Supplemental Response #2_Ann

 *this was going to be a core post but I find that I have a lot of discursive things I want to mention so please bear with me. 

I really like the progressive nature of this week’s readings. Ellen Seiter’s reading is more focused on methodologies and theories; Henry Jenkins’ is a detailed and well-researched case study, and Andrejevic’s is a great recent case study on the internet fan phenomenon. I really liked all of the readings and I feel like Jenkins’ and Andrejevic’s articles make me rethink the idea of “flow” by Raymond Williams. Williams was writing in a time where there was no global fan-base, no internet community, and interactive media wasn’t that prevalent. As a result, his idea of “flow” centers around the actual programs aired on television and the curated interconnected relationships between them. What’s interesting to me is that I feel like this idea of “flow” can be applied to both Jenkins’ analysis of written fan-zines and Andrejevic’s online forum. Both the zines and the television site, TWoP, are essentially an extension to the television programs themselves. One of the respondents in Andrejevic’s article says: “If actors and other persons affiliated with shows regularly showed up, I might end up watching much more TV, simply because of the stronger connection, I would feel” (31). This comment is extremely interesting to me because, in this sense, the internet forum plays a decisive role in engaging the audience into watching television. Andrejevic also comments on this by saying: “The show itself can in some cases become merely a precursor to the real entertainment, which takes the form of its online comeuppance: the gleeful dissection that takes place after it airs” (31-32). As a result, I think it could be argued that the “flow” of television still exists in the age of post-network (even post-cable) television. Instead of being the curated flow of ads, news, and shows, the “flow” of television today incorporates the offline and online engagement between the audience. In some ways, the “flow” of television is even more omnipresent today under the age of interactive media and saturated online communities. The audience is always engaged in conversations related to the show, and that conversation in turn becomes part of the flow. 

Andrejevic has already commented on the characteristics of the online fan community, but I think it is also worth mentioning an online version of Jenkins’ fan-zines. Archive of Our Own, shortened as AO3, is one of the world’s largest fanfiction websites. I say "world’s" because as someone who grew up in another language environment, many fanfiction writers (including myself) still use AO3 as the most stable and prominent platform to post our works (even if these works are not written in English). After reading Jenkins’ article I can’t help but notice the similarities between the fan fiction community in the 80s and today’s AO3. What’s more, I was surprised that I’ve never realized the fact that the fan fiction writers are mostly female. This is true on AO3 as well as in China where I grew up. I’ve rarely seen male writers write fanfictions and realizing that was a revelation to me. Another interesting thing worth mentioning is the fact that AO3, as an organization, won the Best Related Work of Hugo Awards in 2019. This was huge news in the fanfiction community back in 2019, and I think there are many cultural and theoretical implications that can be explored in both the award won and AO3 as an organization devoted to fan fiction.

This has already gone very discursive but I would like to mention one last thing. Jenkins writes: “Just as women’s gossip about soap operas assumes a place within a pre-existing feminine oral culture, fan writing adopts forms and functions traditional to women’s literary culture” (477). Then he continues to talk about the letter-writing traditions between 19th-century women. This also reminds me of a dying written language called Nüshu (女书) in Hunan, China. From a similar origin, Nüshu originated because the old patriarchal society prevented women from going to school to learn the written language. As a result, women in the Jiangyong district of Hunan province invented a secret way of writing among themselves to convey information. The similar methods women took to communicate among each other in oppressing societies across different cultures are fascinating to me. In some way, writing has always been linked to feminism and feminine culture. Sorry for going on a long rant, and I truly enjoyed this week’s readings.