Calling vidders and academics

[rivkat]

So, rather than finishing up my edits or preparing materials for Vividcon (by the way – any intellectual property-type questions vidders want answered? Let me know here and I’ll be sure to work your questions into my presentation) – I’ve been doing more reading, specifically at Henry Jenkins’ website. He has a bunch of interesting stuff up, from Lassie to Mortal Kombat. There’s a long dialogue between him and Matt Hills, who wrote Fan Cultures, that is just wonderful, with too much thoughtful stuff to summarize, though my favorite bits are about the change in cultural production over the past few decades to anticipate, incorporate and respond to fans. If you’re at all interested in theorizing fandom, read it.

What this exchange really got me thinking about was Jenkins’ account of the increasing respectability among academics of being a fan as well as of writing about fans. To a certain extent, this is clearly true; if anything, now one has to defend looking down on fans rather than identifying with them. But Jenkins’ and Hills’ experience is not mine, for a specific (perhaps gendered) reason: As far as I know, though both men are explicit in their academic work that they are fans, they do not produce fiction, art or vids. “Coming out” for them is therefore a lot less fraught. For me, the danger is far more related to my students than my colleagues, most of whom are likely to see my fannish endeavors as bizarre but not academically disqualifying. With students, though, wearing Spock ears really has nothing on the way I’m exposed. Sure, if you actually read Jenkins’ work, you’ll know he’s read a bunch of slash, but, flippantly, it seems to me that the only thing surprising about finding a man reading “porn” is that he’s reading it. My students can easily access what they might well assume are my sexual fantasies – or, at a minimum, what I think might be arousing to readers. Yes, I do feel vulnerable, and it isn’t something I’d ever bring up with students, though I haven’t taken heroic measures to separate my identities and I understand I’ve been outed to some of them.

Anyway, I’d be interested to hear what other fan writers/artists/vidders who are also academics have to say about what your academic colleagues know about your fannish commitments.

Comments

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I think the pro/fan writer divide has a lot of similarities to the academic/fan divide, though I'm only intimately familiar with the latter. Mixing sex and fandom gives you the dangers to credibility of both. I absolutely agree with your point about explicitness -- it's very interesting to me to compare the level of sexual frankness in, say, Dragonrider, with that in current fantasy/sf. Even intra-author, things are changing: Laurell Hamilton and Robert Sawyer are two very different authors whose explicitness has changed markedly over the course of a decade or so.

Do you have any suggestions of good "blow jobs in the throne room" stories? Because I can always make time to read about a good blow job in a throne room.

By the way, I'm glad you stopped by. I'm a longtime fan, as in back to XF and Pretender days. God, Pretender was such a bad show, with just the right kind of potential for fandom. I'm sad it hasn't had a greater prominence in fandom.

[juliefortune.livejournal.com]

Hmm, blow jobs in throne rooms ... how about Guy Gavriel Kay's "Tigana" (I think that's the right one)? And of course, his "Lions of Al-Rassan," which while nary a blow job, has content of considerable interest along similar lines, as well as fearfully impressive writing.

And then George R.R. Martin's "Game of Thrones" trilogy (which, to my shock, is NOT a trilogy and now I'm left hanging for Book 4) ... incest, fellatio, explicit sex of virtually every description.

And a damn good read.

Heh.

I know my porn.

And THANK YOU for remembering me! :blushes: That's so very cool. I still love tP. Miss Parker is amazingly fun to write, even now. ;)

-- J.