annaiswriting, 10/24

 I found our Thursday’s class discussion about participatory culture incredibly fascinating because of how participatory culture decreases the gap between famous directors and inspired fans, as the fans produce their own films inspired by well-known films. While reflecting on this discussion I noticed some parallels between Jenkin’s understanding of participatory culture and Macherey’s idea of intertextuality. Similar to how written texts take inspiration from one another, films take inspiration from one another. During class, I learned how one hundred years ago, celebrities signed and mailed autographs for their fans, and that was about as far as fan culture went. Now, however, fans can interact with their favorite celebrities by messaging them on social media, where they get some insight into their lives. In class, we discussed how the film 50 Shades of Grey took inspiration from Twilight. This made me think about a film that I saw that did not take inspiration from another film necessarily, but it instead took inspiration from a fanfiction written on a platform called Wattpad. This platform gives people the ability to not only write their own stories about fictional universes, but they can write stories about their favorite celebrities. Most writers on this platform just write stories for fun with no intention for these stories to become famous. However, an author named Anna Todd wrote a fanfiction love story on Wattpad with Harry Styles. This fanfiction story then became a book called After. I did not personally read the book but although the plot of the story could remain the same, Anna Todd had to change the name of the male love interest. This book then turned into a movie. Although the name of the character had to change, it was changed from Harry to Hardin, which still has the first same letter. It also still reflects the idea of participatory culture because the story that eventually became a popular book and well-known movie came to life by participation in fan culture.

Link to film trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPTf0Gw5-Bg