Final Uni Blog Post

I don’t know if I’ve done enough but here it is, the final uni blog post for Sem 2 2010.

I did my re-enrollment today, and if all things go well, I will be doing a LOT more uni blog assignments next year. If the tutors seem lenient, I will continue posting them here. If they don’t, I can go to them and be very sweet and all like “but this is a chance for me to better myself”.

Anyway:

So, in a final desperate attempt to blog on the last day (after writing this I’m going around commenting), I will write about fan culture.

There seems to be a group for everything. There is an entire society based around the worship of machines with turbine blades that, when activated, create a movement in the air that comes as a relieving cool breeze on a hot summer’s day.

Oh there’s a pun for ya.

No, actually I’m talking about the bunch of people who go nuts at the mention of something they collectively like. YES, electronic fans may be an example, but in this context, I am talking about media related things.

I asked my friend – you may remember her as Brenda from the previous post – why she used to ‘fangirl’ over what she fangirled over so much. (Fangirl, FYI, is apparently the term used to describe the group of females who worship electronic fans.)

She replied, “Because they’re perfect. They’re the whole package.”

What was the extent she’d gone to, to fangirl?

“Sent a postcard, bought shit off the internet.”

In my experiences, that is definitely not as manic as they come. Unless, of course, the postcard she sent included a lock of her hair, and the shit she bought off the internet was literally, shit off the internet. Then yeah.

I’m not saying I’m exempt from the slightly demeaning things a person does to get closer to a public figure/TV show/etc etc they adore. I follow blogs dedicated to actors and actresses I like on Tumblr, I was tempted to buy a jacket simply because it was the “official NCIS special agent windbreaker”. But these acts of trying to live out what we love are getting more and more recognized – though sending locks of hair is still creepy, in my books. Sidenote, Brenda didn’t actually do that.

Perhaps ‘recognized’ wasn’t the word. I was going for ‘more and more exploited-by-the-media-and-made-to-become-a-determiner-of-what-kind-of-person-you-are’.

Just because a guy likes Glee doesn’t make him gay.

Just because a girl likes watching gory horror movies doesn’t make her a sadist.

(If you like Justin Bieber though, oh, I have nothing to say.)

The media markets Glee and horror movies towards girls and guys respectively, and with good reason – stereotypes exist because they are obviously valid to some extent – but it annoys me when I personally change what I publicly declare as something I like, (or not just me, but people in general) because the stigma of liking something is so strong.

A lot of people say I should like Scrubs. I say “it’s okay.” To be honest, I don’t like it that much, but because Scrubs is almost the epitome of what people expect me to like, it seems I should like it.

No one expects me to like teenage melodramatic shows like The Vampire Diaries. Plus, liking vampires gets you automatically grouped into the sphere of Twihards. I liked vampires way before I even knew what Twilight was. I like Vampire Diaries because I like the way it looks – I can be shallow too. I decided to openly like the show just to prove to myself that I can be a fan of something that people don’t expect me to be.

Why do we have to be branded a certain way for things we like? Why, when someone says “I like Korean dramas” do we automatically brand them as pretty-boy loving teenage girls? Does the Korean media not produce more grungey shows where the actors don’t look androgynous?

Why can’t people just like things, and have other people go, “oh okay cool, as you were”?

There is too much crap given to people who identify themselves as a part of a fan culture, and there are too many people allowing the crap to be crapped.

Last post ends here. Over and out. Guns blazing. Etc.

The prev gif didn’t work. I changed it.

Alex.

Time to do my final CMEL essay, then study the crap out of Self, Asia and Linguistics.

Alex.