows superficial control on behalf of the viewer, engendering a greater sense of ownership over the product. A process that began in the 1980s with the advent of cable television, and the rapid proliferation of technologies and delivery systems such as satellite, videocassette, laserdiscs and fibre-optics (Barnouw 1990: 505), continues as the digital technologies of high-speed internet, powerful personal computers, and digital video recorders provide the television viewer with an abundance of choice. Web-based distribution, both with and without license, makes nearly any television show, movie, or 2 song available to a global audience (Leaver 2008). While television networks and cable companies slowly negotiate the business and politics of digital viewership, while simultaneously attempting to pin down the internet as either a marketing tool or a distribution arm (Leaver 2008: 146), television audiences have created their own broadcast networks via personal computers. From this raw material, media audiences can create collections of favourite content to keep or to share, and can make whole new works such as fanvids or mashups. These forms - music videos, short films or remixes which take existing media as their source material - are created outside of institutions and beyond an academic, professional or avant-garde context. The society of spectacle that Guy Debord (1977) famously condemned has in fact spawned new forms of art-making. I propose to use visual analysis and close readings of these new-media texts in conjunction with a review of the literature surrounding internet and fandom culture, found footage films, and key texts in communications studies, to attempt an understanding of fan-made products and their larger context. This research project is based in the relatively young multidisciplinary field of fandom studies and will incorporate perspectives from political economy, cultural studies and visual cultural studies to provide a theoretical context for responses to television properties and for the production of collage-type video art. At the centre of this project aiefans: a subset of the media audience, "distinguishable from the general audience in their emotional connection to their specialized interest" (Brayton 2006: 138). The project's focus will not be the fans themselves, but rather the practices and artifacts of 3 fandom (the world of fans).1 Within fandom, the practices Henry Jenkins famously characterized as "textual poaching" (Jenkins 1992) exist in concurrence with more explicit forms of out-and-out piracy, where the texts are themselves materially poached, rather than having characters and settings culled for use in fan fiction or fan art. Fanvids (or "vids") are fan-made music videos, non-institutional audio/visual creations that are built from (overwhelmingly) pirated audio and video sources and that have a well- established history in the media fandom subculture (Bacon-Smith 1992, Jenkins 1992, Coppa 2008, Walker 2008). Publications directly addressing specific vid texts have a tendency to celebrate the sensational aspects of vids as radical texts articulating feminist or queer identities,2 and rarely address what Francesca Coppa (2008) argues is the origin and purpose of vids as critical and analytical works. Nowhere is there a discussion of the issue of the source material for these vids; currently, this includes downloaded or format- shifted digital media.