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Narrow and Wide Canons and the Fannish Experience
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month_of_meta!
We live in a time where it seems that more and more, "canon" creative works have a lot of the same derivative/transformative roots that "fannish" works do. Whether it's Elizabeth Bennett fighting the undead in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a modern gender-bent take on Holmes and Watson in Elementary, or a riff on fairy tales in countless sources like Once Upon a Time, it seems like there are more texts than ever that have multiple "takes" on the source material. What are the strengths of "wider" texts with multiple canon takes, and what are the benefits to more "narrow" texts with a more focused, clear voice? This essay is a (tentative) exploration of the differences.
A few clarifications at the beginning: I use for examples various fandoms I only know second-hand. Fandoms I don't know well I've put in bold, just so it's extra-clear I'm not speaking with any authority there. If I'm wrong about those (or any other) please kindly point it out to me! Also, I have a nice neat 10-point spectrum below, but in reality the categories are messy and there's a lot of wiggle room for what goes where. Feel free to make a case for changing categories, or for whole categories I've left out!
Narrow and Wide Canons: A Spectrum
1--The narrowest category, a work with one singular author and source--no movie adaptations, no tv shows. Almost always books. Examples gleaned from my recent reading list: Night Soldiers by Alan Furst, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (though Google reveals some theatrical adaptations of this, so maybe not a pure case!), Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje. These types of highly-focused texts tend to have a very clear authorial voice and tone. As a result, they tend to be smaller fandoms (as being true to a strong authorial voice is a challenge). You'll see a lot of these on the Yuletide list.
2--A work with a singular author, but in a medium other than text-only: webcomics and independent comic books would fall into this category. They still have the clear, focused vision of a single-text work, but the authorial voice tends to be less distinct, because they generally lack a clear, consistent narrator in the same way books have. This class is here largely because I started coming up with examples of texts that have a larger following than a single book (Homestuck, Fables) and felt "wider" somehow, but they still had a relatively bounded text.
3--A work with a clear, single canon, but multiple creators involved in the process: things like Big Bang Theory, Friends, Inception. That is, a movie or tv show can have a clear single canon text, but will have a number of people who are involved in creating and whose ideas can come in conflict or synthesize into something new. An actor can disagree with the writers about what kind of character he or she is playing, for example, and those disagreements can provide tensions and gaps that fans can pick up on and exploit/debate/play with. One of my favorite examples is from the British show Blakes 7, where the actor playing the character of Kerr Avon thought Avon was...well, generally a lot more macho, cool, and studly than many of the writers did. Over time his take on the character gained more traction, and the character shifted accordingly, with interesting results. 2-4 on this spectrum seem to provide something of a sweet spot for a text that's stable and consumable, but also open and flexible.
4--A work like #2, but with various subsidiary "tie-in" sub-media. Babylon 5, for example, had various professional novels and a comic book, as did Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Fans can remain completely unaware of the tie-ins and still participate easily in the fandom. In fact, there are often debates about "how canon" the tie-ins are, especially because they tend to be less-known and sometimes...a bit different. For example, a Babylon 5 novel decided to make a character Deaf since birth out of nowhere. Another fun case is Ryan North's ongoing reading of the Back to the Future novelization (which was published before the movie came out), with hilarious results. In general, these are situations where purists and completists will be aware of the extra texts, but they won't usually be known to the average fan.
5--A work that has two clear and distinct sources, usually a movie and a book (a written and a visual source). Examples here are nearly endless: Game of Thrones, Black Butler, (and most anime/manga pairs), Master and Commander, Hugo, Hunger Games, Harry Potter (though Pottermore might throw this off). This category offers some very specific challenges, usually because the original text is usually a print text and thus a more focused, smaller fandom that is blown wide open by a visual version that brings in a lot more fans. Inevitably there's some conflict over which version is to be valued more, and places where the two versions are quite different can become points of enduring tension. For example, the casting choice for Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter movies was quite different from what many fans of the books had imagined beforehand, and Alan Rickman's Snape most definitely influenced the character's role in fandom. The bigger the difference between the original text and the movie/show, the more complicated the situation can become (paging Sir Conan Doyle, see #8 below, Mr. Doyle...). You've probably witnessed arguments over which version is "better" of a text on your own flist. And if the visual version is a serious let-down (i.e. the movie version of The Dark is Rising), it can be very painful for fans of the text version.
6--A type-2 work with a single, more recent "remake" in a similar (usually visual) medium: Mission Impossible, Hawaii 5-0, Wild Wild West. The tone of the remake tends to be quite different, often more tongue-in-cheek and ironic (based on the trailers I've seen of the upcoming movie Dark Shadows and my childish memories of the original soap opera, there's going to be a big difference in tone). In addition to the conflicts that text-to-visual canons have, there's often a distinct visual conflict as well. When you think "James West," do you see Robert Conrad or Will Smith? And of course the recent Star Trek reboot has resulted in a lot of Shatner/Pine Nimoy/Quinto debate (no, not that kind of slash! Though I'm sure Rule 34 holds true just fine there as well). This can cause a lot of conflict but also gives people a lot of freedom to be flexible with their fannishness.
7--"Worlds": fandoms with a mostly clear central text, but a huge (even bewildering) variety of other texts set in the same world. Star Trek and Star Wars are of course two of the most famous: Star Wars has six movies, piles of professional novels, four animated series, a huge number of comic book series, and over a hundred video games. Oh, and a holiday special! :) Of course, there isn't a clear boundary between this and other categories, and many texts are growing to become full-blown worlds full of detailed and sometimes contradictory texts. I'd say Doctor Who belongs here too, for example, and I'm sure you can come up with more. With these fandoms, what is "canon" and what is not becomes increasingly difficult to define and increasingly personal--for example, I hear Mara Jade is a great Star Wars character, but I could just never imagine Luke marrying anyone, so I never dipped into that area of the extended universe, but the Old Republic! I love that part of the history. Or take the discussions of who's the best Doctor or who's the best Star Trek captain (NO SERIOUSLY, TAKE THEM. PLEASE.) At this point in the openness/narrowness spectrum, things are starting to get pretty chaotic and wide-open. This can create a lot of friction in a fandom, but also usually means a very energized and active fandom as well, with a lot of space for fannish activity because there are so many unexplored corners and possibilities.
8--A text with multiple forms and remakes, but there's still one clear primary text being drawn from. These are things like Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and (increasingly) the Holmes mythos: everyone knows the original text, but there's a stunning multiplicity of takes on the original. Some of them are relatively true to the original (Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet; the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries). However, especially as time goes by, versions of it tend to be increasingly AU, changing the settling dramatically. West Side Story moves Romeo and Juliet to modern New York City; the 1996 Romeo + Juliet makes it even more modern and moves it to Florida. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies inserts zombies into the Austen. BBC's Sherlock is another example of a "modern AU," and the upcoming Elementary is both a modern AU and a genderswap take on Doyle's stories. Neil Gaiman's wonderful "A Study in Emerald" (which you can download here for free, and should!) combines Holmes and Cthulhu. At the furthest extreme, the original text might be little more than hinted at: Clueless's retelling of Austen's Emma; 10 Things I Hate About You's adaptation of Taming of the Shrew, or even House's nod to Holmes.
Here a "fandom" is starting to become a very loose term indeed, as a person can be a fan of one retelling and not at all a fan of another--or even a fan of a retelling and not at all a fan of the original. There's still a text that can be held up as the "original," but that doesn't always lead to greater unity among fans at all--in fact, some people will get quite annoyed at "canon purists." Even creators can get in on the act: for example, Stephen Moffat, writer of BBC's "Sherlock," being annoyed at plans for Elementary, saying he feared a "rogue version" of the show would "degrade the brand."
9--A "text" with multiple forms by a multiplicity of creators, none of which are clearly the "original" form. These are things like Arthurian legend, myths, Robin Hood, or fairy tales. There's a lot of variance on certain plot points due to the overlapping/conflicting texts: is the "real" ending of Red Riding Hood one in which she gets eaten and dies, or one in which she tricks the wolf and escapes, or one in which a hunter saves her? You'll see a lot of stories in this category in Yuletide as well, simply because most people are aware of at least the basics of the mythos, so they're accessible to writers. Of course, the very wide-open quality of the text can lead to conflict when there's a more bounded text that draws on the mythos heavily: BBC's Merlin, for example (note: I only watched the first season!), has maintained a steady tension between what people "know" of Arthurian legend and what is actually happening on the show: never quite abandoning the basics of the legend while rarely following them closely. The recent fairy-tale based shows Once Upon a Time and Grimm have some of this same tension, along with many movies and fiction adaptations.
10--A long-ranging work with multiple authors, few of them clearly superior. I reserve this slot for the "Big Two" comic canons of Marvel and DC, although I'd be curious if you think there are other fandoms that might fit. At this point, "canon text" is starting to get frankly confusing, because there are fifty to seventy years of constant, unfolding stories written by thousands of different creators (writers and artists). Nearly every character has multiple takes on their personality; AUs are built into the "canon" (Batman as a vampire? Done. Daredevil as a blind Irish musician in 1602? Done. Superman turned into a rapist centaur and then into a girl before ending up in a happy threesome on the moon with Lois Lane and Lana Lang? Doooooone.), and inconsistencies, retcons and reboots mean that the "canon" actively contradicts itself in many places. In addition, Big Two comics fandoms also have the text/visual split of other fandoms in spades: "Which Batman movie is the best" is an endless source of fan arguments, and each has a very distinctive tone and style. Filled with overlapping texts and characters, with decades' worth of stories crammed into five to ten years of "real time" (warning: attempting to make a timeline that fit all the Robins and Batgirls into it before the recent reboot could drive one mad; it was a Moebius strip of intertextuality, and there's no reason to believe it won't be just as convoluted again within a few years as bits of canon are re-introduced), Big Two comics are in fact so "wide" as to render the term "fandom" nearly meaningless at times, because it's almost impossible for any two fans to have consumed exactly the same texts (a fan of Dick Grayson, DC's original Robin, who loved him on the Adam West Batman show, and a fan who read his solo run in Nightwing, are getting very different takes on the same character). At this extreme, the text's wideness means it's extremely accessible at the early stages of fannishness (nearly everyone knows enough about Spiderman or Superman to read stories about them or talk about which one they like more), but can be incredibly daunting once you dig a little deeper.
As I finish this up, I realize I don't really have any place in here for RPF, or for "micro-fandoms" like commercials or songs! RPF is especially terra incognita to me, but I'd be curious to hear how you think the "text" of RPF translates into this spectrum. Any thoughts, suggestions on re-categorization, desire to squee about how wonderful "A Study in Emerald" is, or extra examples? Comment below!
month_of_meta!We live in a time where it seems that more and more, "canon" creative works have a lot of the same derivative/transformative roots that "fannish" works do. Whether it's Elizabeth Bennett fighting the undead in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a modern gender-bent take on Holmes and Watson in Elementary, or a riff on fairy tales in countless sources like Once Upon a Time, it seems like there are more texts than ever that have multiple "takes" on the source material. What are the strengths of "wider" texts with multiple canon takes, and what are the benefits to more "narrow" texts with a more focused, clear voice? This essay is a (tentative) exploration of the differences.
A few clarifications at the beginning: I use for examples various fandoms I only know second-hand. Fandoms I don't know well I've put in bold, just so it's extra-clear I'm not speaking with any authority there. If I'm wrong about those (or any other) please kindly point it out to me! Also, I have a nice neat 10-point spectrum below, but in reality the categories are messy and there's a lot of wiggle room for what goes where. Feel free to make a case for changing categories, or for whole categories I've left out!
Narrow and Wide Canons: A Spectrum
1--The narrowest category, a work with one singular author and source--no movie adaptations, no tv shows. Almost always books. Examples gleaned from my recent reading list: Night Soldiers by Alan Furst, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (though Google reveals some theatrical adaptations of this, so maybe not a pure case!), Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje. These types of highly-focused texts tend to have a very clear authorial voice and tone. As a result, they tend to be smaller fandoms (as being true to a strong authorial voice is a challenge). You'll see a lot of these on the Yuletide list.
2--A work with a singular author, but in a medium other than text-only: webcomics and independent comic books would fall into this category. They still have the clear, focused vision of a single-text work, but the authorial voice tends to be less distinct, because they generally lack a clear, consistent narrator in the same way books have. This class is here largely because I started coming up with examples of texts that have a larger following than a single book (Homestuck, Fables) and felt "wider" somehow, but they still had a relatively bounded text.
3--A work with a clear, single canon, but multiple creators involved in the process: things like Big Bang Theory, Friends, Inception. That is, a movie or tv show can have a clear single canon text, but will have a number of people who are involved in creating and whose ideas can come in conflict or synthesize into something new. An actor can disagree with the writers about what kind of character he or she is playing, for example, and those disagreements can provide tensions and gaps that fans can pick up on and exploit/debate/play with. One of my favorite examples is from the British show Blakes 7, where the actor playing the character of Kerr Avon thought Avon was...well, generally a lot more macho, cool, and studly than many of the writers did. Over time his take on the character gained more traction, and the character shifted accordingly, with interesting results. 2-4 on this spectrum seem to provide something of a sweet spot for a text that's stable and consumable, but also open and flexible.
4--A work like #2, but with various subsidiary "tie-in" sub-media. Babylon 5, for example, had various professional novels and a comic book, as did Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Fans can remain completely unaware of the tie-ins and still participate easily in the fandom. In fact, there are often debates about "how canon" the tie-ins are, especially because they tend to be less-known and sometimes...a bit different. For example, a Babylon 5 novel decided to make a character Deaf since birth out of nowhere. Another fun case is Ryan North's ongoing reading of the Back to the Future novelization (which was published before the movie came out), with hilarious results. In general, these are situations where purists and completists will be aware of the extra texts, but they won't usually be known to the average fan.
5--A work that has two clear and distinct sources, usually a movie and a book (a written and a visual source). Examples here are nearly endless: Game of Thrones, Black Butler, (and most anime/manga pairs), Master and Commander, Hugo, Hunger Games, Harry Potter (though Pottermore might throw this off). This category offers some very specific challenges, usually because the original text is usually a print text and thus a more focused, smaller fandom that is blown wide open by a visual version that brings in a lot more fans. Inevitably there's some conflict over which version is to be valued more, and places where the two versions are quite different can become points of enduring tension. For example, the casting choice for Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter movies was quite different from what many fans of the books had imagined beforehand, and Alan Rickman's Snape most definitely influenced the character's role in fandom. The bigger the difference between the original text and the movie/show, the more complicated the situation can become (paging Sir Conan Doyle, see #8 below, Mr. Doyle...). You've probably witnessed arguments over which version is "better" of a text on your own flist. And if the visual version is a serious let-down (i.e. the movie version of The Dark is Rising), it can be very painful for fans of the text version.
6--A type-2 work with a single, more recent "remake" in a similar (usually visual) medium: Mission Impossible, Hawaii 5-0, Wild Wild West. The tone of the remake tends to be quite different, often more tongue-in-cheek and ironic (based on the trailers I've seen of the upcoming movie Dark Shadows and my childish memories of the original soap opera, there's going to be a big difference in tone). In addition to the conflicts that text-to-visual canons have, there's often a distinct visual conflict as well. When you think "James West," do you see Robert Conrad or Will Smith? And of course the recent Star Trek reboot has resulted in a lot of Shatner/Pine Nimoy/Quinto debate (no, not that kind of slash! Though I'm sure Rule 34 holds true just fine there as well). This can cause a lot of conflict but also gives people a lot of freedom to be flexible with their fannishness.
7--"Worlds": fandoms with a mostly clear central text, but a huge (even bewildering) variety of other texts set in the same world. Star Trek and Star Wars are of course two of the most famous: Star Wars has six movies, piles of professional novels, four animated series, a huge number of comic book series, and over a hundred video games. Oh, and a holiday special! :) Of course, there isn't a clear boundary between this and other categories, and many texts are growing to become full-blown worlds full of detailed and sometimes contradictory texts. I'd say Doctor Who belongs here too, for example, and I'm sure you can come up with more. With these fandoms, what is "canon" and what is not becomes increasingly difficult to define and increasingly personal--for example, I hear Mara Jade is a great Star Wars character, but I could just never imagine Luke marrying anyone, so I never dipped into that area of the extended universe, but the Old Republic! I love that part of the history. Or take the discussions of who's the best Doctor or who's the best Star Trek captain (NO SERIOUSLY, TAKE THEM. PLEASE.) At this point in the openness/narrowness spectrum, things are starting to get pretty chaotic and wide-open. This can create a lot of friction in a fandom, but also usually means a very energized and active fandom as well, with a lot of space for fannish activity because there are so many unexplored corners and possibilities.
8--A text with multiple forms and remakes, but there's still one clear primary text being drawn from. These are things like Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and (increasingly) the Holmes mythos: everyone knows the original text, but there's a stunning multiplicity of takes on the original. Some of them are relatively true to the original (Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet; the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries). However, especially as time goes by, versions of it tend to be increasingly AU, changing the settling dramatically. West Side Story moves Romeo and Juliet to modern New York City; the 1996 Romeo + Juliet makes it even more modern and moves it to Florida. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies inserts zombies into the Austen. BBC's Sherlock is another example of a "modern AU," and the upcoming Elementary is both a modern AU and a genderswap take on Doyle's stories. Neil Gaiman's wonderful "A Study in Emerald" (which you can download here for free, and should!) combines Holmes and Cthulhu. At the furthest extreme, the original text might be little more than hinted at: Clueless's retelling of Austen's Emma; 10 Things I Hate About You's adaptation of Taming of the Shrew, or even House's nod to Holmes.
Here a "fandom" is starting to become a very loose term indeed, as a person can be a fan of one retelling and not at all a fan of another--or even a fan of a retelling and not at all a fan of the original. There's still a text that can be held up as the "original," but that doesn't always lead to greater unity among fans at all--in fact, some people will get quite annoyed at "canon purists." Even creators can get in on the act: for example, Stephen Moffat, writer of BBC's "Sherlock," being annoyed at plans for Elementary, saying he feared a "rogue version" of the show would "degrade the brand."
9--A "text" with multiple forms by a multiplicity of creators, none of which are clearly the "original" form. These are things like Arthurian legend, myths, Robin Hood, or fairy tales. There's a lot of variance on certain plot points due to the overlapping/conflicting texts: is the "real" ending of Red Riding Hood one in which she gets eaten and dies, or one in which she tricks the wolf and escapes, or one in which a hunter saves her? You'll see a lot of stories in this category in Yuletide as well, simply because most people are aware of at least the basics of the mythos, so they're accessible to writers. Of course, the very wide-open quality of the text can lead to conflict when there's a more bounded text that draws on the mythos heavily: BBC's Merlin, for example (note: I only watched the first season!), has maintained a steady tension between what people "know" of Arthurian legend and what is actually happening on the show: never quite abandoning the basics of the legend while rarely following them closely. The recent fairy-tale based shows Once Upon a Time and Grimm have some of this same tension, along with many movies and fiction adaptations.
10--A long-ranging work with multiple authors, few of them clearly superior. I reserve this slot for the "Big Two" comic canons of Marvel and DC, although I'd be curious if you think there are other fandoms that might fit. At this point, "canon text" is starting to get frankly confusing, because there are fifty to seventy years of constant, unfolding stories written by thousands of different creators (writers and artists). Nearly every character has multiple takes on their personality; AUs are built into the "canon" (Batman as a vampire? Done. Daredevil as a blind Irish musician in 1602? Done. Superman turned into a rapist centaur and then into a girl before ending up in a happy threesome on the moon with Lois Lane and Lana Lang? Doooooone.), and inconsistencies, retcons and reboots mean that the "canon" actively contradicts itself in many places. In addition, Big Two comics fandoms also have the text/visual split of other fandoms in spades: "Which Batman movie is the best" is an endless source of fan arguments, and each has a very distinctive tone and style. Filled with overlapping texts and characters, with decades' worth of stories crammed into five to ten years of "real time" (warning: attempting to make a timeline that fit all the Robins and Batgirls into it before the recent reboot could drive one mad; it was a Moebius strip of intertextuality, and there's no reason to believe it won't be just as convoluted again within a few years as bits of canon are re-introduced), Big Two comics are in fact so "wide" as to render the term "fandom" nearly meaningless at times, because it's almost impossible for any two fans to have consumed exactly the same texts (a fan of Dick Grayson, DC's original Robin, who loved him on the Adam West Batman show, and a fan who read his solo run in Nightwing, are getting very different takes on the same character). At this extreme, the text's wideness means it's extremely accessible at the early stages of fannishness (nearly everyone knows enough about Spiderman or Superman to read stories about them or talk about which one they like more), but can be incredibly daunting once you dig a little deeper.
As I finish this up, I realize I don't really have any place in here for RPF, or for "micro-fandoms" like commercials or songs! RPF is especially terra incognita to me, but I'd be curious to hear how you think the "text" of RPF translates into this spectrum. Any thoughts, suggestions on re-categorization, desire to squee about how wonderful "A Study in Emerald" is, or extra examples? Comment below!
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Doctor Who, to be honest, nearly falls into the number 10 spectrum. So many writers, some few who are strongly recognized, but with a mythos spanning nearly fifty years, there are some points of continuity that get confusing. The very nature of the Doctor himself, and the fact the original tv show and tie-ins presented the material with lots of room for interpretation have led to me seeing some interesting debates on basic characteristics.
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here via month of meta
I think micro-fandoms may be more of a 2? Like the nail polish fics from last yuletide, where people seemed to me to be working off a relatively small canon of nail polish descriptions, but these lacked that strong narrative voice so people ended up writing loads of very different things because the canon didn't offer a lot of guidance? (Hmm, I feel like this sounds judgey, which I don't mean it to be! Lots of different things are great, they just seem to be the result of certain types of canon.)
Re: here via month of meta
You don't sound judgey of micro-fandoms at all! They're not everyone's cup of tea, but I think the appeal of them lies in that huge playful openness where really just about anything goes...
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We've definitely talked a lot about what constitutes "text" over at writingthewall, it's so hard to pin down!
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And speaking of RPF: for a fandom like J2, for example, the 'text' that people are working with is mainly the behind-the-scenes stuff - blooper reels, interviews, comments at cons, online social media stuff - as well as the text of the show itself. But there's also a lot of rumour at work, and personal speculation based on observation of the actors, knowledge of their careers, and so on. So, all in all, the text which fans are working with is very nebulous. Comments at cons aren't all recorded, people remember them or report them through their journals. The speculative side is, I think, much more important than it would be in the fandom of a TV show (rather than the actors). So Jared might once have said that he likes black coffee, and that would be 'canon', but it doesn't mean that everyone is going to be aware of this or consider it important.
So does that count as a 10?
(Edited to remove a bit of surplus text!)
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And that's really interesting, about the role of rumor and hearsay! It's almost like a form of fanon--one of my favorite old shows has this fannish certainty that a character loves ice cream, even though he never consumes it on the show, some of that same sort of feeling. It's true, the RPF "text" is fascinating and nebulous, I can see it definitely falling into one of the later categories! Thanks so much for the feedback, I ended up learning a lot about the mindset for PRF with this essay and that was definitely something I wanted to get more of...