The Extratextuals

The art form of editing video from one or more fan objects to a piece of music in a way that comments on the fan object – “vidding” – has been discussed at various sources recently (cf. Kristina Busse’s post, New York Magazine’s profile of vidder Luminosity, Henry Jenkins’ post on that article, Jason Mittell’s post on vidding, Louisa Stein’s post, and Francesca Coppa’s In Media Res post on Kandy Fong). So for me to drag my slow typing carcass to the computer and blog about it now might seem kind of late, especially when the wonders of vidding have been known for a long time now by many female fans in particular. But if you’re going to read this blog, you should know that I’m often late to the fan party (I discovered Buffy and West Wing several seasons in, still need to sit down with Battlestar Galactica, etc.). At least I try to bring a good bottle of something when I come, though.

While late to the vidding party, I’ve been planning the date for a long time now. I’m currently writing a book about film and television extratexts, and next on deck is a chapter on audience-created extratexts. I had already intended to use Lost spoiler fandom as one of the case studies (see here for an article on this by Jason Mittell and I), and was somewhat interested in the large number of fan-created opening credit sequences to Buffy the Vampire Slayer as another case study. I once tried to find the official opening credit sequence on YouTube and instead found large numbers of fan-made versions. What intrigued me here was how fans recognize the role that opening credit sequences play in offering preferred readings, a set hierarchy of characters, an overarching genre and set of thematics, and so forth, and the fan versions thus show the fans’ recalibration of those dynamics. Fan-created opening credit sequences allow fans to dictate what the show is all about, and who and what matters to them. And these can then be shared with others.

A close parallel here is the work of literature, art, music, film, and media professors and critics, who regularly use their articles, books, and lessons to propose new ways of watching, listening, or otherwise experiencing and making sense of cultural products. I keenly remember, for instance, the first explicitly feminist reading I heard of a novel, in my second year university English Honors seminar with Professor Egan at University of British Columbia. I’d just read Wuthering Heights and loved it. And Professor Egan took this story and performed a wonderful trick, tripling it in density, meaning, and nuance by encouraging me to read it and its characters in a different way. I didn’t physically read the novel again after hearing Prof. Egan’s reading, but I didn’t need to, since the characters, plot, events, and themes were all coming alive again in my head, rearranging themselves to offer new meanings. The story grew, and I was reading it again without even touching the actual book. I took this class while deciding whether or not to major in English Literature, and this experience sealed the deal in the affirmative.

This, in essence, is what fascinates me about extratexts: how they can change the meaning of a text. Or, rather, not so much change as expand.

More below the fold

Anyways, the chapter preceding this one on deck is all about industry-created hype and advertising, with which producers and their editing and marketing teams try to set the stage for a text. These extratexts propose genres, and even genders (see my post at Flow on this topic, if you’re interested), for texts we haven’t seen, and they act as subtle reminders of the producer-privileged meanings of texts that we have seen. But this next chapter is meant to look at how fans can use extratexts in ways that allow them their own paths through film and television texts, and that allow them the chance to share alternative reading strategies and experiences with each other.

This is something of a familiar theme in academic fan studies, as Henry Jenkins’ and Constance Penley’s early fan studies-beginning work on Star Trek fan fiction argued for a model of fan readings as transformative and resistive. But while resistance is certainly a part of fandom, since that whole angle has been done, and done a lot, I didn’t want to just parrot what’s already been said. I’d like this chapter to be less about resistive transformation that openly and caustically criticizes a text, and more about extratexts that point us to lesser-seen parts of a text, or that simply highlight a relationship, character, or theme that might otherwise get lost in the mix. So, while I love a lot of fan parody clips, I wasn’t so interested in them here.

Okay, some of you might be saying, but what about the vids? Sorry for the delay, but I wanted to set up the context for my viewing.

The more I heard about vids, they started to sound like exactly the sort of thing I was looking for in this chapter, and more intricately crafted than the Buffy opening credit-sequences. Kristina had been so good as to post a recommended list of vids for newbie watchers, and so I started to make my way through them.

I must admit to being an immediate fan. If I was writing this as an academic essay, I’d try to couch that enthusiasm in tame words, but let me take advantage of the relaxed vocab a blog allows me and say, simply, that many of them are really fucking good. As a massive fan of parody, who has often thought up ideas for mashups yet never known how to make them, I’m already astounded by the editing prowess of many of the vidders. The ability to match editing to musical cues can also be spectacular, proving how nuanced an art form editing is. And iTunes will be glad to hear of my new obsession, since the vids have introduced me to many new songs too. On a technical level, many are excellent. Witness, for instance, Lim’s ultra-cool “Us” (and then go read Kristina’s commentary on it here).

I’ve also been struck by how wonderfully some of them offer character studies that allow us to see a character, or a relationship between two characters, develop across the span of a series or film. For instance, Wolfling and Magpie’s “Winter” traces the relationship between Eowyn and Theoden in Lord of the Rings, thereby, for example, beautifully adding layers of meaning and pathos to the scene in which Theoden’s curse is removed, rendering him a regular guy/king once more. It’s easy to lose sight of Eowyn in the film, one of the only women in what is largely a lad’s tale. But not in “Winter.”

Sheila’s “Jesus Walks” and Luminosity’s “Struggle” allow us to focus on the personal journeys and missions of Angel’s Gunn and Lindsay MacDonald respectively, two characters regularly forced to the background in the show. Laura Shapiro’s playful yet poignant “Ing” does the same with Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Anya. And Luminosity offers a Buffy Spike-Buffy shipper’s delight with “The Other Side,” inviting us to trace Spike and Buffy’s relationship across time, from the eyes of my favorite vampire, with David Gray’s angsty song (with chorus repeating, “meet me on the other side” and “I still don’t know what life is”) speaking for the angsty Spike. Or another favorite for me has been Laura Shapiro’s “Circles,” which examines the West Wing characters’ reaction to the announcement that President Bartlet had MS; so much other stuff is going on in the episodes that deal with this that it’s easy to, as Sorkin no doubt wanted us to, get carried along with all those other things, but Shapiro allows us time out to really contemplate multiple characters’ responses to this major announcement. While The West Wing is known for its sweeping confident soundtrack, here the plucky, classical accompaniment picks up on the doubt, worry, and concern of the Bartlet White House, underscoring the fine acting and tonal shift with skill.

A bunch of vids certainly do have parodic play and/or critique at their center: Luminosity’s “Vogue” and (with Sisabet) “Women’s Work” have been adequately discussed elsewhere. Her “Hopeless,” though, is also a very funny edit from Lord of Rings to the sounds of Olivia Newton John’s “Hopeless,” focusing on various characters’ hopeless devotion to the ring. A fair number of vids are slash, pairing single-sex characters together (see Charmax’s “Boom,” for instance), but one of the things I find hilarious about “Hopeless” is how it concentrates on the biggest love affair going on in LotR beyond all the obvious slash pairings (has there ever been a more slash-rich story? It’s almost too easy to slash LotR!), and playfully/lovingly borrows from the generic requirements of slash vids to show this man-on-ring relationship. As Jason notes, it’s the parodies that perhaps have the broadest appeal, given that you really only have to know the object of parody tangentially. The character studies, by contrast, require a better knowledge of the show, and so inevitably some of the vids I’ve been watching don’t hit home for me, largely because I don’t know the show. But when I do know the text, I’m really appreciating the way they make me think about the text. It’s like getting a Chuck-like “intersect” flash of pages and pages of Television Without Pity and fanboard debriefing and discussion in four quick minutes.

I’m also interested in the vids that effectively sell and/or encapsulate their show even more effectively than could any official ad for the show. If you watch Dexter, for instance, check out Luminosity’s deeply disturbing yet brilliant “Blood Fugue,” and I challenge you to find an ad that captures the show’s darkness and psychological intrigue as successfully. Or if, like me, you’ve never seen Dead Zone, check out Shalott and Speranza’s “Day in the Life,” and you may be adding it to your Netflix queue quite soon.

Overall, then, what’s amazed and excited me about vids is what I loved about that class on Wuthering Heights. Professor Egan transformed and expanded Bronte, thereby showing the wonders of criticism: how it can marry analysis, critique, and fandom in a way that expands the size of the text, and one’s enjoyment of it. Indeed, when people ask me if studying The Simpsons made me stop liking it, I don’t really “get” the question, since studying it only allowed me to like it more, and made its “size” and its value as a text multiply. Good vids do the same. Watching some of the above-mentioned vids, those texts have been reopened for play for me, and I’ve had time to think through characters, themes, and events that I’ve loved to think through.

Though late to the party, I’m glad to see it’s alive and happening.

(By the way, if any of the vidders whose work is linked to here would like me to take the links down, just let me know, and I’ll do so immediately)

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