Customizations, collections and corporations: Mass production and self-expression

Abstract

Collecting and customizing highlight the interrelation of fan works and fan practices with corporate counterparts. Neither can be neatly isolated from the other. Corporations appropriate multiple aspects of material fan practices to encourage consumption, framing choice as customization and mass-produced merchandise as rare collectibles. Meanwhile, fans practice mini-mass-production, making multiple versions of fan works for sale or trade. Moving beyond an artificial value-laden binary opposition between fan customizations and collections or corporate versions, it would be more productive to focus on how both satisfy human urges for control and self-expression via one’s own creations and possessions. The personal investment of time and effort offers an expression and extension of self. Fans use toys, shoes, phone cases and other merchandise as raw materials for their creations. What varies is the amount of time, energy, skill or material resources individuals are able or willing to invest. Thus multiple supposedly distinct fan practices interconnect: customizers modifying or creating beloved fan objects; customers selecting from predetermined options to make their own variations on shoes, phone cases and other merchandise; shoppers seeking slight variations in seemingly identical items or collectors assembling work created by corporations or other customizers to display their own creations. Even if corporations monetize some forms of self-expression, collecting or customizing such items should be recognized as a form of fan activity instead of dismissed as mere consumerism.