Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Time Incorporated: The Doctor Who Fanzine Archives: Vol. 3: Writings on the New Series: Part One


With their three-volume Time Incorporated: The Doctor Who Fanzine Archives series, Mad Norwegian Press has been collecting past Doctor Who fanzine articles and presenting them in book format to a larger audience. Like License Denied (Virgin 1997) and Shooty Dog Thing (Hirst Books 2010) before it (which I reviewed in my two most recent blogs), these books serve a worthy purpose in exposing Doctor Who fandom to a critical discussion of the show by their peers. This last week, then, I have been reading Time Incorporated: The Doctor Who Fanzine Archives: Vol. 3: Writings on the New Series (Mad Norwegian Press 2011), a work in which the editors, Graeme Burk and Robert Smith?, comment in their foreword, “There is something about the print form that encourages careful writing and discerning writing” (15). For me, the editors’ words are not disparaging blogs such as this one, which I hope evinces a certain amount of quality in commenting on Doctor Who and its fans. But, honestly, when we know something is going to be published on the processed remains of trees, we strive to add a degree of finesse to the finished draft of our musings!
Comedy is definitely one of the requisite ingredients for composing a zine article, as fans should never take Doctor Who too seriously, reaching the point where their physical or mental health is at risk. This spirit of a respectable soupçon of humor in approaching the show is on display when Burk and Smith? remark on the visceral 2005 trailer for Doctor Who Series One: “The Doctor…tells us the viewer will meet ghosts from the past, aliens from the future, the day the Earth is consumed by flame – although he neglects to mention the farting aliens, the space pig or the burping wheelie bin” (37). The editors are dead on target with their tongue-in-cheek assessment of Series One, which is equally brilliant and problematic as it revives the series for a new generation of viewers. This honest approach continues in the several essays that comprise Part 1, “It’s Back!” and Part 2, “Trip of a Lifetime,” in which the authors praise Christopher Eccleston’s short-lived tenure as the Ninth Doctor, the effectiveness of the new series’ second episode, “The End of the World” in setting up the emotional, character-based writing for the show, and producer/head-writer Russell T Davies’s genius approach in stripping Doctor Who down to its core, essential elements: a Doctor, a companion, a TARDIS, and alien threats (most significantly, the Daleks).

In Part 3, “Children of Earth,” Smith?, writing from the POV of a fan disillusioned with David Tennant’s first series as the Doctor in the “The Revolution Has Been Televised,” argues that the show has become a “mainstream success, with scenes where children in the back of cars cheer the Doctor’s success while the parents are comically ignorant” (81). Smith? even appropriates the cultural studies term, “homonormativety,” which articulates how the media mainstreams gay subculture (77), by coining his own term, “Whonormativity” (80). Of course, I’m sure Smith? was eventually pleased with some of the concepts and story arcs of the subsequent seasons of the new series, because, after all, he did go to the trouble of co-editing this very collection with Burk! Another edgy piece is offered in Kate Orman’s considerations of race in Doctor Who with her contribution to this collection, “The Salt and Sweet.” Applying census statistics for the British population (82) and asking if racial stereotype for black characters can be applied to companions Mickey Smith and Martha Jones, Orman brings up problematic questions that remind me how both timely and troubling the show can be for viewers.

A fan of epistolary writing, I found Deborah Stanish and Burk’s back and forth on the subject of NuWho fans in Part 4’s “He Said, She Said,” “Love in the Age of Squee,” quite satisfying. Although I am what one would call an OldWho fan since my fandom started with the classic series, I do embrace the crazy-love the NuWho fans evince for the current series, particularly female fans who are emotionally moved by the characters and stories. From Stanish’s and Burk’s complementary missives, I learned about “shippers.” Stanish even so nicely clarifies the nuances of the term for Burk: “We may all be ‘new fans,’ but only a subset of us are ‘shippers,' and within the shipper group there are the One True Pairing or ‘OTP’ crowd – those who have a favored pairing – and the more general shippers: those who look for the emotional connection between any of the characters” (103). With this clarification of the terminology in mind, I actually have a better understanding of the NuWho fans I encounter who believe Rose Tyler was the Doctor’s one true love, instead of say River Song or Martha Jones, who would have been a great match for the choosy Time Lord if only he had appreciated her intelligence, wit, and beauty!

In the “Power of Cool,” Jack Graeme examines whether or not Doctor Who can now be considered cool. Using the media-fueled example of football as “a norm of masculinity” embodying coolness since it is “big money” (123) and how the “people operating within the fake worlds of advertising, promotion, and media imagery” use the term to “make us buy stuff” (125), Graeme truly delivers a scathing dissection of the term. However, his conclusion on the show’s coolness factor really resonates: “But let’s face it: in its soul, Doctor Who isn’t cool. Cool is about elitism, complacency, profit, media doublespeak, vanity and conformity. Doctor Who, fundamentally, about fighting evil…evil that, very often, involves elitism, complacency, profiteering, media doublespeak, vanity and conformity” (126). Since I view Doctor Who fandom as one embracing all newcomers, regardless of their income, looks, sexuality, or social graces, I wholeheartedly endorse Graeme’s denial that the show is cool.
“Morality Play,” Jonathan Blum’s piece in Part 5, “Hooray,” connects all of the narrative hints of cause-and-effect that Davies seeds throughout his seasons. For instance, he writes that Rose, in “Doomsday,” “isn’t standing there explicitly tracing the threads through time and space which viewers can see, showing that her smart remark to Queen Victoria directly led to the founding of Torchwood, which directly led to Canary Wharf, countless deaths, and her being separated from the Doctor forever” (157). In their introduction to this section of the book, Burk and Smith? claim that, under Davies’s stewardship of the show, Doctor Who, for the first time in its history, had become an “auteur production.” (139). By combining both Blum’s and the editors’ statements, we can see that Davies is a playful auteur indeed as he leaves enough space in his narratives to engage the fans in a sense of play; in other words, he gives them a sense of collaborative authorship as they participate in the viewing and critical reaction to the show.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media: Part Two


Those of us who love literary theory, or possess a reasonable amount of fear in approaching it, can agree that Jacques Lacan is a bona-fide genius. Unfortunately, when fellow scholars abuse his words, extolling the virtues of his theories to the point where they drown out all other critical approaches, the long-winded result can be unsettling. (And I know anyone who has been stuck in a classroom or conference situation with one of these devout Lacanians can attest to this unholy truth!) Nevertheless, when Lacan is done right, a reality that Stephen Hinerman accomplishes in his contribution to The Adoring Audience, “‘I’ll Be Here With You’: Fans, Fantasy, and the Figure of Elvis,” I can believe in the theory of literary theory benefiting scholarship. In a coherent manner, Hinerman situates his discussion of Elvis fans by first defining Freudian psychoanalysis regarding the effects of fantasy urges upon an individual and combining it with Lacan’s mirror theory, which defines the process of a child learning how to integrate the differences occurring in the “I/Not I” binary. When the author subsequently applies these theories to his readings of Elvis fan narratives, I gained a more sympathetic understanding of their mindsets and questionable testimonials of encounters with this rock ‘n roll icon.

Editor Lisa A. Lewis’s chapter, “‘Something More Than Love’: Fan Stories on Film,” offers an interesting reading of a particular sub-genre of cinema appropriate for discussion in her collection: the obsessive fan film. Amongst the films she discusses are I Wanna Hold Your Hand, a movie centered on a group of Beatles fans, and Heartbreak Hotel, in which one Elvis fan manages to kidnap the King. Speaking of Kings, however, Lewis’s discussion of The King of Comedy, a 1983 comedy-thriller (if I can call it that) directed by Martin Scorsese and starring regular collaborator Robert De Niro as comedian Rupert Pupkin, is what clicked for me the most as a reader. Like Scorsese’s underrated and underappreciated thriller After Hours, The King of Comedy offers a psychological study of a lead character whose story unfolds in the urban environs of Manhattan.  In Pupkin’s case, he wishes not only to connect with idol Jerry Langford (played in a delightfully sardonic fashion by Jerry Lewis), but to use Langford’s clout as a talk-show host as a means to achieving fame for himself as well. Lewis writes about Pupkin, “His comedy instruction is a product of a fan’s imitation of the star, but his producerly impulses have advanced him to the point where he has developed his own act” (151).  This comment interests me since many successful actors, writers, and singers started out as a fan of somebody. What, then, separates a talented fan who achieves fame and success from one who genuinely possesses talent but does not find the right “connection” or receives that “lucky break” that so many people who “make it” claim to have experienced?

For Part III of The Adoring Audience, Lewis groups the essays under the title of “Fans and Industry.” Sue Browder, in “Fans as Tastemakers: Viewers for Quality Television,” provides a thorough overview of a well-organized fan organization called Viewers for Quality Television (VQR), weighing how their efforts define what  a “quality TV show” is during the era of 1980s network television against the potential elitist ramifications of these classifications. When it came to reading Robert Sabal’s contribution, “Television Executives Speak about Fan Letters to the Network,” however, I questioned its value as a worthy inclusion in the book as it simply offers a short, curious transcript of a conversation that took place between Sabal and three television industry representatives.

For Part IV, “Production by Fans,” Fred and Judy Vermorel’s chapter, “A Glimpse of the Fan Factory,” is another oddity in Lewis’s collection as the authors present official, unedited examples of fan letters written between 1977 and 1988 to such musical celebrities as Kate Bush, David Bowie, and Barry Manilow. Although the latter fan  missives humored me in their self-aware application of salutary phrases like “In much Manilust as always” and “Much Manilove now & always,” I was left feeling as if I were a voyeur reading the majority of the other letters.  Maybe I can attribute this feeling of guilt due to the fact that these fans’ vulnerable, heartfelt, and, at times, depressingly disturbed expressions to their respective stars were meant to be read by their idols alone, not by the clinical eyes of academics and students who probably could never completely emphasize with their fanatical mindsets.

The closing chapter of The Adoring Audience, “‘Strangers No More, We Sing’: Filking and the Social Construction of the Science Fiction Fan Community,” grants me the feeling I have come full circle in my understanding of Mr. Jenkins’s theoretical evolution, as he was on the eve of his pivotal work, Textual Poachers, being published. I enjoyed reading about his thoughts concerning “filkers,” science-fiction fans who write, compose, and perform (usually at conventions) folk-like songs containing comical lyrics on such subject matter as the original Star Trek crew experiencing a three-day shore leave blow-out and the lamented cancellation of Blake’s 7 and how these songs help add another intimate layer to convention-based fandom. I hit early-Jenkins’s gold, however, with this quote: “Fandom is a ‘scavenger’ culture built from poached fragments of many different media products, woven together into a coherent whole through the meanings the fans bring to these fragments and the uses they make of them, rather than by meanings generated by the primary texts” (232). As someone who has participated in Doctor Who fandom, engaging in or appreciating fan art, costume contests, late-night karaoke performances, and only occasionally entering into casual complicated conversations regarding the show itself (DW’s “primary text”), I can affirm and celebrate the wisdom of Jenkins’s astute observation on my fellow fan-scavengers!

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media: Part One


Since I have been blogging about fan culture books published in the last several years or so, I have taken for granted the fact that the scholarly revolution concerning fandoms as a legitimate object of study did not occur in one cracking of fresh theoretical thunder. This truth was immediately emphasized to me in editor Lisa A Lewis’s introduction to The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media (Routledge 1992). Lewis writes, “Fans…are the most visible and identifiable of audiences. How is it, then, that they have been overlooked or not taken too seriously as research subjects by critics and scholars? And why are they maligned and sensationalized by the popular press, mistrusted by the public?” (1) Although Lewis’s words were written two decades ago, they are still relevant. True, academia, via cultural, media, and gender studies, has allowed for a scholarly reassessment of various fandoms. But when it comes to the popular press, which we can now extend to the Internet and the plethora of cable channels that have sprouted since 1992, fans are still exploited as nerdy outcasts. Just watch how cos-players are portrayed in broadcast and web media clips, or watch shows such as The Nerdist, where the hosts awkwardly provide an uncomfortable mix of celebration and apology towards their beloved niche-culture, science-fiction, fantasy, and horror worlds.

Lewis’s opening salvo against academic prejudices toward fan cultures is reinforced by the first chapter in the book, “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization,” by Joli Jenson. Framing her argument in an oppositional way, Jenson shows how elitist culture in the form of intellectuals who love literature or classical music are just as fanatical as the lowbrow (as they view it) cultures populating music, sports, and tabloid fandoms. The difference, however, is that scholars have the academic high ground, where their affection for their chosen famous individuals is politely subdued whereas fans of celebrities on the lower socially hierarchical end are prone to sincere (and yes, sometimes exuberant) outpouring of emotion toward their idols. In her effective closing call-to-action directed toward her intellectual peers, Jenson implores, “I believe what it means to be a fan should be explored in relation to the larger question of what it means to desire, cherish, seek, long, admire, envy, celebrate, protect, ally with others” (27). What I appreciate about Jenson’s comment here is that it can be applied to practically anyone, regardless of whether or not that individual is a renowned Shakespearian scholar or the self-appointed president of the Angry Birds fan club!

John Fiske’s contribution to Lewis’ collection, “The Cultural Economy of Fandom,” initially drew me into its discussion of fandoms through Fiske’s application of Bourdieu’s modeling of our society, which applies a two-dimensional mapping of our cultural tastes in relationship to their economic status. To be honest, however, whenever brilliant French theorists with complex theories are name-dropped and/or applied in academic discourse (e.g., Sarte, Bouvier, Foucault), my repressed, inner Francophile wants to stick a pipe in my mouth and squint my eyes in a joyous, disdainful regard of foolish humanity. Now, I can gleefully add Bourdieu-as-viewed-by-Fiske to my list of French theoretical demigods. I was also intrigued by Fiske’s comparison of security guards and fences, amongst other barriers to fans touching their rock and sports idols, to that of the academic critic, “who polices the meanings of a text and its relationship to its readers in a way that differs from the disciplinary apparatus on sports grounds only as being intellectual rather than physical” (41).

With Chapter 3’s “Is There a Fan in the House?: The Affective Sensibility of Fandom,” by Lawrence Grossberg, I enjoyed learning about several of his contributions to media terminology: “affective alliances,” “mattering map” and “hyperconsumerist sensibility.” Grossberg also smartly remarks in this chapter, “…everyone is constantly a fan of various sorts of things, for one cannot exist in a world where nothing matters (including the fact that nothing matters)” (63). Once more, then, a scholar in this seminal collection of essays on fan cultures reminds us that academics are essentially sophisticated fans eruditely harping on about their objects of desire and affection!

For the first two selections comprising Part II of The Adoring Audience, titled “Fandom and Gender,” Lewis made some interesting commission choices. In Chapter 4’s “Essays from Bitch: The Women’s Rock Newsletter with Bite,” rock journalist Cheryl Cline writes in a manner best described as quasi-Gonzo-ish (if we can consider that a workable neologism). What’s striking about Cline contributing to this scholarly collection is that she is an outsider to academia, which, the more I think about it, is appropriate if one wants to read an authentic commentary on rock ‘n roll’s more controversial participants: groupies. Underneath Cline’s boisterous and sometimes crude clarifications, however, rests a sincere attempt to accurately redefine groupies as legitimate, devoted fans of rock musicians instead of the media-generated myth that writes them off as sex-crazed, maniacal followers of male rock gods.

A successful reconsideration of female rock music fans’ identities is likewise performed in Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs’s essay, “Beatlemania: Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Growing up, I often saw archival news footage clips of screaming female Beatles fans chasing after the Fab Four whenever their Liverpoolian feet touched American soil, but I viewed it as another historical social phenomenon, just like the hula-hoop and “The Twist,” that took place before I was alive.  Thus it never occurred to me that Beatlemania could be construed as instrumental in the burgeoning feminist movement of the early 1960s. On this subject of teenage girls’ ebullient response to the Beatles’ sex appeal, the authors write, “To assert an active, powerful sexuality by the tens of thousands and to do so in a way calculated to attract maximum attention was more than rebellious. It was, in its own unformulated, dizzy way, revolutionary” (90).  When I weigh in the fact that the Beatles many times functioned as a swaggering, womanizing clique until they began to find wives, I find it ironically fitting that their popularity would serve as a catalyst for women loudly and publically asserting their rights to vocalize their repressed sexual desires!

Monday, October 1, 2012

Shooty Dog Thing: Part Two


Before I talk about the second half of Shooty Dog Thing, I would like to reiterate what a pleasure it was reading this collection of fanzine articles. Often, when I read magazine articles concerning the world of Doctor Who, I get the sense that the writer composing the piece has to please a plethora of masters: editors, the interviewees, Doctor Who production people, and, most annoyingly, fans, who usually just want the facts, some innocuous gossip, and little to no commentary from the author. With fanzine articles, the opposite occurs, as the writer does not care about pleasing anyone since there’s little to no monetary rewards involved in the process of exchanging ideas; instead, a gift of opinions is granted. Lewis Hyde, in his work The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (Vintage Books 2007 [1979]), argues that this free exchange of ideas forms a “gift economy,” in which fans share their original works with one another, be it art, stories, essays, or videos they have created in celebration of their chosen beloved media property, not for any monetary reward. Sometimes, in terms of fan essays, these “gifts” would never have been actively sought out by other fans as their content is the type designed to piss people off – kind of like the early punk musicians did as they played jarring chords and shouted offensive, incomprehensible lyrics with the only hope of reward being beer bottles angrily hurled by an enraged audience at their spiky-haired heads! 

In the case of Shooty Dog Thing editor Paul Castle composing “Do The M.O.N.S.T.E.R.M.A.S.H.!”, I do not believe his intent is to aggravate fellow Doctor Who fans when he examines the physiology of aliens from the show in an exhaustive manner, choosing a specific race to represent each letter for the third part of his article’s title. With such ruminations on why the Mandrels (featured in “The Nightmare of Eden”) decompose into the powdery, addictive substance Vraxoin, why Sontarans genetically differ from appearance to appearance (in actuality, due to different design teams’ costume choices), and what the Mondasians, who would later become the Cybermen, needed to do to survive into their cybernetic forms, Castle takes a fun, clever, detailed approach in his pseudo-scientific explanations. When he reaches the Autons, however, who are controlled by the Nestene Consciousness, which has an affinity for plastic, he begins by confessing, “I can’t give you a full definition of what plastic means, as I’ve not done any research for this article so far and don’t intend to start now” (163-64). Whether Castle is being factiousness or not, I’m not entirely certain, but I do respect his honest tone, especially knowing that he’s writing for the sake of pure fannish pleasure.

Another Castle piece that takes an exhaustive look at an object of Doctor Who study, in this case the Cybermen, in regard to their various appearances in the 1960s, can be found in the article, “Cy – Fi: The Sixties.” While I enjoyed Castle’s assessment of the William Hartnell (First Doctor) and Patrick Troughton (Second Doctor) Cybermen stories, I was more intrigued by reading about his thoughts on the TV Comic spin-off strips, as I have only seen a few strips from that era. I likewise enjoyed the jargon he exclusively concocted for this article, with “Cy-Fidelity – Whether the basic premise of the Cybermen is upheld” and “Cy-Hi! – Welcome Developments!” exuding a humorous charm. For me, creating new jargon for other fans to appropriate for their own responses to Doctor Who stories and culture is part of the gameplay that accompanies being a member of this energetic, eclectic, and expressive fandom!

Looking back on many of the Doctor Who episodes I’ve watched over the years, I like to engage in the occasional game of “What if?” Some of my wish list in this game includes the fantasy that Tom Baker (the Fourth Doctor) played the role for an eighth season, with John Nathan-Turner producing, that Sylvester McCoy (the Seventh Doctor) had a muli-Doctor story for the his second season as it marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the show, and that the Master (John Simm’s version) was a major player in a third David Tennant (the Tenth Doctor) season in which the evil Time Lord would rule over a galactic empire. Authors Nick Mellish and Castle (aka Brax) similarly play this narrative speculation games in their piece, “Doctor What If?”  Their first, and most interesting speculation involves them discussing the scenario of the First Doctor not regenerating at the end “The Tenth Planet,” and instead being revealed as an organic element of the TARDIS itself (Mellish’s idea) or as an identity that could be passed on via the TARDIS to the Doctor’s companion, Ben (Castle’s counterproposal). This out-of-the-box thinking, working from some of the spin-off media narratives, is the stuff fandom is made of, meaning it’s a place where both amateur and future professional writers of the show hone their craft.

The question as to where these writers who make the transition to professional will publish in the Whouniverse, however, is an uncertain one. Jon Arnold points out the rather limited and unimaginative state of the official BBC Books line since 2005 in his article, “Short Trips: The End of the Road?” While Arnold agrees that the Big Finish audios do a fine job of expanding the mythology of the classic Doctor Who series, he laments the company’s decision to terminate their line of Short Trips short story collections. In his words, “Perhaps my melancholia at the end of Short Trips is because there’s now less opportunity than ever for new voices to break into Doctor Who fiction; perhaps it’s because of that ending to literature based on the classic series” (229-30). For the most part, Arnold is correct. Although BBC Books recently published a classic-era novel by established science-fiction author Stephen Baxter (The Wheel of Ice, a Second Doctor story), opportunities for new authors writing about the original show to be professionally published seem remote at this time. To take a negative stance on this state of the Doctor Who publishing industry would be understandable, but we can resort to a more positive outlook by remembering that fans of the itinerant Time Lord are a resourceful bunch, many of them already adapted to the Internet gift economy of creating, sharing, and reciprocally reading one another’s short tales of Doctors one through seven! Admittedly, they may never have the chance to write for this era of the series, but they will be honing their craft nevertheless, with their eye on the worthy prize of becoming published writers…