#lawalks

Because defending the most vulnerable road users makes everyone safer, we talk to LA Walks Executive Director John Yi and Jared Sanchez, CalBike Senior Policy Advocate, about AB 1238, the Freedom to Walk Act. If made law, this would legalize mid-block crossings and crossing against traffic lights in California. THEN, Josh Cohen, a personal injury lawyer specializing in bikes, discusses the legal options for forcing DOTs and carmakers to make transportation safer.

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Deborah Murphy, Founder of LA Walks, with Tim Fremaux and David Somers, LA Department of Transportation Engineers, explain some points about LA's take on Vision Zero-- the worldwide attempt to bring traffic deaths to zero--and Downtown LA's My Figueroa Project. With Dennis Hindman.  

LISTEN.

For my transformative work, I chose to write a fan fiction set in the Harry Potter universe. As an English major, I am not immune to writing; I also spent some time in my younger years reading and writing Harry Potter fan fiction and felt comfortable picking it up once again. The finished product is meant to be a humorous metacommentary on the state of the fandom 7 years after the final book release, with special interest paid to author J.K. Rowling’s recent comments regarding the Harry/Hermione and Ron/Hermione ships, reflected through Harry, Ron, and Hermione. I wanted to explore the state of the fandom and gauge fan reaction to these topics. Questions about what happens to fans when a media text ends and when a text’s creator angers the fandom are important and interesting ones to ask.  After going through several drafts, I posted the final fic to two different fan fiction websites –a general site open to all fandoms (fanfiction.net) and one specific to Harry Potter fan fiction (harrypotterfanfiction.com).

Here is an excerpt:

In the 16 years since Voldemort's death, Harry Potter's life had been relatively boring. Sure, he had gotten married, had a few kids, and worked his way to the top of the Auror food chain at the Ministry of Magic at a suspiciously young age. That was nothing. He missed the danger, the excitement, the ever-present sense of doom that followed him like a raincloud in the days he was forced to dodge Voldemort's many assassination attempts. Now a man in his mid-30s, he was tired of the monotony he had ironically craved in his younger years. Things were too easy, too happy and he no longer wished to extol the virtues of 'Wizarding World Peace', as was the Ministry's slogan these days.

  Not even his three children could pull Harry away from this need for adrenaline. They were all at Hogwarts now, probably blowing up the castle as he sat at his breakfast table reading The Daily Prophet. The newspaper had rid itself of much of its corruption in the last decade or so but chose to fill its pages with fluff pieces instead. There were only so many articles about household cleaning potions and the Celebrity Crush of the Month a man could read before he chose to turn his own wand on himself and utter Avada Kedavra.

  He longed for a lone Death Eater to come creeping out of the shadows and attempt to kill him once more. He sighed wistfully.

  The general reaction to the story was positive, many fans saying that it was a nice take on Rowling’s divisive comments and was ‘meta’ enough to parody the state of the fandom and make them laugh. This project was a chance to engage in the "participatory culture of fandom", as denoted by Henry Jenkins, and see fan reactions firsthand.  

How can we see the cultural work of filk being taken up and transformed in the arguably more professionalized Wizard Rock of the Harry Potter fandom, or in the proliferation of amateur musicians on MySpace and, more recently, SoundCloud?

Filk, expressions of the ideals and sentiments of a fandom through folk music, is a marginal cog in the fan machine. Often ignored by larger fandom until the late 1970’s, filking is becoming a more common practice in the current fandom landscape, especially as updated technology and the internet has made access to filk and the creation of it that much easier. Filk is also a gender-neutral fan activity; it does not tend to lean towards one gender more than the other, making it a very accessible practice for many. In the words of Henry Jenkins, filk is “at once a personal expression of one fan’s response to the film and a statement of generally shared sentiments and experiences within fandom” (Jenkins 250.) Filk is a communal fan experience, a sub-community within the fan community, and embraces a number of different fandoms. It allows for a multitude of interests to be explored and creates a bond of commonality among diverse interests.

Filking also offers fans the chance to speak from a number of different points of view, often marginalized characters in their chosen fandom, and give them a voice. It also allows them to engage with unexplored aspects of the primary text and create a discourse on these themes through song. Filk is also derived from (usually) already popularized songs or folk music, building new culture on a previously existing foundation. This also ensures participation from many filkers: “Filk songs may evoke the negative stereotypes of fans circulated by the mass media or by cultural critics, yet inflict them in directions more sympathetic to the community’s own interests” (Jenkins 260.) A central feature of filking is the ‘song circle’; one fan begins a song and others join in and at its end, a new song begins in response. This folklore, or filklore, of sorts allows a fandom to express thoughts on their behalf and share their ideals and interests and “define its relationship to the outside world” (Jenkins 273.)   

Updated audio technology and wide internet access is making the creation and sharing of filk easy, but eliminates some of the close bonds of a filksong. Websites like SoundCloud allow for anyone willing to create their own song and share it immediately with friends or strangers via websites like MySpace; both sites have become a hub for amateur musicians, filkers or otherwise. In a way, this is filk being taken up and expanded in a way unlike before. Wizard Rock from the Harry Potter fandom is classic filk taken up a few notches. Many ‘wrock’ bands record their songs, usually from the point of view of a Harry Potter character or about the series, and release them via YouTube or MySpace. The songs are then shared across the fandom; unlike most filk, however, these songs are not set to the tune of other songs and are their own incarnations. Diehard filkers believe this trend is damaging to the concept of filk: “[it] has become more hierarchical due to the push toward professional standards of technical perfection” (Jenkins 275.) The culture of wizard rock and websites like SoundCloud and MySpace have taken filk into the mainstream much more and provided more access than ever before but have also disturbed the democratic ideals filk was built upon.

In Jolie Jensen’s article ‘Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization’, fans are often labeled as deranged and dangerous, either too obsessed or too fanatical to fit into a cultural norm.  Jensen aims to break down these stereotypes and, in doing so, attempts to present fandom as a normal cultural phenomenon. As a long-time Harry Potter fan, I experienced a community of people from around the globe coming together for a common cause; there was nothing dangerous or disturbingly excessive about it, but for those outside of the fandom bubble, the perspective was much more negative.

It is true that some fans go above and beyond the ‘norm’ in expressing their love, but generalizing fandom as a whole based on the behavior of some is extremely problematic. This is illustrated in Jensen’s ‘Us and Them’ theory. Many may identify as fans and be involved in the greater fandom but continue to refer to those who, for example, dress up at conventions and write slash fanfiction as ‘them’. Even fandom is deeply segregated on the topic of fandom. This goes even further than affecting the relations of one fandom and even influences the relationships between multiple fandoms. I am guilty of falling into the ‘Us and Them’ trap as well, never wanting to identify with the craziest of fans for fear of being associated with negative connotations and experiencing societal ostracism. I loved being a part of fandom and was not ashamed of it, but felt the need to hide certain aspects of it from others as it was not deemed the cultural norm. I should also mention that I was relatively relieved my accompanying audio recording would be anonymous.

Jensen also states that fans are either characterized as the ‘obsessed loner’ or the ‘hysterical crowd’. While both characterizations certainly exist, the concept of fandom is too big and diverse to whittle it down to two groups. These two stereotypes have a dangerous connotation and describe fandom as a threat to normal society. It is my belief, through my experience as a fan, that obsession and hysteria are not necessarily negative acts or feelings; they are simply expressions that not everyone understands. What’s more, any given fan is much more than their fandom and labeling someone as a fan and nothing else is problematic for a number of reasons, especially as people grow, fanaticism fades, and society goes through cultural shifts all the time. Although Jensen’s article was written in the 1990’s, far before the age of the internet, her thoughts and theories ring true; what characterized fandom 20 years ago continues to characterize it today.