Textual Poachers Research Articles

From fan appropriation to industry re-appropriation: the sexual identity of comic superheroes

In his controversial text Seduction of the Innocent, Fredric Wertham's (1954) description of Batman and Robin as a ‘wish dream of two homosexuals living together’ (Lendrum 2004, p. 70) represents one of the first published queer readings of superhero characters. This text signalled the commencement of, and subsequent intense interest in, the way superhero characters often portray a ‘camp' sensibility (Medhurst 1991) representative of a queer performative identity (Butler 1993). This is most evident in online fan-communities where the sexual identity of popular superheroes are continuously explored and debated in discussion forums and expressed through the production of slash fiction and queer-themed fan art. The ambiguity inherent in superhero comics has traditionally allowed and encouraged fans to operate as ‘textual poachers’ (Jenkins 1992) appropriating these texts for their own means. Today, however, there exist a new generation of comic book superheroes, in the form of established industry-penned ‘out’ gay characters. This paper examines the impact and meaning of the shift from the ‘implied’ to ‘actual’ in terms of fans’ acceptance, resistance and desire to further appropriate comic texts.

“If you can walk down the street and recognise the difference between cast iron and wrought iron, the world is altogether a better place”: Being Enthusiastic about Industrial Archaeology

“If you can walk down the street and recognise the difference between cast iron and wrought iron, the world is altogether a better place”: Being Enthusiastic about Industrial Archaeology

Real Boys Carry Girly Epics: Normalising Gender Bending in Online Games

Players in online games frequently choose the opposite gender when they select an avatar. Previously, this has been attributed to a player's unconscious sexual anxieties and the need to experiment through the anonymous location of the avatar. However, this paper argues that the development of choice in games, where players have frequently selected the female form for ludic reasons, means that this choice has become normalised through a historical process. The avatar is frequently considered as a tool, with gender regarded as a freely admitted aesthetic pleasure. The player does not see this as a site of tension, or seeks to absolve this tension publicly as an act of appropriation typical to Jenkins¹ textual poachers. Overall, the act of gender switching is not considered deviant within gaming; more, it is embraced as a common practise with historical precedents to support it.

Textual Poachers: Hunting Pop's Wow

Textual Poachers: Hunting Pop's Wow

“Boulevard of Broken Songs”

“Boulevard of Broken Songs”

Star Trek and History: Race-ing toward a White Future.

An original and insightful exploration of a major component of contemporary American -H. Bruce Franklin, author ofWar Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination boldly goes where no scholar has gone before and discovers racial anxiety at the center of the Star Trek story. This careful reading of commercial culture's quintessential mega-text provides invaluable insight into how mass media productions help shape us into the people we are. -George Lipsitz, author of Time Passages Bernardi's thoughtful and provocative analysis of race in Star Trek is wholly original; it challenges viewers to see the series in a new light, and challenges its creators to be more mindful of the implicit messages in their work. -Rene Echevarria, co-supervising producer, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Bernardi has dissected the history of a myth. If we are ever to track down and expose our semi-conscious racist evasions and dissemblings, we need more books like this one. -Mike Budd, Florida Atlantic University would have sworn that there was little new any scholar could say about Star Trek. I was wrong. Bernardi opens up a rich new set of issues for scholarly examination, centering around the contradictory expression of race within the series and the fan culture that surrounds us. His analysis is bold, provocative, and challenging, yet consistently fair-minded. He combines a fan's detailed knowledge of the program's universe with the theoretical sophistication necessary to make this book a cutting-edge contribution to the cultural studies of race. -Henry Jenkins, author of Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture Star Trek and History examines the representational and narrative functions of race in Star Trek and explores how the meaning of race in the science fiction series has been facilitated and constrained by creative and network decision-making, by genre, by intertextuality, and by the audience. The author interprets how the changing social and political movements of the times have influenced the production and meaning of Trek texts and the ways in which the ongoing series negotiated and reflected these turbulent histories. Most significantly, he tells us why is it important for readers to better understand the articulation of race in this enduring icon of American popular culture. Daniel Leonard Bernardi is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Film and Television at the University of California-Los Angeles. He is the editor of The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of United States Cinema.

Book Reviews

The End of the World as We Know It. Daniel Wojcik. States of Sympathy: Seduction and Democracy in the American Novel. Elizabeth Barnes. Disciplines of Virtue: Girls' Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Lynne Vallone. Consumer Rites: The Buying & Selling of American Holidays. Leigh Eric Schmidt. Many Wests: Place, Culture, & Regional Identity. David M. Wrobel and Michael C. Steiner, eds. The Cloister Walk. Kathleen Norris. Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth‐Century Women's Sport. Susan K. Cahn. The Courts of Babylon: Tales of Greed and Glory in the Harsh New World of Professional Tennis. Peter Bodo. Cinema and Painting: How Art is Used in Film. Angela Dalle Vacche. Living in the Depot: The Two‐Story Railroad Station. H. Roger Grant. On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures. Noam Chomsky. The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape. Don Mitchell. Black Lies, White Lies: The Truth according to Tony Brown. Tony Brown. Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn. David Hadju. At the Picture Show: Small‐town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture. Kathryn H. Fuller. The Fear of Sinking: The American Success Formula in the Gilded Age. Paulette D. Kilmer. Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. Henry Jenkins. All of This Music Belongs to the Nation: The WPA's Federal Music Project and American Society. Kenneth J. Bindas. The Pequot War. Alfred A. Cave. Building the Ultimate Dam: John S. Eastwood and the Control of Water in the West. Donald C. Jackson.

Confession and Identity

Confession and Identity

Boys in Space: "Star Trek," Latency, and the Neverending Story

centerpiece while providing the basis for a theoretical template. In his exploration of ST fandom, Henry Jenkins unapologetically invokes his institutional authority to lend legitimacy to his status and confronts popular stereotypes of Trekkies as nerdy guys with glasses and rubber Vulcan ears, 'I Grok Spock' T-shirts stretched over their bulging stomachs.2 Jenkins thus recuperates fandom, transmuting it to the more academic rubric of textual poachers, a critical paradigm resting upon a Marxist critique in which fans, institutionally marginalized and socially decentered, become participants in a rich, nomadic, subversive subculture defying the limitations of the manifest narratives and the capitalist regimes which control them. Although the breadth of Jenkins's work is impressive and resists homogenization of the diverse facets of fan culture, he may be exaggerating the fans' independence. Whether one is a poacher or not, surely it escapes no one's notice that these fans, reinvoking authoritarian institutional hierarchies in their own organizations,3 are being actively courted by an entertainment industry mindful of the consumer dollars in their bulging pockets. Speaking at the formal reception of a retrospective exhibition on the original series at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., on February 26, 1992, a Paramount representative, flanked on either side by the original series actors, congratulated the enthusiastic reception attendees (most of whom were parents with their latency-aged children in tow) for their unfailing vision and faithful participation in the ST phenomenon, appealing to them to pass on this legacy to their children. Three days later, Robert Justman, ST's original associate producer and supervising producer for The Next Generation's (TNG) first season, spoke at a special, day-long seminar on

Review: Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture by Henry Jenkins

Review: Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture by Henry Jenkins

Textual poachers: television fans and participatory culture

Textual poachers: television fans and participatory culture