Title: (Currently) Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." as an Emerging Fandom: A Study in Fan Culture.
Thesis: Marvel's new television series "Agents of SHIELD" will succeed based on how it is projected through online media by digital fan communities. Digital fan communities help fans navigate their immersion in a fandom to find meanings within their entertainment through online discussion and remixed content. Fandoms grow better when their fans share content with their friends. Dr. Wickman suggested I look at the scholarship on immersion and see how it compares to what I am seeing in fan culture.
Relevance: Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is only in its first season. In terms of both its episodes and its relationship with the fans, it has been dynamic. It is part of the larger Avengers and Marvel fandom and one of the show's main producers is cult favorite Joss Whedon. If there was any time to examine a possible fandom in the act of forming, this is the moment. There is a lot of potential for the show and a lot of tension in the fan community.
Format: I am thinking a formal essay, except maybe with picture snapshots of twitter and facebook posts. Maybe I could go multimedia--not for the formal paper but the final blog post or something.
Curation of Content: I started snipping pictures of Facebook and Twitter posts over break. It will keep up. I am also accumulating reviews of the show and fandom articles on Zotero.
Curation of Secondary Sources: I have read/am reading books about the Star Trek and Dr. Who fandoms. I also have a few scholarly articles which I have curated via Google Docs and Zotero (I got it for Dr. Burton's Shakespeare Class--it's awesome!)
Curation of Community: I am following SHIELD fan sites on Twitter, the Helicarrier podcast and Agent Coulson's Army, and they in return are following me. I am being followed by PhantasticGeek on Twitter. I follow the official SHIELD sites on Twitter and Facebook and most of the show's actors on Twitter.
Social Proof: I normally watch SHIELD with my roommates and one or two friends, so I can talk to them about it. I also have a guy friend CJ in the medieval club who likes the show (I mean, a lot of clubbies like the show, but CJ especially). And then I am in contact with Jason Hamilton who is an expert on fandoms in general.
People I don't know directly: I exchanged emails with I also tweeted the author of a Buzzfeed article about the Marvel Cinematic Universe's big impact on Hollywood.
Venue:
So I just found this huge blog page about scholarly blogs and journals devoted to fandom studies. Here is the link if my classmates or other interested parties want it: http://fanstudies.wordpress.com/fan-studies-journals/
Of the ones listed above, I want to submit to Participations, which is a journal of audience reception studies. Their organization exists because (quote from website) "we recognise that these fields are not at present well-supported within the broad academic communities. There are few undergraduatecourses and even fewer postgraduate courses which emphasise this work. Only a small number of research students work in this area, compared to other kinds of work on all the many forms of cultural and media expression. Yet we believe that the findings of audience and reception work are of crucial importance to all our fields – not least because claims about the audience are so frequently embedded within other kinds of work, and within public discourses about media and culture."
So it sounds like mine is the kind of paper they are looking for.
I would also like to submit to Transformative Works and Cultures, since it deals more specifically with fandoms.
The real challenge I am setting for myself is The Journal of Science Fiction Film and Television, which is published by Liverpool University Press IN THE UK!!!!!!! More likely than not, if I got accepted to a conference they put on I'd have to do a video conference, but hey, it would still be cool. The guidelines say I have to use UK grammar and spelling and also use specific citations for TV shows and actors. My response:
self-generated meme.
What I need to do next:
Go through the Dr. Who fandom book I read over the break and comb for quotes.
Create an orderly history of FB comments and twitter quotes (also block out names).
Listen to the Helicarrier podcast
Post link to this blog and "Tweethis" statement to social media sites. Ask fans about their views of fandom and S.H.I.E.L.D.
Start writing out the paper
Curate fan art and memes specifically related to SHIELD.
FIND SCHOLARLY ARTICLES ABOUT:
humor
fandoms and immersion
FIND SCHOLARLY ARTICLES BY:
Henry Jenkins
Cheryl Harris
get fandom books renewed at library
Find more recent SHIELD reviews
A thesis is like a scientific equation. You need certain elements to come together to create a certain product. I am not entirely sure what the final product is going to be. But I am now going to take this opportunity to lay out my ingredients on the table to see what I have and will likely end up with. This is not my final thesis and venue, but just me thinking through my ideas. Lots of feedback would be welcome.
I want to somehow respond to my ideas on immersion from the midterm. A good secondary term for immersion is engagement. Using the terms more or less interchangeably, I define an individual's engagement or immersion within a fandom as a relationship with a fandom with the end goal of promoting a change change of value within the fandom, either for oneself or for the fan community. Open immersion adheres to the values of the fan community and compromises with them to create value. Closed immersion is only interested in the individual's veiw of how a fandom/fans should exist or behave and seeks to tear them down.
I also want to return to the idea of memes. A fandom is a meme or contagious idea, as are the social morays within them. Cultures have their own distinctive symbols, such as the harpoon or the line to Moby Dick's whalers, or Captain America's shield in the Avengers films. Like these more physical symbols, there are also internal ideas that spread and change within a culture, like a whaling captain's responsibility to his crew or, to use an Avengers example, "COULSON LIVES!" It can be as simple as a joke or a motto, or as complex as a value judgment about a certain topic delivered by a community or an individual. I want to understand how memes spreading within a fan community are a manifestation of people working together to add meaning to a fandom and pass judgment on media. Thus,the people create the fandom and not just the entertainment industry. (hmm, nice ring to that). Memes are a product of fan immersion.
The 19th-century whaling industry depicted in Moby Dick is its own culture and, in a way, a fandom, at least the way Ishmael regards it and the way Ahab works within it. The difference between Ishmael and Ahab, as I pointed out in my midterm, is that one is openly immersed and the other is closed. "Where Ahab errs, it seems clear, is in sacrificing others to his egocentric interpretation of reality[....] Disvaluing speech with other men in his desire for a dialogue with speechless nature, Ahab inevitably experiences the isolation that lack of communication and lack of community entail" (Barnett 148). Ahab closes himself off from all other interpretations of the White Whale than his own--human, natural, and supernatural--and charts his course of revenge accordingly. The closed fan only interprets his fandom his own way and only opens himself to people or media that value his fandom the way he does. Likewise the media producers that ignore the needs and desires of consumers are unable to sell their product or ignore larger opportunities for profit. From my reading of the Star Trek Fan Phenomena, what made the difference between Star Trek being a failed TV show and the vibrant fan community it is today were the fans who incessantly clamored the TV networks for a continuation of the show--and that in the days when the internet itself was still the stuff of science fiction. The digital age has turned fandoms into a force to be reckoned with.
An open fan, however, is a breeding ground for memes, or in other words values other people's ideas about the value of a fandom and adds them to his own. Ishmael is symbolic of this type of fan.
"Ishmael [...] is purged of his antisocial feelings by his commitment to Queequeg and then [...]to humanity in general. Intellectually saved by repudiating the narrowed perspective of Ahab's quest, and then physically saved by the caring of others, he is returned to a society whose common totems [...] he now willingly embraces" (147).
To put it more simply, Ishmael's experience in whaling culture re-fits him for life in human society in general. A fan finds meaning and values within their fandom that they apply to real life and not just their narrow-minded quest for satisfaction. Solidarity with fellow fans produces real-life relationships. Fandom does not exist just for the sake of the entertainment but for the sake of well-being, not just for the individual but for the community.
My guinea pig for this project will be Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." This is a brand new TV show that is linked to a fandom (ie Marvel's Avengers) that is currently enjoying enormous success, although the show itself is currently received with mixed reviews. I will be examining the success or failure of SHIELD's introduction to fans as a new fandom of its own and within the context of the Avengers fandom, and compare this to fandom evolution in general. I will also trace the fan responses to the show before it premiered, during the first few weeks, and also the last three or more weeks, between which periods there has been an interesting change in fans' reception to the series. In other words, how are we seeing the SHIELD fandom being created and adding to the Marvel fan universe?
I am not sure where I would want to submit my paper as of right now, but I would like to submit it to some conference or journal dealing with media or entertainment studies or pop culture/fan culture studies. I also want this research project to be of benefit to the people who are actually producing the show. I admit, trying to give Joss Whedon a report about himself sounds like preaching to the choir--but I want to demonstrate my engagement with SHIELD by trying to produce something that could represent a unique form of feedback to the industry about how their product is working and why--in other words, to point out that we are perhaps experiencing a unique phenomenon in the history of fandom. Heck, if I wanted to I could present this at LTUE or a comic-con next year.
The results of this survey (in other terms, after doing a lot of thinking):
fandoms (Marvel (SHIELD))+memes+fan immersion=a unique phenomenon
argument: The Marvel fandom has the power to make or break the show's success because (1) the Marvel films and characters have a lot of value to the fans, particularly Coulson, (2) the fans are working together to derive value from watching the show, (3) and at a certain threshold of involvement, they will either express common approval or disapproval of the show that will make or break it.
Then, add something that people in the higher tiers of academia or the industry don't know: Tell you what, I'm going to sleep on that. The fans create the fandom. Give them stuff to build with. How about that? I'll post my final thesis/venue/other main ideas tomorrow or Monday. I have a headache. And the hiccups. Bedtime. zzzzz.
What I have decided to focus on for this post is communication within fandoms, particularly criticism about the fandom itself.
Moby-Dick is considered a unique novel because of the broken or one-sided communication performed by the characters. As with all types of communication, the aggregate of the communication within the novel leads to a certain conclusion. "[The] atypical nature of most speaking in the novel encourages the
negative view[...]that the world is a place where communication is
suspect and perhaps impossible" (Barnett 140). Although throughout the book various speeches and conversations are made about the White Whale and Captain Ahab, "the multitude of verbal styles consciously represents the heterogenious collectivity of mankind" (141) Likewise, indvidual fans think differently and have different ideas, but they all generally come to the same conclusions.
Can fandoms be compared to a product? Technically they start out as a product or series of products, such as a book or movie. As the item increases in popularity, authentic merchandise as well as fan-created materials begin to circulate. As people invest themselves emotionally within a fandom, or begin to immerse themselves within it, they seek to know whether or not the immersion is worth their emotional energy based on the opinions of others. Fans promote fandoms because they like their involvement and seek to express their liking and their identity within it. This especially happens within social media, because it brings together a variety of people who are not necessarily geographically or socially connected, but sometimes people who share mutual ties of trust. Interested fans also examine the opinions of other people they don't know to get a feel for what the quality of something is.
A study by Buzzetto and Moore found "participants exhibiting prosumer behaviors through the use of social media as a means to share comments, perspectives, and opinions about goods and services. As such, mediated messages conveyed through SNS [social networking sites] are influencing purchase decisions with word of mouth messages paramountin consequence and ability to impel action" (Buzzetto-Moore 77.) In Moby-Dick, Ishmael starts out as a prospective whaler who goes off information he gathers from Queequeg, Captain Peleg, and other people with experience in the industry. Later, Ishmael becomes such a fan of whaling that he spends most of the book promoting and detailing its work.
Participating in a fandom sometimes requires spending money to attend movie screenings, buy books/DVDs/Blu-rays, or to buy paraphanelia to the materials to make it. Individuals who want to spend money may be influenced by their peers in their decision whether or not a product is worth investing in. To give a personal example, I am not a Whovian (follower of Dr. Who), but I want to be because I have seen Whovian-generated memes on Facebook promoted by friends who ARE Whovians, and since I trust their reputation (aka I know they're awesome) I am inclined to think positively of the fandom. Fandoms can also require serious time commitments (e.g. making memes or costumes). This is also true of online missionary work of the LDS Church, but that's another story.
David Tennant as the 10th Doctor. Photo Courtesy ABC Radio.
Then fans make them into something their own. Fans recreate their fandoms on social media sites for bite-sized chunks. On You Tube, for instance, "they come to consume pop culture like movies, television, and songs thesame way they enjoy cookies or chips – in conveniently packaged bite-size nuggetsmade to be munched easily with increased frequency and maximum speed (Miller,2007) [...] It can be considered a buffet of “snack” videos, highly meeting people’s needs for high-speed entertainment munching" (Shao11 ) It's called getting your daily dose of [Insert fandom name here]). Consider this version of "Call Me Maybe." All current episodes of Star Wars in one setting. If that isn't a pick-me up I don't know what is.
For fans, creating content can fulfill personal needs. "On Wikipedia, people can create new items or edit existing items with results that are immediate, obvious, and available to the world. Such contributing experience can help people believe that they have an impact on the group and that support their own self-image as an efficacious person (see Bandura, 1995; Kollock)" (14-15). So when I make or share a meme, I do it because I have observed something insightful about a fandom and want others to know about it. I want to be a part of the fan dialouge and enlighten others about how awesome something is.
Self-generated meme. Picture courtesy of ABC.
Then fans evaluate media created by other fans and the industry. Because the internet is so customized to the individual user, user customization and feedback is vital to sites as well as fandoms and the creators themselves. "Customization provides individuals with an opportunity to express their interests, tastes, thoughts, and values. It also has the potential to generate positive attitudes and behaviors towards the sites (Carpenter, 2000; Graham, 2002; Kalyanaraman and Sundar, 2006)" (Shao 18). And in this way, fans get feedback from each other about their common interests and ideas.
So how about Marvel's Agents of SHIELD? How does social media inform us about this show? Following the conversations on Facebook that the FB site for the show has posted, I have noticed the generally negative trend of commentary on the show. However, the fans who are defending the show usually have the following reasons:
The show is just barely starting and it could take a season or two to get on its feet.
The show is supposed to be about the AGENTS, so obviously people who are expecting a mini superhero movie every episode WILL be disappointed.
The show has a very small budget, which accounts for the lack of certain elements the viewers could be wanting, like having an actual superhero cameo. For instance, a Hulk cameo would never work because the show does not have the budget for that (and in my opinion, even if it was just Bruce Banner it would still be difficult to pull off because the Avengers are level 6 and don't know that Coulson's back--and they might not respond well to that revelation)
The real reason the ratings are low is because people have the option of watching episodes on ABC.com or Hulu on their own time. (not actually said online, but true)
People who are now disaffected with the show need to get off the Facebook sit.
However, in the last two weeks the general comments have improved because apparently the episodes were more appealing (except I'm not sure about last week. Last week's episode I didn't like so much).
Screenshot of my FB status after last week's episode.
Discussion within fandoms also focuses on the subject of the media at hand as well as its quality. This link to a fan discussion board discusses the ending of the latest Marvel film, "Thor: The Dark World" (but it contains serious spoilers, so don't look at it if you haven't seen the movie yet). Although the participants in this conversation say a lot of different things, their discussion also arrives at a consensus.
What this is telling me is that although people can be of different backgrounds and ideologies they can still come to an agreement in order to navigate a common problem. However, this seems to contradict the effect of conversation taken in the earlier quote from Moby-Dick, that communication is hopeless and pointless. This might seem to make this positive perception of fan culture a little superficial, but taking the quote in context of the book, it is more easily understood.
Moby-Dick is quite a different animal from today's social networks. Unless you're FB friends with someone, you can hardly see the character development visible in books that lies behind the day-to-day conversations, and even with FB friends sometimes it's still obscure. While we can communicate, we do fall short of true understanding, because we cannot see what lies behind people's statements. This is why there are such terrible miscommunications on board the Pequod, if this holds true. Ahab is so deeply immersed in his monomania that he refuses to allow the objections of Starbuck or anyone else to deter him from his quest. Ishmael is keenly aware of the limitations of his relationship with Queequeg, who is from an exotic culture and whose values and ideas are completely different, but this only heightens the sublimity of their friendship. In fan culture, everyone watches a movie or reads a book differently, even if such media are mass distributed, and it is easier to come to an agreement with people who agree with your tastes than those who do not. But as far as superficial information-gathering is concerned, it's still the best way to gather information, even if we really don't know how to use it.
