2 Minutes of "There is No News"

For the past couple of weeks we have talked about authorship when studying fan fiction and slash fiction. We are getting into a discourse community that has a set of guidelines within the genre and also a method of editing and determining the levels of superiority in the writing. I think from the last class discussion, we determined that there is possibly a level of quality in the actual text, but tossed around questions of credibility in the genre and the value of authorship.

Now, I know this class is sick of hearing how there is no difference between the authorship of Shakespeare (and his contemporaries) and the authorship of texts in the media we are currently studying. To be honest, I have no great love for Shakespeare. What I do find fascinating is that his work is so highly regarded in academic studies, but was nothing more than Pop-Culture of its time. I will not get into my usual mantra about how Shakespeare’s authorship was just a job. What I will point out are the differences between the people writing on fan or slash fiction sites and the people writing on Shakespearean sites.

Last week we were asked to write slash fiction. This is one of the sites I used:
http://www.futurama-madhouse.com.ar/
It was well organized and basically told you anything a person needed to know about Futurama. It even included some not-so-needed-to-know tidbits of information. Some of the writing is creative and clever and some of it makes no sense at all except maybe to the author. The site includes fan-photos and drawings as well. Comments can be posted for both the text and visuals. Although the writers of fan fiction are using what was originally created by someone else, readers can tell these writers have invested a lot of time putting their own spin on what they have become very knowledgeable on.

Now I would like you to take a look at this site dedicated to Shakespeare:
http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/news.html
Scroll to the 4/13/08 entry “Is Shakespeare Dead?” and click on the new video link. Now check out all the additional videos on the right-hand side. This site is organized and even informative. You can find Shakespeare Festivals all over North America. There are essay contests to enter and even materials that can be used in the classroom, but please tell me what “nose hairs” have to do with Shakespeare (except that maybe he had them). By the way, that guy has his Ph. D.

My point is that most readers, regardless of their education, have an expectation of certain genres. Being truthful to ourselves, we can admit that we expect something a bit more scholarly from the Shakespeare site. When looking deeper into the Futurama site, the work is categorized as “Fan Art” or “Crap Art.” Even if the genre may not be credible for some, the discourse community has a sense of pride when it comes to their work.