Re-Imagining for Representation: Fanfiction and Queer Youth The medium in which a story is told often tells a deeper story. In terms of pop culture, modern media is still targeted to a predominantly heterosexual audience. Consequently, queer characters are under-represented, represented poorly, and often killed. The message within the medium is that to exist as queer is to exist as deviance and to result in death. However, queer audiences are not mindless consumers of these products. One empowering method of resisting the dominant narrative is to re-imagine the characters represented in popular culture from the perspective of a queer existence. This is accomplished through fan discussion, comics, and most frequently, through fanfiction. Fanfiction …show more content…
Consequently, although powerful and uniting on many fronts, particularly in the creation of community, fandom and fanfiction perpetuate the same issues which trans, queer, and people of colour face outside of the communities they have carved out for themselves. This sense of community is still crucial for many queer youth though. Fandom is the space in which people from literal opposite sides of the world can establish an intersectional community of experience. The presence of women, both heterosexual and queer, in a shared space has generated a sense of community for the authors of “Yearning Void and Infinite Potential”. Within their paper, they explain that, “For us, slash fandom has become a place where a young urban dyke shares erotic space with a straight married mom in the American heartland, and where women whose identity markers suggest they would find few points of agreement have forged erotic, emotion and political alliances” (Busse, Lothian and Reid). Fanfiction and fandom create communities of inclusion and of respect, establishing safe spaces of existence for queer …show more content…
It’s a modern-day take on an ancient and essential impulse: imaginative play” (Hu). When these re-imaginings are presented to the fandom, a discourse is established between writer and reader that transcends mere consumption. The relationships that develop between writers and their readers goes “Beyond parasocial relationships with characters, the fanfic community also offers support from fellow fans. …when the young man she encountered told his community that he was going through the same issues that appeared in his fiction, readers were incredibly receptive to his struggles”
Sex and Gender was the subject of the two movies Dreamworlds 3 and Further Off The Straight & Narrow. In Dreamworlds 3 Sex is portrayed as a status of life and happiness in the media. This media displays people as objects that can be manipulated for sexual pleasure. As the media is populated with sex it tiptoes around gender, specifically that of gays or lesbians. The film Further Off The Straight & Narrow emphasized the movement through media gay and lesbian topics. This text analyzes iconic television programs and how they reflect the societal stance during that time. As a member of a generation that has had the topic of these issues prominent I believe they are important but are banal. In this reflection I will be responding to two questions, what would woman driven Dreamworlds look like? And Do you agree with the statement that if you are not on television you don’t exist?
Since the emergence of literature, thousands upon thousands of characters have graced our imaginations. From trouble maker Bart Simpson of the celebrated cartoon television series The Simpsons to Mr. Darcy of Jane Austen’s renowned novel Pride and Prejudice, the world has witnessed a plethora of characters in literature. Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, and Billy Collins, distinguished American poet, as well as countless other authors, share the utilization of characters in their literary works. The manner in which these authors use the literary element of characters varies immensely.
The term “fan” was originally used to describe sports fans during the nineteenth century and was later adopted by science fiction enthusiasts in the 1920s. The term “fan,” however, is used for describing a type of person who is enthusiastic, or fanatic about a certain subject. Popular fan culture, nicknamed “fandoms,” have become an integral part of society in many countries, and have connected people sharing a common interest through online communities where they can freely discuss fan related topics. Popular fandoms today include Directioners, Beliebers, and VIPs. People who are part of fandoms usually show their devotion by participating in fan conventions such as Comicon, writing fan mail, creating fan art, or by promoting their interests to others. Being a fan also comes with the responsibility of changing one’s lifestyle in order to accommodate time and energy into the fandom. Fan culture also offers people the chance to feel passionate about something or someone in order to satisfy the emotional needs they lack from their daily life.
In the graphic novel Fun Home, by Allison Bechdel, sexual self-discovery plays a critical role in the development of the main character, Allison Bechdel herself; furthermore, Bechdel depicts the plethora of factors that are pivotal in the shaping of who she is before, during and after her sexual self-development. Bechdel’s anguish and pain begins with all of her accounts that she encountered at home, with her respective family member – most importantly her father – at school, and the community she grew up within. Bechdel’s arduous process of her queer sexual self-development is throughout the novel as complex as her subjectivity itself. Main points highlight the difficulties behind which are all mostly focused on the dynamics between her and her father. Throughout the novel, she spotlights many accounts where she felt lost and ashamed of her coming out and having the proper courage to express this to her parents. Many events and factors contributed to this development that many seem to fear.
For this engagement essay the article Mean Ladies: Transgenders Villains in Disney Films by Amanda Putnam and the chapter “Someday My Prince Will Come”: Disney, the Heterosexual Imaginary and Animated Films by Carrie L. Cokely will summarized, analyzed, and engaged with using the Queer analytical framework.
The quality of graphic language and depictions of sexuality help to develop the narrative and develop the characters.
Gender Outlaws (Smith, 2010) breaks the laws of gender by defying gender normative rules that exclude trans, queer and other non-conforming gender expressions often oppressed by “gender-norming rules,” rules, “expected to observe” or be subject to ridicule and often times labeled as freak by those who consider themselves as normal (p. 28). A gender outlaw seeks to, redefine the notion of gender and are carving out spaces of their own” (p. 30).
When reading a novel or watching a movie, the audience often looks for a guiding light; a character that steps up to take the lead when all hope is lost. It is not uncommon for that beacon of hope to be a complete stereotype, all too often, the hero of the day is a strong, virile, ruggedly handsome man, but what if he was not? What if he was just an average man, or not even a man at all, but a woman or a child? When reading fiction, the imagination is allowed to run wild, painting vivid pictures interwoven with personal life experiences, relatable to the characters in the novels and to one’s own life experiences. The most memorable content of both The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, and World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks, leaves a lasting impression due to strong lead characters, their resolve to survive, no matter what obstacles may wind up in their paths, and the simple truth that they are human and flawed, but still resilient and willing to push forward as an example to others, both in the novel and in the target audience.
For those who are not familiar with what fanfiction is, it essentially refers to fan-authored texts written around characters, scenarios or elements from pre-existing sources, usually television shows or films, although the list can include such varied sources as bands, cartoon, books, poems or games. It used to be the exclusive preserve of zines or mailing lists, but with the advent of the internet, fanfiction has become easy to find and easy to publish. The internet has essentially brought a show like Buffy to a point that it took Star Trek years to build up to. For example, if you were to type in the words 'Buffy' and 'Fanfiction' in the Google search engine, you would come up with about 77,000 hits. With the advent of internet access to fan-authored works, it has become much easier for fanfiction authors and readers to conceal their identities. However, it still functions as a community, complete with mailing lists, fanfiction challenges and internet zines. There is no longer a neat divide between the producers and consumers from years ago. Now fans can be both.
Blum, Deborah. “The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over?” Signs of Life In the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. Ed. Sonia Maasik. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000.
Social identies are a big force in the way lesbians are treated within society. The fact that groups fear individuals who are different to themselves is a big factor in trying to understand why it is lesbians face discrimination. The more heterosexuals are subjected to the reality of lesbiansm the more this social identity can become normalized. As stated before, unless a lesbian discloses her identity heterosexuals wont alsways assume thir identity hindering them into their social group. This research will further look at how the use of media, in specific TV dramas are a significant tool in representing these lesbian identities, to normalize the subculture which is often overlooked because there are no obvious factors that highlight a lesbian, and to show how normal lesbianism actually is withing society.
Since the coinage of the term in an MIT Technology Review (2003) article, Henry Jenkins’ theory of transmedia has been significantly contested and edited by multiple media theorists and scholars. In short, transmedia storytelling is the technique of telling a narrative across multiple platforms. The goal of a transmedia project is to heighten the degree in which audiences participate and interact with the events, characters, and storyworld of a franchise. A transmedia project can include, but is not limited to, the use of movies, books, games, social-media, and graphic novels. These elements work together to make the story more enjoyable and contribute to richer fan-engagement. Jenkins’ best summarizes a definition himself in his 2006 book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide; “A transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole” (pp. 95-96).
The 1990s saw surge of gay characters in both television and movies. From Ellen Degeneres and her character Ellen Morgan coming out under much scrutiny on the TV show ‘Ellen,’ to Julia Roberts and Rupert Everett comedically playing off each other in the motion picture ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding.’ Sure, gays and lesbians have been around forever, especially in Hollywood. But never has there been a time to be more out. With the popularity of shows like Will and Grace, which feature leading gay characters, as well as Dawson’s Creek and it’s supporting character of teenager Jack McPhee, we are slowly seeing gay and lesbian characters creeping into the mainstream media.
For example, the representation of women on television was for a long time restricted to roles of “loving wives, dutiful daughters, gossiping girlfriends, fashion plates, and the occasional dowdy maid, nanny, or granny” (Zeisler 2008, p. 9), which is a reflection on the roles it was considered ‘acceptable’ for women to take on in real life. Often going against the hegemonic gender ideal is used as shorthand for comedy within popular culture, such as men dressed femininely being played for laughs on countless sitcoms. Popular culture that genuinely challenges hegemonic ideology often faces backlash, as was the case when Ellen DeGeneres’ character coming out on Ellen (1997), as did the actress in real life, resulted in the show being cancelled after only one more season. This is reflective of what was the pervasive belief, that heterosexuality is the only acceptable option, though the changing attitudes about this can be seen through the increased inclusion of gay and bisexual characters in pop culture over the past two decades. Looking at the relationship between gender and popular culture consequently becomes important to the field of gender studies as it provides a way to study not only what is considered to be the gender norms in a society, but how these norms have
The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community has been disapproved by many since it first came about in the 1950s. Since then, the societal attitude towards homosexuality and LGBT culture has changed greatly, as much of the world has become more accepting of same-sex sexuality as it has become more common. Studies have also shown that the younger generation are more tolerant towards LGBT views. The LGBT community consists of many beliefs and values that make the community different and intriguing.