As ever, I have a million projects on the go. I’m finishing up my MA and working on two editing projects with my school, along with attempting to do some creative writing on top of that. In addition to all the work behind a computer, I’m also moving soon! This is very exciting because 1) I’ll be living with my partner and 2) we’re moving to complete our PhDs. :)

Now, when MCR broke up, I said that I had a plan. The truth is, I’m still kind of figuring everything out, but my PhD is part of this plan. When I applied in January, the band was still together, but I knew that I wanted to work on something to do with them and fandom as a whole. Some of you may recall that I was initially writing my MA on this topic — that turned out to be too ambitious for that time period and I didn’t have the resources yet. Now that I do have these resources and the time with my PhD, and so I’m going to take that chance.

I’m very excited about this because it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time now. And especially now that the band is no longer together, I think it’s even more important to complete this project. But since I want to focus not just on the music, but on the fans themselves, I’m definitely going to need everyone’s help.

Below I’m going to share with everyone my short (500 word) proposal that got me into my program that also works as a quick summary of what I intend on doing. Some people I’ve contacted already and have helped me run a trial ethnographic survey on the demographics of this fandom, but since that was a trial study and only about ten people, I’ll need to do it again. I will also need to start interviewing people in more depth (through Skype, email, or if you live close enough, in person) and I will probably have to start archiving certain things. But for the time being, since it’s just beginning to feel like summer and I still have an MA to finish, I am getting ahead of myself.

But keep this in mind. I’m very excited about it, but I’ll need a lot of help and I’d love to hear from you guys soon.

Statement of Interest

From Adoration to Serialization: Studying Bandom and Fan Writing

            My research will explore an overlooked part of fan community and fan media production called bandom. This term is a portmanteau of band and fandom and is predominantly used to refer to the fan communities surrounding popular emo bands such as My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and those on the Fueled by Ramen label. These bands and their fans mark a change in the way audience and musician interact with one another and with the music itself. What I would like to study is the shift away from emulating the style of the icon as seen in past music subcultures, to actually inhabiting those roles in the form of fan writing, role playing, and media production. I intend on engaging with prior studies on music sociology, fan production, and media technology, in addition to conducting fan ethnography, in order to understand the cognitive, affective, and creative shift that is happening now online.

Prior music subculture studies have drawn particular attention to the ways in which fans mimic the style, attitude, and behaviour of the music genre they are involved in, as documented in Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979). There have also been works that focus on individual artists and their fan base, usually iconic ones such as Elvis, Madonna, and Dolly Parton. Fan commitment here is expressed through adoration, collection, and information gathering with other fans. These expressions are still different than those which exist in bandom. Prior fan communities have sought to keep the icon intact as an object of worship, whereas in bandom fan cultures, the creative production of stories and other visual media creates a distinct culture within one that is already pre-existing. Bandom also uses the band members’ real life identity as its source text for productions, not the music they produce. The fan’s process of taking up these men as characters, not as real people, and using them as a filter for their own emotions makes this new type of subculture.

In Andy Greenwald’s book Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo (2003), he discusses the origins of the emo music scene and their focus on affect, but he does not directly link this affect to the ways in which fans express this through fan media production. As for fan fiction studies, Henry Jenkins’ book on fan writing Textual Poachers (1992) still remains an influential work, and other people such as Matt Hills (2002) and Jonathan Alan Gray (2007) have also added to the emerging canon on fan studies. Most of these works discuss fan fiction that deals primarily with text or visual sources, such as Harry Potter or Star Trek. There are very few people discussing what I see to be a distinct fandom inside of music communities and the affective experiences of these individuals. Through ethnographic research, I hope to be able to fill in the disparity between music sociology and fan studies.

This entry was very quick — and probably doesn’t answer near enough of the questions some people may have. Like, how can you actually study fandom and especially fan fiction? But like I’ve named dropped in the proposal, a lot of people already have (Henry Jenkins, Matt Hills) and a lot of people have talked about music (Simon Frith, Andy Greenwall), and I’ll just be filling in the minor blanks. Of course, it’s just a dissertation, (250-400) pages long, that I’ll have to write to get a degree, but it’s something that could be really great if I allow it to be. And hopefully I’ll get to talk more about this in later entries over the summer. I’ll also have some other exciting news to share as well, like possible publications and sharing some short stories, but we will see. :)