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Intermedial Realism in Chernobyl

This is the third in a series of perspectives on HBO’s Chernobyl.

INTERMEDIAL REALISM IN CHERNOBYL

 

Nicola Dusi (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy)

 

 

 

The persuasive effectiveness of the miniseries Chernobyl (HBO, 2019) comes from its documentary approach (Odin 2013). It is not just about historical accuracy in representing places and people, furnishings, clothing and technology in the fictional reconstruction of a narrative possible world (Eco 1979; Ryan 2014). The "figures" of death from invisible radiation are achieved through a sound design that remixes Geiger counters; the scenes of contaminated urban spaces and forests are based on iconographic sources from photo reports at the disaster site; characters and narrative situations (e.g., the death of the young firefighter) are created using investigative literature of interviews with survivors and their families as source texts. And after the fictional finale, Chernobyl goes on to feature a long documentary sequence, with photos and archive footage, that becomes an ethical and political commentary on the nuclear disaster and its management.

 

Photographic sources

 

Talking about photographic sources, let me recall the first photographs taken the day after the Chernobyl reactor’s explosion by Igor Kostin (for the Novosti Press Agency in Kiev), and in 2001 by Canadian Robert Polidori. These pictures focus on the interiors of empty and devastated homes and schools, in which the passing of time has not affected the bleak truth of the spaces and the abandoned objects of daily life. Some of these photos feature in the editing of the final documentary sequence of Chernobyl, others are the basis in the series for silent scenes of explorations of the emptied spaces of the city after the forced exodus of the population. These photographs become visual documents on which set and costume designers rely for the fictional recreation of the iconic world of the series, to create a setting resembling a Soviet cityscape of 1986, with its devastation by blast and radiation. The fictional world thus translates a reality mediated by photography. A translation and reinterpretation in which the historical source becomes a matrix of invariance.

 

Literary sources

 

As for the literary sources, an important one not cited in the credits yet repeatedly mentioned in the podcast, is the book Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich (2005), used in particular for the screenwriter Mazin’s portrayal of the young firefighter’s death from radiation poisoning. The choice to narrate this particular death in the miniseries lies perhaps in the power of an exemplary (and documented) case, combined with a tender and sensitive love story, as a way to simultaneously remember the victims of Chernobyl and their families and to thematize the sacrifice of thousands of people who served to stem the catastrophe (see Alberto Garcia post).

In the firefighter burial scene of the TV series (ep. 3), a truck arrives in the cemetery: it is a cement mixer that begins unloading fresh cement onto the zinc coffins. The end of the sequence alternates shots of the dripping concrete with a detail of the face of the young woman, who is holding back tears: we watch (in slow motion) the filling of the pit with the thick, grey liquid, which first encircles then slowly submerges the coffins.

This figure of the flow of concrete is a key “isotopy” in the series (Eco 1979; Greimas, Courtés 1979), a thematic idea underlying the images. The slow flow of the grey concrete that covers everything appears, in fact, as a good metaphor for the strategy of the Soviet Union narrated by the miniseries with respect to the nuclear accident – not telling and lying, deception and concealment, attempting to make inviolable the secret related to the disaster and to construct an official truth that reassures public opinion, making the surface as smooth as a tombstone slab.

 

Sound design

Recalling the sound design of Chernobyl (composed by Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir), what is interesting are not just the moments of lyricism aimed at emphasizing (with classical music, or choral and vocal arrangements) the heroism of some characters, but a less perceptible and still present background sound composed of mild distortions and broken tones: a kind of background buzz taken up (and remixed) by the noise of Geiger counters measuring radiation. The pervasive noise of Geiger counters metaphorize the silent and inexorable poisoning of places and people, of buildings and objects and animals, affected by something invisible, pervasive, and yet - in this mode -"noticeable", that is, audibly perceptible by the viewer.

So, what does it mean to write the script for a TV series like Chernobyl, to construct the sets and to provide costumes for the narrative possible world of the series, starting from historical documents?

Photographic (and audiovisual), literary and material sources become source sign systems that are copied, translated and reinterpreted in the new textual project of serial fiction, building similarities and cross-references through a reconstruction of urban and private spaces with their furnishings, objects and technologies (including telephones and cars) circulating in the possible world of the past.

 

Accuracy and controversy discussions

 

Because of the “accuracy” exhibited by the fictional story, but especially because of the fierce criticism of the Soviet handling of the nuclear disaster by an American television series, Chernobyl has generated, among other things, the so-called forensic fandom (Mittell 2015) of curious and critical viewers who search for old footage and photos online in order to compare them with scenes from the series. Fans and prosumers argue online as to whether the work done by set designers, costume designers and sound designers is true or false, and even produce interviews and video-essays both to glorify the seriousness of the work and to de-legitimize it.

This fandom triggered by the Chernobyl series also draws on paratextual “top down” materials, such as the series discussion podcasts that circulated immediately after the airing of TV episodes, featuring interviews with the showrunner Craig Mazin, who is also the author of the script.

In the HBO podcast, Mazin emphatically stresses the accuracy of historical reconstruction for what he calls a docu-drama, that is, a "dramatic retelling of history".

In the podcast, Mazin claims: “we had a chance to set a record straight about: what we do that is very accurate; what we do that is a little bit sideways to it; what we do compressed or changed”. In this way, he introduces a gradualness and a kind of classification that appears very useful in semiotic terms, distinguishing four modes of reconstruction in relation to historical sources. We could hypothesize logical and semiotic relations (see Giorgio Grignaffini post), related to these considerations by Mazin. Thus, we are not dealing with amorphous reality, but with translative relations between a fictional representation aiming at historical verisimilitude and a “semiosphere” (Lotman 1990) composed of many mismatched historical sources, to a greater or lesser extent verifiable and reliable. The translational and interpretive relationship is semantically organized by the continuitywith the historical sources (we can talk here of a complex term like “truth” or "reality" or think of a documentary communicative pact) and the discontinuity with the sources (we can call it “invention” or “fiction”); in this tension we could put at least two conflicting semantic pairs:

 

- (A) the accurate reconstruction VERSUS

- (B) the reconstruction that radically changes and transforms

- (not B) the reconstruction in which events, actions and characters in the historical narrative are compressed or displaced VERSUS

(not A) the fictional reconstruction that invents but parallels the directions given by the sources

 

In a semiotic perspective, those mechanisms are all translational. Furthermore, referentiality is never given as absolute, because it is discursively and narratively intertwined in intertextual, intermedial and transmedia ways.

 

The intermedial expansion of the documentary finale

 

In the fifth and final episode of Chernobyl, after the public trial and Legasov's revelations accusing the Soviet state of keeping silent about the problems of nuclear reactors of that model, the head of the KGB informs him that from now on his social and professional life will be reset to zero. The ending of the episode is silent: Legasov is escorted out of the building where the trial took place and taken away.

It is the conclusion of the story, marked by an explicit threshold of suspension since we already know, from the first images of the first episode, what the character's bitter end will be. But it is not, yet, the miniseries finale.

The discourse in fact expands, moving out of the "fictional" pact and into the "documentary" one with a sequence of archival materials, accompanied by elegiac background music, while overlay scripts inform us about the historical fate of the real-life protagonists of the story.

The final documentary threshold of the Chernobyl series constructs an authoritative narrative that stands as an ethical and political commentary on what happened. Data are introduced as objective elements, in contrast to the "official truth" provided by the former Soviet regime.

In this intermedial expansion, creating a second finale, the very credibility of the production and artistic operation of the miniseries is being reinforced.

So we have a dual strategy: on the one hand, the narrative with archival images commented on by the intertitles informs and, at the same time, constructs historical knowledge. On the other hand, it seeks to establish a documentary complicity with the viewer, tending to reset the media filter in order to bring the discourse to historical and phenomenological life.

If the documentary mode sets up a discursive pact whereby what is being told "directly concerns me" (Odin 2013), conveying historical-economic as well as biographical and generational knowledge, the produced media experience serves the miniseries to attest itself as truthful, demonstrating how the fictional narrative is based on intersubjectively verifiable historical sources. Furthermore, the ethical position is the result of the rhetorical construction that denigrates the use of information in totalitarian regimes.

Hence, “intermedial realism" in contemporary TV series means that it is the interweaving of media that builds the truthfulness or veridical effect linked to historical reality (Pethö 2009). Thus, historical memory is “an editing machine” (Didi-Huberman 2002).

 

 

ALEXIEVICH, S. 2005 [1997], Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, Magus Books.

DIDI-HUBERMAN G. 2016 [2002], The Surviving Image, PennState University Press

ECO U. 1981 [1979], The Role of the Reader. Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Indiana University Press.

GREIMAS A. J., COURTES J. (a cura di) (1979), Sémiotique. Dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage, Hachette, Paris

JENKINS H. (2006), Convergence Culture, New York University Press, New York.

LOTMAN J.M. 2001 [1990], Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Tauris, London and New York,

MITTELL J. (2015), Complex Tv. The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling, New York University Press, New York.

PETHÖ A. (2009), “(Re)Mediating the Real. Paradoxes of an Intermedial Cinema of Immediacy, Acta Univ. Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1, pp. 47-68, 2009.

ODIN R. 2022 [2013], Spaces of Communication. Elements of Semio-Pragmatics, Amsterdam University Press.

RYAN, M.L. (2014), Story/Worlds/Media: Tuning the Instruments of a Media-Conscious Narratology, in M.L. RYAN, J. THON (eds.), Storyworlds Across Media: Toward a Media- Conscious Narratology, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, pp. 25-49.

 

Biography

Nicola M. Dusi, PhD in Semiotics, is Associate professor of Media Semiotics at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy), Department of Communication and Economics. He is the author of the books: Il cinema come traduzione (Utet, 2003); Dal cinema ai media digitali (Mimesis, 2014); Contromisure. Trasposizioni e intermedialità (Mimesis, 2015); Capire le serie TV. Generi, stili, pratiche (with. G. Grignaffini, Carocci, 2020). He edited some monographic issues of international journals: Versus (85-87, 2000, with S. Nergaard) dedicated to "Intersemiotic Translation"; Iris (30, 2004, with M. Troehler and F. Vanoye) dedicated to "Film Adaptation: Methodological Questions, Aesthetic Questions"; Degrés (141, 2010, with C. Righi) about "Dance Research and Transmedia Practices"; Mediascapejournal (16, 2020, with R. Eugeni and G. Grignaffini) dedicated to “La serialità nell’era post-televisiva”. He also edited many Media Studies books such as: Remix-Remake. Pratiche di replicabilità (with L. Spaziate, Meltemi, 2006); Matthew Barney. Polimorfismo, multimodalità, neobarocco (with C.S. Saba, Silvana Editoriale, 2012); Bellissima tra scrittura e metacinema (with L. Di Francesco, Diabasis, 2017); Confini di genere. Sociosemiotica delle serie tv (Morlacchi, 2019); David Lynch. Mondi Intermediali (with C. Bianchi, Franco Angeli, 2019).

Chernobyl Reloaded: Renewing Traditional Male Heroism Through Female Characters

This is the second in a series of perspectives on HBO’s 2017 series, Chernobyl.

Chernobyl reloaded: Renewing traditional male heroism through female characters

Charo Lacalle (Autonomous University of Barcelona)

 

As highlighted in various studies on the miniseries, the protagonism and tragic fate of Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) and Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) in Chernobyl grants them an absolute pre-eminence. This work, however, vindicates the narrative prominence of the two female characters, who rework the male Homeric models of heroism: Lyudmilla Ignatenko (Jessie Buckley), the wife of one of the first victims of the nuclear accident, and Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson), the scientist who travels to Chernobyl to determine the causes of the explosion at the nuclear power plant. Both women, who initially complement the firefighter Vasily Ignatenko (Adam Nagaitis) and the scientist Legasov plots respectively, subvert the men's protagonism by forging their own narrative trajectories: Lyudmilla's desperate struggle to find her husband and support him in his agony, and Ulana's collaboration with Legasov to halt the spread of the radiation.

Free from the servitude to the power governing the destinies of Legasov (deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute) and Shcherbina (deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers), the two women endow the miniseries with the necessary "moralizing impulse" present in any account of reality where narrativity makes the world speak itself as a story (White, 1980). Lyudmilla constitutes one of the most disturbing voices of the survivors, recounted by Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich in her acclaimed work Voices from Chernobyl. The oral history of a nuclear disaster (2006[1997]). Beyond Luydmilla's characterization as a wife, her primary narrative function consists of developing a sentimental subplot, aimed at suturing from the emotional dimension the distance between the viewer and the documentary exposition of the events. Ludymilla's love for her husband drives her to disobey the prohibition on approaching or coming into physical contact with him, to the point of risking her own life and even that of the unborn child she carries to be with him in his death throes. By contrast, the fictional character of Ulana is based on an amalgamation of many unnamed scientists who struggled to unravel the true causes of the catastrophe and "to honor their dedication and service to truth and humanity", as the miniseries credits inform the viewers.

Adam Higginbotham, a former British correspondent in the USSR and author of Midnight in Chernobyl, which won the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, criticizes Chernobyl on the premise that there was no need for a crusading whistleblower to uncover the causes of the catastrophe. The journalist also questions the plausibility of Ulana's portrayal as not reflecting reality in terms of the position of women in power-appointed bodies in the Soviet Union in 1986. Sonja Schmid considers instead that while Ulana effectively erases the names and efforts of many other people, her character illustrates that Soviet women were top scientists and fearless investigators at that time. Schmid (2020: 1161) praises Higginbotham's book, but argues that the miniseries should be enjoyed for what it is: "an engaging storytelling with extremely felicitous reconstructions of the accident and Soviet material life".

Emily Watson, who plays Ulana, goes further by considering Chernobyl a politically astute and essential piece of work, and she even attributes her character to a hypothetical past anchored in Ukrainian history to justify her inclusion in the miniseries: "My character would've been a child during World War II, and from Belarus — one of the worst places on the planet to be in the 20th century. Just astonishing. Horrific treatment from every direction. She would've grown up incredibly tough […] As a child, she lived through extraordinary brutality and probably was witness to appalling acts. She developed a 'don't trust anybody' mentality" (Watson in Nicolau, 2019).

Be that as it may, it is worth recalling that the number of women in the field of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) in the USSR even exceeded the average for Western countries in the period of the disaster, despite Soviet women scientists' difficulties to pursue their profession and conciliate it with their family life were systematically on Mikhail Gorbachev's agenda (Evans, 2012). In this sense, the discussion of plausibility should not overshadow the need to highlight the achievements of women scientists in Western, where the media plays a key role in spreading the research results. Most of all, because disregarding women's STEM achievements stimulates the creation of negative myths and misconceptions about women scientists' and therefore contributes to their social discrimination.

 

From heroes to heroines

            The contrast between the ideal (Ulana) and real (Lyudmilla) characters installs in Chernobyl's narrative logic an opposition between emotion and reason around which the text's axiological system is articulated. Both women symbolize two classical versions of heroism, which Mark Edmunson (2015) identifies respectively with the figures of the warrior and citizen soldier: Achilles and Hector. And with this recognition of the typically masculine andreia/ἀνδρεα (manliness, bravery) in the two female characters, the miniseries subverts the traditional concept of heroism.

 Like Achilles, Ulana chooses to set off to war from the Nuclear Energy Institute in Minsk (Belarus), where she works. This fictional character, whose sole dimension explored in Chernobyl is her portrayal as a scientist (everything concerning her personal sphere is unknown), embodies the ideal of perfection in that she will not be fu And it is this recognition of the typically masculine andreia/ἀνδρεα (manliness, bravery) in two female characters, that manages to subvert the traditional concept of hero.lfilled until she has completed her particular quest for truth. Ulana has the pride and self-confidence attributed by Edmunson to the Homeric hero she embodies, which places her beyond fear and weariness. Aware of the limits imposed on Legasov by his Communist Party membership, but also that those in power will never hear her own voice, Ulana urges him to take on the system to defend the truth "Because you're Legasov. And you mean something. I'd like to think if I spoke out, it would be enough. But as I said, I know how the world works" (fifth episode).

 

            LEFT: El trunfo de Aquiles (Franz von Matsch, 1892)           RIGHT: Ulana khomyuk

Unlike Ulana/Achilles, Lyudmilla is forced to acquire the fighting spirit natural to a warrior. Lyudmilla/Hector is the citizen soldier  who fights to defend what she loves; although she does not fear death, she must learn heroism. Hence, like the hero who inspires her, this female character is both the brave fighter and the pater familias. Her journey from Pripyat - the city where the Chernobyl power plant is located - to the Moscow hospital room where her husband is dying constitutes the initiatory journey of a woman who, like Ulana, also rebels against impositions.

LEFT: The Farewell of Hector to Andromaque. RIGHT: Astyanax Lyudmilla and Vasily (Karl F. Deckler, 1918)

 

As the narrative unfolds and Ulana and Lyudmila come to the fore, the viewer empathizes with their respective points of view. Impervious to the constrictions of the rise and fall of tragic heroes, the warrior Ulana and the citizen soldier Lyudmila represent the characters through whom the miniseries pays homage to the bond between women and nature. Both archetypes thus evince Chernobyl's alignment with today's eco-feminist sensibility, which calls for women's involvement in environmental issues (Rigby, 2018: 61). And so doing, the conciliation between heroism - a characteristic associated by dualism with masculinity - and compassion - traditionally attributed to femininity - merge into a message of hope, which transcends desolation to penetrate the spectators' sensibility and alert them to the nuclear risk.

 

References

Alexievich, Svetlana (2006[1997]) Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster. Picador.

Evans Clements, Barbara (2012) History of Women in Russia From Earliest Times to the Present. Indiana University Press.

Higginbotham, Adam (2019) Midnight in Chernobyl: The untold story of the world's greatest nuclear disaster. Bantam Press.

Nicolau, Elena (2019) "She Was A Truth Ninja:" Emily Watson On Her Intrepid Chernobyl Character. Available at: https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2019...

Schmid, Sonja D. (2020) Chernobyl TV series: O suspending the truth of what’s the benefit of lies? Technology and Culture, 61(4), 1154-1161. doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2020.0115 

Watson, Fay (2019) Chernobyl explained: Is Emily Watson's character Ulana Khomyuk a real person? Express, July the 15th. Available at https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1139105/Chernobyl-explained-Is-Emily-Watson-s-character-Ulana-Khomyuk-a-real-person-hbo-series 

White, Hyden (1980) The value of narrativity in the representation of reality. Critical Inquiry, 7(1), 5-27.

 

Biography

Charo Lacalle is Full Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona-UAB (Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences), where she teaches Semiotics and Narratives. She has two degrees, in Journalism and in Philosophy, and a PhD in Communication Sciences. She started my academic career as an assistant in the Faculty of Languages and Literature at the University of Bologna. Her research activities focus on Semiotics, TV and internet studies, media cultural analysis (particularly about fiction and entertainment genres), feminist studies, intermediality and fandom. Her last book explores de social role of media in the construction and dissemination of dignity and indignity: (In)dignidades mediáticas en la Sociedad digital (Catedra Editors, 2022).

 

Remembering (and Refiguring) Chernobyl: What Can be Learned from the HBO (2019) Series?

This is the first in a multipart series offering transnational and interdisciplinary perspectives on the 2019 HBO series, Chernobyl.

Remembering (and refiguring) Chernobyl:

what can be learned from the HBO (2019) series?

 

Nicola Dusi (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy)

Charo Lacalle (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)

 

The premiere of Chernobyl (HBO-SKY, 2019) recalled the greatest man-made catastrophe in human history and the enormous damage on both living beings and the environment. This "historical drama" —as the critics labelled the miniseries— made nuclear disasters once again the focus of public attention, after being overshadowed in the last two decades by the increasing dramatization of other risks (such as climate change).

Created by the experienced director and screenwriter Craig Mazin, Chernobyl asserts the role of media in the recovery and dissemination of historical and cultural memory (Rampazzo Gambarato, Heuman and Lindberg, 2022). The miniseries also corroborates the intermediality of television fiction and its capacity to touch the deepest and most complex dimensions of our existence (Pallarés-Piquer, Hernández, Castañeda y Osorio, 2020). In this sense, it can be said that its value lies not so much in evoking a past that can no longer be changed, “in a risk society, where history offers no guarantees” (Giddens & Pierson, 1998: 157), but in appealing to human responsibility so that this type of catastrophe will never happen again.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant —the largest in the world— makes Chernobyl a wake-up call for the fear of another explosion. Such a concern was expressed by the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, after his visit to the installations at the end of August 2022. "It could be a bigger disaster than Chernobyl," warns Carlos Umaña, co-chair of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). As it is, Mazin’s miniseries makes us feel skeptical about the European Union's February 2022 proposal to grant "green" status to nuclear power at least until 2025 on the premise that it is consistent with the EU’s climate and environmental objectives.

 

The risk society

Sociologists of Modernity Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens use the concept of risk society to express the anthropogenic manipulation of nature and the concern for the future of humanity, at a time when it is no longer possible to attribute catastrophes to, “an external intervention of hazards” because risks depend on decisions (Beck, 1992[1986]:183). The risk society theory also expresses the way contemporary society organizes itself in order to manage the consequences of human agency in what is referred to as the Anthropocene: the new stage of the current Quaternary period shaped by the actions of humankind thought to have succeeded the Holocene or post-glacial period (Boyd, 2009; Crutzen, 2002).

As the Australian philosopher Toby Ord points out in his influential book, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (2019), the certainty that we are at a crucial turning point in the history of the human species, whose greatest challenge is to safeguard the future of humanity, clashes head-on with the lack of maturity, coordination, and perspective needed to avoid ecological disasters. In keeping with the stories about the effects of the Anthropocene, the Chernobyl series’ mixture of fiction and facts and narrative strategies illustrates the horror of a nightmare from which we can never entirely escape, because it is something that could possibly happen again. After all, “Russia effectively is using the plant at Zaporizhzhia as a pre-positioned nuclear weapon to threaten and intimidate not only Ukrainians but millions of Europeans across a dozen countries,” writes Mary Glantz (2022), Senior Advisor for Russia and Europe Center of US Institute of Peace (USIP).

Complex TV, Intermediality and Transmediality

 

The Chernobyl TV series opens many possible issues, and in this thematic section of the blog, we will address some of those issues that are part of our research topics. Like many new contemporary TV series, Chernobyl can be considered a case of what Jason Mittell (2015) calls "complex TV." It is no longer a matter of analyzing a TV series as an isolated and autonomous media product. It is important to understand the miniseries' choice of discursive genre and format (Giorgio Grignaffini); to examine the narrative structure of the script (Paolo Braga), and the construction of male (Andrea Bernardelli) and female characters (Charo Lacalle), as well as to analyze the collision or interplay in the series between its fictional capacity and its documentary aspirations (Nicola Dusi), as is evident in the miniseries' finale (images of the fictional narrative are replaced by those of iconographic and historical sources). While analyzing the TV series, we will talk about the Chernobyl disaster as a social and cultural trauma (Antonella Mascio), about the TV series and the elements of modern sacrifice (Alberto Garcia), and about the representation of the Cold War and the manipulation of information (Federico Montanari). All this without forgetting "traditional" viewers and their reactions, for example in a particular local setting such as Greece (in Europe), verifying with qualitative sociological analysis (interviews) the reception and understanding of the TV series’ narrative (Ioanna Vovou).

TV seriality, as Chernobyl teaches us, thrives on the intermedial and transmedia relations that are created through the paratexts, the commentaries, the reinterpretations, and interpretations that circulate on the web in the transmedia storytelling of the Western semiosphere (to limit ourselves to this part of the world).

Therefore, the discussion we open in these pages faces the intermedial interweaving of footage, allusions, quotations, and translations, which the Chernobyl series activates from the writing of the script to the shooting and the postproduction editing. Think, for example, of iconographic sources, literary sources, and historical sources, including written (investigative literature, journalistic reports, historical documents), visual (photographs, drawings) and audio-visual (footage from the period, interviews, television reports). The comparison and discussion also becomes a transmedia problem, as the series is reopened and discussed weekly (during its airing) through some detailed podcasts by HBO with interviews with the showrunner Craig Mazin and other members of the production team. As Jenkins (2006) claims, this kind of transmedia storytelling features the TV series narration and story world on other platforms, where each medium retells them in the way that suits it best.

The transmedia and crossmedia products are a swarm of new interpretations, controversies, and discussions about the truthfulness and the accuracy of the choices of the Chernobyl serial’s narrative, which produce new videos, remixes, articles and statements in which a close scrutiny and exchange of views is conducted about the sources and testimonies used in the TV series. Lots of reinterpretations, often critical and highly polemical, are given by web prosumers intent on discussing (even with fairly obvious tendentious purposes) a serial narrative that casts a cold and negative light on the Soviet regime and its manipulative and falsifying handling of the nuclear disaster through the information provided about the catastrophe both as it occurred in 1986 and in the following years.

For these reasons, some contributions to the discussion we are presenting will take into account intermedial intersections with other media products (other series, films, documentaries, but also novels and documentary photographs, etc.) on the one hand, and on the other, transmedia and crossmedia overlaps and reinterpretations (through production podcasts, but also through the autonomous and grassroot productions of web users).

Our proposal stems from a panel discussion that took place at the University of Thessaloniki during the World Semiotics Conference (IASS/AIS) in August-September 2022, but has been extended (for this blog) to other scholars and researchers interested in the analysis of contemporary television seriality and its psychological, social, and semiotic implications and constructions.

 

 

References

 

Beck, Ulrich (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. Sage Publications.

Boyd, Brian (2009). On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Harvard University Press.

 

Crutzen, P. J. (2002). Geology of mankind. Nature 415(23).doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/415023a

Giddens, Anthony; Pierson, Christopher (1998). Making sense of Modernity. Polity Press.

Glantz, Mary (2022) Russia’s New Nuclear Threat: Power Plants as Weapons. United States Institute of Peace. Available at: https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/08/russias-new-nuclear-threat-power-plants-weapons

Jenkins, Henry (2006). Converge Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press.

Mittell, Jason (2015). Complex TV. The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York – London: New York University Press

 

Ord, Toby (2019). The precipice: Existential risk and the future of humanity. Hachette Editions.

 

Pallarès-Piquer, Marc; Hernández, J. Diego; Castañeda, W. José; Osorio, Francisco (2020). “Vivir tras la catástrofe. El arte como intersección entre la imagen viviente y la conciencia. Una aproximación a la serie “Chernobyl” desde la ontología de la imagen”. Arte, Individuo y Sociedad 32, 738-798. doi: https://doi.org/10.5209/aris.65826

 

Rampazzo Gambarato, Renira; Heuman, Johannes; Lindberg, Ylva (2022). “Streaming media and the dynamics of remembering and forgetting: The Chernobyl case”. Memory Studies, 15(2), 271-86. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980211037287.

 

“Part of Your World”: Fairy Tales, Race, #BlackGirlMagic, and The Little Mermaid

In 2016 Disney announced a live-action adaptation of its 1989 animated film The Little Mermaid. Loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 fairy tale, the animation earned critical acclaim, took $84 million at the domestic box office during its initial release, and won two Academy Awards (for Best Original Score and Best Original Song). Given Disney’s recent foray into creating live-action adaptations of some of its most successful animated films, it’s no surprise that The Little Mermaid was added to the list. Yet controversy rose when Black actress Halle Bailey was announced as Ariel in July 2019. Among the critiques was the argument that the adaptation should be as close to the original as possible, and the original featured a white mermaid; that if a Black character was re-cast as white in a remake there would be uproar; and while representation in all forms is important it shouldn’t override the history of the characters (Figure 1.1):

Figure 1.1: Tweets discussing the casting of Ariel when Halle Bailey was originally announced in 2019

  “This film ruined my childhood!”

Adaptations and remakes are often contentious topics because fans can have deeply emotional connections to the original text. Disney animations in particular often hold a nostalgic appeal for adults who grew up with the original films, and for whom they hold ties to a different - perhaps better - time. Yet negative responses to remakes which feature Black actors go beyond the ‘purist’ argument which states that adaptations and remakes should remain true to the original. A key example of this is the 2016 Ghostbusters remake which featured an all-female team of ghostbusters. The gender-swap of the ghostbusters themselves is criticized, but the majority of vitriol was directed against Black actress Leslie Jones. We have seen over the last decade or so the way that social networking sites can “promulgate sexually violent discourse and expand the opportunities to shame and humiliate women” (Horeck 2014, 1106). Twitter became one of the main spaces used to target Jones, with the star herself sharing just some of the many horrific tweets (Figure 1.2) that she had been sent: 

Figure 1.2: Racist tweets directed at Leslie Jones following the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot

 

This language clearly shows the racism inherent in many viewers’ reactions to the film, and while this overt hate speech is horrific to see, there were other, more insidious racist responses to the film. One of the most frequent reasons for dislike of the Ghostbusters reboot was that it affected fans’ memories of the original - a common refrain highlighted in discourse around the film was that it ‘ruined my childhood’. Nostalgia thus became a coded way for some fans to perform racism, framing a childhood classic - where straight, white men were the default in film and television - as the norm and any attempt to change that as ‘wokeness gone mad’. 

We see some of these more covert racist responses in reactions to The Little Mermaid. The trailer for the adaptation was released in September 2022, giving viewers their first glimpse of Halle Bailey as Ariel, singing “Part Of Your World”. Immediately comments began circulating on social media sites criticizing the casting as Disney pandering to the woke brigade, diversity for diversity’s sake, and another example of social justice warriors ruining popular culture (Figure 1.3):

Figure 1.3: Tweets responding to the first The Little Mermaid trailer, released in 2022

 

For these viewers then, their opposition to the recasting of Ariel isn’t because they’re racist; it’s because they see a concerted effort being made in popular culture to force an ideology, they feel isn’t necessary, despite that ‘ideology’ being an attempt to redress the decades of racism evident in both the production of film and television content and the representations within that content. Of course, this is still racism. It’s just couched in language that frames these as legitimate concerns. So, while questions like ‘instead of remaking this film why don’t they produce a film based on African folklore?’ may seem valid on the surface, they ignore the systemic racism within the industry and the difficulty in pitching, commissioning and making a profit on non-white content.

Before Halle there was Mami Wata…

While the original fairy tale from Hans Christian Andersen does describe Ariel’s character as “her skin was as clear and delicate as a rose-leaf, and her eyes as blue as the deepest sea” this does not mean that there were no mermaids who were of color. In fact, water spirits and Black mermaids existed even before Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairy tale. It is important to note the global history of mermaids and water spirits due to the fact that the existence of Black characters in fantasy, magical realism, and science-fiction is often non-existent. If we think about this from an Afrofuturistic lens, these early Western tales did not see Black characters as even being a part of these narratives. The waters have always been seen as a sacred space literally and figuratively within African folklore. Housed within many African traditions, the water serves as a bridge between otherworlds, life and the afterlife. And the sea deity Mami Wata or La Sirene (which translates as Mother Water or Mother of Water) serves as the beginnings of many African mythical tales. Described as having a female human torso, sometimes with a serpent wrapped around her, with a tail like a fish, and hair that can be straight, curly, or wooly the image (see Figure 1.4) could be likened to that of Halle Bailey.  Nevertheless, the idea of mermaids has had a long African tradition. In South Africa, there is a myth from the Khoi-san people about the Karoo Mermaid that was discovered in the Cango Caves, in Mali the Dogon people have an origin story involving fish creatures called “nommos”, and in Nigerian Igbo tradition Mmuommiri ("Lady of the waters"). The water spirit also translates into Caribbean and South American tales through the orishas of Yemonjá (or Yemanjá) in Brazil and Yemanya (or Yemaya) in Cuba; and River Mumma, River Mama in Jamaica, and Maman de l'Eau ("Mother of the Water")/Maman Dlo/Mama Glo in Dominica. 

Figure 1.4 [l-r] Sculpture of the African water deity Mami Wata. Nigeria (Igbo)-Original in Minneapolis Institute of Art and Dona Fish Ovimbundu peoples-Angola-Private Collection-Photo by Don Cole

 

Moreover, this narrative has and continues to be re-written to include and normalize Black bodies in the fantastical and mythical space. For example, author, filmmaker and Afrofuturist Ytasha L. Womack brings attention to the presence of these magical creatures in her chapter “The African Cosmos for Modern Mermaids (Mermen)” in her 2013 book Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture; Afro-Futurist artist, writer, and educator D. Denenge Akpem recreated her own water fairy tale reminiscent of African mermaids by transforming herself into a space-sea-siren-hybrid-human-jellyfish for a 2006 exhibition show at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA)-Chicago; and Nigerian-Welsh writer Natasha Bowen would create a literary series of African mermaids based in West African tradition through her YA/fantasy novels “Skin of the Sea” (2021) and “Soul of the Deep” (2022) which follows Simi, a ‘mami wata,’ that travels across sea and land in search of the Supreme Creator. Additionally, Ta-Nehisi Coates makes references to Mami Wata in his 2019 novel "The Water Dancer" as well as Nalo Hopkinson making the key figure ‘Lasiren’ a part of her 2003 erotic historical fiction novel “The Salt Roads,” and the 2022 film Nanny depicts the figure of Mami Wata in relation to the main character Aisha. Each of these mediums of past and current history provide a plethora of historical context for the casting of Halle Bailey in the role of Ariel. As noted by Bowen, “I think speaking from Black mermaids, we need to see ourselves in positions as magical creatures. There's all the furo about Black people in fantasy. And I think that it's important for us to see ourselves — to have that freedom of imagination. And I think it's important for everyone else to see us in those roles as well.”[1]

“She’s Black! Oh, my God!”

In the same vein, the news of the live-action adaptation also garnered a #BlackGirlMagic effect that would have just as much excitement across social media. This is not surprising as there has always been a history of Black audiences wanting to see themselves represented in a way that is not stereotypical, campy, or cliched. However, the move on Disney to celebrate and include a diverse cast is an encouraging move towards embodying the idea of “#RepresentationMatters. Having the teaser trailer center the introduction of Halle Bailey as Ariel makes a strong statement of how narratives can change. Her presence in just the teaser trailer ushers in an opportunity for Black girls to see themselves as magical as well as for other young girls to see a manifestation of what can be beyond the westernized white princess. In Disney’s almost 100-year history there has been only one Black Disney princess — Princess Tiana in “The Princess and the Frog (2009),” which was voiced by Anika Noni Rose. And similar to the casting of Halle Bailey as Ariel, singer Brandy portrayed “Cinderella” in the 1997 made-for-TV film version remake of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Thus, the addition of the upcoming live-action of The Little Mermaid is very much welcomed. 

Evidence of this welcoming was seen in an array of TikTok videos. For many parents, having tangible representations of characters that resemble and look like their children is essential and necessary. In a reaction on TikTok from the Lanier family, it features the three children getting ready to watch The Little Mermaid teaser. Their excitement is captured and is filled with joy (Figure 1.2), “She’s Black! Oh, my God!” exclaimed a wide-eyed Madison (11), followed by their brother Carter (6) shouting “Yes, yes, yes!” with a final reaction from McKenzie (9) “I can’t wait to see this!”

Figure 1.5- https://www.tiktok.com/@mrshannonlanier/video/7142462207656332587

 

Since the teaser trailer dropped in September 2022, many parents have been flooding the TikTok space with reactions to seeing a Disney princess who looks like them. The reaction to Bailey as Ariel is also very reminiscent of the young Parker Curry’s reaction to the Michelle Obama portrait at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC (Figure 1.3). While the teaser is only a little under one minute and a half, its impact is leaving a long-lasting imprint. With a slow, steady increase of Black girl representation particularly in film and television, The Little Mermaid has the potential to become a part of a legacy that does not diminish Black girl’s imaginations but revitalizes them and makes them a fantastical reality. Even for Bailey, she understands the significance of playing this role, in an interview with Variety magazine she notes, “What that would have done for me, how that would have changed my confidence, my belief in myself, everything…Things that seem so small to everyone else, it’s so big to us.”

 

Figure 1.6: Parker Curry in awe of seeing the National Portrait Gallery painting of Michelle Obama, Photo credit: Ben Hines

 

It will be interesting to see how the reactions change or stay the same once the official trailer drops and we visually see the other characters, especially the six other sisters. Since there are seven daughters total, representing the seven seas, the representation of each which is rumored to be from different racial/ethnic backgrounds will be one that probably causes a mix of emotions. Once the rest of the cast is announced and the official trailer is dropped, the conversations will only increase and become even more layered. Moreover, the teaser is an example of a filmic litmus test used to get the ball rolling to see what the response would be and ultimately show people what Halle Lynn Bailey is going to bring to the table as Ariel. 

[1] Headlee, C., & Saxena, K. (2022, September 30). Long before 'The little mermaid' remake, Black mermaids were swimming through African folklore. WBUR. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/09/30/black-mermaids-the-little-disney  

 

Grace D. Gipson is an assistant professor of African American Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University where she teaches courses on theories and foundations in Africana Studies, Blackness in pop culture, and Black media narratives. Her research interests include Black pop culture, race and gender in comics, Afrofuturism, and digital humanities. Outside the classroom, you can find Grace collecting comic books and stamps on her international travel discoveries, ticket stubs to the latest movies, co-hosting the video podcast "Conversations with Beloved and Kindred," contributing her personal and professional thoughts on pop culture via blackfuturefeminist.com and giving back to the community through a myriad of projects and organizations. You can also follow her on Twitter @GBreezy20 and Instagram @lovejones20.

Bethan Jones is a Research Associate at the University of York. She has written extensively about anti-fandom, media tourism and participatory cultures, and is co-editor of Crowdfunding the Future: Media Industries, Ethics, and Digital Society (Peter Lang) and the forthcoming Participatory Culture Wars: Controversy, Conflict, and Complicity in Fandom (under contract with University of Iowa Press). Bethan is on the board of the Fan Studies Network, co-chair of the SCMS Fan and Audience Studies Scholarly Interest Group and one of the incoming editorial team for the journal Popular Communication.

Tumblr, TikTok, Dead Memes, and ‘Me’: Finding Yourself in the Niche-fied Internet

Sulafa Zidani in conversation with Amanda Brennan

Recently, while I was making my way through Kaitlyn Tiffany’s wonderful book Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It (2022), I came across the title “meme librarian” describing Amanda Brennan, and I knew I had to chat with her!

Amanda’s decade-long career as an internet librarian spans across different platforms and materials ranging from memes to trends at large. I spoke to her to learn about how she understands and struggles with internet culture. In our interview, Amanda highlights the internet as a place for creative niches and fandoms where people can explore and make sense of their identity, with Tumblr being the quintessential place for that type of engagement. We also discuss the difference between “memes” and “trends” in Amanda’s work, how she organizes and categorizes internet culture to forecast trends, and whether trends ever really die.

Since we live in an era where the internet is “nichefied” – dominated by platforms that try to monopolize audiences with increasingly narrow parameters my conversation with Amanda has left me thinking about a loss of agency in the ways we now use the internet. I identified a difference between the experience of exploring internet niches that we both seemed nostalgic for in the “old internet” versus the algorithmically personalized corners we find ourselves on while using TikTok or other platforms today. Amanda described exploring websites, creating fan art, and learning new perspectives as key parts of identity formation online. Today this practice of exploration is exemplified through TikTok, where a user finds themselves in a “corner” determined by the algorithm that is difficult to move away from. This can make the experience of identity exploration more challenging, or sadly, less self-directed.

Whether we are working at the intersection of technology and popular culture, researching it, or roaming the internet to try to figure out our own identity, Amanda reminds us of the importance of being aware of our positionality that determines the lenses through which we interact with the internet.

So, I get the impression that you like the internet. Can you tell me what you like about it?

I've been doing this for so long that things I like have changed. It’s a lot more nuanced now, where some of the things I like are double-edged. For example, I like the ability for people to connect based on the things that are parts of their identity that they may not always be able to find people in their physical space to share those things with. Which, going back to the double-edged sword, sometimes people connect over things that are… not great.

I think the hard bit is that, for the most part, the internet allows people to explore their identity and vulnerability in new and novel ways that continue to evolve and just exploring identity and exploring what it means to be the self.

Is there a particular way that you have gone through this process? Or, are there specific communities online that you think helped in the process of exploring identity?

Oh, yeah. For sure!  I started my Internet journey like, in the walled gardens of AOL chat rooms and I was in fandom from the beginning, when I was 12 years old and obsessed with Hanson. This may seem embarrassing now, it’s messy. But, realizing that I could find a space of people who think similarly but would challenge me to think differently at the same time. When you’re in a fandom, there is this one thing that you all like, but you all bring different lenses to it. This way, you can see how different people approach that same thing. It’s like this crystal that I have at my desk at home that looks completely  different each way you hold it. If you hold it one way, you’ll see rainbows, and if you hold it a different way, you can see a pattern of  squares in it. I love being able to take a thing and think “what are the lenses that I’m bringing into this?” But also, if I’m talking to a coworker, the lenses they bring into it allow me to see it differently and better understand it as a whole.

I love that about fandom. It’s a place where people connect over things they know and love, but then it also becomes a space to learn new things, to push your bounds, and maybe do some very creative stuff together as well.

Yeah, and it’s not always like that. But, transformative fandom specifically does that. I think that’s why I’m so drawn to Tumblr. The types of fans that are drawn to Tumblr where you can be creative and you can question ‘the canon’ and really dig into the reasons of why you are participating in this thing. I love that. I love overanalyzing.

What are your favorite platforms, or the platforms that you use everyday? And, I know these two do not necessarily overlap and are not always the same thing.

They are not! Yeah, Tumblr is one of my favorite platforms, but I don't use it everyday, which is a perfect example of that because I definitely go through cycles where I want to be in it, or when I pick up a new fandom. For example, I just got into the Locked Tomb series. So, I’ve been obsessed with looking at Tumblr series and fanart and explorations of those characters, but that happens when I feel like I have all the time in the world and I just want to focus on the things that I love.  

The platforms I use everyday are in a flux right now. It used to be Twitter, but, with everything going on [referring to the changes ensued after Elon Musk purchased the platform] I’ve been using Twitter less and less. I feel like I don’t know where my internet home is right now. I use Instagram but mostly just for messaging and inspiration. I use it everyday but I don’t love it.

I do not use TikTok, although I think I need to for my job and for what I do. But, I have a lot of moral complications with it because TikTok wants to put you in an algorithmic niche to better serve ads against you. What happens is you’re being taught that an algorithm is seeing you, and you’re like “Oh, I love being on the side of TikTok!” But I don't know if I want an algorithm to try to put me in a box. The reason I like Tumblr is because there is that magic serendipity where you get what you get when you log in. To be really cliché about it, it is like going to a library and walking through the stacks, as opposed to going to Amazon and looking at your recommendation list and consuming what an algorithm thinks you are.  From working in internet culture for so long, I have a lot of strong opinions about algorithms and I try to be cautious of where I’m letting algorithms consume me.

My sense is that this is becoming increasingly difficult with the platforms that are popular right now, right? At the same time, as someone who researches the internet, TikTok feels like a must. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, I do. But I feel like I have to be on it to know what is going on there. Then, of course, I end up knowing only about trends that are in my “algorithmic corner” that maybe other people don’t know about or aren’t exposed to at all. This limits my ability to use TikTok trends as a means of connecting with friends or students because they’re not in the same corners of it.

I explicitly use TikTok on burners. When I think of using the internet as myself versus using the internet as my work persona or work concept, I’ve got several burner accounts depending on what corner of TikTok I’m trying to be in. The other day I even realized some people have been sending me messages on TikTok and I will just never see those. When most people think about TikTok, they’re usually thinking “this app knows me so well!” and, going back to what I said earlier about identity and the self, this makes me ask: how much of the self is chosen and how much of the self is assumed by an algorithm at this point and at what point does it become a self-fullfilling prophecy that, for example, all bisexuals love Phoebe Bridgers or something like that.

“My Spotify Wrapped Outed Me” - Video by @jakeblennings on TikTok

A lot of the work I do is also based around archetypes and stereotypes and how we lean into more comforting generalizations to find our identity. I think there’s something to be said about how in the last five to seven years people increasingly want to be seen and quantified. An example of this is the rise of astrology memes. You want to be put into a bucket where you can always have something that you can look at and say “Yes! I don’t know how, but this signs as sandwiches meme is right, I am a Taurus, and I identify with the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” It’s such a stretch of the brain. But I think over the last decade or so we’ve been trained to look for a group of things and find our archetype within them. 

the signs as sandiwches image by @thezodiacstea on Instagram

 I feel like, on one hand, people have started trusting the algorithm so much now, so if TikTok feeds us videos about ADHD, we think we must also have ADHD, and we forget that the algorithm is not a doctor. But people believe it and trust it so much, so when it puts them in that corner they begin to question ourselves. On the other hand, I think even when the algorithm messes up, people find it funny and almost endearing. So, if someone finds themselves on some side of TikTok that they did not expect to be on, then they’re like “oh that’s so funny LOL.” rather than questioning it and worrying about what it looks like for other people and all the echo chambers and misinformation that it’s helping spread.

People feel honored to be put somewhere, like “wow I’m in ? You must think I’m so cool!” There is this trust in the algorithm but the algorithm was built mostly by a bunch of dudes who don’t understand fandoms and don’t understand communities in the same way that a teenage girl would. That’s something that’s always on my mind: that people who built the algorithms built them in their own lenses. We each bring our own lenses to the table, and that’s not a moral failing, it’s just who you are. So, what does it mean when a bunch of Gen Z kids are defining who they are based on some algorithm that a 40 year old man built and doesn’t maintain like a garden. They just build it and let it be.

Yeah, that assumption that algorithms are a neutral code language, rather than a specific way of seeing things and a way of building things. As someone who works in that space, do you see this changing at all? Or do we still have a long way to go?

I feel like Gen Z has a really interesting perspective on algorithms, that they see it a little bit as a necessary evil. But we are at a weird place right now where millennials are not quite in the decision making process of all this stuff yet, and it’s still run by the generation above. When it comes to change, I think it’s a question of: will capitalism win? Or will search for identity win? Because, at the end of the day, the algorithm serves capitalism, it’s not for people. It’s made to serve ads better and as Gen Z is so hyper-aware of how they’re being advertised to constantly, I think there’s potential there to change that, but we are a ways off.

Going back to a happier place, I get the sense that Tumblr represents the old internet, and I wanted to ask you: do we over romanticize the old internet? Or are there things about it that we should try to carry over or bring back and maintain?

There are three or four things that come to mind. The first one that sparked in my brain is: not being online all the time is important for everyone, and especially important for people who are chronically online, to remind themselves that the whole world is not on Twitter. I say this as someone who is chronically online and needs to be reminded of that a lot. As Twitter has been burning down, I am realizing that there are people in this world who don’t care at all or don’t know that this is happening, and they are living happy lives. That’s my own journey of finding what part of my life is IRL and what part of my life is online, and what the venn diagram of where they cross each other.

I also really miss when it was just websites because I could go to a website. Now, I have to download an app and do about six steps and sign up for the loyalty program and buy an in-app purchase. I miss the freedom of someone’s shitty Geocities page about how much they love their cat and the ability to not have to be on every app. I follow this witch shop based in Philadelphia called The 8th House, and I love everything she makes. I think she’s really cool and smart. She always makes these reels about how running social media content to promote her business is also a job. That’s how she can get new customers. But I met her at the Trenton Punk Rock Flea Market in Jersey, and had a great interaction with her and I was like “You know what? I am going to stan you forever!” This makes me think about my partner, who does art as well, and has to put up with all of the actions in social media in order to get their art out there. It makes me think “How did people do this before apps?”  There had to have been a way because we have a history of art. I think Patreon is one great way to find art and support artists and them. I do a lot of Patreons as a way to say “You don’t have to be on every app. I see you, I like what you make, and I’m going to support you.”

Also: Serendipity. The ability to just look at something. I love going to museums. I recently went to see Nick Cave–the artist, not the singer–at the Guggenheim, and I didn’t look at any information online, I just went. I remember walking into the room and having this experience where I was taking it all in and feeling like “woah!” It felt very special in a way that I hadn’t felt in a while. I find art online constantly. I’m always looking for art inspo and tattoo art or the silly four-panel comics. But this is the type of experience that I can’t stop thinking about. 

There was that element of discovery and exploration. Now, we have so many steps before. Even if I want to do something like watch a movie, I will probably look up a list of the most popular movies from this year, then watch some of their trailers, and at that point, I might be too tired to even watch the movie. But, thinking back to maybe 10-15 years ago, I would watch any movie just because a friend told me I have to watch it. Then I’m on this ride, and who knows what’s going to happen! There used to be an element of simultaneously having the option to be offline, but also when we were online, we had a chance to be completely enmeshed in whatever we were doing rather than being on 10+ apps simultaneously with the phone buzzing next to us and the email tab constantly open.

Oh, yeah. I have no attention span anymore. And it’s something I’m working on. Whenever I have to sit and write a document, I need to put everything on Do Not Disturb and try not to open Twitter in another window.

Diving a little deeper into your work, I saw that you are doing some work around trends at XX Artists. I want to hear more about that. Is there a particular way that you define a trend? Do you predict trends?

I would define a trend as a concept plus a constraint. That is the highest level kind of approach to it. But I also feel like the word “trend” has lost its meaning now, which is a little silly because it is my specialty. But, the way that Tiktok works has changed the approach to trends, specifically audio trends. When you have to do this specific audio with this specific lip sync or this specific dance, those are memes, not necessarily trends. When I talk about trends, about concept plus constraint, that allows for the ability to think about things like how we celebrate celebrity birthdays. I’m thinking here about KPop fandom and all of the goings on that go into an idol’s birthday. I think of trends with which we celebrate different holidays like, Mariah Carey defrosting on November first. That is a specific trend. The ways that very colorful tinsel trees are happening right now because people are desperate to find joy, to reinvent right now.

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A post shared by Mariah Carey (@mariahcarey)

Part of the reason I wanted to be at an agency rather than a platform is because I wanted to be able to take in all the input from across the internet. I wanted to be able to see how people are approaching something on one platform versus another and a third one, and what ties all these things together. I work a lot with the idea of macro trends. We identify for example, that XYZ is happening on these platforms, but the underlying meaning behind it all is this little nugget of something. I work with a really great team across the organization and I like to coach everyone to approach the internet with the idea that we all have our own personal internet, and how we can help each other understand the larger concepts at play in internet culture by sharing the things that we are seeing. This is because I also believe monoculture is over. There are things that will tap into a whole different bunch of cultures but I think you and I can exist on the internet in very different worlds and have very small overlap. We have a lot of people in their early twenties who work at the agency so I coach them on identifying internet trends to understand how to make the connections between what’s happening in different places and stretch their mind a little bit, to get them thinking “why do I want to share this thing?” I think back to last year when everyone was tweeting series of red flags with a caption like “when he lives in his parents’ basement.” I think of questions like “why is everyone using this time now to talk about this? Why does everyone want to talk about a red flag? And why are some of them so universal?” There’s no definitive answer for any of it.  It is a thought exercise in what drives people to share and what makes certain concepts stand out? What makes something catch on? And what is the emotional drive behind why?

I am interested in hearing more from you about the difference you identify between a meme and a trend. Many scholars who research memes identify an urge or invitation to participate in sharing memes or creating your own iteration as part of what a meme is. From what I’m hearing, you’re seeing a difference between meme culture (like TikTok dances that when people see everyone doing one dance they feel like they have to do this dance now), versus a trend that touches on a social or cultural moment that resonates with people. How do we better differentiate between a meme and a trend?

When I think about macro trends, an example that comes to mind is the desire to put yourself into an aesthetic. That is a macro trend. It is trying to niche-ify yourself so much because that's like what all the businesses are doing and also like a way to find identity. Then the trends that pop up from that are like ‘cottagecore’ and ‘dark academia’ or all the ‘-cores’ we could say. Memes to me are more format-oriented. I consider the dance a meme because people would iterate on it. For example, the hot meme right now is the dance Wednesday does in an episode of the Netflix show and there are iterations of people doing it on their own, some people who are not goth are doing it. People have ways of making it their own personal expression. The macro trend that that leads up to is that people like doing whatever dance is the hot dance right now because it’s a low lift. If I see a dance and it’s a little weird, it’s still simple overall and you can join in very easily. It’s also difficult to siphon off my personal understanding from the words I have to use for my job. I would call that a meme, my work would call that a trend.

image by 🥀 𝐦𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐚 🥀 from instagram

I would also add that a word may start a little more niche, as it gains popularity it goes to the most common denominator. A meme, at the lowest common denominator, is a word with pictures on it, and some people have a hard time expanding out the idea past that. Another example is the word ‘Emo.’ Everyone has a different interpretation of that word depending on their age and how into weird music culture they are. To me, Emo means a very specific group of bands. To the average person, if you say Emo, it might mean My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy, but I wouldn’t consider those Emo. I would be thinking of bands like Rites of Spring and Penfold and all these bands no one has heard of because I’m in that niche bucket.

I want to talk more to you about how to organize memes so let me ask you this: What does a meme librarian do? What does your day to day job look like?

In my past job it was a lot more tactile. But in my role now, I read a lot of newsletters because, again, everyone has their own perspective and there are people whose perspectives I really trust at seeing what they’re seeing through the internet and how they’re interpreting it. Like Ryan Broderick of Garbage Day, Kelsey Weekman who’s at Buzzfeed, Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci’s Embedded, Casey Lewis’ After School, Dirt, and many other newsletters. I also check people’s Twitter accounts, I have a list of people that I love to follow. I like to see what people are taking in and kind of be a sponge. I will look at the internet and see what connections people are making today, and where I can make the connections on top of that. I have a big macro-trend document where I organize my thoughts and I work with incredible people everyday who are sharing information and thoughts. It’s really all about trying to make connections. It’s less archiving than my old job was. I don’t think it’s necessary for every business or agency to have their own meme archive, unless they want to think about the memes directly about their brand or business. Know Your Meme is very good at what they do and they serve a specific purpose.  What I really like to do is get people to look at what is popping up and think about what ties them together and find out what the thing that’s up and coming so we can find out what is going to be the next thing. How can we take these smaller conversations and know what it’s like to be in this community while also being ahead of the curve so we can impress the audience with knowledge. One of my not-official OKRs is someone responding to the account with the social media manager “Are you okay?” Showing up as a brand and getting an audience reaction that is like “Woah! This is my internet thing! How do you know about that, brand?!” That is a win to me.  Some brands are better than others at this, and it also has a lot to do with the level of trust that is given to the social media manager. Not everything is well planned, and sometimes you need to jump in on a dumb thing on the internet. It might not drive clicks to your website but it shows that you are in community with your audience and speak their language. That is not a measurable metric per se. But it is important to show up and let people know that you know what they’re talking about, and that as a brand, I am not here to dominate the conversation. Rather, I am here to get you to connect with other people, and have the audience feel like they’re part of something.

Yeah, that they’re in on the joke, at least.

Yes, and I think a lot about how in the heyday of Doctor Who, some people would post on Tumblr saying “I’m thinking of watching Doctor Who. What episode should I start with?” And the Doctor Who Tumblr, rather than answering that person themselves, would reblog the post saying something like “We see that this person likes X, Y, and Z. If you also like X, Y, and Z, what episode would you recommend for this person to watch?” and facilitating the fandom without dominating it or deciding for it.

Thinking back reminds me of one of the challenges I bump up against in my own work which is tracing a meme or tracing a trend back to find out where it started or how it has evolved.  Sounds like what you're doing is trying to keep track as things develop. But, if you have to go back and trace where something started, especially if it is across platforms, how do you facilitate that?

A lot of reverse image searching. I really love the date range tools on Google search. I studied a lot of linguistics when I was in college, and I learned that a word won’t come into your point of view unless it’s been used for a certain amount of time before it reaches you. I think about this with memes too. A meme could be used in a closed Facebook group or an instagram DM or a Discord. Things are happening in those communities that just aren't archivable or searchable. You can get as close as you can unless you've got someone who was there when the tones were written. But, I think that especially over the past few years I had to do some letting go because sometimes you are not going to find the original. But, you can find the amplifiers, and sometimes the amplifiers are the best way to understand what community brought this forth. 

Is there a typical track or a trajectory of where a trend starts and how it moves or evolves?  I think I was giving a talk on memes maybe five or more years ago, and, at that time, it seemed that many memes started on 4chan, moved to Reddit, then Instagram and Twitter almost simultaneously, then maybe Facebook. Do you think there is still a common “track” for memes?

I don't think there is as much anymore. I think TikTok really has a handle on it, but I don't think TikTok is where things start necessarily. People see something somewhere on the internet and then they bring it to TikTok. Then because of the algorithm and the way that a lot of other platforms favor video, there's a little bit of a perfect storm of TikTok as amplifier.  For example, all of  the -cores that “started” on TikTok in the past couple of years like cottagecore? Those were on Tumblr about five years before. Tastemakers that make content that plays algorithms are definitely in that track. But tastemakers can really be anything or anyone. It really depends on the niche and how niches bump up against each other. The past couple of years have had the least amount of standard process. I was talking to a friend recently about the Tumblr-blog-to-book trajectory. You could make a Tumblr and it would be dumb and then you would get a book deal and that would be the process. But I don’t know if there is that process anymore. Maybe Instagram-page-to-book-deal? But if you are on Instagram then you have to also be on TikTok or somewhere else to drive people to look at that thing. TikTok is also so video-based so I don’t know if any TikTok people are getting book deals. Maybe there’s TikTok-to-TV? I’m thinking of Charli D'Amelio, that was TikTok to Hulu, but that was not a story that is as easily replicable. TikTok is more focused on moments versus people. People like Charli D'Amelio and Khaby Lame, who is now a spokesperson for a fashion brand, are exceptions. You don’t hear as many stories like those on TikTok. Other ones that stand out are Cranberry Juice Guy, Corn Kid. These types of specific moments from a random person that go viral. TikTok’s viral videos now are also getting smaller. This goes back to niche-fying. Something that can go viral in a niche doesn’t have the same impact because there’s no monoculture to drive it. The people who do succeed are becoming more niche. One of my personal favorites on TikTok is the Pasta Queen. Her videos are incredible loops where she is making pasta in an incredible kitchen and is always wearing beautiful clothes. She has such a wholesome approach to recipe-making. She’s always saying things like “this is beautiful just like you are.” And she just released a cookbook now, she just got signed to CAA. I think not everyone is going to want to watch Pasta Queen and that’s okay, but for people who love pasta and like this affirmation-y content, her style is amazing and the book is incredible. It includes stories from her Italian family and it’s all really accessible too. So, there are people out there who are going to be accessible and will be an influencer for a specific group of people, but it’s not the same as it was five years ago or more. Then, everyone has seen a Charli D’Amelio video.

PastaQueen

One thing that continues to interest me is when a trend is based off of a “revived” meme. Recently, for example, I was listening to an ICYMI Podcast episode where they talked about a fake Martin Scorsese film that was completely made up by fans on Tumblr based on a meme from years ago that someone just decided recently to respond to. Have you heard about this? It makes me wonder if memes ever “die”? How do we know if a meme is dead?

Some die. I think Gen Z tells us when they’re dead. Like, when was the last time you heard someone say “Damn, Daniel!”? I don’t know. Does Gen Z still watch Charlie the Unicorn? I don't think they do. Then you have something like the Rickroll, which makes Rick Astley part of internet culture forever. I don’t think we can predict which memes stay in power and which won’t. If a tastemaker finds it and thinks “Wow! This is fun! I want to bring this back,” then there’s potential for anything to come back. Since the pandemic, we’ve had a revised relationship with “cringe” as an idea. More people are going to like stuff and continue to do stuff just because it resonates with them, and that includes the memes that they use. Look at Minions memes, for example. They’re cringe but some people use them just for the irony of it. Or afffirmations on Instagram, that meme style is one that has been around and iterated on repeatedly. In my brain, it is the great grandchild of the de-motivational poster from the early internet. It’s all about what lenses people are bringing in. That goes back to the beauty of Tumblr. You can have a long tail because Tumblr exists in this no-timestamp and no-algorithm space. If someone wants to resurrect a photo from years ago, they can, and no one will know that it’s from 5-10 years ago. It’s all about the absurdity of it all. It’s all about finding absurdity and finding joy amidst the actual absurdity of all of our lives.

Tolerance demotivational poster

 It feels like this moment is a moment of absurdity. Cringe is weirdly enjoyable. The aesthetic is exaggerated and crass. This isn’t new to the internet, but it feels like this is the time to eat this stuff up. So, in the midst of all this absurdity in our lives and on our internet(s?), what is a message that you would like to share with the world?

Wow! I’d say: Think about what lenses you bring to the table and how they affect what you’re seeing. Self awareness is a good one!

 

Sulafa Zidani is a writer, speaker, and educator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is an Assistant Professor in Comparative Media Studies and Writing. She is a scholar of digital culture, and writes about global creative practices in online civic engagement. She is currently working on a book-length student on multilinguistic internet memes. She also serves as an editor on the board of Pop Junctions. You can learn more about her work at www.sulafazidani.com

Amanda Brennan is an internet librarian who has spent the past decade looking at the ways we talk about the things we love online. After graduating with her MLIS from Rutgers University, she began her career at Know Your Meme, then spent seven years at Tumblr. There, she spearheaded The Fandometrics, a ranking system of entertainment fandoms, which Paste Magazine asserted should be “given a permanent place in pop culture’s critical metrics tool belt.” In 2021, Amanda stepped into the role of Senior Director, Trends Social at XX Artists, an award-winning agency built on diversity and inclusion. She has spoken about internet history at conferences across the US, on topics ranging from Slender Man to cat videos, and has appeared in multiple documentaries as an authority on internet culture. She can be found in liminal spaces between New York City and New Jersey.

Games as Social Technology—A Syllabus

IMAGE 1: Welcome to COMM 260: Games as Social Technology

Teaching Games

(Video) Game is a curious topic to teach. Despite its social and cultural significance, it is still a topic that gets an occasional “wow, this thing exists?” and a “wow, people are actually into doing this stuff?”, often followed by a “but it’s not real!” At times, you may catch a whiff of condescension in the awe. When you engage with popular culture enough, whether as an academic, a fan, or both, you get trained to its distinct note.

Game design is a curious topic to teach because this lingering prejudice can contribute to a unique classroom atmosphere; a sense of community. Many students are likely to have been drawn to the course by their pre-existing interest in games, with an eagerness that matches their fan expertise. They are likely to have observed and experienced first-hand many of the topics to be covered in class, although not necessarily with a critical or analytic approach. Research findings and concepts may resonate on a personal level, and discussions can be rich with examples. The class may grow to become a safe space to bond over shared passions, an environment that may not have been readily available to everyone. In fact, my first semester of teaching COMM 260: Games as Social Technology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)—which was also my first semester here—started with many “I was so happy to see a course on games!”’s and ended with a series of student presentations that truly felt like a celebration of learning and camaraderie that we have fostered together over the course of the past 15 weeks.

Of course, I have heard, although lucky to have not personally experienced it (*yet—fingers crossed), that some students may approach a game studies class with a hostile counterproductivity that champions only their gamer or game player identity, especially if it is taught by someone who does not fit the dominant “gamer” image (i.e., typically heterosexual, cisgender male, and young, and depending on the cultural context also White, Western, and English-speaking). This challenge is relevant to a mythical thinking that an expression that I casually used in the previous paragraph can espouse: (a sense of) “community”. While the concept does not innately assume uniformity among its members, the notion of membership can limit one’s imagination, at times to a composite of similar self-portraits, entitled “the gaming culture”. In reality, there are numerous people who play games that do not perfectly fit this profile, including myself. In fact, a more accurate title for such a composite picture would be “a gaming culture”. The core of the challenge then, in a somewhat circular manner, becomes how to encourage, if not benefit from, a sense of community around games while embracing gaming communities and cultures, including those associated with non-gamers and non-game players.

This was what I understood as the foundation of Games as Social Technology(*) and my main objective. The course overview and learning objectives are as follows:

Course Overview and Learning Objectives

Course Overview:

This course approaches games as networked and collaborative technologies. This semester, we will focus on how games, gaming practices, and gaming cultures communicate values. As social technologies, games can facilitate community building, interaction, and development. However, not everyone is (feels) invited. We will closely study how their structural, representational, and cultural components are sites of dynamic meaning negotiations. Games have a social impact.

Student Learning Objectives:

Understand how video games have shaped culture (and how culture has shaped games)

Explain why certain video games and gaming trends have been so controversial

Interrogate video game structure, narratives, and their representations

Analyze the implications of video games as cultural commodities and as political technologies

Assess the impact that video games have on audiences and culture

IMAGE 2: Sample In-class Exercise “Alien Ship.” (two slides). This exercise invites students to think about standards in technology design and diverse parties that may be involved in this process. Politics, biases, and consequences and be discussed.

Assignments

I am a big believer in scaffolding when it comes to assignments. Weekly journals were designed to doubly yield an annotated bibliography and a pseudo gameplay log (Consalvo & Dutton, 2006; see course schedule for full reference) or ethnographic fieldnotes for the student’s final project. Reflection essays and documentary notes were designed to provide sufficient time and space for students to deeply reflect on, personally experience, and/or think through (with aid of media) practices and discourses that are relevant to the flow of the course. When needed, prompts for weekly journals additionally helped with this process. The midterm exam functioned as a checkpoint before progressing into more discussion-heavy topics. As the focus was on learning, the students were given the option to review up to four questions for partial points; it was to include a) why they got confused, b) why the correct answer is correct, and c) an illustrative, narrativized example that demonstrates their understanding of the concept. For their final project, students could choose from one of two options: 1) a creative project (designing a choice-based dating simulator) and 2) a critical gaming analysis. An in-class group exercise around Week 5 introduced the students to the first final project option and allowed them to start exploring it. The gameplay logs from their weekly journals were to be used as the data for those pursuing the second final project option. 

(1) Weekly Journal

Except on the days with a designated prompt, you can have up to two (2) freebies. This is designed so that it will help you keep up with class discussions and prepare for the final project.

1. Reading Note

a. You are expected to have come read the assigned readings before coming to each class. From the readings you read for the week, pick one (1) academic reading (journal article or book chapter) that you found interesting and include in your Weekly Journal as your Reading Note. Please follow the format below.

Bibliography: APA recommended

Takeaways: Key summary points or takeaways based on the reading. No more than 3 sentences.

Application/Thoughts: Discuss your reflections on the concept and/or apply to an example(s) and discuss. You may draw on class discussions, make connections to your gameplay log, or discuss its relevance to your final project. Putting readings in conversations with each other is also encouraged. Quality over quantity—e.g., should not exceed a paragraph; aim for insightful 2-3 sentences.

[Optional] Key quotes: Put in quotation marks and include page number(s).

2. Gameplay Log 

Play your game of choice* for at least 30 minutes every week. You may exceed 30 minutes, and this does not need to be in one sitting. (*on some weeks, there may be a designated game.)

Answer if there are any journal prompts.

Write down 1) game name, 2) when you played and your total playtime, and 3) three (3) bullet points of your play experience/observations. Include details, also bullet pointed. For example, don’t just write “It was good.” What do you mean by “good” and what made you feel that way? Was it because of certain features, the way you played it, or any other external circumstances? Make sure to screen cap or memo if something interesting happened or there is something you think you might want to refer to later. See formatting example below:

Game Name: write name of the game

Playtime: XX hour XX minutes

Aug 22 Mon 12:30-1:15 pm (45 minutes)

Aug 23 Wed 10:00-11:00 pm (1 hour)

(add as needed)

Notes:

Your play experience #1 (repeat for play experience #2 and #3)

Supporting details such as a relevant feature, your thought/feeling, a reason, relevant information

Supporting detail

Supporting detail

(2) Reflection Essay x2

These will be short essays (~2pages). The first will be on your personal relationship to games and the second will be on your social play experience of playing either Among Us or Pokémon Go with your classmates. Instructions will be provided.

(3) Documentary Notes x2

There will be two at-home screening days. Links will be available on Blackboard. After watching each documentary, you will upload a list of timestamped quotes and quick impressions from the documentary. Instructions will be provided.

(4) Midterm Exam

Some people feel more comfortable with taking an exam, others with writing papers. Your midterm will be a take-home Blackboard exam. We will go over the format in class before the exam.

(5) Final Project: Final Presentation + Final Paper

For your final project, you will give a short final presentation and submit a final paper (~5 page without references, tables, images, etc). You will have two options. Option 1 will be a creative project. You will develop one of the class exercises we will do during the semester (designing a choice-based dating simulator) and write about your experience, thought process, etc. Option 2 will be a critical game analysis. You will refer to your weekly gameplay logs and critically analyze the game(s) that you played during the semester. In both cases, you will be required to discuss your positionality and integrate course materials and discussions. Instructions will be provided.

Image 3. A Sample “In the Previous Class” Review Slide . I have befriended continuity, repetition, and gradual build-up in my lecture organization as well. At the beginning of each class, I briefly review some key concepts and/or discussion points from the previous class. I use this time to stress important ideas and help students immerse themselves back into the course narrative, even if they could not attend a few times. This also helps me remind myself of my progress and easily connect together lectures delivered on different days. The left-side image is a Mentimeter word cloud on “game” from the first day.

Course Schedule: A Weekly Breakdown

The narrative of my syllabus, also represented by the respective section titles, can be put as: “we can/should talk about games…by studying these things…for these things”. Classroom is where theory can be practiced. This semester, I paid additional attention to two diversity and inclusivity goals—or, goals for better science—while finalizing the course materials: 1) actively discuss and embrace, if not center, casual games and casual gameplay, as opposed to reproducing the overconcentration on stereotypically “hardcore” games and playstyles; 2) incorporate works on non-English, non-Western cases and by traditionally underrepresented authors throughout the semester, not only on “global” or “diversity” weeks. My training and background both helped me and limited me. The syllabus will continue to be a work in progress. This is one of the reasons why I decided to share it: let’s talk, let’s work together.

The course schedule is as follows. Please note that the original schedule has been reformatted from a table-based version to the current text-only version. Additionally, there are materials that I did not assign as reading to prevent overburdening the students but introduced in class that my students loved, such as Nick Bowman and colleagues’ 2022 work(**) on online discourses around Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that discusses eudaimonic media effects. One of my students seemed to be particularly fascinated by the notion of “proactive stickiness” from Jen-Her Wu and colleagues’ 2010 article(***) on the Uses and Gratification theory and online games that we discussed in class.

The course schedule was prefaced with the following statement: “This syllabus is subject to change—and probably will change—based on the progress of the class, news events, and/or guest speaker availability.” It did change. I drafted the map, but my students and I navigated together. Based on what I observed during the semester and from student presentations, I am happy to announce that we have progressed and arrived.

Week 1

8/22 Mon: Introduction

N/A

8/24 Wed: “Game”: What’s special about you?

Suits, B. (1967). What is a Game?. Philosophy of science, 34(2), 148-156. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/288138

[Recommended] McKee, A. (2016). Chapter 3 What is Fun?. FUN!: What Entertainment Tells Us About Living a Good Life. Palgrave Pivot.

Due: Beginning of the semester class survey

Week 2

8/29 Mon: Technology: Who are you, are you on our side?

Murphie, A., & Potts, J. (2003). Introduction:‘Culture’and ‘Technology’. In Culture and Technology (pp. 1-10). Palgrave, London.

Meyrowitz, J. (1999). Understandings of media. ETC: a review of general semantics, 56(1), 44-52. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42579860

8/31 Wed: Technology: The decision-makers

Postman, N. (1998). Five things we need to know about technological change. Talk delivered in Denver, CO. https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/materials/postman.pdf

[Recommended] Winner, L. (1988) “Do artifacts have politics?” The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high technology. The University of Chicago Press.

Due: Journal #1: In lieu of Gameplay Log, make a list of games (at least 5) that look interesting to you. How did you learn about them? What makes them more/less appealing than others? (Ignore cost, system requirements, etc for now but pick ones you have not played before)

Week 3

9/5 Mon: Labor Day (No Class)

9/7 Wed: Video Game History (Online - Documentary)

Watch: TheUpliftingGuy (2016). “The History of Video Games Documentary.” YouTube. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7-BN0qdZDk&ab_channel=TheUpliftingGuy

Williams, D. (2006). A (brief) social history of gaming. In P. Vorderer & J. Bryant (Eds.), Video Games: Motivations and Consequences of Use. Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum.

Due: Documentary Notes #1

Week 4

9/12 Mon: Social Consequences: The Good, the Bad, and the Nuanced

Mäyrä, F. (2008). Game Culture: Meaning in Games. An introduction to game studies. Sage.

Steinkuehler, C. A. (2006). Why game (culture) studies now?. Games and culture, 1(1), 97-102. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412005281911

Due: Essay #1: My gaming experience (What’s your relationship to games? Do you play any? Do you identify as a gamer? Are there any games or gaming experiences that are/were significant to you? If you do not play or dislike games, why? Please explain/elaborate—no simple yes/no answers.)

9/14 Wed: Reading games: From my experience…

Shaw, A. (2010). What is video game culture? Cultural studies and game studies. Games and culture, 5(4), 403-424. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412009360414

Bourke, B. (2014). Positionality: Reflecting on the research process. The qualitative report, 19(33), 1-9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2014.1026

OR

Shaw, R. M., Howe, J., Beazer, J., & Carr, T. (2020). Ethics and positionality in qualitative research with vulnerable and marginal groups. Qualitative Research, 20(3), 277-293. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794119841839

Due: Journal #2 Pick a game and download. Explain why you chose that game. What are your first impressions?

Week 5

9/19 Mon: Reading games: So, you are saying [       ]?

Consalvo, M., & Dutton, N. (2006). Game analysis: Developing a methodological toolkit for the qualitative study of games. Game studies, 6(1), 1-17. http://www.gamestudies.org/0601/articles/consalvo_dutton

9/21 Wed: Coded: IF A THEN B

Juul, J. (2005). Introduction. In Half-real: Video games between real rules and fictional worlds. MIT Press

Plotkin, A. (2011) Characterizing, if not defining, interactive fiction. In Jackson-Mead, K., Wheeler, J. R. (eds) IF Theory Reader. Boston, MA: Transcript On Press, pp. 59–68.

Due: Journal #3

Week 6

9/26 Mon: (En/de)Coded: Designers and players

Stang, S. (2019) “This action will have consequences”: interactivity and player agency. Game Studies 19(1). Available at: http://gamestudies.org/1901/articles/stang

Consalvo, M. (2009). Chapter 4 Gaining Advantage: How Videogame Players Define and Negotiate Cheating. Cheating: Gaining advantage in videogames. MIT Press

Due: Play Coming Out Simulator: http://ncase.me/cos/ (content warning)

9/28 Wed: (De/en)Coded: Players and designers

Rogers, E. M. (2003) Chapter 1: Elements of diffusion. Diffusion of Innovations (5th edition). Free Press.

Kahn, A. S., Shen, C., Lu, L., Ratan, R. A., Coary, S., Hou, J., Meng, J., Osborn, J., & Williams, D. (2015). The Trojan Player Typology: A cross-genre, cross-cultural, behaviorally validated scale of video game play motivations. Computers in Human Behavior, 49, 354–361. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.03.018

Due: Journal #4 [Coming Out Simulator]

Week 7

10/3 Mon: From text to context: Monetization

Alha, K., Koskinen, E., Paavilainen, J., Hamari, J., & Kinnunen, J. (2014). Free-to-play games: Professionals’ perspectives. Proceedings of Nordic DiGRA, 2014. http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/free-to-play-games-professionals-perspectives/

Nieborg, D. B. (2015). Crushing Candy: The Free-to-Play Game in Its Connective Commodity Form. Social Media + Society, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115621932

Recommended games:

Game Dev Story (Kairosoft)

Game Dev Tycoon (Greenheart Games)

10/5 Wed: From text to context: Gaming culture

Gray, K. L. (2020). Chapter 1 The “Problem” of Intersectionality in Digital Gaming Culture. Intersectional Tech : Black Users in Digital Gaming. LSU Press.

Paul, C. A. (2018). Introduction. The toxic meritocracy of video games: Why gaming culture is the worst. U of Minnesota Press.

Due: Journal #5

Week 8

10/10 Mon: From gaming culture to contemporary culture 

Kim, D. O. (2021). “Pay for your choices”: Deconstructing neoliberal choice through free-to-play mobile interactive fiction games. New Media & Society, OnlineFirst. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211018177

10/12 Wed: Midterm Exam (Blackboard)

Week 9

10/17 Mon: Intersections: Gender/Sex/Sexuality (Online - Documentary)

Watch: Sun-Higginson, S. (2015). “GTFO.”. Streaming available via UIC library. Link: https://i-share-uic.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CARLI_UIC/vq50bm/alma99494929112005897

Chess, S. (2017). Introduction. Ready player two: Women gamers and designed identity. U of Minnesota Press.

OR

Cote, A. C. (2020) Chapter 3 Girly Games and Girl Gamers: Inferential Sexism and Its Impacts. Gaming Sexism: Gender and Identity in the Era of Casual Video Games. New York University Press.

Due: Documentary Notes #2

10/19 Wed: Intersections: Gender/Sex/Sexuality

Harvey, A. (2018). The fame game: working your way up the celebrity ladder in Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Games and Culture, 13(7), 652-670. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412018757872

Bailey, E. N., Miyata, K., & Yoshida, T. (2021). Gender composition of teams and studios in video game development. Games and Culture, 16(1), 42-64. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412019868381

[media] D’Anastasio, C. (August 7, 2018) Inside The Culture Of Sexism At Riot Games. Kotaku. https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483

[Recommended] Jenson, J., Taylor, N., de Castell, S., & Dilouya, B. (2015). Playing with our selves: Multiplicity and identity in online gaming. Feminist Media Studies, 15(5), 860-879. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2015.1006652

Due: Play Kim Kardashian: Hollywood (mobile)

Due: Journal #6 [Kim Kardashian: Hollywood]

Week 10

10/24 Mon: Intersections: Gender/Sex/Sexuality

Chang, E. Y. (2015). Love is in the air: Queer (im) possibility and straightwashing in FrontierVille and World of Warcraft. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 2(2), 6-31. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.2.2.0006

Lankoski, P., Apperley, T., & Harviainen, J. T. (2022). Platform-produced Heteronormativity: A Content Analysis of Adult Videogames on Patreon. Games and Culture, 18(1). DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120221084453

[Recommended] Dym, B., Brubaker, J., & Fiesler, C. (2018). theyre all trans sharon”: Authoring gender in video game fan fiction. Game Studies, 18(3). http://gamestudies.org/1803/articles/brubaker_dym_fiesler

10/26 Wed: Intersections: Race/Ethnicity/Nationality

Gray, K. L. (2012). Intersecting oppressions and online communities: Examining the experiences of women of color in Xbox Live. Information, Communication & Society, 15(3), 411-428. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2011.642401

Brock, A. (2011). ‘‘When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong’’: Resident Evil 5, Racial Representation, and Gamers. Games and Culture, 6(5), 429-452. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412011402676

Due: Journal #7

Week 11

10/31 Mon: Intersections: Race/Ethnicity/Nationality

Hussain, U., Yu, B., Cunningham, G. B., & Bennett, G. (2021). “I can be who I am when I play tekken 7”: E-Sports women participants from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Games and Culture, 16(8), 978-1000. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120211005360

Mukherjee, S. (2018). Playing subaltern: Video games and postcolonialism. Games and Culture, 13(5), 504-520. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412015627258

11/2 Wed: Social Gaming (Online/hybrid – Group Gameplay Day)

OPTION 1: Among Us

With assigned class team (at least 2-3 matches)

With strangers (at least 2-3 matches)

OPTION 2: Pokemon Go

Alone (at least 30 minutes)

With assigned pair (at least 45 minutes)

*Contact me in advance if you wish to explore a different game.

Due: Journal #8 [Among Us or Pokemon Go]

Week 12

11/7 Mon: Intersections: Age and Ability

Gray, K. L. (2020). Chapter 5 #TechFail: From intersectional (in)accessibility to inclusive design. Intersectional Tech : Black Users in Digital Gaming. LSU Press.

Liu, M., Choi, S., Kim, D. O., & Williams, D. (2021). Connecting in-game performance, need satisfaction, and psychological well-being: A comparison of older and younger players in World of Tanks. New Media & Society, OnlineFirst. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211062545

11/9 Wed: Final Project check-in/Workshop 

Due: Journal #9

Week 13

11/14 Mon: Not JUST games: Social gaming

Chen, V. H. H., & Wu, Y. (2015). Group identification as a mediator of the effect of players’ anonymity on cheating in online games. Behaviour & Information Technology, 34(7), 658-667. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2013.843721

Vella, K. et al. (2019). A sense of belonging: Pokémon GO and social connectedness. Games and Culture, 14(6), 583-603. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412017719973

Due: Essay #2 Social Play

11/16 Wed: Not JUST games: Learning and acting together

Steinkuehler, C. A. (2004). Learning in massively multiplayer online games. ICLS’04: Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Learning sciences, 521-528. DOI: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1149126.1149190

Lin, H., & Sun, C. T. (2022). Game-Assisted Social Activism: Game Literacy in Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Movement. Games and Culture, 17(7-8). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120211061852

Due: Journal #10

Week 14

11/21 Mon: Not JUST games: Transmedia content, E-sports

Behm-Morawitz, E. (2017). Examining the intersection of race and gender in video game advertising. Journal of Marketing Communications, 23(3), 220-239. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13527266.2014.914562

Read both:

Choi, Y., Slaker, J. S., & Ahmad, N. (2020). Deep strike: playing gender in the world of Overwatch and the case of Geguri. Feminist Media Studies, 20(8), 1128-1143. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2019.1643388

Cullen, A. L. (2018). “I play to win!”: Geguri as a (post) feminist icon in esports. Feminist Media Studies, 18(5), 948-952. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1498112

11/23 Wed: Not JUST games: Livestreaming (Online - Zoom) [Guest speaker: Christopher J. Persaud, Ph.D. Candidate, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California]

Persaud, C. J., & Perks, M. E. (2022). Beauty From the Waist Up: Twitch Drag, Digital Labor, and Queer Mediated Liveness. Television & New Media, 23(5). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764221080912

Ruberg, B., Cullen, A. L., & Brewster, K. (2019). Nothing but a “titty streamer”: legitimacy, labor, and the debate over women’s breasts in video game live streaming. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 36(5), 466-481. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2019.1658886

Week 15

11/28 Mon: Final Presentations [Zoom]

11/30 Wed: Final Presentations [In-person]

Week 16

12/6 Tue: Final Paper Due Date

OPTION 1: Creative Project: Dating Simulator (other choice-based games are also fine)

OPTION 2: Critical Game Analysis

Image 4. A Sample of the Original Weekly Schedule Table

Closing Remarks

A student had told me that this class felt like home. Every week, I looked forward to learning from my students. I will be teaching Games as Social Technology again in the Spring semester, and am looking forward to navigating together with my new students. UIC and Chicago have begun to feel like home.

If you wish to see the full syllabus, please email me at doownkim[at]uic[dot]edu.

Notes.

(*)The original Games as Social Technology syllabus (then 300-level) was developed by Dr. Kishonna L. Gray, who is currently at the University of Kentucky. Her knowledge and brilliance, which I was already aware of from her work including her 2020 book Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming, inspired me once again. I carried over some of the readings and materials from the original syllabus in designing my version of the course, not just for continuity but because they were essential and excellent. I would like to thank Dr. Gray for her insights and for her endorsement of sharing my version of Games as Social Technology on Pop Junctions. The current version of the syllabus reflects my vision of the course and represents my views and interpretations only.

(**) Bowman, N. D., Bowen, D. A., Mercado, M. C., Resignato, L. J., & de Villemor Chauveau, P. (2022). “I did it without hesitation. Am I the bad guy?”: Online conversations in response to controversial in-game violence. New Media & Society, OnlineFirst. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221078865

(***) Wu, J. H., Wang, S. C., & Tsai, H. H. (2010). Falling in love with online games: The uses and gratifications perspective. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(6), 1862-1871. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2010.07.033

Do Own “Donna” Kim is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago's Department of Communication. She studies everyday, playful digital cultures and mediated social interactions. She is particularly interested in the questions of what “(being) real” and being together mean in emerging technological contexts. Her work examines boundary-crossing communication practices, with a focus on physical/virtual/hybrid places, norms and categories, and the notion of being human/artificial. Donna also writes about Korean digital feminism and popular media. Her work can be found in journals such as New Media & Society, International Journal of Communication, Mass Communication and Society, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CHI PLAY), and Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.

Donna received her Ph.D. degree in Communication from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She is a Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies Alum.

Email: doownkim[at]uic[dot]edu

Website: https://www.doowndonnakim.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DoownDonnaKim

YouTube Musicians and a Pathway from Fandom to Empowerment

In 2007, I was a K-12 music teacher in Northern Illinois when one of my students told me about this amazing website that had a ton of music videos that I could watch for free. Of course, the video-sharing website he wanted to show me was YouTube, the site with the slogan “Broadcast yourself. Watch and share your videos worldwide!” The site instantly provided me with listening and learning examples for my students to enhance their time in my classroom. Not only could I find random choir performances of the music I had programmed to have my students go home and practice with, but I also pulled inspiration from the ways people were converging culture [see Henry Jenkins’ 2006 book about convergence culture where he discusses the various ways grassroots creators mashed up commercially-produced media with their own content during the early 2000s] to propel my students into new ways of creating. Projects in my classroom included creating cover music video performances, re-scripting and composing new music for movie trailers, developing picture montages of their favorite pop culture idols featuring music curated by my students, and filming documentaries about Black History Month for which students wrote scripts and chose music that exemplified their messages.

The YouTube Effect

In 2008, I went back to university to pursue higher education degrees and embarked on researching YouTube and the various ways musicians used the platform to interact with music. My master’s thesis, which eventually manifested in an article entitled “The YouTube Effect: How YouTube Has Provided New Ways to Consume, Create, and Share Music” (Cayari, 2011), was a case study that looked at a teenage musician, Wade Johnston, who was one of the pioneers of multitracking in the early days of YouTube. Multitracking is the practice of layering audio tracks on top of one another to create a song. What Wade did was not uncommon in the music recording industry. Commercial artists like David Byrne, The Carpenters, Michael Jackson, and Enya are all known to “dub” their own vocals and play multiple instruments on their studio recordings. Multitrack recordings abound on YouTube, and if you’d like to see how the art form evolved, watch A History of Virtual Choirs: A documentary about online singing.

Wade created his YouTube videos by himself in the comfort of his childhood home or dorm room. He had a “wing it” mentality where he sat down to record and added tracks until he was happy with the product. The resulting recordings were quite complex for the time, especially for a 19-year-old on a MacBook. Wade figured out how to use free software like iMovie and Audacity to create videos that went viral (see Figure 1 below). 

FIGURE 1: ANALYSIS OF A MULTI-TRACK yOUTUBE MUSIC VIDEO

Wade’s work exemplified how YouTube was changing the ways musicians could share their music with others and develop a following. The affordability of technology made hardware and software available to the masses that were previously restricted to professional studios. As an academic, inspired by his story, I made the bold claim:

“YouTube is an art medium; a technology which allows listeners to become singers, watchers to become actors, and consumers to become producers creating new original works and supplementing existing ones. It allows everyone to have a voice that can be heard and a face that can be seen. YouTube is constantly pulling for viewers’ attention and entertainment.”

— Cayari, 2011, p. 24.Musical Cover as Fan Activity

Online media platforms are so prevalent in our lives that most people are hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t created some form of media content, which can range from text in the form of life status updates on Facebook to pictures of well-plated meals on Instagram to trendy dancing videos on TikTok. Many musicians utilize social media sharing platforms to develop a following by publishing covers of popular music artists and other popular media. This helps them connect to an already established audience or fandom. Even though Wade wanted to share his original works, he found that popular chart toppers brought more viewers to his channel than songs he wrote himself. For example, a cover of I’m Yours by Jason Mraz brought hundreds of thousands of views to his channel. For a time, his cover was suggested more than the original commercially produced music video. The tactic of playing covers to build an audience is common; just think of all the bands you see at bars or in garage concerts, which is well documented in How Popular Musicians Learn by Lucy Green (2002). While Wade chose songs that he thought would do well with his audiences, many YouTube creators situate their creation within their favorite fandom.

Carlos Eiene, who is known as Insaneintherainmusic on YouTube, started his YouTube channel by publishing covers of his favorite video game music (VGM). The VGM fandom was fertile ground for Carlos, who was passionate about sharing his loves for jazz, video game music, and playing saxophone. He published over 100 music videos in his first year on YouTube, actively talked to others in online chatrooms and forums, and even encouraged his viewers to join him socially and musically through virtual ensembles and on his Discord. If you’re interested in hearing his story, check out my documentary about How a Middle School Band Kid Created an Online Musical Empire.

Carlos exemplified fanception, a word I used to describe the phenomenon of a fandom existing within a fandom (Cayari, 2020, p. 397; read more at Fanception and Musical Fan Activity on YouTube). Carlos existed within the VGM fandom. He created content and gathered his own group of fans, who in turn developed their own fandom of raindrops. Raindrops not only contributed to a community and fandom around Carlos’s content by interacting with him and each other on other social media but also attended live meet-ups at conventions and concerts.

Giving Back to Others through Mentorship

Since I’m an educator, I’m fascinated about how musicians who produce content online learn. I was ecstatic to find that many online content creators found that music classes and informal learning online worked in tandem to set them up for success. If you’d like to watch or read more about helpful learning strategies used by musicians who publish online, click one of the above links (Cayari, 2022).

Since many people learn about how to publish music online through informal music learning online—which includes, but is not limited to, reading texts, watching videos, asking questions of others on social media, and playing along with recordings, whether they be tutorials or commercially produced music—they often evolve their online presence from consumer to creator to, what I want to call here, contributor. (We all love alliterative lists.) As veteran creators, they contribute to the online community (whether that is of generic YouTube creators, affinity groups that focus on specific fandoms, or their own cultivated online gathering space) beyond just publishing their original and derivative content. For example, Carlos started developing communities in which others could learn from him and each other. He longed to create an affinity space at the intersections of jazz, video games, and music making. He helped teach others through tutorials, advice videos, and texts. This is a common trend for musicians on YouTube, as fans often ask, “How did you do that?” These creators like to give back to their communities by pulling back the veil of creation, thus inspiring a new generation of creators.

Since the end of my research time with Carlos, he has moved away from covering other people’s works to focusing on producing original content he makes as a composer, songwriter, and improviser. Making covers of other people’s content is great for finding fellow fans and then developing one’s own fanception-driven following. However, it comes with some challenges. For example, many of my research participants have discussed how they end up appeasing their audiences rather than focusing on the music that brings them the most meaning, joy, or fulfillment. It’s a delicate balance between focusing on entertainment and aesthetics. Additionally, producing covers is much less profitable than publishing original work because of royalties, copyright strikes, and revenue sharing. Many amateur/hobbyist research participants I’ve spoken with focus on covers, as they exist within an established fandom, while research participants who are professional musicians tend to have a pivot point where they pursue original works, rather than reproducing music composed by others.

Finding Empowerment through Musical Self-Reflection

While this pivot doesn’t have to be an exclusive decision where an artist only publishes original works and no covers, the focusing on one’s own music often requires self-reflection: a musical mindfulness, if you will. Additionally, when an artist focuses on their own music, they seem to find their musical “voice.” And, I’m not writing about voice as the ability to make sound, but the sense of autonomy that empowers one to share their beliefs, thoughts, and experiences. You might imagine how scary it could be for an artist with hundreds of thousands of followers online when they decide to move from a mindset of making audiences happy and delighting in shared interests to creating music based on their life experiences and personal aesthetics, especially if their music centers around their identity as a person from a marginalized or disenfranchised community. After all, many people believe the comment sections of social media platforms to be toxic, angry spaces where trolls abound. However, online forums and comment sections can also be places that help communities express themselves, find other likeminded individuals, and develop a support system of parasocial relationships. Amie Waters is an exemplar of someone who used her YouTube channel to share parts of her identity through the music she composed and produced.

Amie was most well-known for her VGM covers, which featured tracks of synthesizers, guitars, voice, and other random instruments. She also produced original works that were often one-off recordings intermixed in a sea of covers. In 2018, Amie released an EP online called Bisexual Space Magic as a coming out event. She found the process empowering because she was able to share the music she wrote about her journey in life. Many of her fans on social media loved the music and encouraged her to be authentic and keep producing the music she wanted to create. During the development and release of the EP, Amie realized she was trans, and the music in her studio started to evolve. She had worried about sharing that aspect of her identity with not just family and friends, but also her online community, opting to continue using her birthname. However, social media was integral in helping her find inspiration, support, and empowerment. Observing her YouTube channel helped me see an evolution of physical, visual, and emotional changes through her musical performance: wearing gender-affirming clothing; changes in the hair on her body, face, and head; and even the colors of lighting and audio-visual editing effects. She used text, visual cues, and music to come out, testing the waters of her audiences by moving from her smaller, more intimate platforms to the social media on which she had the largest number of followers. She first came out on Twitter, then her blog, and finally on YouTube. She worried that she would lose patrons (those who support her financially for the content she publishes online). However, that was not the case. While she did see a dip in subscriber count after coming out, all of her former-followers left quietly, and she was overwhelmed by the positive support from her audiences. She soon released an album called Cosmos of the Soul, a ‘synthwave space odyssey,’ in the form of an instrumental queer space opera that told the story of her sexuality and gender journey. If you’d like to read or watch more about how Amie became a Trans Synth Queen, click on one of the above links.

Expanding Music through Social Media

It excites me to talk to amazing YouTube creators and learn about how they learn music and publish art on social media. Many of my participants have shared that they piece together their education from institutionalized learning (school and university courses) and online resources. Yet, the challenge is that the venues of learning are often siloed. A commonly held option in the 2000’s and 2010’s was that people pursing musical careers should stay away from publishing their work on YouTube, assuming that self-produced creations would haunt a professional musician later on in life (for more about the relationship between Music Education and Informal Learning in the YouTube Era, click on the link or watch the video below). I’m so glad that many of my colleagues and I are working hard to help students gain skills in the classroom that set them up to be life-long music makers aided by the resources and tools that proliferate online. After all, when I visit elementary classrooms and ask kids what they want to do when they grow up, pop star and violin player are nowhere near as popular as TikTok dancer and musical influencer. So, I’ll keep my eye out for how musicians are using media and technology in fascinating ways so that I can help teachers and students learn more about creating media in 2022 and beyond.

Citations

Cayari, C. (2011). ‘The YouTube effect: How YouTube has provided new ways to consume, create, and share music.’ International Journal of Education & the Arts, 12(6), 1-28, http://www.ijea.org/v12n6/

Cayari, C. (2020). ‘Fanception and musical fan activity on YouTube.’ In J. Waldron, K. Veblen, & S. Horsley (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning, 395-415, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Cayari, C. (2022). Learning strategies of video game music makers: Informal and school-based learning for online publication. International Journal of Music Education 40(3), 445–459, https://doi.org/10.1177/02557614211070037

Green, L. (2002). How popular musicians learn: A way ahead for music education. Bodman, UK: MPG Books.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide, New York, NY: NYU Press.

Christopher Cayari (he/they; DrCayari on gmail, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram) is an associate professor of music at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. He holds a Ph.D. and M.M.E. in Music Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a bachelor’s degree in music education from Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, IL. Their research spans topics including, but not limited to, YouTube, identity, communities of practice, learning & teaching, race & ethnicity, gender & sexuality, and musical & theatrical performance. His video research on music, video games, and social media can be found on this YouTube playlist.

Geeking-Out, Nerd Culture, and Oral History Methodology: An Interview with See You at San Diego’s Mathew Klickstein (Part Two)

See Part One of “Geeking-Out, Nerd Culture, and Oral History Methodology: An Interview with See You at San Diego’s Mathew Klickstein”.

One of the things that struck me reading the book is that it felt like I was walking through the aisles of Comic-Con and eavesdropping on either group conversations or just individual people talking. I thought the way you edited it was really interesting because you put people in conversation with each other who weren’t necessarily having a real conversation together, right?

Yeah absolutely. I think one of the times it worked out really well was when Stan Sakai and Kevin Eastman are talking, and I really had a lot of fun with that one bouncing them back and forth and having them completing each other’s sentences. I’ve gotten adept at that over the years. I love watching documentaries, I love oral histories, I love reading them, so I think I have a knack for that. A lawyer from Penguin had actually said [for the Nickelodeon book] that we needed to maybe put something in the beginning that made it clear that this was not some round table panel, because it seemed too much like everybody was having a conversation with each other. And I told my editor, first of all, please explain to him what an oral history is. Second of all, tell him that's probably the best compliment I ever received. Thank you for saying it is that seamless that legally we might have to tell people this wasn’t all done at the same time. 

If you notice, [for See You at San Diego] I was also very intentional on how I did the photos and art as well. It's not always exactly what people are talking about. I love the fact that you are turning pages, and there are a lot of people - you might not know who they are. But then every now and then it's like “what the heck! Arnold Schwarzenegger?!” I love that celebrities kind of pop-up out of nowhere instead of having them all in one place. I wanted it to be like a little bit of a surprise. Like, you have to flip back and be like “did I just miss John Landis?” Because, again, that’s what it's like at Comic-Con. You’re walking, you’re talking to friends, you’re looking at your phone, looking at some books, you bump into someone, you keep walking, then you go “wait a minute that was -”

That was Patton Oswald! Which is exactly what happened to me this past year at Comic-Con.

Yeah! Exactly, exactly. 

And I wanted [the story] to digress. I wanted it to go on some side tangents. I like thinking of it in terms of calculus rather than arithmetic. It's three dimensional and it puts you in it more. It's similar to something like a Mad Magazine or Far Side or Addams Family comic strip. There are things you might not have seen the first time, there are comical Easter eggs for those who I know are going to read every word, and every caption. I want it to be fun, to be a scavenger hunt; I want it to be an adventure because that's what Comic-Con is and that's what geek culture is. That’s why I like doing oral histories because it's an unconventional literary form. 

 

costumed attendees, comic-con 1982

 

Focusing on the last phrases of the book’s subtitle - “fandom and the triumph of geek culture.” A significant portion of Fandom Studies’ foundational work focuses on this geek culture as a subculture. As Erin Hanna states in the book, “fan studies comes out of Cultural Studies.” This nerd and geek culture was an avenue for outcasts and misfits to find community, make meaning and interact with texts and narratives that were not part of the mainstream. Now these texts seem to be part of the mainstream. And to oversimplify it - geek culture has indeed triumphed. Paul M. Sammon discusses in the book, “did geek culture take over the mainstream or did the mainstream take over the geek culture? Definitely the latter.” What are your thoughts on this, and how did others interviewed in the book respond to this shift?

It is interesting you bring that up, because it very much goes back to the origin of all this - to 2014 again. This is so much of what I wanted to accomplish with that project. In fact, a couple of my good friends, when they heard that I was doing this project, one of them said, “oh my God, you are finally getting to do your nerd and geek culture book, aren’t you?” And I was like, “shhh, yes, but under the lens of Comic-Con.” So that’s been an obsession of mine for many years and ultimately why the nerd book failed, because the new editor was like “hey, nerds are cool now, Big Bang Theory.” I was like, “well yes, but also no.” And it’s like - what two things at once!? And I’m like “yeah, nuance.”

Yeah, nuance!

And the editor was like, no we aren’t going to do this anymore- bye - no footnotes for you!

But this was an opportunity for me to explore it like a huge case study of exactly what you just said. And it goes back to why I was glad it was an oral history, because a lot of what you just said, people would agree with and some people would not agree with. Including Mark Evanier. He doesn’t like referring to this group as outcasts or misfits - he didn’t think that they were. He was one of the people I had to have in this. He would disagree that it is a group of misfits and outsiders. 

Well, I agree with Mark and disagree. In early Fandom Studies, fans are discussed in those terms. I have this debate with my husband, who is 5 years older than me and had to hide his Star Wars posters and comic books from peers in High School. He’ll say to me “oh you're such a nerd” and I’m like “yeah, you mean - cool.” Right? Because it’s cool to be a nerd. 

But Mark is saying even back then. Obviously now, and that's the thesis that is hard to avoid, now it is cool to be a “nerd” or a “geek,” which is why there is a lot of discussion about real “nerds” or “geeks” who feel like their culture has been appropriated. 

Of course!

That was always the big question with The Big Bang Theory. Is this pushing nerd and geek culture and getting more people to know who Stan Lee is, getting more people to know about Comic-Con, getting more people to know about free comic book day on Wednesday? Or is it kind of making fun of them? Also, some of those people are very attractive. There was a lot of that discussion even when I was working on the nerd book. There were a lot of videos on what does it mean to be a real nerd versus a fake nerd? I even talked to Diablo Cody about it; she refers to it as “hard nerds” versus “soft nerds.” I’ve written and talked about this, but I go with Douglas Coupland, who wrote in his 1995 novel Microserfs, that “a geek is a nerd who knows he is one.” And I agree with that. I’ve actually talked to some of The Simpsons people [about the terms] nerd, geek, and dork. Comic Book Guy is a geek, Lisa is a nerd, and Milhouse is a dork. Lisa doesn’t necessarily want to be a nerd, she doesn’t really like being called a nerd, she doesn’t even really think of herself as a nerd. She really just wants to be left alone to read, and be into jazz, and play her jazz music. Comic Book Guy is a geek - brightly colored, loud, overt - a geek is a nerd who knows he is one. It’s an opt in - “I’m a geek and proud.” And Milhouse can’t help but be a dork. In fact, I had Mike Reiss tell me tell me the reasons they had Milhouse’s father as a loser because they wanted to show that Milhouse is genetically predisposed to being a loser. He is a dork, he is not even a nerd and good at things, and he is not necessarily a geek. The point is, I think there is a lot of this [discussion in the book]. Like a lot of people I interchange nerd and geek. But philosophically, existentially, and scholastically, the taxonomy of all this, I believe they are two different things. I bring it to the archetype of Stan Lee is the geek and Jack Kirby is the nerd. You can kind of play that game. 

So which one are you? Are you the geek or the nerd? 

Haha! Good question! No one has ever asked me that before - uh oh - dun dun dun! I’m a dork actually, I kind of suck. I don’t know, I go back and forth a bit. I think there are some things I'm nerdy about and some things I’m geeky about. Well let’s just say, today I was wearing a Ghost Dog beanie, and a My Pet Monster shirt, and a Twilight Zone jacket. So, I’m pretty geeky about that. And of course, like everything else, I think everyone is a little bit of everything. 

I agree! I was going to say, I think I’m a geek about Disney and a nerd about Shakespeare. 

Right, but then here’s a fun one. Then, you are not a nerd about Shakespeare, you are a geek. 

Indeed? Why?

Because if you were a real nerd about Shakespeare you wouldn’t say you're a nerd about Shakespeare. Remember, a geek is a nerd who knows he is one. 

I guess I am a geek about everything then. I’m pretty open about my fandoms. I embrace them and talk about them. 

If you say you're a nerd about Shakespeare then you are a geek about Shakespeare. That’s the trick - the existential trick. If we want to get technical about it, with my formula that no one else thinks about or knows about except for me and my friends who’ve heard my podcast, as soon as you say it you become a geek. Because a nerd doesn’t care about external perception. A nerd is just doing what a nerd does. 

I am definitely geeky then. 

You are geeky. You can say you are “geeking-out” about it. When you nerd-out, nerds go in. When you are nerding-out about something you are on the couch by yourself watching ten hours of whatever. When you geek-out on something, it's like “hey everybody! Look what I’m doing! I’m live tweeting it and with a bunch of friends.” Geeking-out is the explosion. 

I feel like, if you look at Fan Studies and think about what it means to be a “fan” - there is that community aspect that is heavy in the literature. So if you are a fan, you have to be a geek, because you are looking for the community and the group to participate in. There is outreach. It could be up for debate, but it’s heavy in the literature that fans are a part of participatory culture. 

That’s like Stan Lee with Kirby. Kirby just wants to sit there with his family and draw all day long. And leave him the hell alone. Stan is like, let’s do a lot with this, let’s make movies! Stan wanted to be Errol Flynn his whole life; Stan wanted to be a superstar. Stan’s hero was Errol Flynn. But you need that, you need both sides. 

But going back to what you said about [the Paul Sammon quote], I love that you brought that up. Paul really talks about [geek culture and the mainstream]. 

Well, it felt to me like the quote of the book, personally. It was the one that I latched onto. 

It was the stuff that I really wanted in the book and that’s really what it became. I talk a lot with [Erin Hanna] about it too. Was it that the geeks who took over or were the geeks taken over? One of my favorite books of all time is Animal Farm. And it is Animal Farm. I mean it really is - the revolution happens and then the revolutionaries become the establishment. And that happened here too. And frankly, here we go, time to get in some trouble, but I think there is a lot of that in the Comic-Con administration. But there are people from the administration that runs it now in a way that upsets some of the older people - some of the logistical and practical ways Comic-Con is done now. Patrick Reed, one of the curators for the Comic-Con museum, (and I’m saying this because he is putting it out there) he has been working with New York Comic-Con and trying to do a thing on hip-hop and comics, and they refuse to do anything with it. So, he has been putting out some information about why he thinks that's a bad thing. So, I think even in the way some of these conventions are run now is ultimately - if you will - the corporate elements of fandom. They are the people running the gatherings; there is an element of “the revolutionary has become the conservative” - the counterculture has become the establishment. 

I wanted to be able to talk about these things without coming off as too lofty. And I was like, the way I’ll do it is through the angle of that is who [Erin Hanna] is. She is a professor; she is supposed to do that. I’m going to get academic because I am talking to academics. And she is the person who actually introduced me to Henry’s work. He was named-dropped a couple times in the podcast and came up in this book (so I would have found him anyways), but she is the one who told me about his work with fan studies.

Yes, amazing! So in wrapping up, what is your hope for this book? What role do you see it playing in fan culture and the greater tradition of Comic-Con? 

Like anyone else, given the time and energy and resources I put into it, how passionate I am about the subject matter, how much I very much want the people who are discussed in the book - especially the ones who maybe haven’t gotten the credit that they deserve (or any at all) to get as much [credit] as possible. I would like this to be taught. I would like this to be part of curriculum. It is important to me to have academics and professors aware of this book. Plus, let's be honest, professors are easier to get a hold of than Kevin Smith!

Ha yes! We are responding to our own emails, so that helps.

One of the things that’s been hardest about getting the word out about [the book] is A) it’s not just about San Diego Comic-Con, B) it is not just about comic conventions, C) it is not just about comics. Like, just getting through those three hoops alone has been very difficult. It’s really about pop culture nostalgia of the last century through the lens of the prehistory/ history and expansion of Comic-Con simply because it's the biggest. 

I want people to take this seriously and I want people to be teaching this. You know, I’ve never really been into comics. I am into the comics world. I am the Margaret Mead of this (barring all the kind of negative stuff). But I would still hang out at comic book shops as a kid, because it was where you went to hang out with other kids who were into movies and TV shows. It’s sharing, it’s community. So, I hope… it would be great if this [book] got turned into a movie or a documentary. Some of this might be coming together. We did the podcast, we did the book, we did the audio book - there is literally only one more thing left. 

Well, there is always the musical!

Yeah, exactly, we’ll do the Broadway version! The point of all this being I hope [See You at San Diego] becomes part of that continuum and part of the cannon of people like you and Henry. Because this is the information. This is the source. And I want to make sure that we get the information right. When Rolling Stone Magazine, just a couple years ago, could have such an egregious error as saying New York Comic-Con and San Diego Comic-Con are the same thing in the first sentence on an origin story, it's really a danger. And when the Comic-Con people I interviewed in my book, hit them up and told [Rolling Stones], they didn’t fix it. It’s still up. 

I’m putting everything I have into this book. And look, even with the small advance I got from Fantagraphics, I probably would have done it for free. I really just wanted to do this project so bad, and I wanted it to be the best it could be. I would not be able to rest easy if I didn’t think I was doing every possible thing I could do to make sure it’s talked about, to make sure people know about it. And if it comes up as a clue on Jeopardy in 10 years that’s fantastic, but let’s hope it doesn’t take so long! 

 

Los Angeles launch event via Skylight Books and American Cinematheque: (l-r) moderator Allen Salkin, Scott Shaw!, Wendy All, Gus Krueger (son of Ken), Clayton Moore, Mike Towry, Phil Yeh; Scott Shaw!'s artwork made exclusively for the event projected behind them.

 

Lauren Alexandra Sowa is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication at Pepperdine University. She recently received her Ph.D. from the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on intersectional feminism and representation within production cultures, television, and popular culture. These interests stem from her several-decade career in the entertainment industry as member of SAG/AFTRA and AEA. Lauren is a proud Disneyland Magic Key holder and enthusiast of many fandoms.

Geeking-Out, Nerd Culture, and Oral History Methodology: An Interview with See You at San Diego’s Mathew Klickstein (Part One)

Mathew Klickstein is a multi-platform storyteller who consistently works in the formats of: reportage, non-fiction books and novels, ghostwriting, filmmaking, episodical television, live theatre, public speaking, comic book creation, audiobook originals, and podcasting. His recent book, See You at San Diego: An Oral History of Comic-Con, Fandom, and the Triumph of Geek Culture, is a fascinating (and unexpected) journey into the pop culture world. An excellent resource for fandom researchers and educators, See You at San Diego uses Comic-Con as a vehicle (or rather, a DeLorean) for introducing a broad cast of influential characters within pop culture who share their stories, opinions, and geekiness with the reader. Teeming with entertaining tangents and Easter eggs for the super-fan or keen reader, this oral history is one for the books - comic or otherwise!

As an acafan who proudly participates in numerous fandoms and a regular Comic-Con attendee over the last half-decade, I was thrilled to interview Mathew Klickstein about this book. Here, we discuss the often-circuitous path that is qualitative research and book publishing, as well as the implications of pop cultures’ transformation over the decades and its changing dynamic within fandom studies/ theory.

Cover of See You at San Diego (klickstein, 2022)

One of my favorite components to any superhero, fantasy, or Sci Fi narrative is the origin story. So before diving into the specifics of See You at San Diego I wanted to talk to you about its origin story. You have described the book as “the director's cut” of the SiriusXM podcast, Comic-Con Begins . I was wondering if you could explain what the podcast was about and how has See You at San Diego developed out of that. 

A lot of this goes back to 2014. I had just gotten off of finishing both the completion of and large scale promotion of my Nickelodeon book, Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon’s Golden Age. And that was extremely challenging on a number of different levels. Although that did come up as a clue on Jeopardy not too long ago. But, I was kind of exhausted, similar to what I always read and heard about what happened to Paul Thomas Anderson when he went from Boogie Nights to Magnolia - where what he really wanted to do was a simpler, easier, shorter project, but “whoops” it turned into Magnolia because he can’t help himself - same thing with me. 

It is 2014 and it is the 30th anniversary of Revenge of the Nerds. I had been reading those 33 ⅓ books; they were these little books that were about different movies- really random ones too. That really intrigued me, so I hit my agent at the time and said “I would love to do something like that about Revenge of the Nerds for the 30th anniversary.” So, I started interviewing people like Curtis Armstrong and director Jeff Kanew. I really enjoyed it and had some great conversations. And from that it started to change and develop to a point when my agent discovered that people in the industry all liked the idea of a book on Revenge of the Nerds, but they also said “well, there is just not enough there for that.” And also the publisher that was doing those movie books already folded or something - you know how that goes. And everyone was like, “but all this other stuff Matt is starting to capture…” When I talked to Curtis [Armstrong], we talked for over 2 ½ hours. And we were not just talking about Revenge of the Nerds. Also around this time, there was a lot of other discussions going on about what nerd and geek culture means, what it means to be a fan and all this - pop culture and all that. So the publishers were more interested in that larger story. So now I’m working on this book that went from small to huge, about the changing face of nerd and geek culture. Through that process I started talking to a bunch of people, one of them was Wendy All. She became my Comic-Con contact because she was one of the original committee members. 

Then, a lot of other things happened… and there was a moment when [the book] was orphaned. I was really upset because I already put a lot into this; I interviewed all these people, and this book is going to be a game changer - not just for me, but for the industry, and I really wanted to get at what it was to be a nerd and a geek. I got really invested in reading all these philosophy books - I was reading Theodor Adorno, Rousseau, Raymond Williams…

Oh wow! You were reading in my land!

I always tell everyone, that was my PhD! I was interviewing professors and neurologists. I was breaking new ground. [But] when we found the other editor, it was clear that she wanted this to be kind of a behind-the-scenes rumor mill about Big Bang Theory etc. When we started talking about footnotes, she was like “wait a second, footnotes?! Why would you have footnotes?” And I was like “oh. Uh oh. So I’m not going to have a joke about don’t mix-up György Lukács with George Lucas?” She was like, “who?”

Oops!

So anyway, that kind of fell apart. But, it always stuck with me that I wanted to do something more with all this information. And then the years go by, 2019 rolls around, I need a new project, I’m with a new agent, and then I realize the 50th anniversary of Comic-Con had just happened and I missed it. But boy, there still hasn’t been anything big on Comic-Con. So we went from there!

Wendy was really my cipher for that world. She did two really important things for me. She got me a list of everybody’s names and what they had done, who they were, their emails and phone numbers - but most importantly she told them about me. So everything was coming together with setting up the interviews. But maybe as you have heard, this was the end of 2019 early 2020….soooo, something happened. 

What? Something happened in 2020? What was that?

Yes, as is my Sisyphus life. So when Covid hits hard, the publishing industry just was upside down just like everything else. Everyone was fleeing their offices and you couldn’t get a hold of anyone.  Luckily, I had a buddy who had done some podcast stuff and had risen the ranks at SiriusXM. They were one of the companies that said, “hey this is a good thing for us. Now people are going to be sitting around needing something to do.” They were going crazy for original content. So I have this great producing team and editing team, and the podcast was getting a lot of coverage because Comic-Con was virtual and there was not much to say about Comic-Con except that it wasn’t happening. In the podcast we used 4-5 hours of interviews, and I had recorded 70 [hours]. There was so much more stuff I wanted to talk about - what's going to happen to the con in the future, Comic Fest, the backstory of Sergio Aragones, Bradbury, but we didn’t want the podcast series to be 50 hours. 

Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Katz, and sergio Aragoné at the berkeley con in 1976 (See You at San Diego, p26)

Right, I saw in the book you do get into all of this.

Exactly. So now I have the podcast, which is great because when I’m talking to people about the book, I can say it's going to be like the podcast but 10 times as much. Stan Sakai, who was involved, said this would be great for Gary at Fantagraphics. Gary listened to the podcast and loved it. We made a deal pretty quickly in September 2021. He was supervising editor and brought on a really great team. Designer. Jonathan Barli and the three of us just made this thing happen. I’m even tearing up now, because as hard as it was, and as hard as every book is, from all the way back to 2014, when I had a different version of it to everything that's happened over the last few years…this one is like “I can’t believe it's actually here.” 

So that’s the full origin story and I swear to you I will keep my next answers much, much shorter!

That’s totally okay - it’s great! As someone who interviews other people, you would rather have extra content than not enough.

Right, exactly. And I tell that to people as well. The more clay you give me the better the castle I’m building. 

Exactly! So, along those lines, I think one of the most impressive aspects of this book is the breadth and variety of interviews. For those of us who do qualitative research, this is interview gold. I wrote my dissertation on the production of Law & Order: SVU, and I found significant success in just cold messaging producers, writers, directors, and actors and then expanding within that network. I discovered that people really love to talk about their craft. And I was wondering what your experience was in gathering these interviews, talking to people, and compiling the oral history format? I know you mentioned that you got a lot of your connections through Wendy All.

Wendy helped connect me to a lot of the people, and SiriusXM helped with some of the celebrity interviews - the Russo brothers, Scott Auckerman, Felicia Day; I have my own network of certain celebrities I can get to through different people. Kevin Smith for example, I had just worked on a documentary project and [he] was part of that. Frankly, simply put, I have gotten very good over the years at getting people simply because I have had to for other projects I have done in my life that have been very interview based.

One of my favorite stories is Frank Miller. Frank was a fun one. I have been trying to get Frank Miller for months, and this is going back to when I am still working on the podcast. I’m trying to talk to a bunch of his different representatives, and I am just getting nothing back. I get very meticulous about it - very into the “collect them all” mentality. 

A very Comic-Con mentality to have!

Yeah! I stay on it. So, Marc Summers said something that I always like to tell people. He said, “Matt, you are a pain in the ass, but in a good way.” But anyways, I’m getting nothing from Frank Miller. Meanwhile, there is a lot in the book of George DiCaprio. I don’t know why, it had never dawned on me to try to interview George, but I thought it would be really cool to talk to Leonardo DiCaprio. As you can tell from the interviews, I wanted it to be eclectic. I didn’t want it to be just a bunch of comic book people or a bunch of science fiction people. It would be kind of great to have Leo in here, not just for the marketing purpose, but to show it's a very vast field I’m playing in. Not surprisingly, I wasn’t getting much of a response from that either, but I kept bugging his publicist over and over again. And at one point she said, “we are not going to give you Leonardo DiCaprio, but this is about Comic-Con and comics, right? Do you want Frank Miller? We represent him too.” So, I get Frank Miller because I bugged Leo’s publicist so much, she just threw up her hands and said, “Okay, here’s Frank Miller!” And it's like, “Ok, thanks! Bye!” And that’s how that happened!

That’s a great story! I love when things work out that way. 

We were doing interviews for a few months, and we did them however we could. Some of the people we talked to didn’t have computers, we were just learning how to use Zoom at the time like everyone else in the world. We did mail out recording devices. That was the nice thing about working with SiriusXM is that we had equipment and a shipping budget. They were really working with me to make sure we could get the best quality recordings we could. Some people, like Sergio, like Neil, like Kevin, just recorded their own stories and sent it to me, and I gave them talking points. I also really wanted to make sure we had Richard Alf and he is such an important figure, and I found an amazing interview with him for the 40th Anniversary [of Comic-Con] that was really good, crystal clear, that was just before he passed away. I tracked down the producer who gave me permission to use it. So that’s how we got Richard Alf in there. 

Also, Pamela Jackson runs some kind of pop-culture library at San Diego State University - I have the links at the back of the book - but she did something called The Comic-Con Kids Project. She did a bunch of interviews with these people with videos and I hit her up to see if we could use some of that material. She had actually interviewed some of the people I was already interviewing, but I thought, like you and I just said, the more material the better! So, I gave her a call and she was like “thank God something came! We had all these grants and did all this work, and we put it up online, but we don’t really have anything to do with it… Please take this and do something amazing with it!” 

I had put together oral histories before; I have edited documentaries before. So, I had spent a good two months or so (sometimes like 15 hours a day - I got really into it, it was so much fun) [going] through every single interview and I just started cutting them together, basically like cutting a documentary. My team at SiriusXM were able to go through it and take this massive thing that I cut together (I cut probably 70 hours down to 50 hours, but at least it was all in order now), and they were able to help me cut that down to the 7 or so hours to make the podcast that happened. When I did the book, I quite literally went back to that original 50-hour thing and it is basically the skeleton, which is why I call it a director’s cut. 

Lauren Alexandra Sowa is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication at Pepperdine University. She recently received her Ph.D. from the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on intersectional feminism and representation within production cultures, television, and popular culture. These interests stem from her several-decade career in the entertainment industry as member of SAG/AFTRA and AEA. Lauren is a proud Disneyland Magic Key holder and enthusiast of many fandoms.

Dawn of a New Era: Reinventing Confessions of an Aca-Fan

I have some bg news today. I am going to be shutting this blog down for a few weeks and when it returns, it will do so with a new name and a new editorial structure.

I started this blog in 2005, wondering how I was ever going to find the time to keep it afloat. At the time, I was on sabbatical and so I was able to post five days a week, almost entirely on the basis of my own writing. Through the years, I have made well over 2,000 posts, sometimes two a week, sometimes closer to four, but always adjusting to reflect the rhythms of my increasingly complex work life. And

As I did so, this blog has taken on a progressively stronger community-orientation. It has become less a place for my own reflections about our changing media landscape and more a resource which showcases important thinkers through interviews and emerging new talent through guest posts and conversations series. For the past year, I have been running the Global Fandom Jamboree conversation series, seeking to showcase the next generation of fandom studies researchers world-wide. I had fully expected to return to my previous patterns after that series, but I am finding I am really tired and frankly, my podcast is where my passion has been the past few years. It feels like time for a change.

So, when we return, this blog will have evolved towards a collective editorial board that will be responsible for generating most of the content. I will still be contributing alongside everyone else and I will be playing a senior statesman role in the short term providing mentorship to the others on the team and coordinating its activities.

Since there will no longer be just one “Aca-Fan,” the old title no longer makes sense. So, the new titles, collectively selected, will be Pop Junctions: Reflections on Entertainment, Pop Culture, Activism, Media Literacy, Fandom and More.

The new editorial board will include:

Christopher Cayari is an associate professor of music education with a courtesy appointing in Curriculum & Instruction at the College of Education and an affiliation with the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies. He holds a Ph.D. and M.M.E. in Music Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a bachelor’s degree in music education from Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, IL. Previously, he was the Director-Producer for Wisconsin Singers and an Associate Lecturer at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Samantha Close earned her PhD in Communication at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include digital media, theory-practice, fan studies, gender, race, and Japanese media. She focuses particularly on labor and transforming models of creative industries and capitalism. Her documentary, I Am Handmade: Crafting in the Age of Computers, based on her most recent research project, is hosted online by Vice Media’s Motherboard channel. Her writing appears in edited volumes and academic journals, such as Feminist Media Studies, Transformative Works and Cultures and Anthropology Now.

Mark Deuze is a professor of Journalism and Media Culture at the University of Amsterdam (before that at Indiana University). He is author of 11 books, including McQuail's Media and Mass Communicatin Theory (Sage, 2020), Leven in Media(Amsterdam University Press, 2017), Media Life (Polity Press, 2012) and Media Work (Polity Press, 2007).

Julie Escurignan is a Lecturer in Communication Studies at Sorbonne Paris Nord University and a Doctoral Researcher in Film and Television Studies at the University of Roehampton, London. She holds a MA in Communication Studies from the Sorbonne University, has conducted research at doctoral level at the University of Texas at Austin and at the University of Nordland, Norway, and has worked for NBC Universal International. She researches television series’ fandoms, and particularly transnational fans as well as material practices of fandom. Her thesis looks at the material experience of Game of Thrones transnational fans. She is the author of several book chapters on television hits such as Game of Thrones and Black Mirror.

Renata Frade is a tech feminism PhD candidate at the Universidade de Aveiro (DigiMedia/DeCa). Cátedra Oscar Sala/ Instituto de Estudos Avançados/Universidade de São Paulo Artificial Intelligence researcher. Journalist (B.A. in Social Communication from PUC-Rio University) and M.A. in Literature from UERJ. Henry Jenkins´ transmedia alumni and attendee at M.I.T., Rede Globo TV and Nave school events/courses. Speaker, activist, community manager, professor and content producer on women in tech, diversity, inclusion and transmedia since 2010 (such as Gartner international symposium, Girls in Tech Brazil, Mídia Ninja, Digitalks, MobileTime etc). Published in 13 academic and fiction books (poetry and short stories). Renata Frade is interested in Literature, Activism, Feminism, Civic Imagination, Technology, Digital Humanities, Ciberculture, HCI.

Martina Fouquet is a J.D. candidate at USC’s Gould School of Law, Class of 2022.

Grace D. Gipson is an assistant professor of African American Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University where she teaches courses on theories and foundations in Africana Studies, Blackness in pop culture, and Black media narratives. Her research interests include Black pop culture, race and gender in comics, Afrofuturism, and digital humanities. Outside the classroom, you can find Grace collecting comic books and stamps on her international travel discoveries, ticket stubs to the latest movies, co-hosting the video podcast "Conversations with Beloved and Kindred," contributing her personal and professional thoughts on pop culture via blackfuturefeminist.com and giving back to the community through a myriad of projects and organizations. You can also follow her on Twitter @GBreezy20 and Instagram @lovejones20.

Kishonna Gray is currently an Associate Professor in Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies at the University of Kentucky. She previously served as an MLK Scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor at MIT in Comparative Media Studies and the Women & Gender Studies Program. She also served as a Faculty Visitor at the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research (Cambridge). Her scholarship is influenced by my interdisciplinary training and grounded in critical race theory and feminist approaches to knowledge production. She interrogates the impact that technology has on culture and how Black users, in particular, influence the creation of technological products and the dissemination of digital artifacts. While her extensive publication record explores how technology disparately impacts women and people of color, her current research interrogates the possibilities and potentials of what that technology can afford Black communities who are traditionally excluded from public spaces, including digital ones.

Do Own (Donna) Kim is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago's Department of Communication. She studies everyday, playful digital cultures and mediated social interactions. She focuses on boundary-crossing practices in human-technology assemblages: being together across diverse "real", "online", "virtual", or "imaginary" places, and among the mundane and the weird, the "normal" and the Other. What does it mean to be human in mediated communication environments? How do we want to be together?She received my Ph.D. degree in Communication from the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism (2022). Her dissertation—Virtually Human? Negotiation of (Non)Humanness and Agency in the Sociotechnical Assemblage of Virtual Influencers—took a deep dive into boundary crossings in digital reality technology and social media cultures through the lens of virtual influencers (CGI human social media influencers).

Bethan Jones is a Research Associate at the University of York. She has written extensively about anti-fandom, media tourism and participatory cultures, and is co-editor of Crowdfunding the Future: Media Industries, Ethics, and Digital Society (Peter Lang) and the forthcoming Participatory Culture Wars: Controversy, Conflict, and Complicity in Fandom (under contract with University of Iowa Press). Bethan is on the board of the Fan Studies Network, co-chair of the SCMS Fan and Audience Studies Scholarly Interest Group and one of the incoming editorial team for the journal Popular Communication.

Tara Lomax has expertise in blockbuster franchising, multiplatform storytelling, and contemporary Hollywood entertainment. She has a PhD in screen studies from The University of Melbourne and is published on topics such as the superhero genre, franchising, licensing, transmedia storytelling, storyworld building, and digital effects. Her work can be found in publications that include the journals Senses of Cinema and Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and the book collections Starring Tom Cruise (2021), The Supervillain Reader (2020), The Superhero Symbol (2020), The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production (2019), and Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling (2017). She is also editor at Mark Out Comics and a multiplatform story consultant.

Antonella Mascio is Associate Professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy. Her research interests focus on digital media, fashion communication, audience studies, nostalgia and celebrity culture.

Alex Peek is a philosopher and designer focused on creating educational blog posts based on minimalism and immediacy. Alex has a blog at Econ Analysis Tools and an economic data website at econfactbook.org.

Lauren Alexandra Sowa is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication at Pepperdine
University. She recently received her Ph.D. from the Annenberg School of Communication and
Journalism at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on intersectional
feminism and representation within production cultures, television, and popular culture. These interests stem from her several-decade career in the entertainment industry as member of SAG/AFTRA and AEA. Lauren is a proud Disneyland Magic Key holder and enthusiast of many fandoms.

Rachel Joy Victor works at the intersection of three related sectors: innovation strategy for content, products, and brands; product design for emerging tech; and narrative design and worldbuilding for interactive and immersive narratives.

Ioanna Vovou is an Assοciate Professor at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences (Athens, Greece), in the Department of Communication, Media and Culture. Her writings focus on the relation between the media and the society, on media analysis and on Television studies.

 Sulafa Zidani is a writer, speaker, and educator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is an Assistant Professor in Comparative Media Studies and Writing. She is a scholar of digital culture, and writes about global creative practices in online civic engagement across geopolitical contexts and languages such as Mandarin, English, Arabic, Hebrew, and French. She is working on a book-length study called Global Meme Elites: How Meme Creators Navigate Transnational Politics on the Multilingual Internet.

If you would be interested in contributing to this effort, contact me at hjenkins@usc.edu.