![]() Michel de Certeau describes these types of readers as “travellers they move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it themselves” (de Certeau 1984, p.174). He theorised that fan are not just passive consumers of these texts, but “become active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings” (Jenkins 1992, p.24) which suggests that fans are now in fact deep and perceptive readers working outside of what institutions expect of them, by “poaching” their favourite texts to create their own versions of the universes they’re introduced to. This idea of using particular aspects of one text to create your own is commonly described by modern theorists as textual poaching, a term popularised by Jenkins to articulate the process that fans have when responding to popular culture media. Cosplaying is when fans will dress in costume to make themselves look like characters from within a texts universe, often adopting their personality traits and mannerisms for the purpose of performance. Fan fictions are stories written by fans of a particular piece of fiction and will draw on the originally authored characters or universe to inform its own whilst fan videos, or ‘fanvids’, are when fans will put together an edit of clips from a chosen television program or film and then add seperate music to it, or create their own narrative by using clips from multiple source texts. ![]() These artistic expressions can be found in various formats, with the most popular being fan fiction, fan videos/art and cosplaying. In many ways fandoms are examples of participatory cultures, in which fans begin to act not only as consumers but also creators and producers of creative texts, however it is media fandoms in particular that will directly encourage creative and artistic expression by those involved. Modern fans of popular media now have the option to post their texts online, rather than submitting them to fanzine companies and hoping for the best. However in more recent years, the rise of the world wide web and the popularisation of the internet has allowed for these fan cultures to become more digitised, and in turn more widespread and accessible. Modern fan culture originated from 1960s Star Trek fandom (Stasi 2006), and at that point in time fans that wanted to share their creative expressions were limited to ‘fanzines’ and conventions. This is where the idea of textual poaching in fandoms becomes more relevant, with fans wanting to bring the world shown to them in the Harry Potter series into their owns personal lives through altering the texts to create their own pieces of creative media, which in turn explore original interpretations and craft new meanings.įan Culture, or ‘fandom,’ is a term used to describe the communities built around a unified liking of a part of popular culture. However even with theme parks and exhibitions worldwide, thousands of toys to choose from, magazine subscriptions and even a fully interactive website to fuel the hardcorer fan’s hunger for more information, fans still want for something more out of the franchise. ![]() Warner Brothers, the institution which distributes the majority of the franchise, has brought forward thousands of products for fans to enjoy outside of the books and films, making effective use of media convergence through these cross-platform products. The books themselves have sold over five-hundred million copies worldwide since the first published copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1997, making it the best-selling book series of all time, and with all of them being made into motion pictures. The Harry Potter franchise consists largely of a series of seven novels and eight movies written by author J.K. ![]() I will also evaluate the various arguments presented by media theorists over time to build a discussion on the concerns and debates surrounding the act of textual poaching in fandoms and the impacts that they have had on the legitimisation of fan-based forms of artistic expression, drawing on the increase in fan practices such as creating texts, videos and launching organisations. Within this essay I will be exploring the concepts of fan culture and textual poaching to analyse the Harry Potter series and the franchise’s fandom as a whole, focusing on how both of these concepts have changed over time and using them to discuss the shift of audiences to producers, rather than consumers, of these popular media texts. ![]()
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