[research] Under construction: presentation on reading fanfic as part of 'open work'

[unjapanologist]

Originally published at Academic FFF. You can comment here or there.

Next month I'm going to Sweden for the symposium 'Textual Echoes: Fan Fiction and Sexualities' (program and abstracts), where I'll be making a case for 'The 'open work' as a framework for the interpretation of fan fiction'. For those who are interested in seeing a coherent argument emerge slowly from a morass of disconnected gibberish, I'm constructing the presentation here. Abstract:

Since the 1960s, semiotician Umberto Eco has written at length about 'open work', a largely theoretical kind of artwork characterized by open-endedness and a need for audience participation. By combining this concept with other semiotic methods of data extraction and analysis, it would seem possible to construct an alternative method of fan fiction interpretation that permits objectively verifiable data to be examined within the established theoretical framework of the 'open work' -a framework whose precepts make it uniquely suited to analysis of online amateur media such as fanfic.

    A preliminary test of this method seems to confirm its potential for opening new perspectives on fanfic narratives and using public debate about the findings as a part of the research itself, not something that occurs only after final publication of the results. I will illustrate the method's advantages and disadvantages by detailing its use in a broader study currently underway. This study contrasts English-language fanfics published online with Japanese amateur comics (dojinshi) based on the same source material (the 'Harry Potter' series). The data sets  examined contain a wide variety of narrative elements, including but not limited to characters, pairings, narrators, handling of canon elements, sexual activity, events, and locations.

Comments

[therealsnape.livejournal.com]

Sounds very interesting - I had no idea that scholarly attention for fanfiction was so huge!

[fanficforensics.livejournal.com]

Huge it isn't -the vast majority of people in any department still haven't the foggiest idea what fanfic even is, really- but it's growing. Today there's more and more academics who talk about fic and actually know what they're saying, which is great. Some older pieces on fic by scholars who weren't actually fic readers themselves are pretty damn atrocious ;)

[calicokat.livejournal.com]

Ahhh...you make me want to go back for my sociology masters. XD I think I see where you're going, that English culture and Japanese culture is a lens through which the final product passes. I wonder how much cultural context contributes to the interpretation of a work upon reading it? Can a Japanese reader and an American reader read the same open work and project different values onto it, creating different interpretations? Maybe you have the answer to those questions.

Of course, I also think about when Ueda-sensei said "An American can't watch Serial Experiments Lain and understand it" and all American viewers interpreted it correctly a majority of the time and he was sad and I laughed at him. (Actually, I laughed at him when he first said it, and I also laughed when he was sad. Oh snap.)

Still, Ueda Yasuyuki having an inflated ego doesn't negate evidence of broader cultural trends.

[fanficforensics.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much cultural context contributes to the interpretation of a work upon reading it?

Rather a lot, I suspect. The idea for this project came when I was reading lots of HP fics and dojinshi for fun and started to wonder why the dojinshika did tons and tons of James/Snape, while that's a real rarepair in English-language HP fandom. Open work theory gets dragged in because it's useful as a framework for comparing two different media from two different cultures without bringing in my own cultural preconceptions right from the start, and because the kind of artwork it describes is amazingly similar to fanwork, and the theoretical implications interest me.

There's this set of books for Japanese speakers who want to read Harry Potter in English. They're full of explanations of uncommon words and British elements and customs in the books that would make no sense to Japanese readers. I suspect that if a Japanese reader isn't reading HP while cross-referencing one of those explanatory volumes, he or she reads something entirely different than a British reader does. Hell, I probably read something different too - I'm not a Brit.

Re: Ueda-sensei... That's the problem with assuming that authorial intent is all that matters, isn't it. You can stuff as much authorial intent into your work as you like, the people who end up reading or seeing it (and making fanwork about it) will happily interpret it from their own personal experiences. Those interpretations may or may not match your Authorial Intent, but it's totally pointless and pretty self-important to snipe about people who interrogate your stuff from the wrong perspective. (Thank you for that one, Anne Rice, I owe you so much.)

[calicokat.livejournal.com]

Going from the bottom first, I think there was a problem specifically with Serial Experiments Lain where, if I'm remembering it right, because I haven't seen it since 1999-2000, but I remember it having a lot to do with how the intrusion of the internet is separating the individual from the traditional cultural institutions that promote a feeling of inclusion and affirm that the individual has a place and purpose in society.

What I don't think he realized, at least, as far as I remember as a 16 year old ha ha suck it Ueda, is that the internet is creating the same schisms in American culture and isolating American individuals in the same ways as Japanese individuals. (Also, I may hate when people tell me "You wouldn't understand." :x)

I think there was an essential misconception on Ueda-sensei's part, while purposefully making these things blatent within the narrative, that American viewers with their purported focus on individual freedom and independence lack similar institutions to promote group cohesion.

Because America is replete with these institutions and is experiencing the schism caused by the internet and other media and their ability to stream unfiltered memes into the individual, destroying shared values in immediate neighborhoods...well, in short, American culture is experiencing the exact same effects as Japanese culture from these intrusions.

The mechanism of attack is so novel in human history that it sort of reveals the similarities of seemingly disparate cultures.


.... apparently I'm having a lot of fun talking with you. Um, I'm going to respond to the other part in a seperate post because this turned into such a wall of text. XD

[calicokat.livejournal.com]

Erm, so, anyway, not having collected my thoughts beforehand, I ended up launching into a massive essay in need of heavy, heavy editing that I friends locked to you on my journal (http://calicokat.livejournal.com/311698.html). (Mostly because it's not structured in such a way that anybody not already in this discussion could make heads or tails of it. @_@)

Of course, you may have already interrogated things from this angle or completely disagree with everything I've said. That's the fun of academics I guess.

Hmmm, I forgot how much I enjoy it, though! *eyes MA in Anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham* My mom keeps telling me I should go back to school. *cough*

[fanficforensics.livejournal.com]

Essay fun, oooh. I'm reading and composing a long-winded reply now!

Academia is fun, once you learn to ignore the other academics when they get in the way ;)

EDIT: I barely remember anything about Lain. Must watch again before making sweeping judgements, probably.

[calicokat.livejournal.com]

I love long-winded replies. :D I haven't gotten to have a good discussion in awhile. Forgive me if I am rusty!

And I think if I went for a masters at least I wouldn't be a saucy undergraduate, this time around. XD;; That might help, at least somewhat.

eta: I should probably watch Lain again, too, because I quite liked it. It was only after quite liking it that I learned I wasn't supposed to understand it. >>'