Rock This Way: Cultural Constructions of Musical Legitimacy

Any and all songs are capable of being remixed. But not all remixes are treated equally. Rock This Way examines transformative musical works-cover songs, remixes, mash-ups, parodies, and soundalike songs-to discover what contemporary American culture sees as legitimate when it comes to making music that builds upon other songs. Through examples of how popular discussion talked about such songs between 2009 and 2018, Mel Stanfill uses a combination of discourse analysis and digital humanities methods to interrogate our broader understanding of transformative works and where they converge at the legal, economic, and cultural ownership levels. Rock This Way provides a new way of thinking about what it means to re-create and borrow music, how the racial identity of both the reusing artist and the reused artist matters, and the ways in which the law polices artists and their works. Ultimately, Stanfill demonstrates that the extent to which a work is seen as having new expression or meaning is contingent upon notions of creativity, legitimacy, and law, all of which are shaped by white supremacy.

Arts & Photography

Stanfill, Mel

Music

University of Michigan Press

<div> Any and all songs are capable of being remixed. But not all remixes are treated equally.&nbsp;Rock This Way examines transformative musical works--cover songs, remixes, mash-ups, parodies, and soundalike songs--to discover what contemporary American culture sees as legitimate when it comes to making music that builds upon other songs. Through examples of how popular discussion talked about such songs between 2009 and 2018, Mel Stanfill uses a combination of discourse analysis and digital humanities methods to interrogate our broader understanding of transformative works and where they converge at the legal, economic, and cultural ownership levels.&nbsp; Rock This Way provides a new way of thinking about what it means to re-create and borrow music, how the racial identity of both the reusing artist and the reused artist matters, and the ways in which the law polices artists and their works. Ultimately, Stanfill demonstrates that the extent to which a work is seen as having new expression or meaning is contingent upon notions of creativity, legitimacy, and law, all of which are shaped by white supremacy. </div>

Highlights the importance of considering contemporary public culture through the lens of fan studies The Gamergate harassment campaign of women in video games, the "Unite the Right" rally where hundreds of Confederate monument supporters cried out racist and antisemitic slurs in Charlottesville, and the targeted racist and sexist harassment of Star Wars' Asian American actress Kelly Marie Tran all have one thing in common: they demonstrate the collective power and underlying ugliness of fandoms. These fans might feel victimized or betrayed by the content they've intertwined with their own identities, or they may simply feel that they're speaking truth to power. Regardless, by connecting via social media, they can unleash enormous amounts of hate, which often results in severe real-world consequences. Fandom Is Ugly argues that reactionary politics and media fandoms go hand in hand, and to understand one, we need to understand the other. Mel Stanfill pushes back on two mainstream assumptions: that media and the pleasure of consumption are frivolous and unworthy of study, and that fandoms are inherently progressive. Drawing on a corpus of angry social media posts, Fandom Is Ugly finds that ugly moments happen when deep emotional attachments collide with social structures and situations that have been misunderstood. By holistically examining the forms of ugly fandom in cases that touch upon race, gender, and sexuality, Fandom Is Ugly produces a comprehensive theory of the negative sides of fan attachments.

Fandom Is Ugly: Networked Harassment in Participatory Culture (Critical Cultural Communication, 47)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

NYU Press

Fandom Is Ugly (Critical Cultural Communication, 47)

A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy: The Construction of Authorship in Transmedia Franchises

Book Description\nA Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy is a vital tool for understanding our current fan-centric media landscape. The authors thoroughly explore the emergent authorial archetype of the fanboy auteur, being mindful of the industrial, textual, and cultural conditions that have facilitated its rise to power. Exhaustively researching the ways in which these approachable author figures are imagined and received, the authors are especially attentive to the ways in which gender and race shape the fanboy auteur’s ability to claim status and authority. Thisis essential reading for fan scholars and will be highly accessible and productive for those working within film studies, television studies, and industry studies. (Suzanne Scott, author of Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry)\nIn A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy, Salter and Stanfill build on concepts to develop a series of in-depth case studies, exploring some of the leading ‘auteurs’ in cult cinema and television, representing a range of different models of what authorship looks like in contemporary convergence culture. This important and timely book will be essential reading for people in fandom studies as well as those invested in feminist criticism and contemporary media authorship. The book represents an important intervention into debates about authorship, linking male creators and their fans into larger debates about intersectionality and male privilege, and providing some context for current media discussions of toxic male fandom. (Henry Jenkins, author of Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture)\nIncreasingly over the past decade, fan credentials on the part of writers, directors, and producers have come to be seen as a guarantee of quality media making―the “fanboy auteur.” Figures like Joss Whedon are both one of “us” and one of “them.” This is a strategy of marketing and branding―it is a claim from the auteur himself or industry PR machines that the presence of an auteur who is also a fan means the product is worth consuming. Such claims that fan credentials guarantee quality are often contested, with fans and critics alike rejecting various auteur figures as the true leader of their respective franchises. That split, between assertions of fan and auteur status and acceptance (or not) of that status, is key to unravelling the fan auteur.\nIn A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy: The Construction of Authorship in Transmedia Franchises, authors Anastasia Salter and Mel Stanfill examine this phenomenon through a series of case studies featuring fanboys. The volume discusses both popular fanboys, such as J. J. Abrams, Kevin Smith, and Joss Whedon, as well as fangirls like J. K. Rowling, E L James, and Patty Jenkins, and dissects how the fanboy-fangirl auteur dichotomy is constructed and defended by popular media and fans in online spaces, and how this discourse has played in maintaining the exclusionary status quo of geek culture.\nThis book is particularly timely given current discourse, including such incidents as the controversy surrounding Joss Whedon’s so-called feminism, the publication of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and contestation over authorial voices in the DC cinematic universe, as well as broader conversations about toxic masculinity and sexual harassment in Hollywood.

Comics & Graphic Novels

Salter, Anastasia

History & Price Guides

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI

Increasingly over the past decade, fan credentials on the part of writers, directors, and producers have come to be seen as a guarantee of quality media making - the "fanboy auteur". Figures like Joss Whedon are both one of "us" and one of "them". This is a strategy of marketing and branding - it is a claim from the auteur himself or industry PR machines that the presence of an auteur who is also a fan means the product is worth consuming. Such claims that fan credentials guarantee quality are often contested, with fans and critics alike rejecting various auteur figures as the true leader of their respective franchises. That split, between assertions of fan and auteur status and acceptance (or not) of that status, is key to unravelling the fan auteur. In A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy: The Construction of Authorship in Transmedia Franchises, authors Anastasia Salter and Mel Stanfill examine this phenomenon through a series of case studies featuring fanboys. The volume discusses both popular fanboys, such as J.J. Abrams, Kevin Smith, and Joss Whedon, as well as fangirls like J.K. Rowling, E.L. James, and Patty Jenkins, and dissects how the fanboy-fangirl auteur dichotomy is constructed and defended by popular media and fans in online spaces, and how this discourse has played in maintaining the exclusionary status quo of geek culture. This book is particularly timely given current discourse, including such incidents as the controversy surrounding Joss Whedon's so-called feminism, the publication of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and contestation over authorial voices in the DC cinematic universe, as well as broader conversations about toxic masculinity and sexual harassment in Hollywood.

As more and more fans rush online to share their thoughts on their favorite shows or video games, they might feel like the process of providing feedback is empowering. However, as fan studies scholar Mel Stanfill argues, these industry invitations for fan participation indicate not greater fan power but rather greater fan usefulness. Stanfill’s argument, controversial to some in the field, compares the “domestication of fandom” to the domestication of livestock, contending that, just as livestock are bred bigger and more docile as they are domesticated, so, too, are fans as the entertainment industry seeks to cultivate a fan base that is both more useful and more controllable. By bringing industry studies and fan studies into the conversation, Stanfill looks closely at just who exactly the industry considers “proper fans” in terms of race, gender, age, and sexuality, and interrogates how digital media have influenced consumption, ultimately finding that the invitation to participate is really an incitement to consume in circumscribed, industry-useful ways.

Exploiting Fandom: How the Media Industry Seeks to Manipulate Fans

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

University Of Iowa Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stanfill, Mel. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Stanfill, Mel

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stanfill, Mel. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Rock This Way: Cultural Constructions of Musical Legitimacy

Rock This Way: Cultural Constructions of Musical Legitimacy

Fandom Is Ugly: Networked Harassment in Participatory Culture (Critical Cultural Communication, 47)

Fandom Is Ugly (Critical Cultural Communication, 47)

A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy: The Construction of Authorship in Transmedia Franchises

A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy: The Construction of Authorship in Transmedia Franchises

Exploiting Fandom: How the Media Industry Seeks to Manipulate Fans