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Banality in fan studies

Michael Bérubé has posted a lengthy response to criticisms of the CHE essay "What's the Matter with Cultural Studies?" that I'd linked to last month, with bonus elaborations and clarifications. And for those playing along at home, special guest appearances from Lisa Duggan, Jody Berland, and Simon During!

I'm just going to highlight here this one section that touches on fan & television studies, and emphasizes the history of their critique by and within cultural studies:

My complaint about Frank’s account of cultural studies in One Market Under God (in a review essay reprinted in Rhetorical Occasions, titled “Idolatries of the Marketplace”) was (a) that it relies almost entirely on Bob McChesney’s “Is There Any Hope for Cultural Studies?” and (b) that Frank was simply unaware of the rich tradition, in cultural studies itself, of criticism of the field’s cultural populist wing. So here’s the relevant passage from The Left At War (I tell you, the book covers absolutely everything in the world. The second edition will cover all the other stuff):

It is, without question, a serious political and theoretical mistake to overestimate the importance of popular culture and the power of its consumers (even if they are also, in some ways, its producers), and to strain to find world-historical political consequences in the film Basic Instinct or televised “reality” shows. But it is a still more egregious and lamentable mistake to ignore a vast terrain of popular culture and popular experience altogether, or to determine in advance (and in ignorance) that it can serve only reactionary ends, or to decide that certain cultural phenomena might be worth the attention of conscientious leftists—but only if they (the phenomena) have nothing to do with corporations. At the time McChesney penned his attack, cultural studies had more than its share of enthusiastic celebrants of the “active audience” thesis, it is true; they had already been repeatedly criticized by other cultural studies theorists, as when Tony Bennett complained about his colleagues’ “sleuth-like searching for subversive practices just where you’d least expect to find them” (“Putting Policy into Cultural Studies,” 32) or when Simon Frith wrote of “defending popular culture from the populists” [footnote]. But it also contained plenty of people who understood that the struggle against the Reagan-Bush right could not be engaged exclusively on the terms of electoral politics, let alone defeated on the economic front by dragging out the charts and showing Americans that their real wages were falling while CEO wages were skyrocketing.

The Frith quote is footnoted like so: “Simon Frith, ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent: Saving Popular Culture from the Populists.’ diacritics 21.4 (1991): 101-15. Other classic critiques of populism in cultural studies include John Frow, Cultural Studies and Cultural Value; Larry Grossberg, It’s a Sin; Jim McGuigan, Cultural Populism; Meaghan Morris, ‘Banality in Cultural Studies’; and, alphabetically last but chronologically first out of the box, Judith Williamson, ‘The Problems of Being Popular,’ from way back in 1985.” In fact, McGuigan’s book, proclaiming itself “a sympathetic critique of cultural populism,” nevertheless argues that “neo-Gramscian hegemony theory’s approach to subcultural analysis was deconstructed and reoriented toward what became an uncritical understanding of youth cultural consumption. A similar trajectory is traced in the construction of ‘popular television’ as an object of study, exemplified by the turn toward ‘the active audience,’ which in spite of its evident advantages neglects the economic, technological and political determinations of televisual culture. The uncritical endorsement of popular taste and pleasure, from an entirely hermeneutic perspective, is curiously consistent with economic liberalism’s concept of ‘consumer sovereignty’” (6).
So, okay, but what's happened to fan studies? Sure, a lot of later work dialed back on the rhetorical excesses of "active audience" boosterism, but so much of it still seems governed by a "the fans are alright" orientation. On the one hand, you have Henry Jenkins and friends, the Convergence Culture coterie, whose collective intelligence has apparently led them to stop worrying and embrace the brand extensions, and wherever possible to embrace industry itself. On the other hand, you've got the cult of the fanwork, where transformative is the new subversive, pleasure becomes its own politics, and the material/economic domain is largely reduced to questions of copyright and creativity. Sure, that's a gross generalization of a lot of really interesting work being done -- but I look at the (excellent) fan(works) studies articles from the In Focus section of the latest Cinema Journal (pdf), and I see, albeit posed in more sophisticated and nuanced terms, yet another valorization of active audiences which, all in all, doesn't seem to have moved very far beyond the orbit traced by Jenkins' Textual Poachers, published nearly two decades ago.

Am I missing something? Has fan studies simply defected from cultural studies, rejected its presuppositions and preoccupations as inadequate or irrelevant, or shrugged off the '90s critiques of cultural populism?

I'll close with a bit of Meaghan Morris' most excellent "Banality in Cultural Studies":

If banality keeps on coming back around in our polemics, it is less because of the residual elitism of individual intellectuals, and populist reaction to it, and more because "banality" as mythic signifier is always a mask for the question of value, and of value-judgement, or "discrimination". If I find myself in the contradictory position of wanting to reject the patronising idea that "banality" is a useful framing concept to discuss mass media, and yet go on to complain myself of "banality" in cultural studies, the problem may arise because the critical vocabulary available to people wanting to theorise the discriminations that they make in relation to their own experience of popular culture -- without debating the "validity" of that experience, even less that culture as a whole -- is still, today, extraordinarily depleted. It seems to me, therefore, that the worst thing one can do in this context is to accuse people trying to develop a critique of popular culture of succumbing to "elitism" or pessimism.

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Isn't the question rather one of sidestepping the subversive category as irrelevant? For me the most populist, most radical, albeit not subversive *g* aspect of the In Focus essays are its focus on individual fanworks, not as much in celebration (though that's clearly there too) as much as simply AS ART.

I mean, coming from literary studies (and the high brow aesthetics of modernism and even the various poststructural/postmodern/deconstructivist models which ultimately are pretty damn elitist all by themselves), for me the very fact that we can read Us next to Andy Warhol next to West Wing next to Citizen Kane next to James next to Chaucer...that in and of itself is a pretty huge thing.

I mean, when did aesthetics start getting measured in terms of political efficacy? And also, when did we stop working with nuances and settle for an either/or? (Both in the incorporation/resistance paradigm but also in your embracing the producers/repeating the active audiences framework.)

I mean, I think we need more rather than less differentiation, especially when it comes to the political/social values of art. Truth is beauty; beauty truth is clearly false, but the way the two interact, the way ethics and aesthetics interplay remains fascinating.

I want more and more subtle readings of these interplays, because I think, actually, we are entering an era where political and social values have become near simplistic surface qualities of texts, and while a what you see is what you get may be ultimately desirable, I look at works like Disidentification and mourn the differentiated reading of identification and engagement with sometimes not necessarily easily embraceable media texts...

Wow, and I'm not winning any stylistic awards here...I mean *vbg*

I read, but didn't quite grok the linked articles with all the cultural studies identity angst, but I don't understand how it is "Cultural Studies" (in a specific sense) to just study art as art unless you do something more or different from the people who studied other art as art before to justify giving it a new name as a separate field.

I mean sure, I get that in practice in academic discourse and in institutions not all art is equally accepted as object of study, so in that way it may be "radical" in the context of what gets published or talked about in some journal or accepted institutionally or funded when it was previously not "valid", but that doesn't make it some kind of new thing when you look at it from outside those self-imposed boundaries or were never subject to these in the first place. So this kind of "radical" is not really "radical" at all in any wider sense, because what it promises to revolutionize was mostly some kind of artifical or internal academic kind of exclusion/boundary. There needs to be something more to fit the definition of "radical" of those for whom it seems fairly obvious anyway that if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck (e.g. how say fanfic is written and it is fiction) it's not a leap to treat it as a duck (i.e. say it is "literature" of some sort and should be looked at that way and falls into that field).

I can see potential that a case could be made that such definitions of what gets counted as "art" (or whatever) and how it is treated by academic institutions has a wider impact and relevance, and thus any radical change had wider relevance also, but IMO it is not all that self-evident how the mere fact what gets studies (rather than specific conclusions/theories that may have political impact or claim interpretation power and such) matters outside of the fields directly impacted.

But I think the entire debate is framed within the institutional boundaries, isn't it? I saw it not as a discussion about life and its representations as much as a discussion about trends in the academy. But then I might be too narrow focused as well :)

The rest is very true, of course. I think my response effectively breaks down to--there's more to studying culture than cultural studies in its political guise. Maybe?

So, point well taken. I sidestepped the argument in a way, didn't I? :)

Btw, I very much responded to Crypto's comments only, not the larger debates he's linked. Because surely, all of fan studies is to be dismissed within Berube's account as Popular Culture rather than Cultural Studies :)

And as one commenter interestingly adds, the real enemy is THEORY...so, as a critical theorist doing popular culture? I probably have little to add to the Cultural Studies debate :)

(glad i'm on DW so I can use my Lacan icon!)

While I see the point your broad gloss of fan studies, I think its really an unfair assessment of the CJ section in particular, which was to my mind the most materialist collection of fan scholarship so far in terms of considering, specifically, gifts vs. piracy vs. profit as economic models for fan production and also trying to consider those models vis a vis gender. I think the conversation is more nuanced in those terms than its ever been. Moreover, the copyright/legal issues isn't just some sort of odd disciplinary obsession: its the sign of an ongoing, very real war that almost everyone on all sides is actively fighting (not just in the broad sense of "shaping culture" but literally fighting--in court, in the press, with lawmakers and cultural institutions), and its totally guiding (limiting?/organizing?) what we say and how we say it: everything is strategic. I've said in talks that in my own depressed moments I fear that this is my moment of ham radio, of television before the networks, and that all the culture I love will someday be shoved onto two channels of "internet public access"--while I am a theorist, this shit isn't THEORETICAL for me, and I do think there's a very real chance of being crushed like a bug under the heel of capitalism. In that way, it does remind me of other cultural studies--queer theory, feminist work--where there is a sense of coalition politics and where you're not going to get certain kinds of thoughts (openly) expressed until certain basic rights have been secured.

Sorry, but because I just can't let it go:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/more-insight-into-claimed-content-on.html

I mean, this is EVERY DAY in my inbox. I've never in my life got to watch power reorganize itself in front of me like this.

That's crypto, not me, right? :)

And yes, I was reading the constant dismissal of popular culture in the comment section to Berube's essay (and in his post as well, of course), and kept thinking that while the two areas are not identical, there's certainly a pretty decent intersection. I'm tired of the high brow is radical and low brow is entertainment for the dumb masses. If the all-hailed Birmingham School did anything, I thought, it showed that!

I don't want to negate aesthetic nor ethical considerations. What I do want is a more subtle and differentiated approach to both!

I'll cop to an unfair assessment; I cited the CJ section precisely because of its heavy focus on questions of economics, value, and labor. That's exactly where I'd most expect to see the cultural studies tradition that Bérubé describes in fan studies, yet those papers really didn't feel like they were grounded in that orientation. That's not necessarily a problem or weakness -- and certainly the diversity of approaches and analyses in that section (and more broadly the TWC journal, Fan Cultures and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, etc.) is a definite strength and sign of sophistication in the field.

But it did make me wonder about the relationship of fan studies to cultural studies today. I'm starting with the assumption that cultural studies in the '80s and early '90s provided a critical foundation and enabling condition for the emergence of fan studies -- certainly not the only one, but surely a cornerstone. But so much current fan studies doesn't feel very connected or engaged with cultural studies -- why is that, and is that a good thing or a bad thing or just a reflection of a different time with new questions and challenges? Or am I just wrong in my starting assumption, and/or my perception of current fan studies?

And I certainly don't want to write off the very real and pressing struggles around copyright and corporate incursions, or the urgency and value of academic engagement with them and the broader advocacy efforts. I do think that there's a tension between the strategic imperatives and theoretical questions when legal criteria for fair use considerations get imported and elevated to critical values (I'd glossed that as 'transformative is the new subversive', but I'd extend that to, say, the recently expressed desire to claim podfic as transformative, or the elevation [canonization?] of specific fanworks and fan auteurs as transformative poster children). But, in the big scheme of things, that isn't something that keeps me awake at night -- as you say, everything is strategic, and some conversations happen later or elsewhere. Plus Alexis' move in CJ to make the radical case for unfair uses demonstrates that there's still plenty of room for alternate and oppositional critiques alongside the advocacy. So here again, my question is about how (much) the analysis and rhetoric around copyright/legal issues in fan studies reflects or draws upon the cultural studies tradition, and whether that tradition and contemporary fan studies have anything to offer each other today in places where they haven't been connecting.

I guess my sense is that whatever the value of focusing on individual fanworks as art, when you're doing that you've moved pretty far away from cultural studies as I'd understood it. That's not to say that it's not worth doing for its own sake or interesting on its own terms -- or that it doesn't have its own potential risks and tradeoffs.

And I'm not even sure that it's about political readings of art or fanworks in the sense of ideological decodings, feminist criticism, etc. -- that, to me, is more in the sphere of literary/film & cultural criticism than cultural studies per se. I guess the distinction I'm fumbling with is something like privileging the textual over the social, material, and historical dimensions of fan works & fan cultures. Which, as you point out, is an either/or formulation lacking nuance! But a lot of the work on fanworks does seem stronger in textual analysis. While -- especially in the Cinema Journal collection -- there are tantalizing glimpses of the the social/material/historical stuff, those aspects of the various arguments came across to me as relatively more shallow and undertheorized than the textual stuff.

Of course, this is basically me saying the equivalent of "Why is everyone writing Dean/Castiel when I want to read plotty genfic about Ellen?" *g* But I was seriously asking how fan studies today conceives of its relationship to cultural studies, in its classical and contemporary forms.

I'm not sure the shallowness is more a function of the outlet (Cinema Journal's a pretty textual journal from what I understand) or the literary biases of the editor :)

Also, I want Ellen/Dean, so where does that leave me???? :P

Well, for a textual outlet there was quite a bit of talk about gift economies & profit & piracy. :)

Also, I want Ellen/Dean, so where does that leave me????

Hey, I'd read that too! *g*

But that was...how did you say "hallow and undertheorized" :P

Too bad neither one of us is writing! Because while I think Dean has chemistry with a tree, I thought he and Ellen were...very, very lovely! (And i'm not a usual big fan of the older woman/younger man pairing...Lee and Roslin notwithstanding :)

Well, "shallow" as in I wish it had gone deeper (I'm thinking especially of the "gift economy" discussion), and "undertheorized" as in "wow, we're a long way from the Birmingham School's engagements with Marxist theory, and maybe 'needs moar historicized critique of neoliberalism' or whatever isn't necessarily the only way to go, but it does feel as though something valuable has been lost along the way" (I'm thinking especially of basically any reference to FanLib).

I haven't been watching this season of SPN, so I'll happily take your word on their recent scenes together. I think I've only read one Ellen/Dean fic, so long ago that I can't remember who wrote it, but it was a solid PWP.

that was me sucking at C&P :)

I am feeling like you're doing a bit of the why no gen Ellen fic now, yes. Because these essays were doing an awful lot in the space of 3000 words a piece. I mean, we're talking about a potential audience who doesn't know what a vid is. Who has never heard of FanLib. So yes, these authors could have done more. But I'm not sure how without either losing large parts of their audiences or writing an entirely different essay...

I take your point -- I don't mean to single out those essays, or fault them for falling short of unrealistic expectations. As I said to Francesca above, I referenced the CJ section specifically because so many of the topics did verge on cultural studies terrain & analyses, yet didn't read to me like cultural studies (in the hazy "I know it when I see it" way *g*).

So for "deeper" I'm less interested in length than orientation -- I wanted a more historicized, critical, reflexive approach to the gift economy question, and I felt like it was presented as a "gift economy yay!" blend of the resistant fan and 2nd wave-style valorization of female values. And this is one place where I see a role for a fan studies more grounded in cultural studies.

Similarly, I'd love to see Francesca (or someone else) take the provocative ideas in her essay about the historical role of the VCR in fannish consumption and production -- with all of its social, spatial, temporal, and technological/material implications -- and really run with them, connect them to the work of people like Lynn Spigel and broader feminist television and technology studies, historicize them and extend them through current DVD/DVR/digital/online modes, etc. That's sort of what I have in mind for productive encounters between fan studies & cultural studies.

Yeah, I'm really not the right person to ask these questions :) As I said, Cultural Studies was what the 'other' part of my department, the one who decided to single me out as the only person to not get a fellowship (and lo and behold, pretty much the only one of my year to finish...), the side whose books we read almost in secrecy because between Derrida and Hegel and Heidegger and Lacan, that was near heresy.

So while I'm engaged with historicizing and contextualizing and am certainly partial to old school left winged theories (mandatory icon check), I'm not really the one to make the CS connections :)

So, yes, I think I agree with you--but I need someone else to do the Dean/Ellen :P (I'll instead be podficcing...whether it's transformative, derivative, or just plain something else :)

BTW, Zizek will be at the publication party at the Brecht Forum in NYC for his new book, "First as Tragedy, Then As Farce" this coming Wednesday (10/15):

http://brechtforum.org/zizek?bc=

Of course, this is basically me saying the equivalent of "Why is everyone writing Dean/Castiel when I want to read plotty genfic about Ellen?" *g*

The subversive part is saying, "let there be plotty Ellen genfic, AND LET IT BEGIN WITH ME."

Maybe the difference has to do with the location of the small place that fan studies occupy in cultural studies as a whole? I mean, people get to choose whether or not to be fans, what to be fans of, and how they conceive fandom in ways that they don't get to choose things like where they were born and how wider culture relates to people like them (for any value of Them) and what kinds of work are available and what happens in the workplace.

Thanks for thinky thoughts (these issues border on fields I know, but I have nothing useful to contribute about these fields!). *reads comments*

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Banality in fan studies

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