Fan studies & resistant TV

DISCUSSION PROMPTS: PICK ONE

Prompt 1 — Fan Studies: After reading everything and listening to/watching this unit’s lecture, pick a show you know well and start looking for fan activity. Your primary goal is to find examples of fans changing or altering the original show to meet their priorities or interests. Some examples will be ideologically resistant (the fan’s creation upends stereotypes and norms on the show), and some will simply alter the program in less resistant ways, even possibly making resistant shows more ideological. Your task is to explain how the fan creation (fiction, artwork, vids, etc) alters the original program and assess any resistance or adherence to Ideological normativity. You do need to know your show well in order to respond to this prompt. The watchlist has some helpful suggestions. In short: if a show has sprouted a ton of fan activity, it will definitely work for this topic.
Prompt 2 — Resistant TV: If the fan studies option isn’t piquing your interest, or you don’t know a program well enough to proceed down that route, you may conduct an analysis of any show that resists Ideology, stereotypes, and norms. Your goal is differently specific: watch a show that challenges normativity (see suggestions in watchlist) and explain how the show is resistant. In order to avoid overlap with last unit’s discussion or paper 2, be sure to pick a different program, and train your focus on resistance specifically. One more thing: there’s no such thing as a totally resistant show (as we learned last unit). Your post must include not only the resistant content but also note at least one way that the show is normative, stereotypical, or Ideologically complicit.
IMAGES: YES, images are important this week. We definitely need to see the fan work (even screenshots of fan writing could be interesting visual aids). For prompt 2, show us pictorial evidence of the resistance you noted in the show you watched.