Fandom is a form of love, which is finally incomprehensible; though unlike romantic love, which is exclusive, it must be shared, experienced in at least an imagined crowd. (Gitlin, 2002, p. 129)
Fandom is born out of fascination and some frustration. If you weren’t fascinated, you wouldn’t continue to engage as a fan. If you weren’t frustrated, you often wouldn’t continue to rewrite and reinvent. (Jenkins, 2015, p. 14)
Gitlin’s and Jenkins’s considerations of fandom represent two distinct but overlapping phases within a fan’s experience. Gitlin’s definition operates as the point of entry; the moment or the event or the person who piqued your interest and made you choose to follow that interest further. That initial engagement is always thought of nostalgically, you remember when it happened and why, and how it manifested into more. Jenkins’s definition operates as the experience that follows that moment. I believe also that this is why Gitlin alludes to an imagined crowd while Jenkins occupies himself with participatory culture which by its very definition requires multiple participants and active agency-driven behaviors.
Popular culture is not always popular to examine critically. “Paradoxically, the very element that, normatively, degrades popular communication among cognate and collegial disciplines is also that which forces it to be acknowledged at all, that is, its popularity” (Thomas & Holderman, 2007, p. 218). When Stephenie Meyer’s internationally popular book series, The Twilight Saga, was brought into the critical, interrogative space, reductive binaries became the most common means of analysis. The Twilight Saga was either heteronormatively-regressive and advocating antiquated gender roles and dynamics or it was subversively Feminist depending on how the critic considered the agency (or not) of main character, human-cum-vampire, Bella Swan. The Twilight fandom was composed of either young girls carving out a space for themselves in participatory culture through the implicitly sociopolitical negotiation of Twilight’s content (Summers, 2010) or Twilight moms; married women with children in mostly conventional family structures who read Twilight and found themselves “dazzled” by Edward Cullen (and subsequently, Robert Pattinson who played Cullen in the film series) (Paris, 2016).
Isaksson begins to address the space for fan creation and reconciliation that these reductive interpretations of the series and its readers ultimately opens up through her look at Twilight fan fiction. But in Negotiating contemporary romance: Twilight fan fiction, Isaksson only looks at fan produced stories that are set within the canon of Meyer’s original series. Conversely, Paris’s work also within Twilight fan fiction, highlights the extreme prevalence of Alternate Universe All Human Twilight fan fiction. In Meyer’s canon, Bella Swan is a human 17 year old girl and her boyfriend, Edward Cullen, is a 107 year old vampire. In AU/AH Twilight fan fiction, there are no vampires. Edward and Bella can be any age, occupy any setting, have any degree of romantic relationship (flirting, dating, married, divorced, etc.), there are no limits placed on what the story can include since as the genre suggests, it’s the fan/writer’s own alternate universe. This move toward alternate Edward/Bellas that elides the limitations of Meyer’s source material is significant and informative as it opens up even more space for additional narratives.
Lion_Lamb is a LiveJournal community created in 2007 devoted to all things Edward/Bella. After actors, Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, were cast as the romantic leads, the majority of the Lion_Lamb community embraced the actors as worthy physical incarnations of their beloved characters. This was evidenced not only through regular entries featuring information about one or both of the actors but also the use of their images in fan-made graphics promoting AU/AH Edward/Bella fan fiction called banners. Because the characters were human and distinctly not of the Twilight universe, these graphics were not limited to images of the actors from the series. (When the creation of the graphics began, no such images were available). Edward and Bella began to look as much like Pattinson and Stewart within fandom as Pattinson and Stewart looked like Edward and Bella. This conflation of actor and character was perpetuated to a degree by the actors themselves in discussing their roles.
The shift from character to actor is where my information community is born (though significantly, the aforementioned conflation remains a vital presence through the life and analysis of this fandom).
Celebrity fan communities get their information from official media sources. They are reliant upon entertainment journalists, professional photographers, celebrity-focused websites including PopSugar, Radar Online, Just Jared, etc. and gossip columnists like Ted Casablanca at E! Online. With consistency, but far less frequency, the communities also obtain information from lay people with inadvertent access to the actors. The information that shapes the record of a Pattinson/Stewart “event” – attending a concert, for example – could consist of paparazzi photos of them in the venue, the accompanying article on a media site describing the photos, a gossip column post that fits the appearance into promotional information about the actor’s latest work, eyewitness accounts from people at the appearance initially posted in a comments section after the fact and eventually, in real time of the appearance, on Twitter.
The images, the media narrative, and the firsthand non-media accounts are synthesized and contextualized with time (date) and location identifiers and “chunked” into a comprehensive record of one “event” that is then situated into a larger, ongoing narrative composed of similar “chunks” and organized chronologically. This chunk can potentially be modified through additional official sources (more photos, a print magazine article with new details) and/or fan-made productions referencing the event including fan fiction and fan videos. The images in a video are informed by the song that accompanies them, the video’s theme (eg; Eclipse filming, date nights, Robsten in L.A., etc.), the additional graphics included, the use of captions or print quotes, and any other original design elements the video maker employs to reify the event through a new, separate but related context to the original chunked event. Notably, memorialization of certain events through fan made productions increase their significance in the overall narrative.
This process of acquiring and synthesizing is constant and concurrent. A media promotional tour for a Twilight film can include 10-15 different event syntheses (and if the actors were split up for promotion, this number doubles to account for and record both actor’s activities.)
In June 2009, the actors were spotted saying goodbye outside of a hotel in West Hollywood, CA the morning following the MTV Movie Awards at which they had both appeared. This was the first report of the two appearing to spend personal time together outside of Twilight filming and professional obligations. Coupled with the popularity of the Twilight release and the initial marketing of New Moon which completed filming in May 2009, the Saga’s fan base had increased exponentially to include women outside of those who were early devotees of the books. The discernible and public shift between the actors inspired a shift within the already-established Twilight fandom online and women who began to engage in the online culture that had fragmented from the primary Edward/Bella community and shaped itself around interest in Stewart and Pattinson *as a romantic couple* a.k.a. Robsten (the portmanteau of Rob and Kristen) engaged in dual but equally purposeful behaviors– they documented the daily activities of the actors, together and apart, and they began “time-lining.”
For the purposes of my analysis, I regard time-lining as the following activity – the chaining of independent syntheses of events toward a cohesive narrative that establishes a pattern of past behavior and creates expectation of future behavior. Time-lining in this context only refers to past events. This is achieved through a process of focused online information seeking as well as information encountering and plays out across a number of platforms, websites, and online communities both authorized and fan-made.
YouTube, as a platform used by media companies for promotion and fans to share their productions, is integral to the practice of time-lining. Here is the extended trajectory of one “event” in February 2009 from discovery to knowledge to synthesis to eventual placement in the ongoing chain of events. Admittedly, re-constructing this search in 2017 was somewhat inhibited by the fact that there was a lot more information available than had been in 2009, but it’s still a good indication of the process that occurs toward retrieval of information.
Google – Upon watching Twilight, a woman is inspired to learn more about the main actors in the movie, especially during filming. The discerning fan knows that specificity of search terms will increase the likelihood of her desired results and enters ‘Robert Kristen Twilight set 2008’. The inclusion of ‘set’ is important to generate results about the filming process and not just the film itself. Web results are mostly gossip columns published long after 2008. Image results include production stills and promotional stills but no real details.
YouTube – Video results yield a YouTube link to a video interview of the two actors that was conducted on the set of Twilight in 2008 by MTV. User lovelouby4444 uploaded the video which features the logo ‘Brought to You by http://www.edwardandbella.net’. On the right sidebar, YouTube suggests similar videos. The first suggestion is a fan-made video that features compiled interview clips and images of the two actors generated over the course of 2008 set to a cover of Wild Horses and titled ‘Robert and Kristen – Adorable and Funny Moments That Makes [sic] the Heart Melt.” The creator/uploader of the video is user CaliNative70. If one clicks on her profile, there are 51 ‘Robert and Kristen’ fan videos that she has made and uploaded.
CaliNative70’s fan videos are a prime example of information encountering. I’m going to go further and posit that while fan behavior is focused as Gitlin suggests, fans are likely super-encounterers within Erdelez’s model of information encountering. Of super-encounterers, Erdelez writes, “It is as if information super-encounterers have channels for information perception that are more sensitive than the channels of other information users. This in turn may make them more sensitive to noticing information in their environment” (1998, p. 26). Jenkins’s ‘fascination and frustration’ creates an omnipresent potential for information reception; that is for the fan, information can never be too much or enough. While elements of encountering a related fan video that provides new information also fit into a browsing method of information seeking, I maintain that encountering is key because likely, within the process of time-lining, encountered information will be recalled, retrieved and applied in a new context toward a new event. All information is useful even if that use is not readily apparent at the time it’s discovered.
CaliNative70 has a video titled “Lovers in Japan” that was uploaded on February 28, 2009. The video is set to the Coldplay song of the same name and features older footage of the actors as well as professional photographs of a Twilight promotional appearance in Tokyo that occurred a day before the video was uploaded. These images from a fan video serve as the entry point for synthesis of the “event” – ‘Rob and Kristen’s Twilight promo in Tokyo’.
Google – back to the search engine to search ‘Rob Kristen Tokyo 2009’. Notably, adhering to this search term order is important as it will help to hopefully include only relevant search results. Under web results, there is nothing from 2009. Under image results, there are many of the same pictures included in the “Lovers in Japan” fan video. Hovering over each picture displays its source. PopSugar is the first result and the image is taken from a slideshow retrospective compiled on the website in 2012. The second image is sourced from a JustJared.com post summarizing the specifics of the appearance and featuring additional photos.
Fan Site – Most of the pictures are sourced by official photo vendor gettyimages but much further down the results page, a photo is sourced from a fan site, robsessedpattinson.com. The source link goes to a fan site/blog dedicated to Pattinson that has posted more pictures of the appearance.
LiveJournal – The fan site sources the pictures from ATWTFanForever, hypertext that links to an entry called “Some Rob and KStew Cuteness from Tokyo” posted in the LiveJournal community, Lion_Lamb, by member ATWTFan on 02/28/09. The post has three pictures and forty-three member comments. The previous post in the community is about a feature on the Twilight DVD and the following post is a recommendation for Edward/Bella fan fiction – neither post contains information about ‘Rob and Kristen in Tokyo’ and the post with the photos only has two tags ‘Robert Pattinson’ and ‘Kristen Stewart’. But the homepage of the community features an archive tab with posts broken out by year and month. On 02/27/2009 (the day before the photos post and the upload of the fan video,) there is an entry for a story from eonline.com about Pattinson and actor, Hugh Jackman, singing karaoke together in Tokyo. The next post is an entry featuring thumbnail images of the actors at a press conference for Twilight in Tokyo that credits source twilightsingapore.com. Next post is titled “Kristen was there with Rob and Hugh…” and is sourced from JustJared.com. The Lion_Lamb entry also includes a comment from the JustJared.com comments section below their original post made by a person who claimed her friend saw the actors at the karaoke venue and reported:
This is true. My friend was there but she couldn’t get close to them the whole night b/c there were a lot of people with them. She said that Robert and Kristen seemed very into each other the whole night but were trying to not get too into it b/c they knew people were watching.
In the 39 comments on this post at lion_lamb, almost all the members dismiss the witness comment as false.
For some, this might end the search. Images from the appearance as well as some personal and professional details have been surmised. But… the fascination and frustration compels further query. Because of the dismissive nature of the witness account, this community will likely not yield additional private details about the actors’ appearance in Tokyo.
Google – the search process now requires more creativity. ‘Rob Kristen Tokyo karaoke 2009’ yields nothing new nor does ‘Rob Kristen Tokyo karaoke 2009 fans.’
Message board – But ‘Rob Kristen Tokyo karaoke 2009 LiveJournal’ generates a few new results including a link to a fan fiction about the appearance and a link to a thread called “Stephenie Meyer and the Twilight Fan Club” in the forums section at madnono.com. The page in the thread linked from Google is from 09/28/2009, months after the Tokyo appearance. But the page features notably text-heavy posts; this is an ongoing discussion among the members of the message board and it’s a conspicuously different approach to considering information about the actors than either other fan site which was primarily image-driven. The mention of ‘Rob Kristen Tokyo’ that Google picked up is in reference to fan fiction but the text-driven discourse suggests the potential for new and detailed information (and insight) and so the discerning fan searches ‘Tokyo’ mentions in the thread and generates 4 pages of results. She at first skims and then sets in to read the results in full expecting that with new information about Tokyo, she’ll likely find new information on a number of other events.
This process goes on infinitely so long as there is Internet to support it. Eventually the “event” of Tokyo Twilight promotion will include information gleaned from the original gossip site posts, many more photographs from a press conference, photo call, and fan event, additional fan videos and fan fiction about the appearance, an interview with Kristen Stewart where she mentions singing karaoke during the appearance, more witness accounts from people who saw the actors that night, full length videos of the press conference and fan event uploaded to YouTube, various fan discussion analyzing mood, body language, and quotes from the actors in the context of past Twilight promotional events, and any further mention by any media outlet or the actors themselves referencing Tokyo Twilight promotion.
Synthesizing the event occurs over time and through space, it requires several different kinds of sources of information as well as being contextualized within the larger narrative created by fandom through their own produced material to achieve its significance as an “event”. The Robsten fan community shares information with each other through every phase of this process through open platform information spaces like LiveJournal communities, fan sites, and message boards. The person or community need not be aware they are acting as a source to serve as one as there’s an implicit acknowledgement that if one places information in one space, someone else will copy and paste that information into a different space.
Both the documentation of real time activities and the practice of time-lining to construct a fan produced narrative necessarily relies upon retrieval and synthesis of information from sources inside and outside of the fandom. To this end, its members are distinctly participants in an information community.
References:
Gitlin, T. (2002). Media unlimited. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Jenkins, H., Ito, M., and boyd, d. (2016). Participatory culture in a networked era. Malden, MA: Polity Press
Erdelez, S. (1999). Information encountering: It’s more than just bumping into information. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science 25(3), 29-25.
Isaksson, M., (2014). Negotiating contemporary romance: Twilight fan fiction. Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, 5(3), 351-364.
Paris, L., (2016). Fifty shades of fandom: the intergenerational permeability of Twilight fan culture. Feminist Media Studies, 16(4), 678-692.
Summers, S. (2010). Twilight is so anti-feminist that i want to cry: Twilight fans and defining feminism on the world wide web. Computers and Composition, 27, 315-323.
Thomas, S., & Holderman, L., (2007). Trivia and social theory in popular communications study: age reporting in tabloid tales of celebrity romance. Popular Communication, 5(4), 217-222.
Community References:
[lovelouby4444]. (2009, March 7). Robert pattinson and kristen stewart funny interview. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sSmpSy-Mg4
[CaliNative70]. (2009, Jan. 15). Robert and kristen – adorable and funny moments that makes the heart melt. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRFE4piOKok
[CaliNative70]. (2009, Feb. 28). Rob and kris – lovers in Japan. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyotQ5tLycQ
Gozde. (2009, Feb. 28). Rob and kristen: shiny happy people in Tokyo. [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.robsessedpattinson.com/2009_02_01_archive.html
ATWTFanForever. (2009, Feb. 28). Some rob and kstew cuteness from Tokyo. [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://lion-lamb.livejournal.com/3799020.html
Yesil16. (2009, Feb. 27). Krsiten was there with rob and hugh – oh and taylor was also there for some reason. [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://lion-lamb.livejournal.com/3791319.html
(2009, Sept. 28). Stephenie Meyer and the Twilight fan club. [Pg. 25] Retrieved from https://madnono.vbulletin.net/forum/madnono-com-content/whatnot/188-stephenie-meyer-the-twilight-fan-club/page25
[Originally published on 03/09/17 @ SJSU iSchool blog, Heteroglossia]
Emily Moss - Electronic Portfolio 