#anna martin
Earlier, in this post, we have talked about Jenkins’ idea of how fans, in the process of slashing, might read the body of characters (especially in media fandoms). We also talked about in this post I quoted Cathy Yue Wang on how Real People in RPF can appear as Derivations of the characters they resonate with. Taking these points farther, maybe it can be said that the viewer reads the characters into these bodies that appear on the screen. Martin discusses a fanvid where this happens on a dietetic level: the plot itself turns the bodies of the actors (shots from documentaries or behind-the-scenes footages) into the reincarnated or immortal version of the characters they play.
The final sequence of the vid, in which a shot of Arthur and Merlin looking out over Camelot fades to a shot of Bradley and Colin standing and looking out over Caerleon (from The Real Arthur and Merlin) sums up the layering of “Arthur and Merlin” and “Bradley and Colin”: a shot of two actors, standing where the “real” Arthur and Merlin reunited. Again, the inter-textual (sic!) relationship between various texts and sets of texts is a site of play for fans in exploiting their meaning-making potential. The effect is also one of mythologising James and Morgan: in saturating images of the actors with images of their mythic characters and their narratives; they become the bodies of stars as they are mythologised. This vid and ones like it demonstrate again that it is not alone the industry producers who undertake the project of mythologising. Fans engage in the same thing, though they may not call it that. RP fans are preoccupied with the resonances that produce the star.
MARTIN, ANNA (2014). WRITING THE STAR. STARDOM, FANDOM AND REAL PERSON FANFICTION.
Based on this, it appears that the visual elements not only inspire fanworks (fanvids or fan art) but might even motivate the mythologisation of real people. What are your experiences?
Earlier, I quoted Jonathan Gray and Anna Martin on how the basis of The Lord of the Rings Real Person Fandom is their connection to The Lord of the Rings fandom.
In the bonus material, (Gray) points out, the actors as presented as similar to their roles in the film (…). The behind-the-scenes narrative existed parallel to the fictional narrative of the trilogy, and, as Gray argues, it mirrored the narrative of the trilogy, both enriching and being enriched by it. (…) Certain parallels are used to pin these versions together at crucial points, as I will discuss later in this chapter. Many points in the behind-the-scenes documentaries are used to pin the film version to the books. The books, the films and the paratexts link together in various ways to form a complex intertext, an interrelated group of texts that enrich and layer each other in meaning.
GRAY, JONATHAN (2006). BONUS MATERIAL: THE DVD LAYERING OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS In: ERNEST, MATHJIS (ED.) THE LORD OF THE RINGS: POPULAR CULTURE IN GLOBAL CONTEXT, WALLFLOWER, 238.-253.
MARTIN, ANNA (2014). WRITING THE STAR. STARDOM, FANDOM AND REAL PERSON FANFICTION, 64., 69.
Now, Cathy Yue Wang talks about a broader tradition of creating a transmedia story around certain characters or certain ships.
A more intriguing and creative subgroup has appeared, called “Lou/Cheng Derivation” (楼诚衍生). This refers to fan works which use characters from other media productions, who are played by the same actors who take the roles of Ming Lou (actor Jin Dong) and Ming Cheng (actor Wang Kai). (…) From the West, “Halric” presents a similar case, as part of the fandom of Thor/Loki and Chris Hemsworth/Tom Hiddleston – Hemsworth played Eric in the 2012 film Snow White and the Hunstman and Hiddleston played Prince Hal in The Hollow Crown TV series (2012). The creation and reception of this type of derivative coupling rely on sophisticated identification and recognition from both fan authors and fan readers. On one level, fans need to meld the performed character with the performing actor and this implicitly incline toward the controversial Real Person Slash. On a second level, it is also necessary for fans to project the image of the actor into the newly created fictional role, from a different media text. During this process, the boundaries between performer and performed, between actors and characters are radically blurrred. (…) The motivation behind the crossover coupling is the shared belief that the love and affection between two male characters , in this case, Ming Lou and Ming Cheng, is transmittable across several disparate media texts. In this sense, we can view this creativity from slash fans as a grassroots endevaor to produce a special kind of transmedia storytelling which is solely motivated by love – both the love between two characters, and the love received by these characters from the fan audience.
Wang C.Y., Hu T. 2021. Transmedia Storytelling in Mainland China: Interaction Between TV Drama and Fan Narratives in The Disguiser. In: Gilardi F., Lam C. (ed.) Transmedia in Asia and the Pacific. Palgrave Series in Asia and Pacific Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. 120-121. https://ift.tt/36BZZeu
In this way, there is definitely a subgroup of RPF that treats the Real People, the actors behind the characters as another derivation of the characters themselves. The transcendence of these stories, indeed proves love is universal – at least for a fan’s OTPs. But it is not that love is truly universal but that by layering these stories on each other, they create an experience of greater authenticity for the readers and creators.
It seems to me impossible to separate the emphasis throughout the DVD Appendices (of The Lord of The Rings) and behind-the-scenes documentaries on truth and authenticity from the focus in fandom on truth.
MARTIN, ANNA (2014). WRITING THE STAR. STARDOM, FANDOM AND REAL PERSON FANFICTION.
It might be interesting to consider the space in which RPS usually takes place: any real person can be the object of RPF in theory, yet, it is usually the same space from where our favourite fictional worlds are produced.
This chapter argues that the actor-character resonance at the heart of this process of mythologisation of both the actor and the industry is the space from which RPF is produced.
MARTIN, ANNA (2014). WRITING THE STAR. STARDOM, FANDOM AND REAL PERSON FANFICTION.
If the space where work does not mean producing something for the money but creating is such a defining element then RPS about actors and other type of artists might have more in common with actor AUS than with RPS where the people are not famous for some kind of creative work.
What do you think? Where would you place sport RPS, is it also another kind of pastoral fantasy?
The process of slashing a text is described by Jenkins as reading the body for clues of a relationship.
Here and in other such moments, characters retrace the steps of the fan viewers who have searched the performers’ bodies for suggestions of these same unexpressed feelings.
JENKINS, HENRY (1992). TEXTUAL POACHER, ROUTLEDGE, 213.
We see that in stories, this practice of reading the text and even reading the body for these clues can be mirrored in the narrative where the characters recognise the same feelings the viewer does. Martin observes the same mirroring in how RPF fans read the stars’ body and their texts. They say about a fanfiction that deals with an editor discovering that Viggo Mortensen’s poem are about Orlando Bloom and Orlando Bloom after reading the collection, confronting Viggo Mortensen:
This story is particularly interesting because the narrative reflets the experience of the fan reading the poems (of Viggo Mortensen). David, the editor, can see which poems are about Orlando without having to ask. Upon reading the poems, the meaning is clear to Orlando himself.
MARTIN, ANNA (2014). WRITING THE STAR. STARDOM, FANDOM AND REAL PERSON FANFICTION.
Fans adapt a practice of reading for clues, hidden narratives and that can lead RPF, too. Have you observed the same similarity, too?
Over the last week, we received many responses to the question how RPF can operate without a canon text, the majority of them among the lines of much the same way non-RPF fandoms do: by constantly negotiating fanon interpretations. It looks like then that the question of what constitutes as canon is problematised for any kind of fanon.
(I’m also very glad that my throw out about canon already being problematised when we leave the media fandoms definitions was caught in this post.)
Henry Jenkins’ concept of Convergence Culture provides a useful way of thinking about how RPF communities work together to create their own meanings from transmedia texts, or intertexts, such as The Lord of the Ring and its paratexts distributed across many delivery platforms.
MARTIN, ANNA (2014). WRITING THE STAR. STARDOM, FANDOM AND REAL PERSON FANFICTION, 68.
We can see fans refer to a continuously changing meta-text, both in and outside of RPF. (Something that we might call fanon.)
The „ideal” version of Star Trek, the meta-text against which a film or episode is evaluated, was constructed by the fan community through its progressively more detailed analysis of the previously aired episodes.
Jenkins, Henry (1992). Textual poacher, Routledge, 101.
I’ve found interesting the mention of fandoms with several adaptations here. It was surprising to me, but Martin also talks about this interconnectedness.
In the bonus material, (Gray) points out, the actors as presented as similar to their roles in the film (…). The behind-the-scenes narrative existed parallel to the fictional narrative of the trilogy, and, as Gray argues, it mirrored the narrative of the trilogy, both enriching and being enriched by it. (…) Certain parallels are used to pin these versions together at crucial points, as I will discuss later in this chapter. Many points in the behind-the-scenes documentaries are used to pin the film version to the books. The books, the films and the paratexts link together in various ways to form a complex intertext, an interrelated group of texts that enrich and layer each other in meaning.
GRAY, JONATHAN (2006). Bonus Material: The DVD Layering of The Lord of the Rings=Ernest, Mathjis (ed.) The Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context, Wallflower, 238.-253.
MARTIN, ANNA (2014). WRITING THE STAR. STARDOM, FANDOM AND REAL PERSON FANFICTION, 64., 69.
Thank you for all the responses so far! To continue the conversation, I’d like to ask your experiences: have you ever seen something that felt like queerbaiting but with real persons? If you can think of an example, what did you think of it?
When writing about RPF, there is one crucial question that makes it different from other parts of fandom (generally accepted as media fandoms).
How does it work without a clearly-defined central
MARTIN, Anna (2014). Writing the star. Stardom, fandom and real person fanfiction,
canon text to play with?
Now for those who expected the difference to be between fiction and reality, I invite you to message me and continue an everending discussion on whether that difference exist as something we can interact with. But when it comes to the way fans approach the source material, reality doesn’t figure into it. Whether there is a living, breathing body connected to our favourite ships, is also of no concern as even Henry Jenkins already talked about how fans read these bodies on the screen. What does is whether there is a central, agreed upon canon text or the fandom lacks it.
So the question is: how, indeed? What is your experience, how do transformative works operate without canon texts?
