I really liked Henry Jenkins’ chapter for this week for how it explains fan participation as a valuable viewer experience and how it demonstrates the amount of agency that fandoms actually have. Although the chapter was originally published in 1988, the way Jenkins observes television and movie fans to be poachers is still – or even more – relevant to the way we consume media today. Describing fan culture and fan reading as “a type of play, responsive only to its own loosely structured rules and generating its own types of pleasure” (471) and, per de Certeau, “a type of cultural bricolage through which readers fragment texts and reassemble the broken shards according to their own blueprint, salvaging bits and pieces of found material in making sense of their own social experience” (471), Jenkins’ idea of fan interaction makes me think of how fandoms read and rewrite content online.
Examples of how the internet has taken poaching to a new level is the phenomenon of funny recaps of TV episodes, where fans will cut highlights of an episode in conversation with other memes, videos, shows, etc., often with a critical perspective of the show. It is a genre of fan work very popular within the RuPaul’s Drag Race community, with the most popular series being RU-CAP, but I also recently found some on The Bachelor Nation such as “THE BACHELOR IS ON CRACK” and “THE BACHELORETTE IS ON CRACK.” This type of work really demonstrates what Jenkins talks about this culture of poaching blurring “boundaries between producers and consumers, spectators and participants” (473). Lee Dawson, the creator of RU-CAP is now so well known (as a creator rather than just a fan) within the fandom that drag queens have shared their desire for going on Drag Race and seeing themselves in an episode of Rucaps.
With the internet giving so much power and visibility to fans, I wonder where fans really stand in the hierarchy of production/consumption/entertainment. Seeing how, last year, online reactions immediately resulted in alterations in the marketing campaign for Cats and a new trailer for Sonic with a completely new character design, it is clear that fans have a lot more power nowadays. It was also ironic to read Jenkins mentioning how Lucasfilm didn't really love fan agency given that the latest Star Wars film received criticism for extreme fan service. Does this fan power give the title of “fan” more respectability or is there still something reductive about being a fan?
Here's a really short clip from the current season of The Bachelor recapped "on crack":
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