Women, Star Trek, and the early development of fannish vidding

Abstract

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.

An Editing Room of One's Own: Vidding as Women's Work

“…12 More recently, fans recognized themselves in the final image of Lim's "Us" (2007): a girl in glasses who, in unmasking herself, takes the first step toward a revolutionary visibility; the glasses, of course, emphasize her status as perceiver rather than object. Vidders also identify with the animated fangirl Laura Shapiro and Lithium Doll created for "I Put You There" (2006), a vid about Britney Spears's music video "Crazy" is recontextualized in Obsessive24's "Piece of Me" (2008).…”

You Know You Love Me

“…Unlike music videos, in which images are created in order to popularize a piece of music, vidders use music as a kind of script through which to re-imagine the original text, placing a greater emphasis on visuality and image. Francesca Coppa (2008) argues that music within a vid "is used as an interpretive lens to help the viewer to see the source text differently." Louisa Stein (2009) similarly notes the vid's visual emphasis, writing that its "meaning is borne .…”

“…Vids themselves also fall into a number of different subgenres. "Slash" places two male characters in a sexual relationship, while "femslash," a growing area of production (Coppa 2008), does the same with female characters. "Alternate universe" vids use source material to imagine new narratives, while hybrid "crossovers" introduce characters from one programme into another.…”

Not ‘from my hot little ovaries': how slash manips pierce reductive assumptions

“…This focus on fiction is critiqued later and reveals the need for further research into other slash media, manips in particular. It is also worth acknowledging here scholarly work on non-written slash forms, such as vids (see Coppa 2008;Russo 2009) and fanart (see Manifold 2009;Dennis 2010). To critique the slash tropes above, one needs only to look at the categorical work done by fans in identifying genres such as 'squick' (stories that may cause feelings of unease or revulsion in a reader) and 'whump' (pain inflicted repeatedly and brutally on a character).…”