For me this week, Jenkins’s analysis of fan writing and textual poaching spoke to the long-standing impossible dilemma of how to—or whether we should—separate a work of art from its artist when that artist is a monster. I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer (as others in our class seem to <3!) and am thus suffering through the repeated gut-punches of reports of Whedon’s misogyny and cruelty, as detailed most recently in this article from today: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/arts/television/joss-whedon-charisma-carpenter.html. The contradiction between Whedon’s enactment of gendered power dynamics and the way he writes gender into the series offers an opportunity for fans to align themselves with the show and not its creator and to “seize televisual property only to protect it against abuse by those who created it” (Jenkins, 490), in this case the “abuse” being quite literal. As Jenkins writes “consensus within the fan community itself” (487) is key, and it seems—at least based on this NYT article and my own anecdotal experiences—that Buffy fans are in agreement that Whedon’s behavior does not “ruin” the show or negate its role as a “lifeline” for so many.
Anyways, this connection is probably obvious to those more steeped in fan studies, but for me, it was a nice coincidence to come across this NYT article just before reading Jenkins’s piece. The article offered a useful example of the possibilities for fan-reclamation beyond rewriting and expanding a show’s narrative universe; as someone quoted in the article said: “It’s the fandom claiming it back…I don’t think that anyone would think that Buffy Summers belongs to any one person.”
I was similarly struck by Jenkins’ assertion that fans are empowered over— not by— mass culture and his citing of Michel De Certeau’s poacher to describe television/ Star Trek fans. Through this lens bloggers and fanfiction writers aren’t just barnacles glomming onto the giant hulls of television franchises but rather have the agency to (in keeping with this boat metaphor that I’ve started) wrest control of the steering wheel from the captains. Like you, I’m also glad that us Buffy fans ( I watched it as it aired on The WB and UPN but don’t remember ever viewing any blogs or reading any fanfiction about it) can disassociate what Joss Whedon is accused of from the joy/ solace/ comfort of watching/engaging with it but if this is an example of poaching for the better what then are the circumstances in which mass culture is poached for the worse. Buffy fans going about the process of rescuing the property from Whedon—wresting it from the hands of its’ creator— makes me wonder if there is an example of fans wielding this power for less virtuous reasons— with negative consequences for those involved with the show and the show itself. In posing this question to myself my mind immediately drifts towards Chappelle’s Show, Dave Chappelle’s short-lived and wildly popular sketch series that aired from 2003 to 2006. Chappelle, at the height of his popularity and with a 50 million dollar deal with the network to keep churning out episodes of his series, left the show because— as he has explained in some subsequent interviews (though his reason for leaving does seem to change from one interview to the next)— he felt fans were interpreting his work the wrong way. Granted, to my knowledge there was not a lot of Chappelle’s Show fanfiction, but I still think there is a similarity in terms of fan engagement in the way that comedy fans interpret and then repeat their favorite funny lines of dialogue (“I’m Rick James Bith” was a big one back in 2004). Comedy’s inherent subjectivity similarly allows fans of comedy to poach what they want from sketches/sitcoms/stand-up sets and Chappelle grew disturbed at how his—largely racial— humor was being consumed and distorted by his fans. As a result the show ended with a truncated and unsatisfactory third season and Chappelle disappeared from the public for over a decade. No one— the fans or Dave Chappelle— got what they wanted. Could it be said that the poachers over-poached?
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