Fandoms are well known for creating fanfiction to express their wants and desires as well as the creator’s identity. Each ‘fic’, or piece of artwork, gives another point of view, adding up to give us a bigger picture of the ‘hiddlestoners’ fandom. Fanfiction is a postmodern creation - fans want to play around with what producers have given them, they want to mess with reality. These intertextual pieces of fiction allow for fans to talk about characters as though they are real. In this state of hyper-reality, the creators take on the role of ‘God’ in deciding exactly what happens within the narrative. It’s quite a powerful role to take on. There’s no point in working out whether fanfiction is made/read by males or females because that’s not why it’s made. A better approach to fanfiction is to look at what is produced when fans have the power to control characters. One product that is relevant to feminism, is the ‘marmite’ genre of ‘slash’ fiction. This is a genre that forces two characters of the same sex into a relationship. This appears to be targeted at both heterosexual women and homosexual men. One theory that can be applied to this is ‘Queer Theory’ - an approach favoured by post-feminists. Considering ‘Queer Theory offers the view that the ideas of ‘male’ or ‘female’ are just as much the product of representation, as masculinity and femininity’, ‘slash’ fiction could be a way for fans to express that they are not bound by their gender or sexuality.1 Morley stresses the ‘importance of culture (including gender) shaping audience use of media, and making sense of media’, which means that ‘slash’ fiction is another way fans make sense of the media texts given to them in relation to gender and sexuality.2 In contrast, it could just be a way for fans to show that they don’t care what the producers think, they’re going to prove that they can control characters just as much at them.
1 Bennett, P., Slater, J., 2010, A2 Communication and Culture: The Essential Introduction, 2009 Specification, USA, Canada, UK: Routledge. ↩
2 Burton, G., 1999, Media and Popular Culture, Great Britain: Hodder and Stoughton.↩
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