Fandom and capitalism

[lobelia321]

Fandom and capitalism - random musings

When I came across a calendar with photos of the Twin Towers (one for every month), it occurred to me that capitalism really has eaten up every last niche of this world. What does it take? It seems nothing will be enough. Thousands of people can die, and still capitalism closes over the momentary hiccup of shock with its habitual smoothness and absorbs its all into one big money-making machine.

Then I started to think about this fandom that I find myself a part of and about all the lovely birthday presents I got in the form of stories.

The authors in this fandom are producers (in the marxist sense). We produce fics. But we don't make any profit from them. We give them away, we share them out. Sometimes we get 'paid' something in kind, like an icon or a wallpaper or feedback. But it's all equally immaterial and equally removed from the world of commerce.

On the other hand, we couldn't exist without that world. We feed off capitalism because without the movie industry and its commercial consumables (movies, DVDs, endless advertising and gimmicks), we wouldn't be here. Plus, we're absolutely dependent on capitalist ventures such as internet service providers and telecommunications satellites for our access to the means of communication.

But still, still: the fandom sort of moves in the interstices of capitalism, like subversive fish wiggling in and out among the algae.

Huh. I feel quite revolutionary now.

Comments

[eyebrowofdoom.livejournal.com]

I tend to think of absolutely all human motivation in terms of self-interest. But I don't mean that in a misanthropic way, or a pro-capitalism way. Say in fandom (much as in anything), you do things for others because you anticipate them doing things for you, but above and beyond that because the experience of creating goodwill, regardless of its practical proceeds, is pleasurable of itself. The trouble with capitalism is that it quantifies -- as such, which is artificial -- and also that it only quantifies the tangible. It fails to pick up whole realms of the human experience of value; it's a failure as a discourse of human motivation in that way.

I do think fandom is revolutionary vis a vis mass media, or at least subversive. In that don't merely consume: we remake, we make the text our own, we defy its commercial-authorial intent.

[vasiliki.livejournal.com]

we defy its commercial-authorial intent.

However, they do exist fanartists and fanfiction authors who have either used the fandoms as a first step to move on the commercial world, or are getting paid by the fandoms in the form of money for commissions of art or stories.

So, Lobelia has it right, when she so eloquently and poetically says that
the fandom sort of moves in the interstices of capitalism, like subversive fish wiggling in and out among the algae.
Dear goodness, I love this woman's similes. Yours too!