Transformative Works and Cultures - TWC (Organization for Transformative Works)
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852 research outputs found
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Fans and politics in an illiberal state
No full textCertain extremely successful popular culture contents may convey democratic values that can have an impact on the political views of readers and fans. The differences in the values of Harry Potter fans and average Facebook users using social data about public Facebook activity are examined. Even though currently only a minority share the values that the Harry Potter stories embody, they are still an important segment of society that one might not even be aware of if one only follows the state-controlled media and make up a significant majority of the Hungarian media market. Understanding this culturally constructed fan network is thus academically and socially relevant
Self-identification in Malaysian cosplay
No full textTo examine cosplay (costume play) as performed by non-Japanese cosplayers, video interviews were conducted at five Japanese popular culture conventions in Malaysia. Analysis of descriptions made by 158 cosplayers reveals cosplay to function as a medium for the process of self-identification. Cosplay enables Malaysians to explore individual rather than collective identities and to experience fluidity and dilemma in self-identification as they translate fictional characters into their physical world. Although ethnicity seems not to prevail in their cosplay, it appears not to have totally vanished
"Fake geek girls: Fandom, gender, and the convergence culture industry," by Suzanne Scott
No full textReview of Suzanne Scott, Fake geek girls: fandom, gender, and the convergence culture industry. New York: NYU Press, 2019, paperback, $30 (304p) ISBN 978-1479879571
Identity, curated branding, and the star cosplayer's pursuit of Instagram fame
No full textIn response to the digital landscape, the nature of cosplay, in which the cosplayer constructs an identity complementary to the character via costuming, has changed from a performative expression of fandom appreciation to a desire to achieve viral fame. As a signifier of popular culture, such so-called star cosplayers commodify their bodies to market a social identity through the curatorial process of displaying work on Instagram. A creative project, ".//wired: TRENDING," promotes the aesthetic value and function of cosplay while utilizing social media to create an identity brand for endorsement
Toward a queered and/as affective theory of fandom
No full textWittgensteinian propositions are used to investigate whether there is some benefit from thinking about objects of fandom and their vectors via affect theory and queer theory as an inverse analytical approach: fandom as something that is not text specific but rather affect or even body specific
Reimagining fan studies in the age of Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter
No full textWe in the United States are living in the midst of two pandemics: Covid-19, which is affecting communities of color at an absurdly disproportionate rate, and a renewed spate of murders of Black people at the hands of police. They reveal the depths of racial inequity and injustice in our country. This is a crisis—a turning point where many of us are wondering what we can do better and how we can be better. For us in fan studies, will we finally face the white supremacy embedded in our discipline and take steps to become an antiracist discipline
Fan geographies and engagement between geopolitics of Brexit, Donald Trump, and Doctor Who on social media
No full textThe 2016 Brexit decision and Donald Trump's election to the US presidency that same year led to a wide variety of social media activity, ranging from visceral anger to unadulterated jubilation. How members of particular fandoms choose to express their emotions regarding a geopolitical event can be filtered through the lens of their fannish enthusiasm. Analysis of Doctor Who-influenced geopolitical engagement on Facebook that uses case studies of both Brexit and Donald Trump's election and 2017 inauguration shows that fans used Doctor Who to cope with emotionally taxing geopolitical events and expressed their anguish through the lens of selected Doctor Who plotlines. This use of social media permits fans to shape a new geopolitical landscape within which they can grapple with their political surroundings as influenced by their fandom
Fans, community, and conflict in the pages of "Picture Play," 1920–38
No full textFan history remains a neglected subdiscipline of fan studies, in part because of the methodological complications in dealing with a community of fans who may be deceased. Fan magazines, and particularly fan magazine letter sections, are a way for fan historians to access the views and opinions of classic Hollywood fans of the 1920s and 1930s—a community otherwise largely lost to history. Judicious use of the freely available 1920, 1930, and 1940 US census records helps researchers establish which letters were written by real, existing fans; further census information can help establish a demographic profile of the fan magazine community as a whole. Content analysis of fan letters illustrates the preoccupations of particular fans, as well as the way they established and negotiated particular codes of behavior within their fandom. A focus on particular fans who wrote to the magazine repeatedly over the course of multiple years can help historians recreate the fannish journey traveled by now-dead fans over the course of years or even decades
"Fans and fan cultures: Tourism, consumerism, and social media," by Henrik Linden and Sara Linden
No full textReview of Henrik Linden and Sara Linden. Fans and fan cultures: Tourism, consumerism, and social media. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, hardcover, $152 (234p) ISBN 978-1-137-50127-1
Negotiating acafandom as a first-time researcher
No full textThis reflection on positionality draws on experiences from undertaking an undergraduate writing research project involving a series of email/chat server interviews with fan fiction authors active on Archive of Our Own. The identity of the acafan is a negotiated spectrum that relates to positionality and knowledge production