This paper argues that the practices and aesthetics of vidding were structured by the relationship of Star Trek’s female fans to that particular televisual text. Star Trek fandom was the crucible within which vidding developed because Star Trek’s narrative impelled female fans to take on two positions often framed as contradictory in mainstream culture: the desiring body, and the controlling voice of technology. To make a vid, to edit footage to subtext-revealing music, is to unite these positions: to put technology at the service of desire. Although the conflict between desire and control was particularly thematized in Star Trek, most famously through the divided character of Spock, the practices of vidding are now applied to other visual texts. This essay examines the early history of vidding and demonstrates, through the close reading of particular vids made for Star Trek and Quantum Leap, how vidding heals the wounds created by the displacement and fragmentation of women on television.
First-wave ethnographic work in fan studies, especially that of Henry Jenkins, Camille Bacon-Smith, Constance Penley, Roberta Pearson and John Tulloch, remains foundational to contemporary fan scholarship. Jenkins’ work in particular remains relevant for its ongoing commitment to fandom as a social identity and as a network; this contrasts sharply with the work of later scholars who see fandom as a matter of enthusiastic but individual engagement. It is important for fan scholars both to revisit and to emulate first-wave scholarship because the terms of the relationship between fans and the entertainment industry are being radically renegotiated. Fandom is increasingly understood to have economic and promotional value to content producers, and there is a danger that fandom-as-enthusiasm is being encouraged by producers even as fans are in danger of being alienated from their creative labour and from each other as a community.
No abstract
YouTube was founded in the spring of 2005. That summer, viddersthe overwhelmingly female community of video editors who create fan music video out of television and film footage -gathered in Chicago to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of vidding with a dance party and two cakes: one shaped like a VHS cassette and one like a DVD.It now seems incredible that vidders managed to create and share video for almost thirty years without streaming technology; in fact, in 2005, some vidders were still distributing their work on VHS. However, most vidders had by then switched to digital editing, and some were even cautiously offering their work for download on password-protected sites.
Editorial for TWC No. 9 (September 15, 2012).
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