...Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk.
Interpretation
Fan fiction serves as a cultural response to the commercialization of contemporary myths by allowing people to engage and create their own narratives.
This quote highlights the idea that in a society where major narratives and contemporary myths are often controlled by corporations, fan fiction emerges as a form of cultural expression that enables individuals to reclaim these myths. By crafting their own stories, fans repair the disconnect caused by corporate ownership and create a communal space for storytelling and creativity, emphasizing the importance of shared cultural ownership over mass-produced narratives.
In practice
Using this quote at a fan fiction convention to highlight the importance of community and creativity.
If old consumers were assumed to be passive, then new consumers are active. If old consumers were predictable and stayed where you told them, then new consumers are migratory, showing a declining loyalty to networks or media. If old consumers were isolated individuals, then new consumers are more socially connected. If the work of media consumers was once silent and invisible, then new consumers are now noisy and public.
Fandom, after all, is born of a balance between fascination and frustration: if media content didn't fascinate us, there would be no desire to engage with it; but if it didn't frustrate us on some level, there would be no drive to rewrite or remake it.
When we create out of our experiences, as feminists of color, women of color, we have to develop those structures that will present and circulate our culture.
Sports is like rock 'n' roll. Both are dominant cultural forces, both speak an international language, and both are all about emotions.
Popular culture is a contradiction in terms. If it's popular, it's not culture.
The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition... always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.
For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a steadily declining path toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the 'masses' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies want to give the masses what they want.
Chinese Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?
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