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.
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