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More seriously, it's to some extent about the embattled nature of the individual in the face of incomprehension or hostility, isn't it? That is, if you feel like you are about to come under criticism for, for example, really liking Star Trek, you might get a bit defensive if you can immediately be likened to people who, say, dress up in Star Fleet uniforms when you do not - not that that is bad to do so, only that it is an obvious thing for people in the real world (which for our purposes will mean "not interested in genre fiction") to notice and to latch onto. Which is bascically kind of on the "mum, you're embarrassing me!" level, in a way - it's about peer pressure from that real world to fit in, with the threat of being looked down on providing a reason to distance oneself from that level of socially unacceptable fan culture.
Which is not quite what Flyboy was talking about at the beginning of this thread, which was, I think, more about being coopted into a particular mode of interaction with a cultural product - that is, that while the people in the real world (defined as above) might be saying to you "You like Star Trek? What, you like to dress up as Kirk and write erotic furry fanfiction where Kirk is, like, an ocelot, and you're, like, on the bridge of the Enterprise and you totlally do it?", the people in the unreal world might also be saying "Ah-hah! You too like to wear the uniform and write the fanfic!" - now, I'm not all that offended by that personally, but perhaps there is the issue that these are both attempts to coopt and to limit the way in which liking for something can be expresses - one is exile and the other is recruitment, but they both argue that one can only like certain products in a specific way. Which I think brings us back to Bard and browncoats - that "browncoat" exists in a kind of suspension between being a simple word meaning "person who likes Firefiy" (which describes Flyboy) and "person who composes folk songs about Joss Whedon" (which Flyboy feels does not describe him, and which identification actually impairs his enjoyment of the product itself - I may be overreaching here). This sort of ties into something paranoidwriter said a while ago about how as a writer he would be very angry if somebody took his work and used it to justify a political position he disliked, except the other way round - in this case, the text is being used to make assumptions about the reader.
So, to go back to Firefly, I very much like Firefly, have seen Serenity twice, boought the comic book, Mal Mal fishcakes. I have certain things in common with, say, the people who make The Signal, and certain things not in common with them. I'd say that calling me a browncoat is probably not taxonomically accurate, but I probably wouldn't take offence. Thhen again, I have no hip to risk. |
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