This week, Henry & Colin are joined by three fan studies scholars, andré m. carrington,author of Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction; Abigail De Kosnik, author of #identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation; and Rukmini Pande author of Fandom, Now in Color and Squee from the Margins. We talk about how race has been addressed (or not) in fandoms and fan studies, digging into recent fandom controversies over race, such as Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and the legacy of fandom’s roots in America. We ask how Squid Games can be the most popular series on Netflix, even as we are seeing an unprecidented wave of anti-Asian hate crimes or why fandom has tended to ignore some of the characters of color who have emerged through popular entertainment franchises. Ultimately, how can we look beyond the competing narratives of “fandom will save us” vs. “toxic fandom” for more nuanced ways to understand and deal with societal biases through fandoms?
A full transcript of this episode will be available soon!
Here are some of the references from this episode, for those who want to dig a little deeper:
andré m. carrington – Associate Professor of English at the University of California-Riverside, author of Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction
Abigail De Kosnik – Associate Professor and Director, Berkeley Center for New Media, author of #identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation
Rukmini Pande – Associate Professor, Literary Studies and Writing, Jindal School of Liberal Arts & Humanities, author of Fandom, Now in Color and Squee from the Margins
Original Star Trek series – origins of fandom
Star Wars Last Jedi trolling – Kelly Marie Tran, Krystina Arielle, John Boyega
Tolkien fandom dust-up
Early Sherlock Holmes fan clubs
Star Trek, Blake’s 7 60s-70s
Early internet fandom – usenet, geo cities, yahoo groups
Live Journal
Fan Pressure to integrate:
Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone Reboot
Ava duVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time
Disney’s live action version The Little Mermaid
The Flash – pushback on casting Iris as Black
Netflix announces Squid Game is bigger than Bridgerton
Wendy Chun – High-Tech orientalism
Concept of “ships”/”shipping”
Bong Joon-ho, Steven Yeun
Bruce Lee (actor) vs. Kato in the Green Hornet (character)
Simu Liu (actor) vs. Shang-Chi (character)
Korean media wave: BTS, Parasite
Fan fiction and diversity/inclusion
Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley)
Tenoch Huerta as Namor (Black Panther character)
Oscar Isaac
Tony Leung
Lead Users and Democratizing Innovation book by Eric Von Hipple
Robert Kozinets
Review of #Republic (and the value of deliberating enclaves) by David Weinberger
Michael Saler – a public sphere of the imagination
Episode #79: Hope for New Online Public Spaces with Talia Stroud and Eli Pariser
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Music:
“In Time” by Dylan Emmett and “Spaceship” by Lesion X.
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In Time (Instrumental) by Dylan Emmet https://soundcloud.com/dylanemmet
Spaceship by Lesion X https://soundcloud.com/lesionxbeats
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/in-time-instrumental
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/lesion-x-spaceship
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/AzYoVrMLa1Q
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