Session 4a: Fan Cultures Online

5th Global Conference

Friday 12th March – Sunday 14th March 2010
Salzburg, Austria

The Darker Side of Slash Fanfiction on the Internet
Brita Hansen
Gender Studies Unit, School of Philosophy, University of Tasmania

In the 1960s lash introduced a major new premise to fanfiction – eroticising the homo-social undercurrents between the appropriated male protagonists. Slash has never been published in mainstream media despite widespread publication of similar male-oriented erotica. The Internet has provided the means for widespread self-published, uncensored circulation, allowing women to realise their shared, common sexual phantasy. They no longer need to feel isolated and ashamed.

Researchers suggest slash, while written with very explicit homosexual sex, is not about homosexuality; it is a female idealisation of relationships acted out on male bodies. The writer can ascribe emotions and behaviour she desires from the men in her relationships. Research to date argues slash as a reworking of the traditional romance novel formula; inherently between unequal partners, portraying a model of male authority. Slash is suggested as a means of substituting a situation in which a loving relationship between equals is possible, allowing the writer/reader to identify with the hero’s partner, a social equal, a friend, and a desirable person.

While this appears to be a realistic interpretation of some slash stories, I argue that this is not the case for a large proportion of slash – the darkfic slash. These stories are more complex, based on unequal, complicated relationship showing evident dominant/submissive roles, often sadomasochistic, sexually explicit and/or violent, sometimes containing abuse issues particularly pertinent to women. On entering most of the large, dedicated slash Web sites, one is directed to search for stories containing specific themes, themes that come under the classification ‘darkfic’: bondage, erotic asphyxiation, horror, kink, mutilation, non-con, torture etc. I would posit that, certainly among the slash writer/reader community, there is an awareness of this darker aspect of the literature not touched upon by researchers.

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Virtual Friends: Experiences of an Online Fan Community
Helen Barber
Psychology Department, University of Northampton

Within modern culture ‘celebrities’ and ‘their fans’ are familiar phenomena and the idolization of famous people is an easily recognisable popular social practice. However, the construct of ‘fan’ is one that is both deeply pathologised and caricatured in both academic and media representations (Sandvoss, 2005). Research into fans of celebrities has resulted in a less than flattering representation of them. The majority of has been conducted from a quantitative viewpoint, determining personality attributes that contribute to a person’s desire to be a fan or who have ‘Celebrity Worship Syndrome’ (CWS) (McCutcheon, Ashe, Houran & Maltby, 2003). This has resulted in stereotype of a fan as a naïve teenage girl with high neuroticism, high introversion, have a compromised identity, be lonely and lacking in social relationships, as well has having high transliminality (i.e. prone to fantasy), be lacking in critical thinking ability and is likely to have faced a period of crisis in their lives. This seems to generally describe a teenage girl quite accurately anyway without them needing to be a fan! Research seems to approach the topic with a representation in mind of this pathologised teenage girl, and consequently the emerging view of a fan is heavily gendered and pathologised (Railton, 2001). It is understood by such researchers as being similar to Erotomania (APA – DSM IV, 1994), where sufferers believe they are in a passionate relationship with someone they (normally) have never met (McCutcheon, Ashe, Houran & Maltby, 2003). These representations clearly suggest a pathological nature to being interested in celebrities.

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Drawing upon theories largely used in popular music studies I propose a new approach for the analysis of music blogs using concepts such as music scene, sub-cultural capital and authenticity. I first consider music blogs as an emerging form of commercially independent fan production, a more recent digital reincarnation of fanzines, creating and circulating sub-cultural capital within indie music scenes at a local as well as at a virtual level. I describe how music blogs act as cultural gatekeepers filtering information in different but often overlapping contexts. Using Bourdieu’s Field of Cultural Production as the main theoretical framework, I argue that contrasting dynamics of hierarchization and commercialization, operating within music scenes, might influence music blogging and, consequently, how they filter information. Although music blogs have been considered as operating independently from the music industry I raise some issues in regards their authenticity and cultural autonomy from pressure of power within indie scenes. I argue that music blogs’ cultural production is often shaped by personal motives as well as more commercial motives such as popularity and professional status. The considerations presented in this paper are based on primary ethnography data on the Australian indie scene and in-depth interviews with Australian music bloggers.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)