all I know about fandom I learned from you guys...

[flea]

Here's a silly thing that's been preying on my brain lately: mediafandom? Stupid name. I mean, what does "media" mean? I have read enough of y'all's meta to know it isn't the NEWS media, which is what the non-fannish first thought goes to. As I see it, mediafandom seems to describe people who entered fandom through television shows (especially Xfiles, among my acquaintance), in contrast to people who were attending scifi cons and in the zine scene before this dang newfangled technology came along. Am I wrong? But then, where does Harry Potter fit in, since that seems to be in mediafandom but he's a book? Or wasn't he fannish before there were movies? I'm so confused.

Anyway, why not simply call it television-fandom, not mediafandom, and keep me from flashing to Dan Rather all the time? Also, the pedant in me wishes to observe that every mode of communication is a medium - print, television, etc.

Who made up this name?

Your mundane friend,
flea

Comments

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Media fandom hasn't been all television, and it predates the web too; but those two things have been big in its history. It really got started when all those icky WIMMIN arrived at SF cons, thanks especially to Star Trek, in the late 1960s, early 70s. The WIMMIN did not tend to feel welcome in SF's male-dominated space, in which science and theory were very big (and emotions were often considered something icky and outdated, like an appendix).

The WIMMIN and their cabana boys allies decamped to Other Parts, and organized their own cons and social practices, and since they mostly hewed to TV and movies -- multimedia before that word was cool --, as opposed to the primacy of the book in traditional SF circles, the WIMMIN fandom took on the name media fandom.

(Rememeber, once upon a time, this shit was slow. Star Trek got cancelled in 1969, and didn't have a movie till 1980, and in between there was Star Wars, and Brit TV series, and (shudder) Starsky and Hutch. So the ur-texts of media fandom are evenly split between TV and movies; it's just that the TV end of the fandom, having something to react to every week, tends to be bigger and more fulminating, especially in the fast-paced online world.)

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Just tell me there is not Luke/Han, and all will be well. Han/Chewie I think I can handle.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I am pretty sure there is Luke/Han, although I cannot fathom why. Any more than I can fathom having sex with an eight-foot-tall bathmat, unless you also are an eight-foot-tall bathmat. I draw the line at interspecies nooky!!

The fact that you don't suggests you are a great match for media fandom.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Don't the puppets have sex on Farscape? Or do they only have sex with other puppets?

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Other puppets, you perv.

(There is a fair amount of interspecies sex, come to think, but the puppets do not have sex with the people-shaped species. That way lies crush injury.)

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Also, many giggle-takes on the part of the actors during filming. I mean, imagine you were being asked to fake intimacy with an 8-foot bathmat.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Also, multimediafandom abbreviated to mediafandom makes my semantic headache end, though I still don't like it. I think you, as a BNF, should make a push to resurrect/begin the name WIMMINfandom.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Pfft. I am no BNF. At the very best I qualify as medium-sized, and my inactivity for years (to say nothing of my loathing several very popular fannish texts) is a big hole in my fannish resume.

Also, I think that media fandom is like a gigantic women's college in this way: if you attempt to label us all as WIMMIN, the eight-foot-tall bathmats, to say nothing of the self-described girl, gurls, gurlzzz, trannies, males, hermaphrodites, and "none of the above," will all object to the formalized exclusion of their types.

So we go with a mushy, meaningless name, so as not to offend/exclude anybody with a name that might be meaningful. This is why eye-rolling is such a powerful skill in fandom.