Fandom as Idenity and Community

A type of media that I am not a fan of, but my brother is would be the show E.R. Recently, E.R. just aired the final show for the last season. Ever since I can remember my brother has been a huge fan of the show that has been on for the past 12 years. My brother and his friends formed their own kind of community around this show. Every night that it was on they would sit around the television and watch the show while discussing with each other what was going and how they felt about that particular episode. Now, my brother has also formed a certain identity with this show. The other day my mom and brother were talking to me about the final show of E.R. and my brother made the comment that he wanted to go to medical school. You must know my brother to understand he would not be the medical school type. He struggled through high school barely passing math and science, which is a large part of the medical field. The reason he had considered making this life change was all because of the show. He said that he would love to be just like the people on the show and take care or gun shot wounds, burns, bleeding, and everything else. I was very interested in the fact that just two years ago he hated school and barely made it through, but after being a part of this fandom that formed a community and new identity for him he wanted to make a whole life change. After hearing about this I realized the effect that not only media can have on us and our lives, but also what the actually involvement and dedication to this media can actually do to us.

Fandom

I think that the difference between "normal" and "obsessive" is the effort spent being involved with a certain "thing". I would consider a normal fandom to be something like keeping up with a certain television series or collecting an object of some sort to a certain degree. Sometimes collecting objects can also be classified as obsessive fandom. An example of normal fandom would be the past craze of collecting pokemon cards. Many kids would just collect the cards and occasionally play the actual game, but other kids were buying the cards, video games, posters, clothes, assessories, and everything pokemon. I would consider just the card collectors a form of normal fandom, but the kids who had to collect everything that was pokemon became a type of obsessive fandom. I think that the difference between normal and obsessive is extreme. Although the whole process of collecting or interacting is similar some people just seem to take it to an extreme level like we all witnessed on the "Trekkies" movie. A fan community that I am apart of like I mentioned in another blog is the Sarah Dessen book club. The community is nothing official but it brings a bunch of people together to share their thoughts and feelings of the books. I think that being apart of this community make it special for me because it gives me friends that I know I have a connection with. I participate because it makes me feel good to read a book I enjoy and then get together with friends to discuss the lastest thing we had read and discussed how we feel about it. This has shaped me because it gives me something to look foward to and anytime I need to get away or relax I can just jump into a Sarah Dessen book and lose myself in the story. I would classify this as normal, but borderline obsessive. The reason I would say this is normal is because I don't think that I go to the extreme such as dressing up or talking to the characters of the book, but I would consider it almost obsessive because I do think that at times I have a parasocial relationship with the characters of the book. Often I will catch myself relating to what the character is saying and imaging myself and their shoes or as their friend. Sarah Dessen book have definitely become a media that has a large effect on me and who I am.

Star Trek

After finishing the movie on Tuesday I really started to think how different forms of media grab our attention and begin to shape our lives. Today I was watch "That 70's Show" and there was a part where they referred to Eric's obsession with Star Trek. When I saw this part of the show it made me think about the movie from class and just how much the people shown have been effected by just this one form of media. The people on the movie are great examples of how media take control of us. Through Star Wars these fans have come together to form a community, relationships, and personal identity. While watching the movie I just kept in my mind that this was basically another world and that these people just found something they liked and made it their life, but it was not another world. It was our world and an example of media's impact on our life. Although I can not say I am a huge fanatic like a lot of the "trekies" I will admit that I do have many different media forms in my life that same who I am and connect me with a different community that I can share my interest with. One form of media that has impacted me was any book by Sarah Dessen. I love Sarah Dessen books! I could spend all of my days just reading if it were a book by Sarah Dessen. The love I have for these books have kind of put me into another community. A couple summers ago I learned that another girl on my softball team loved Sarah Dessen so we began to read and share. Later we realized that we had everyone reading Sarah Dessen and sharing what they had read. Eventually, these talks became official book talks and helped us to connect with one another and share our love for this media text. I think that the effects media has on our lives is a good thing and it helps us to find who we really are.

American Myth of Success

Recently I was reading in the "Eyes Wide Open" book and I ran into a great example of the American Myth of Success. Earlier in the semester when we were assigned the online reading about the American Myth of Success I found it interesting, but I found it also slightly hard to understand. The idea that you are either born into success or you have to work hard for it is what got me. I do agree with this idea that you are either born into it or work for it, but I always tried to think of a story that could help me visualize the actual idea of the American Myth of Success. So, as I was reading the other day I found in this book that the author use the story "The Little Engine That Could" to illustrate the American Myth of Success. I found this interesting because it is a children's book that contains the complex idea of how to be successful. When I heard this example I thought back to when my mom would read to my brother and I before bed and she had told this story multiple times. After hearing the story time and time again she would refer back to it when either my brother or I were going through and time when we didn't think we would make it through. Years passed and still she would refer to this children's book. Then my senior year of high school on the last day of class my leadership development teacher read to us the same story...only now I actually understood the true meaning and the concept of being successful. As a child I thought that this little engine overcame something that it thought it couldn't do, but as a senior in high school hearing the story again I realized the engine was successful through hard work and that was the point that my teacher was trying to make to us that last day of high school that with hard work and determination success will come...just as the American Myth of Success says it will.

Parasocial Interactions

Yesterday in class we discussed the idea of parasocial relationships. At first I thought the whole idea of having a relationship with a media character was super weird, but as I continued to think I was reminded of a couple characters that I feel close to when I am a part of their media. In class I chose Jenni Finch, who is a softball pitcher for the USA team. When we used the psychological scale to figure out our relationship with our certain characters I scored pretty low compared to everyone else. Through the day it stuck with me the whole idea of person and media relationships. While I was cleaning up my room I ran into a book that I had read awhile back called "Dreamland" by Sarah Dessen. The past few years starting in my younger teenage years I enjoyed reading books by Dessen and when I ran into this book I thought about what it was that made me so involved and connected with the books that she wrote and right then I realized my own parasocial relationship, my own media best friends, and that was all the main female characters in the Sarah Dessen novels. It occurred to me that I did miss these characters and I did miss these books that I had not read in awhile. When I read the books by Dessen I feel like I can understand what the main female character is going through, but if I don't understand and I have never been through it myself then I feel like a friend to the characters someone that they can vent to and share their story with, which puts together a novel. So, after discovering my own parasocial interaction/relationship I realized that maybe they are not so weird, but rather they are relieving and entertaining.

Henry Jenkins

Since I had never heard of Henry Jenkins before class on Tuesday I decided that I would investigate a little about him and the work he does. While I was investigating I found and interesting blog of Henry Jenkins at http://henryjenkins.org/. The blog idea was titled "How has the web reshaped amateur film production, publicity, and distribution?" Basically what the point of the blog was is the connection between the Internet and the world of film production. Henry Jenkins explains that production uses the Internet to get things done like the purchasing costumes and other parts of the set, but there is a new use for the Internet that is helping the production team. Jenkins explains that the web is now used to create a virtual crew team for the film. In the blog Jenkins gives the example, "For instance, the 2005 fan film, Star Wars: Revelations, was an ambitious, 40-minute effort covered by all the major news channels and downloaded over a million times in its first 48 hours on the web. Part of the appeal was its eye-popping special effects, which were created by a volunteer team of CGI enthusiasts around the world that used the web to recruit artists, exchange files and compile the finished effect shots." After reading this and realizing what influence the web has for production I was amazed and the way the two work hand and hand. When I picture a production I just think of light, cameras, directors, and actors. I never really considered the use of computers, let alone the idea that the web could create a virtual work crew.

My little black....box

After class today and the discussion about I began to wonder what it would be like if we really did have a "black box" that had all forms and possible media right in our hands. As I thought about this my main thought was how would this black box change society and would it help or hurt the world of media. Personally, I think that by creating this ultimate form of media it would change society greatly. Now, when I envision this new black box I think of something similar to the iphone because now-a-days it is not cool to make anything bigger than that. So, after this black box is created I believe it will have a negative effect on society. I think that by having all this media at our hands it will disconnect ourselves from the world, but yet be completely connected at the same time. You would stay completely connected to the world by having the access to television, newspapers and magazines. I think that when this black box is created many people will forget the telephone calls and face-to-face conversation and begin only email and text messaging. By the creation of this new product we will forget all the groups we are apart of and it will just become another distraction in our everyday lives.