This Week On “I Should Be Metaing the Show But I’m Going to Analyze the Fandom Because I Can”
I’ve been avoiding writing this essay. There’s a half dozen people at this point who know I’ve been strenuously avoiding writing this essay. And this nascent idea, this unborn word vomit, has been following me around for days as I poke about Tumblr; I’ve begun to believe it’s an aspect of the hellatus rot, where all the old arguments and moot points and “why the hell is this still a thing GET OFF MY LAWN” topics come back to the top because there’s a dearth of new material to drown them out, and all of it circles back to one singular disconnect.
So. Fanon vs. Canon.
First off, definitions.
- Fanon is a conglomeration of concepts, headcanons, shared ideas, and beliefs that fandom constructs around a topic. Fanon especially builds up around ships.
- Canon is the text presented to the audience by the author. It is absolute, up until the point that the author changes things (redefining previous canon, recontextualizing, or straight out retcons). It includes the text and the subtext. Yes, subtext is canon. What, you say, I’m totally imagining that subtext even exists?
“To analyze, to meta – to meta, perchance to headcanon – ay, there’s the rub, for in this realm of fantasy what concepts may come…”
The wonderful thing about the postmodern era is that the author is dead; the audience is free to interpret the text however they like, pulling out unintended meanings everywhere. This is great for tv shows, where there’s a dozen people adding a dozen different types and points of subtext, some intentional and some not so intentional.
The horrible thing about the postmodern era is that the author is dead. The audience is free to interpret the text however they like. So what I see as canon and what Jo over here sees as canon? They don’t match up.
I’ll bet you a dollar that someone will read this and go “subtext isn’t canon.” And by the wonderful paradox of “all interpretations are valid” they’re both right and wrong at the same time. Right now, in this essay, I am metaing the fandom, and the shared belief of fandom interactions is that subtext existing is canon; in other words, subtext being canon is fandom fanon.
I know, my head hurts too. (Guess what; because subtext being canon is based on a large chunk of Western literary tradition, it’s not only de facto canonically canon (because we’re addressing western literature as our source), this is now a meta about meta.)
“Why are you making me read this?” Well, because I have been swamped in a half dozen different discussions and arguments over the past week that all fall back on this point, and this misunderstanding, and I feel like yelling at clouds today.
Fandom isn’t one universal cabbage patch, a singular monolithic entity; on the day to day, we aren’t the Borg, and we don’t agree on stuff. Each ‘fandom’ for a show is made of dozens of different sub-fandoms. Like I said above, fanon tends to conglomerate around ships. Part of engaging with fiction is suspension of disbelief; part of fanon is choosing what to engage with in the source material. For ships and characters alike, this can very quickly turn into “I am choosing not to engage with this piece of canon.”
This is great for ships. The ability to put together a collective dialogue of “I want to play with x concept and I want to do it ethically so here are the rules” is fantastic. It’s also common for characters, which… is more complicated.
It’s a source of headaches. And fights. And basic fundamental misunderstandings that make me want to tear my hair out.
Because fanon sometimes becomes canon for those sub-groups. Which is great in the context of the group. Everyone agrees on the basics and can use that as a launching point for more complex discussions.
Canon vs fanon becomes a nightmare when it spreads beyond the people who know what the common dialogue is. Quite suddenly, there’s this clash of “your canon and my canon don’t match,” which devolves very quickly into “you’re wrong and I’m right.”
Weirdly enough, there is also fanon-level understandings about the fandom, and all the sub-fandoms. (If you listen closely you can hear the sounds of me whimpering in the corner from inception syndrome.) Each sub-fandom has an outsider’s perspective of all the other sub-fandoms, and shares stories about those other groups with each other, which creates a common dialogue of what they think others believe. So the Sam fandom believes that the Destiel fandom believes xyz, the Destiel fandom believes that the Wincest fandom believes eqr, and on and on and on. And it’s all part of the fanon discussion because it’s all built around how we interact with the show and with canon.
So. This has been the “yelling at clouds” portion of your morning. Basically nobody is on the same page, there’s reasons we’re not on the same page, and for goodness sake you’re not on the same page stop assuming things and actually figure out what the context is!
Amazing. A very interesting read which I thoroughly agree with, including how complex this discussion is.
Post-Structuralism vs Structuralism
Interestingly (if i may add), the interpretation of canon and fanon is further confused by some people interpreting canon in a more Structuralist way, and others a Post-Structuralist way. I’ve witnessed some metas where the writers (I believe unknowingly due to the confusion that arose) lay on either side of the criticism binary; one interpreting the visual text in a Structuralist way (there are structures and an absolute truth behind a text), the other a Post-Structuralist (there are multiple meanings and interpretations based on people’s individual experiences) (Apologies for the too brief and awful descriptions of those complex terminologies). So even though (with regards to SPN specifically) the show is incredibly post-modern, some writers don’t view it through a post-modern/post-structuralist critical gaze. I’m not going to get into a critical argument with anyone who holds a different critical gaze to me and rejects certain post-modernist critical modes (because some people do have good points as to why they don’t analyse things in a post-modernist way). So even though some people analyse canon with the knowledge that ‘the author is dead’, others don’t subscribe to that assertion, causing canon disputes based almost purely on the fact that two meta writers are approaching the canon is vasty different ways.
For example, one writer could be trying to say that Destiel is written into the subtext because of the language used, the inference of the myths and signs of angels and how the show utilises this, the reference to classic love stories and how this applies. This writer is viewing the entire ship from a structuralist critique. Then the other writer would say that they think Destiel is in the subtext because they see how the show writes it as a familial love and a romantic love and whilst both interpretations are there, the romantic love supersedes the other interpretations. They would also say that there has been a deconstruction of formal story-myths of familial love to give way to a romantic love interpretation. This writer is viewing the entire ship from a structuralist critique.
Multiple vs Single Interpretations
These disagreements in critiquing canon become very interesting when say a Structuralist critic says that canon is canon and there is one interpretation. Then the Post-Structuralist comes along and says that there are many interpretations, and every person will continuously reinterpret and continuously deconstruct the canon…. ahhhhhhrrrrrrr. Gosh it all becomes very interesting but very convoluted.
How Interpretations change over time according to Post-Structuralism
Another thing that I’ve noticed, including within myself is that my views about canon and fanon change over time, not because of anything the visual text shows, but because of how I experience the visual text differently (at this point I think you can tell that i’m more of a post-structuralist haha). So my understanding of SPN was different when I was watching it each week, then not watching seasons one after another, and since marathoning it all my understanding of the canon is very different. Then each time I watch the canon material again my understanding changes again because it’s a rewatch, and also because I am older and things have happened each time I watch an episode. Or if I jump between watching non-consecutive seasons my understanding of the show links up in a different way. So, as a post-Structuralist, I see that my interpretations of the show and of ships changes over time, and that’s just me! Everyone else’s interpretations are changing over time and are different to everyone else’s.
Overall
So whilst i fully agree with your assertions; the death of the author, multiple interpretations of canon, fanon, and fandoms, there are many people who write critique and what I suppose we might call ‘metas’ on shows however they disagree with the post-modern/post-structuralist critique. Some people see canon as a structure of myths, signs, and semiotics which have a hold of axiomatic truth within the visual text, and disagree that post-structuralist and multiple interpretations can be formed by viewing the text (kind of).
My brain hurts slightly and I don’t know if any of that makes sense. I just find it very interesting how not only do some post-structuralist meta writers disagree that there can be multiple interpretations, but some structuralist critical writers don’t even base their arguments on a literary theory that allows for multiple post-modern interpretations.
Jumping off on that (which all made sense btw!) I think that there is a good chance people are kind of doing both if that makes sense?
I mean, the author is dead, no question, and while I love to engage with and challenge other’s headcanons because I think this is a fun part of the discourse I know that in the end, all readings are valid – some more than others imo, but generally.
But still, we can’t deny that the author’s vision exists. It may not line up with ours, or others, and in a show like Supernatural with hundreds of people involved everyone’s vision will also be different, but there still is one and I think that it’s very interesting to try to find out what they could have meant. This doesn’t mean that there is only one absolute truth but sometimes it can be interesting to think about it.
Like in your example, identifying certain tropes that predominantly exist in a love story – that’s trying to break up the (possible) author’s intent. And these are things that are measurable, tropes exist for a reason. You can choose to acknowledge them or not or interpret them in different ways, you can insert your own further headcanon on why these tropes were used, but there still there you know. If that makes sense.
There’s a difference between showing 10 parallels between Destiel and canonically love stories and saying that this means this is the 100% absolute truth behind it and definitely the vision of everyone involved. But sometimes it’s interesting to at least try to see what other people may have intended with this – without thinking that this insight should be an absolute authority.
In the end, both ways to interpret stuff are valid and I think they can co-exist very well; I can acknowledge a lot of romantic tropes and or sexual innuendo people in the show have made about Wincest, especially in the earlier seasons, but still that doesn’t mean that in my personal interpretation Wincest is a thing that holds any weight. That’s where my thoughts about the author’s possible intent and my interpretation differ fundamentally.
Just going from the post-structuralistic aspect can sometimes leave you floating around nowhere; stories do have structures, you should just be able to bend them.
Agree with all of the above, AND:
There’s a thing in formal negotiation called levels of abstraction. I want to go to Salad’s Are Us for dinner because I want a chickpea spinach salad versus well, how about Meat Lovers Rule instead; they have salad too (but not chickpea spinach salad specifically) versus well, how about Vegetables On A Stick instead, they don’t have salad, but they’re consistent with your vegetarian diet are all different levels of abstraction. And fandom arguments are often frustrating because they have an element of arguing on different levels of abstraction without realizing it too.
So, for example:
1) I like wincest because example X, Y and Z show how they are soulmates. Look how emotional and hot episode Q was.versus:
2) Wincest is an abusive ship. Look how example R is exactly like patterns of real life abuse.versus:
3) Please tag your ships more responsibly. Example F is personally troubling to me.versus:
4) People should not ship abusive ships because real life reason W.are all arguments at different levels of abstraction. It can be frustrating when someone argues for example, that episode Q was not in fact hot as example 1 contends because, per example 4, people should not ship abusive ships.
There’s no way to resolve this argument satisfactorily because they are not even about the same thing. Person 1 is talking about a specific internal reaction and Person 4 is talking about a wide-ranging sociopolitical issue. They are related and can be discussed in the same argument, but they’re not actually in direct conflict with one another, and failure to realize this makes for arguments that feel like they’re both unnecessarily hurtful and also don’t make a lot of sense.
Additionally, there is a lot of fighting about what words actually mean. A huge part of the issue is that fandom shorthand starts to become muddled and confused and what one person means by something like “trope” doesn’t mean the same for another person. (See my rant about what “parallel” means.)
The issue is that if you’re trying to make sense of a work from any number of literary theories you’re going to take different approaches but in general in literary theory or film theory things like “parallels” “mirrors” and “metaphors” mean something that everyone in the room (or reading the essay) understands. Not so with fandom. Structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxist analysis, deconstructionsim, feminist theory, post-moderism, etc can all be used to analyze a text, but not everyone goes in understanding which theory is being used and how to engage with it. And not everyone understands the difference between a metaphor and a motif.
Proper discussion, critique, and theory can never be achieved because instead of arguing interpretation half the people discussing analysis have one meaning for a term and the other half have a different meaning. So instead of actually realizing we’re coming from different schools of critique and discussing the merits and flaws of each interpretation we’re stuck at square one fighting over where or not themes are called something else and why/why not we can discount them out of hand.
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