Fandom: Area Revision

Fandom’s an interesting thing. Various fan works (art, fiction, videos, etc.) basically reinvent/reinterpret the original product into a new media form. Fans who do this are basically prosumers, and they’re building directly off of existing things rather than do entirely original stuff. Not that they can’t do both, of course. Theory-wise, the biggest one for this area is Henry Jenkins’ stuff. He basically talks about fandoms reinventing the stuff they like, and 'knowledge centres', fan community.

We were looking at fandom in relation to film. There was a stop-motion 'let it go' lego animation. But that’s not the only example out there. You can just type a character’s name into deviantart, and you’d be flooded with fanart. Fanfiction.net’s got a decent movies section, and there’s some fairly popular fanfics on there. The top few star wars ones, for example, have a fair few K favuorites (and all seem to be peggy-sue fics). You can check the site closer to the exam for more specific examples if needed.

Let’s take Deadpool for a more in-depth look. Type that into DA (or even google images), and you’ll find tons or art, most of it probably amateur-fan-made. The quality will be very varied, from pretty simple sketches to cell-shaded, full colour pictures you wouldn’t be surprised to find on official posters. This can be linked to Keen, and his argument about the ‘cult of the amateur’.

Terminology

·         Fandom

·         Prosumer(s)