"Get a life" William Shatner told Star Trek fans. Yet, as Textual Poachers argues, fans already have a "life," a complex subculture which draws its resources from commercial culture while also reworking them to serve alternative interests. Rejecting stereotypes of fans as cultural dupes, social misfits, and mindless consumers, Jenkins represents media fans as active producers and skilled manipulators of program meanings, as nomadic poachers constructing their own culture from borrowed materials, as an alternative social community defined through its cultural preferences and consumption practices. Written from an insider's perspective and providing vivid examples from fan artifacts, Textual Poachers offers an ethnographic account of the media fan community, its interpretive strategies, its social institutions and cultural practices, and its troubled relationship to the mass media and consumer capitalism. Drawing on the work of Michel de Certau, Jenkins shows how fans of Star Trek, Blake's 7, The Professionals, Beauty and the Beast, Starsky and Hutch, Alien Nation, Twin Peaks, and other popular programs exploit these cultural materials as the basis for their stories, songs, videos, and social interatctions. Addressing both academics and fans, Jenkins builds a powerful case for the richness of fan culture as a popular response to the mass media and as a challenge to the producers' attempts to regulate textual meanings. Textual Poachers guides readers through difficult questions about popular consumption, genre, gender, sexuality, and interpretation, documenting practices and processes which test and challenge basic assumptions of contemporary media theory.
Author(s): Henry Jenkins
Year: 1992
Language: English
Pages: 352
Book Cover......Page 1
Half-Title......Page 2
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgments......Page 7
Introduction......Page 9
1 “Get a Life!”: Fans, Poachers, Nomads......Page 17
FANS AND “FANATICS”......Page 20
“A SCANDALOUS CATEGORY”......Page 24
TEXTUAL POACHERS......Page 32
FANS AND PRODUCERS......Page 36
READING AND MISREADING......Page 41
NOMADIC READERS......Page 44
WHAT DO POACHERS KEEP?......Page 53
2 How Texts become Real......Page 59
FROM BYSTANDERS TO FANS......Page 63
SITTING TOO CLOSE?......Page 68
VCRs, RERUNS AND REREADING......Page 76
THE SOCIAL PRODUCTION OF MEANING......Page 85
CASE STUDY: ALT.TV.TWINPEAKS......Page 86
FAN GOSSIP......Page 89
3 Fan Critics......Page 96
“THE RIGHT WAY”......Page 98
PROGRAM SELECTION......Page 100
THE CASE OF ALIEN NATION......Page 102
CONSTRUCTING THE PROGRAM CANON......Page 105
STAR TREK: THE META-TEXT......Page 109
EMOTIONAL REALISM AND GENDERED READERS......Page 117
4 “It’s Not a Fairy Tale Anymore”: Gender, Genre, Beauty and the Beast......Page 130
ONCE UPON A TIME…......Page 133
FROM READING THE ROMANCE TO READING AS ROMANCE......Page 143
“PROMISES OF SOMEDAY”......Page 145
“FEEL THE FURY”......Page 155
5 Scribbling in the Margins: Fan Readers/Fan Writers......Page 163
“SILLY PUTTY”......Page 167
ZINES AND THE FAN COMMUNITY......Page 169
TEN WAYS TO REWRITE A TELEVISION SHOW......Page 173
CASE STUDY: LESLIE FISH’S THE WEIGHT......Page 190
6 “Welcome to Bisexuality, Captain Kirk”: Slash and the Fan-Writing Community......Page 198
“SLASH” AS FEMALE PORNOGRAPHY......Page 205
SLASH AS ANDROGYNOUS ROMANCE......Page 206
SLASH AND FANTASY IDENTIFICATION......Page 211
“FRAUGHT WITH DANGER”......Page 214
SLASH AND HOMOSOCIAL DESIRE......Page 215
THE FORMULAIC STRUCTURE OF SLASH......Page 219
FANS DEBATE SLASH......Page 233
7 “Layers of Meaning”: Fan Music Video and the Poetics of Poaching......Page 236
“HALF-AND-HALF THINGS”......Page 237
FAN VIDEO/FAN WRITING......Page 240
“TAPESTRY”......Page 243
FAN VIDEO AND MTV......Page 245
VOICING THE CHARACTERS’ THOUGHTS......Page 248
START MAKING SENSE......Page 251
THE POETICS OF POACHING......Page 253
VIDEO ART AND THE FAN COMMUNITY......Page 258
8 “Strangers No More, We Sing”: Filk Music, Folk Culture, and the Fan Community......Page 263
“ALL OF THE ELEMENTS ARE THERE”......Page 266
CASE STUDY: PHILCON, 1989......Page 269
“SCIENCE WONKS, WIMPS, AND NERDS”......Page 273
“ESCAPE FROM MUNDANIA”......Page 276
“TOAST FOR UNKNOWN HEROES”......Page 278
“NEITHER FISH NOR FOWL”: FILK AND THE FOLK TRADITION......Page 282
FILK IN TRANSITION......Page 287
CONCLUSION......Page 291
APPENDIX......Page 302
Sources......Page 321
Index......Page 338
