Fans have argued angrily about this too, as some see
fan fiction as a feministic struggle for recognition
and equality. An upset fan wrote an angry editorial
about Lucasfilm in the zine Slayzu,
Lucasfilm is saying, “you must enjoy the characters
of the Star Wars universe for male reasons. Your sex-
uality must be correct and proper by my (male) defi-
nition.” (Jenkins 1992: 31)However, it should be noted that not all readings are
considered as poaching or tinkering outside of the
narrative.
Readers are not always resistant; all resistant read-
ings are not necessarily progressive readings; the
“people” do not always recognize their conditions of
alienation and subordination. (Jenkins 1992: 34)According to Jenkins, academic analysis of fan cul-
ture has traditionally been heavily influenced by
Critical theory and Adorno, understanding fandom
as pure consumerism fed by the cultural industries.
Here fans were either cultural “dupes”, or the oppo-
site, engaged in cultural “resistance”. Adorno’s theo-
ries put fan identities in a struggle between commer-
cial ideologies, supported by commodity culture,
and their “authentic” independent response.
The old either-or oppositions (co-optation vs. resist-
ance) which have long dominated debates between
political economy and cultural studies, approaches
to media simply do not do justice to the multiple,
dynamic, and often contradictory relationships
between media convergence and participatory cul-
ture. Approaches derived from the study of political
economy may, perhaps, provide the best vocabulary
for discussing media convergence, while cultural
studies language has historically framed our under-
standing of participatory culture. Neither theoretical
tradition, however, can truly speak to what happens
at the intersection between the two. (Jenkins 2003)Jenkins does not want to contrast academic with to
fan readings, but instead put their level of exegesis
on an equal level. These groups are both fans and
even use similar meticulous methodologies of analy-
sis. Academics poach texts similarly to the ways fans
do, reading selectively and building new stories be-
tween the lines. Only their audiences differ – aca-
demic conferences or fan conventions, which these
days sometimes also turn out to be the same (Brook-
er 2005). However, the fans have turned poaching
into an exquisite skill:
Fans are not unique in their status as textual poach-
ers, yet, they have developed poaching to an art form.
(Jenkins 1992: 27)The participation in fan culture merges various ap-
proaches of participation; conflict (legal battles), cri-
tique (culture jamming), challenge (amateurs against
pros), collaboration (co-arrangements with fans), or
recruitment (fans hired for their skills by corpora-
tions). What is clear is that the new media tools have
enabled the grass root fans to archive, appropriate,
and recirculate the media in new ways. We will see
larger groups of fans re-reading and reinterpreting
and fighting for the right of co-authorship.
It should be noted though, that from a resistance
point of view fan fiction is of dubious value. The
narratives are owned by the culture industry and
they decide how the next episode will be, however
much the fans have resisted. Instead many of the re-
sistance ideas are instead free for the directors to ex-
ploit. In the end the fans might get the story tuned
into the direction of their will, as is popular in Japa-
nese Manga stories where fans are encouraged to
write in and tell the authors where they want the
story to head. Popular culture will continue to be a
profitable commodity.
What fan fictions offer is a loophole, a method or an
action space for sharing outside the control of the
original authors. All fiction is about fantasies. All
readers are in some way contributing to the fantasy
by reading and enlivening it, but what fan fiction
does is to manifest their own fantasies, and share
them with the other fans. They build communities
around their common practice of poaching and
build on top of each others’ compiled fantasies. It is
a change in approach to authorship and originality
as well as a creative critique of control that is not
based on opposition and detachment, but instead on
passionate attachment. Not of hate but of love.a vector of one’s own
Zines also have a power of enablement, as they form
a simple means to create something “real”, something
accessible to others and an entry ticket into a com-
munity of the likeminded. In an empowering way
the zine format becomes a real channel for engage-
ment and setting a physical mark on the world. It is
a way to be seen and heard, and a celebration of DIY
creativity and commitment. Duncombe frames it
like this: