Transformative Works and Cultures - TWC (Organization for Transformative Works)
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852 research outputs found
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Sherlockology and Galactica.tv: Fan sites as gifts or exploited labor?
No full textCurrent scholarship on fandom has been preoccupied with examining the changing relationship between media industry professionals and fans. Media producers, celebrities, and industry insiders are increasingly establishing contact with fans, bypassing traditional media entertainment outlets to provide them with information directly. This contact is facilitated by social media networks. Fans serve as grassroots campaigners, promoters, and sometimes even public relations officers, acting as liaisons between media producers, celebrities, or industry insiders and fandom in general. In doing so, they take on roles traditionally fulfilled by professional PR and marketing personnel, and they do it for free, resulting in accusations that they are being exploited for their labor. However, fans do not necessarily view themselves as being exploited. We need to consider the possibility that they may regard their contributions as a service—or gift—to fandom. In examining the roles played by two popular fan sites, Sherlockology and Galactica.tv, I propose to examine how fan labor may be considered an act of gift giving in fandom
Fan work: Labor, worth, and participation in fandom's gift economy
No full textFandom's gift economy should be understood as involving a wide variety of gifts, a complex system of reciprocation, and the use of gifts as a sign of their reception
Beyond souvenirs: Making fannish items by hand
No full textFan crafts such as knitting, plushies, painted objects, and food are a fulfilling and creative endeavor for the artists. Five fan crafters were interviewed via e-mail to discuss how and why they create
Fandom and the fourth wall
No full textI use the Teen Wolf fandom as an example to examine the ways social media has created a more complicated, nuanced relationship with fans. The collapse of the fourth wall between fans and The Powers That Be can have both positive and negative impacts, depending on the willingness of participants to maintain mutual respect and engage in meaningful dialogue
The media festival volunteer: Connecting online and on-ground fan labor
No full textIn this initial attempt to bring volunteering, or what we call on-ground fan labor, into the ongoing discussion of fan productivity, we examine volunteer motivations as elicited through interview and participant observation data collected at a 2012 genre film festival, Fantastic Fest, held in Austin, Texas. This case study is a first step toward integrating the volunteer and fan labor literatures and interrogating the role of social capital and civic engagement in volunteerism. We conclude that the media festival (a term intended to encompass such sites as film festivals and fan conventions) is a site of particular and emergent importance for those studying the audience's increasing delivery of free labor
"Gaga feminism: Sex, gender, and the end of normal," by J. Jack Halberstam
No full textReview of J. Jack Halberstam. Gaga feminism: Sex, gender, and the end of normal. Boston: Beacon, 2012. Hardcover, $26.95 (192p) ISBN 978-0807010983
Wordplay, mindplay: Fan fiction and postclassical narratology
No full textRecent narrative theories on story worlds, or the worlds evoked by narratives, call attention to the process of fan reading and the role which the canon plays in that process. This paper posits that such theories can help us understand literary techniques that make a difference on the level of the reading experience that is implied by fan fiction texts. This is illustrated with a close reading of Naguabo's "The Mother of All Marriage Proposals," a Jane Austen fic
Exploring fandom, social media, and producer/fan interactions: An interview with "Sleepy Hollow"'s Orlando Jones
No full textOrlando Jones, an American film and television writer, producer, and actor who currently plays Captain Frank Irving in Fox’s Sleepy Hollow, provides an intriguing example of how producers and fans can engage in a receptive and dynamic relationship through social media, most specifically through Twitter and Tumblr. We interviewed Jones to ascertain how a regular in a popular television show perceives and maintains this form of communication with fans; how his enthusiasm for fan studies has unfolded; and how he has negotiated and managed fan controversy
The heterogeneity of maid cafés: Exploring object-oriented fandom in Japan
No full textMaid cafés may be positioned as objects of (often oversimplified) fan communities in Japan; their heterogeneous qualities may be explored by presenting chronotopes with which they may be reconsidered. The problematics of viewing maid cafés in a homogeneous or reductive way (via iyashi-kei, "relaxation purposes," and moe-kei, "entertainment purposes") are considered, and the results of empirical research conducted at establishments across Honshū in Japan are presented. The vast differences in the services and interactivities provided in maid café settings are at odds with the homogenized fashion in which these venues have been treated in the popular press, in local promotional publications, and often in the academic literature. By presenting chronotopes and case studies with which maid cafés may be reconsidered, what it means to discuss maid cafés as a holistic phenomenon is challenged, and a heuristic for examining how spaces are constructed inside such establishments is provided
The invisible teenager: Comic book materiality and the amateur films of Don Glut
No full textDon Glut, between the ages of 9 and 25, made 41 short amateur films inspired by horror, science fiction, and superhero movies, serials, and comic books. The tactile qualities of comic books as affect-generating objects are instrumental to how Glut confirmed his identity during a time (adolescence) in which that identity is particularly unstable. Glut used the popular figure of the teen rebel and his role as a filmmaker in order to negotiate with hegemonic restrictions on his objects of affection, especially comic books