PhD Presentation

I've at least done some work for the mid-year presentation my PhD group has to give to the department. The presentation is on which theory covered in our theory module will be of most use to my PhD. It's clearly Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding essay, though I'm having to find critiques of it and ways in which it's been adapted for use in studying TV drama as the original text is about news and advertising. But nonetheless, it's still more useful than anything else (and my supervisor has said he's more than happy with a) that assesment and b) me using it in my PhD). I've only got to give a ten minute presentation so I've got the Powerpoint going and have the first two slides sorted. I know what example I'm going to give (we have to use the theory in the presentation so I'm going to give a short clip from TXF - possibly the Pilot, and the scene in the motel room. You know, that scene - put in a quote from CC about there being no relationship between Mulder and Scully, and then put in an excerpt from fanfic showing there very obviously being a relationship between the two. All of which will be useful in my Erotic Adaptations paper), so really I just have to write the other five minutes or so. Which hopefully won't take long. Or at least won't take long once I stop potching on the internet.

Oh, one thing before I go though, I finally put my signed XF poster up!



I'm so happy with it. Also, can you see my cardboard cutout?!

VILFs Conference Review

First of all - my first conference paper? I did it! And it went really well! I had good feedback from the conference organiser (who chaired my panel) and various people who'd been listening. I had people nodding along to points I was making, and telling me they really enjoyed it, and more importantly the panel I was on (which included a friend of mine) really gelled - the papers fit together really well and complemented each other, and all were very interesting too.

I've already said one of the panellists was a friend of mine - we shared a hotel room the night before, and went out in Leicester to a dinner paid for by the university where we got the chance to meet the organiser and some of the other presenters. I must have come across a right fool as I did mention that it was my first conference and I was freaking out a little, but I got some good tips on presenting and handling Q&As. After the meal a few of us went onto a pub, where I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening chatting about fandom, vampires, tattoos, Wales and loads of other things. The morning of the conference itself was a bit of a nightmare as we managed to get lost on the way to the university (how we managed that, given we were staying less than a mile away I don't know) and missed the whole of the registration and some of the keynote speech. But thankfully we were there for all of the panels, and there were a lot of interesting papers, including one on vampires in Terry Pratchett's Discworld which I found fascinating, and one on a British vampire series of novels called The Radleys which has made me a) want to read the books and b) think about the difference between British and American vampire fiction written at the same time and what each says about the societies in which the author is living/writing. It was a shame I couldn't get to all of the panels - there were some really interesting papers that I missed out on because there were other things I wanted to listen to, but it was definitely well worth attending.

I've also discovered the importance of conferences for networking. I've had requests for copies of the paper and the bibliography from a variety of people, have been given business cards (which reminds me, I need to get my own for any other conferences I go to) and I've also been asked if I'd be interested in submitting chapters to two books (one on vampires and one on Twilight). The organiser of the Erotic Adaptations conference I withdrew from in January also managed to persuade me to rethink my withdrawal. So I will be talking about first time XF fics to a bunch of academics in two months' time!

I had a whale of a time though. I was really nervous at first but once I got up there and starting talking I got much more into it. It was really interesting listening to the other papers too, and chatting to different people in the coffee breaks. Yay me!

Supervision Meeting

But I'm not making a post like the last one I made *g* I was actually a little bit worried about the meeting, but that's because after much umming and aahing I decided it would be better for me if I could do the PhD part time. I was very naïve (stupid?) when I first applied and thought that I'd be able to work full time and study full time (after all, I did it for the last half of my MA) but I hadn't realised the sheer amount of work I'd need to do. Reading about fan fiction and The X Files alone just isn't enough-there are so many other areas to read around and theories to learn, and coming at this from the academic background I have means I'm playong catch up while studying. So I decided that doing the PhD part time would be better because I'd be putting the same amount of work in but would have much longer to write everything up. I'd emailed Matt to ask if we could discuss it and the response was positive but I was still a bit nervous.

Anyway, come today it actually went well. We talked about the fact I have to work because at the moment I have a £20 a week budget and that has to cover food, train travel and all other odds and sods. £20 is what I have left after my bills, etc have gone out, and I get my pay and help from my parents for those. So Matt's suggested I email our department head to ask about the possibility of teaching hours in the next academic year to supplement my income. He asked how much I was working, and I must have pulled a face because he said he wouldn't be pissed off if it was full time, he just needed to know. So I told him it is full time, and I work late every night to make up for the time I lose on a Wednesday morning (because work wouldn't grant me study leave). He said that it's impossible to work and study for a PhD and if I keep doing it I'll only get more stressed and harm my candidacy because there's no way I'll be able to complete to a high standard in 3 years. Which I agree with. So I'm going to email the department head, explain my situation and see what he says. Matt can't see any problem with me going part time; the only issue may be that I might have to pay back some or all of the grant I was given by the university, but we'll cross that when we come to it. So I'm going to send the email when I get home and go from there. I do feel like a weight has been lifted since making that decision though, and I'm glad today's meeting went well.

In other news, I can't believe a week ago I was on a train home after New York! I don't know where the time goes.

I'm presenting a paper at the Fangbangers conference next week and am freaking out about it! I haven't actually written the paper yet, and I don't want to go anymore! Except I have to so I will.

Oh, and it looks like my writing therapy article is going to be published as they've asked for a bio, and I've had an article on tattoos accepted for a new literary tattoo magazine, which makes me happy.

So Good They Named It Twice

Right, I am sitting here with the cat on my lap and some peanut butter M&Ms within easy reach so I have no excuse not to write about my New York trip (actually, I have uni work I should be doing but I'm going to do this first).

And before you ask, of course it's relevant to my research interests. I met David Duchovny, who was in The X Files. I am writing about The X Files. I'm also writing about fan activity. I got to take part in a large amount of fan activity (and it was all awesome).

Saturday, the day of the play, started off with all of us freaking out about it being the day we'd meet DD. I think we'd all been ok before - we knew we were going to see the play and hopefully meet him, but it was still far enough away that it didn't seem real. Today was the day though, and there was lots of 'in eight hours' time we'll be there'; 'in six hours' time we'll be there'. We packed up all our stuff though, and headed into the city. We did a fair bit of sightseeing on Saturday - Central Park, the Time Warner centre, various Ghostbusters locations, the Empire State Building and an awful lot of NY districts (neighbourhoods? I can't work out the difference). We then got a cab up to our friend's house in Uptown NY again, and dropped off our shopping there before the play. It was about five by that point, and we were all acutely aware that the play wasn't far away. We went to a diner for tea, which served huge portions of lovely food and I felt awful about leaving as much of it as I did. It was the subway then to theatre (including a few transfers) where we met our friend and settled into our seats...

I have to say I really enjoyed the play. It was an interesting concept, which I've thought about a bit previously. The premise is that John Smith (DD) sees the face of God in the middle of the worst office shooting in American history. He goes on to try and persuade the people he knows, and the wider population, that God wants us to be better people. I won't say too much more as I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but I found it to be funny and thought provoking and all the actors did amazing jobs. DD is in each scene, and it was so bizarre to be sitting five rows away from him. I don't think I breathed for the first five minutes he was on stage! He gives a great performance and it allows him to use his skills really well. There's one scene where another actor is talking and DD's facial expressions convey exactly what the character is thinking - it got a great reaction from the audience. It's definitely a play I'd go back to see. And the use of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus at the end I thought was brilliant!

After the play, then, it was time to hang out at the stage door. We were all huddled together because it was quite cold and we were all really nervous. After a few minutes there was some hubbub behind us, and we turned round to see DD coming out of the front door. I was really worried that I wouldn't get to see him as there was a big surge in his direction, but I needn't have worried. I hovered while friends and strangers got his autograph and photo, then handed him my IWTB posted (signed by GA, Chris and Frank in London two years ago) and asked if he would possibly be able to sign it for me. He said sure, and asked if I'd seen Amanda Peet and asked her to sign it for  me. I said I hadn't, and he said I really should because she was in the film too. He gave the poster back and went to turn around so I asked if he'd mind having his photo with me. He said no, put his hand on my shoulder and asked which camera was mine. He was so nice it was unbelievable! We all hung around for a bit longer while he signed for more people, then he went to leave. Before he did though, he turned round and asked if everyone had what they wanted and did anyone else need anything before he left! I was amazed when he asked that because it was so thoughtful, and if that was me I'd probably have wanted to get some food and go home. But he didn't - he was really considerate, and when no one said anything headed across the road to a bar and sat down with some of the other cast members.

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We were all on a massive high by that point so took more photos outside the theatre and generally tried to calm down! What was really nice was that there were no 'crazy' fans. Everyone there was really respectful. There was no pushing or shoving like there had been when GA did Doll's House in London. There was no signing of XF related songs, or people following him to the bar and gawking at him. It was all in all a thoroughly great experience. We wandered to the next block to look at the Friends' apartment, then wandered back and past the bar that DD was in. We all glanced sideways as we passed, but didn't freak out or run in after him! We headed over to this bar called Jekyll and Hyde for a drink afterwards, calling <lj user="sandiscully"> on the way because she was waiting to hear about the experience! We all just kept repeating how nice he was and what he'd said to us! It was great though.

After that we made our way back to Uptown NY to pick up out stuff, then (after much waiting in the subway for a train that never came) got a cab to Port Authority and the bus back to NJ. We stayed up quite a while when we got there, uploading photos to Facebook and replying to Philes' comments! And went to bed very happy.







What else was good?

Watching two eps of Californication on the plane, in which they cut out the swearing and the sex. It was very odd hearing Hank call someone a melon farmer...

Explaining to Homeland Security that I was staying with a friend I met on an X Files Facebook group, and him not batting an eyelid at it.

My first sight of the city from the front seat of a yellow cab.

Buying a baseball shirt and a blue t-shirt with Mantle on the back ('I get this message marked 'urgent' on my answering service from one Fox Mantle...') and the sales assistants looking at us a bit strangely when we started acting out the end scene from The Unnatural.

Midtown Comics!

Modell's Sporting Goods store which made us all laugh.

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The Knicks game at Madison Square Garden.

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Liberty Island.

It was an absolutely amazing week. I'm so glad I went - not only did I get to meet DD, I got to see NY and meet my utterly awesome friends! It was tiring, and I walked miles and miles, but I'd go back again in an instant. Thanks so much everyone who made it that special.

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I'm Determined Not to do This...

...every time I have a meeting with my supervisor but indulge me this once.

THERE IS SO MUCH TO DO AND SO MUCH TO LEARN AND I HAVE SO LITTLE TIME IN WHICH TO DO IT!

Ok, that last part is probably not true. A PhD takes at least 3 years (and I'm ignoring the fact I need to write a 20,000 word lit review by this time next year) but the first part is. I had a meeting today to talk about the notes I made when reading Carol Clover's Men, Women and Chainsaws, and lots of ideas came out of it (it was a 1 hour meeting that lasted for 2 hours) but there are so many more areas to examine than I first thought and so many books to read and ideas to organise. I actually spent part of the meeting telling myself it would be a huge waste of money to drop out this early but given we're only a few weeks into the term wouldn't I at least get some money back. Which isn't the way I want to think at all but this is really overwhelming. There's definitely a part of me that wishes I was just writing about TXF on my own, with no pressure to get a PhD or get published or present papers. But then that's definitely countered by the sheer enthusiasm I've encountered among fans who want to be interviewed and think this is really interesting and want to know more. I love studying TXF and talking about it. It's all these new theories I'm less sure about.

At Least I Know I Can Write Great Abstracts

My 'scientific nature of the whammy' paper just got accepted for the magic and the supernatural conference in Prague. On the one hand I'm chuffed cos this is a proper (scary) conference which runs for 3 days and last year's paper looked reakky interesting. On the other I'm turning it down because it looks scary (seriously-no powerpoint usage [which doesn't bother me but it means people will look at me rather than shiny XF clips], picking out the main points of the paper rather than reading it because drafts get posted to the site in advance), it's expensive (£245 plus accomodation plus flight), my supervisor would probably go a bit spare and I have no time or money to do it. But in a few years' time hopefully I'll be able to submit and go and that'd be cool.

In other news, I need more hours in the day and a job which leaves me with more than £74 at the end of the month (and that's when I'm on a tight budget).

Ok. Time to get up.

My MA?

I passed it with a distinction! So pleased and relieved at that. Picking up feedback Tuesday but I don't even care what they say because I am done! (Although maybe I do, a little bit.)

Training, Meetings and Suchlike

So today I had my starting out as a researcher training event and my first formal meeting with my supervisor. The training was good, even though some of it was obvious, some of it too long and some of it information we'd been given previously. There was an overview of our rights and responsibilities, detail on the graduate schools and a (very nice) free lunch.

The morning session I'm sure was designed to freak us out. Cardiff (and a few other UK universities from what I've heard) are very keen on students completing in 3 years, and that 3 years is going to go very quickly. That did scare me, especially as I have so much to learn and not much spare time in which to learn it. They are very good with things like interruptions to study and so on though, so if I run out of money or decide to do the course part time instead I think they'll be able to accommodate that. But still-there was an element of 'Oh. My. God' to it.

The afternoon did go better, though I'm sure part of that was the free food, and I did an online IT literacy thing that tells you where you need development on research skills, intellectual property right and copyright, and plagiarism. I scored above 90% in all of them which is apparently very good and means I don't need to worry so much.

After that was the meeting with my supervisor, which was both good and overwhelming. The first thing he told me was don't freak out, which was reassuring! There're a few of us without a cultural studies background so I shouldn't compare myself with those who know theories I don't. That's something I have been doing so it was nice to be told I'm an individual, will be treated as much and will do just as good a job. We then talked about the literature review, which should be 20,000 words, due in a year's time. My lit review is going to look at representations of gender in the media, audience studies, fanfic and a bit on TV (creation of characters, etc) so a lot of stuff to cover. I'm going to look at the gender side first, so I've got to read about Clover's 'final girl' and make detailed notes for our next meeting. We'll have fortnightly meetings for the 1st semester at least, which I am happy with because this is going to be a steep learning curve for me.

He did caution against accepting any more conferences this year given I'm going to have so much else on, and would probably like me to not do the gender one I'm at in November, though did say not to drop out because I've already agreed to it. That means I probably won't do the erotic adaptations one, which I really am gutted about because it's so interesting! But it makes sense because I have so much to learn and read about and I am a bit scared that I'm working, doing conference papers and learning BA level theories while writing this! On the plus side though, in a year or so I'll be able to submit chapters I'm writing to conferences, journals and even books, and be seen as an expert in my field rather than the girl who does this, that and the other (my words!).

He did say he's a really hands on supervisor and will give detailed feedback, so that's good. Given the review I had for the journal article I mentioned previously I'll be much happier with detailed feedback! We also broke my thesis down into more easily manageable parts (5000 words for intro, 5-10,000 for methods, etc. means half's written before we come to my actual research!) and I'll be writing a chapter on Mulder, which pleases me (and makes sense given you can't really talk about on without the other)! He did say it's a lot of work and he expects me to put in the time and effort, but he also thinks it's got the potential to be a really cool thesis when I'm done. So overall it was a really encouraging meeting, even with a bit of a 'walk before you can run' caveat!

Research and University

I spent yesterday researching for my papers, filling out my expression of interest form for teaching next year, reading Midnight Sun (Twilight from Edward's point of view and it's just as bad!) and generally pottering about. Speaking of research, I now have my first typed notes! They're not very long, but I think they're relevant. I hope they're relevant! The conference schedule is also up and I'm presenting in one of the last panels of the day. My name (my actual name!) is the first one out of the three of us so I don't know if that means I go first or what. I'm on the same panel as my friend though so that's making me feel better. Oh, and there's a conference budget in uni that'll pay for it =D

I have a meeting about teaching in uni tomorrow (though I'm not teaching this semester), followed by my first seminar (on semiotics, which I get more than I did but I'm still not sure I fully understand) on Wednesday and a training course and my first formal meeting with my supervisor on Friday. A busy week but I'm really looking forward to it.

PhD Stuff

I had my PhD induction yesterday. It was so cool! I have been a bit freaked out lately about the amount of learning I'm going to have to do, coming from an English/Religous Studies background; the huge gap between MA and PhD work; my general intelligence levels and the like. So I was a bit nervous about the induction. Turns out I shouldn't have worried though! Only two out of eight students have a cultural studies background. The rest come from areas like English, politics and history. So we're all pretty much in the same boat when it comes to learning new things. Paul, our postgrad director, is also lovely - really chilled out and he has a sense of humour! Given he's teaching most of our theory modules over the next semester I think that's going to be a good thing.

There is a lot of work involved. The assesment for the theory module is a short presentation on how we will use the theory that is most relevant to our PhD project (plus submission of handouts and/or presentation notes) and a 3,000 word essay on the same topic. That'll be due someime in December. The topics we're going to cover are:

Semiotics
Encoding/Decoding
Gramsci
Althusser
Orientalism
Foucault
Habermas
Discourse Theory
Postcolonialism
Deconstruction

And I think semiotics is going to be one of the main theories I'll be using. I'm going to be in the States for the Orientalism and Foucault seminars (wonder if there's anyone in the States who can fill me in on Foucault?!) and at the vampires conference for the Discourse Theory seminar, but reading will be posted to our online learning centre and I'm planning on doing a lot of extra reading around the theories anyway.

The methods module is our second semester module, and that covers (funnily enough) methods of research. The assessment for that will be similar to the assessment for the theory module, so that's ok. At the end of the first year we also have to submit a 10,000 word essay covering pretty much what we've done in the first two assessments, plus a bit extra, and do a presentation to the department on the same thing. I'll have done one, probably two and maybe even three conferences by then though, so hopefully I can manage that!

Speaking of conferences, we also get a £400 conference budget so I'm applying to that to get some money towards the conferences I'm presenting at. I also got given a cheque for tuition fees, which I need to put in the bank.

So I'm feeling pretty good about the work. I'm still hoping I win the lottery so I can quit my day job, but my supervisor has said he's going to try and get me as many teaching hours as possible in the second and third years, and the current teaching is being reviewed and revised to allow all those who want to teach the chance to do so, so that's good.

My fellow students seem really nice too. The topics are incredible varied, though there is another girl looking at fandom who seems really cool! We spent ages talking about feminism/gender and the like; I rabbited on about TXF and she filled me in on Supernatural, which I'm going to have to start watching. We've exchanged email addresses too and are sending each other our proposals. I think we'll end up working closely on a few things. My supervisor, Matt Hills, also seems really nice. There was a wine and crisps thing after the induction where we got the chance to meet other PhD students and lecturers, so I spent a lot of that time talking to Matt. He seems pretty cool and I think we'll get on well. I have my first proper meeting with him a week Friday, and I'm hoping he'll tell me that the conferences I'm attending and the papers I'm writing will be enough to not be given additional work (like lit reviews!). We'll see. I'm also meeting one of the current PhD students who's looking at fanfic for a coffee and am really looking forward to that. A friend of mine from the MA knows another recently-finished PhD student who seems really nice, so I'm meeting her next week as well. Yay for meeting people and making friends!

I've got a training event a week Friday on starting out on a PhD, which is organised by the grad centre and is free. They run loads of training events for PhD students, all of which are free and all of which seem really useful, so I've got a few of those that I'd like to go on.

All in all I'm really excited now. I'm looking forward to starting my research properly and getting into seminars properly and generally being a proper PhD student. Yay!

The X Files and Psychology

A post a friend of mine made on LJ the other day got me thinking again about something I'd been thinking about the other day - academic books and The X Files. For the papers I'm writing I've been getting a lot of 'The Philosophy of...' books. A 'Philosophy of The X Files' book does exist. A 'Psychology of The X Files' book, however, doesn't. So guess who's now (semi-seriously) considering trying to get together an anthology of essays called 'The Psychology of The X Files'? That's right - as if I didn't have enough to do!

I'm half thinking I should get my arse in gear and actually approach a publisher (I've found one who seems to fit the bill) with a query and see if they'd be interested. I planned to write a 'Philosophy of The X Files' book for years and then Dean A. Kowalski got in there first. Of course, starting a PhD, working full time and writing three papers (for conferences and journals) - all by next April - might be a bit of a sticking point. Not to mention this post makes the whole process sound like a nightmare. But just out of curiousity, would anyone be interested in reading/contributing to such an anthology if one existed?

More Conferences

So, another abstract I wrote has been accepted for a conference! In November (two-ish weeks after coming back from New York) I'll be at De Montfort in Leciester talking about gender in the Vampire Slayer and the Twilight series in front of a load of academics at the Vampires, VILFs and Fangbangers conference! This is the absstract I sent in:

Buffy vs. Bella: Gender, Relationships and the Modern Vampire

No one familiar with Bram Stoker's Dracula could fail to recognise the scantily-clad female on the balcony, luring the vampire with her pale bosom and heaving chest. Stoker's Dracula, like many other vampire texts, painted women in very traditional, if opposing, lights: Lucy Westenra, empty-headed and flirtatious, dependent on men for both approval and support; and Mina Harker, embodying purity, innocence, and Christian faith - virtues she retained despite being bitten by the Count.

Modern vampire stories, however, have moved on from these traditional depictions of gender. Today's women wear jeans and high heels, carry stakes in their purses and like their men (vampires) to be in touch with their feminine side. Or do they? This paper examines the portrayal of women in modern vampire stories in terms of gender and relationships. I will be comparing Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Bella of the Twilight series, assessing their roles as 'strong' women and examining the ways in which the characters interact with the men in their lives (Angel and Edward respectively) to determine whether vampires, modern men and feminism really can go hand in hand.

And here's the one I sent in for the erotic adaptations conference:

Slow Evolution: ‘First Time Fics’ and The X-Files Porn Parody

Chris Carter once said that he “didn't want [The X-Files] to be another Moonlighting. [He] didn't want the relationship to come before the cases” ruling out the possibility of a relationship between the two main characters. While this did change by the end of the show, the unresolved sexual tension that existed through the course of the series, particularly in seasons one to seven, gave fanfiction writers reason to create their own erotic adaptations.

For a fandom that coined the term ‘shipper’, it is not surprising that a large number of stories concerning Mulder and Scully’s relationship have been written. It is perhaps less surprising that a high percentage of these are ‘first time fics’, dealing with the agents’ first sexual encounter. But this is also a subject that the 2009 porn parody (The Sex Files: A Dark XX Parody) chose to deal with. In this paper I wish to explore the interaction between the canon text, the fan fiction texts which have arisen from it, and The Sex Files: A Dark XX Parody, to examine the appeal of ‘first time fics’ and the ways in which prior readings of the text(s) led to the development of the porn parody.

I've got one more abstract submitted, which has a deadline of October 1st, so we'll see then if I'll be presenting another paper (on science v magic in The X Files). Got my work cut out for me the next few months!

Abstract Accepted!

I've had one of my abstracts accepted for a conference in January! I sent it off to the chap running it last night and got a reply this morning saying that it sounds perfect for the symposium and he'll emil me confirmation after the deadline. It's an erotic adaptations symposium and I'm going to talk about 'first time' fics in the XF fandom, as well as the porn parody. So yeah, I'll be talking about porn in front of a bunch of academics! What have I let myself in for?

Academic Stuffs

Do you know, it's great that re-reading my PhD proposal only makes me more excited (instead of more terrified) about starting it! Can't wait to properly get into the research and everything, though with my current plan it'll be another year before I'm writing/sending out my questions.

Before that though, I have to write my paper for the Journal of Transformative Works and Cultures (I'm so excited-I have the Aussie X Files group on board as well as heART!) and submit the writing therapy essay I wrote for my MA to a couple of journals.

I also need to get hold of The Sex Files-A Dark XXX Parody as well as any articles about it/interviews with the cast and crew. I'm hopefully attending two conferences soon (along with a friend who I met through X-Files fandom) and for one of them I want to write about the X-Files porn film. That conference is on Erotic Adaptations, on 26 January 2010 at De Montfort University in Leicester, and the description is:

Proposals are invited for papers on erotic and sexually explicit adaptations and appropriations, from film versions of erotic classics such as Justine, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Story of O to contemporary slash fiction and porn parodies. The focus will be on screen adaptations but papers are welcome on graphic novels, novelisations, video mashups, photography, manga, book illustrations, radio and video games. The Symposium is hosted jointed by the Centre for Adaptations and the AHRC-funded Onscenity Research Network (http://onscenity.org/index.html)

Please send an abstract of 200 words for a 20 minute paper to Ian Hunter at iqhunter@dmu.ac.uk.

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: 1 November 2010

So I want to look at the film as less a porn parody and more a porn homage. Need to get a move on with the abstract though.

The second conference is also at De Montfort University, on 24 November this year, and the description is:

Vegetarians, VILFs and Fang-Bangers: Modern Vampire Romance in print and on screen

Keynote Speaker: Dr Nickianne Moody, Liverpool John Moores Univeristy

Vampires have had a long and complex relationship with human beings and have been threatening and attracting us through folklore, literature, film and television for centuries. But now they walk among us, seeking to integrate themselves into our culture, to be our business partners, friends and lovers. Why do we now prefer our vampires with a sensitive nature or with their ruthlessness focused on business deals? How does this change affect the relationship between both species and genders? This one-day conference seeks to understand and criticise the phenomenal popularity of what is sometimes termed Dark Romance. Papers are sought on authors such as Stephanie Meyers, Charlene Harris, and Lauren K. Hamilton, the adaptation of Dark Romance books for both film and TV and a general consideration of the change in our relationship with the vampire.

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers, which might address (though not exclusively) the following areas:
•21st-century vampires in the Gothic literary tradition
•Vampires and gender/relations
•Adaptation and the shift of audience
•Debates on the Other
•Difference between film and television adaptation
•Colonialism/postcolonialism/postnationalism
•Vampires and money/business
•Vampires and class relations
•Vampires, authors and fans

For this one I'm going to look at the relationship between vampires and gender/relations. I'm going to compare Buffy, Bella and Sookie and their relationships with the men (vampires) in their lives. I haven't fully formulated my plan yet though, but I need to get a move on!

Lots of really cool things coming up then! Just have to make sure I finish my MA work too :D

It's Worrying How Time Flies

I now have only two months to finish my MA portfolio of 10000. I swear 5 minutes ago I had four months.

I've had my marks back for my teaching essay and portfolio one - 76 for the essay and my tutor's told me to submit it to some journals, and 68 for the portfolio. I was really hoping I'd get more, and I debated contesting it, but in the end I decided not to bother. I did, however, email a couple of journals for the teaching essay (which was on writing therapy and client safety) and one has come back to say yes, please submit. I've also emailed Henry Jenkins about the fan activism issue of the Journal of Transformative Works and Cultures he's guest editing, and had a reply today to say that they're interested in the paper I've proposed and would like me to submit. They can't guarantee publication as it has to go through peer review, but the fact that they're interested when it's not an area I've studied and I haven't even started my PhD yet really pleased me. I know what I'm going to write about, and I've approached some people I want to do case studies with, so just waiting for their permission and then I can start the research and drawing up my questions.

Christ, Hamlet and Ralph Nader: Symbolism and Sacrifice in The X Files

Written for the 2010 round of xf_is_love. I'm writing this much later than I'd have liked to, and it's therefore shorter (and possibly less coherent) than I'd like it to be. There's so much I could say about The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati. Religion, philosophy, reality, fiction, sacrifice and resurrection are just some of the themes covered in this episode, and if you take a look online (or at the bibliography) you'll find just some of the articles out there covering these. I hope that you enjoy this essay though, that it gives you something to think about, and that I haven't offended anyone with what I've written (that definitely isn't my intention).




Chris Carter once said that he saw The X Files as a search for God: 'it was a big part of the inspiration, but no one religion was the focus' and certainly there are plenty of references to religions and spiritualities (of all kinds) over the nine season course of the show. From the obvious (Scully's cross) to the esoteric (Feng Shui Life anyone?) both Western and Eastern philosophies and ways of life are used to encourage the characters, and the audience, to question what they see, to question what they are told, and to believe that the truth is out there.

Paul Peterson, in 'Religion in The X Files' says:

The television series The X-Files has become prominent for its treatment of alien visitors, alien abductions, and vast government conspiracies. But in addition to those things, for which it is most famous, it has provided one of the deepest and most sophisticated treatments of religious phenomena ever found on network television.

While religion is by no means the predominant theme of The X Files, the battle between 'good' (Mulder and Scully) and 'evil' (CSM and the Syndicate) which forms the basis of the show draws clear parrallels to ideas of good and evil in many world religions. Revolving around good and evil, and being entrenched in Western culture with all of the connotations that brings, The X Files does draw heavily on Christianity and themes of faith, belief, redemption and sacrifice occur regularly. It is the latter I particularly wish to focus on in this essay.

Ask anyone about religion in The X Files and I'm sure Scully would spring to mind. It is established early on that Scully is a Christian: she wears a golden cross around her neck which her mother gave her at the age of fifteen; she was 'raised Catholic and [has] a certain familiarity with scripture'; she believes that God can create miracles. Her journey throughout the course of The X Files could also be seen to mirror the journey of the Virgin Mary - the birth of Emily and William's conception mirroring the immaculate conception:

The birth of Emily reminds us of another Virgin Birth. "Christmas Carol" and "Emily" are a reminder of the birth, life and ministry of Jesus. The stories of Emily and Jesus are linked by the unique circumstances of their conceptions. They are also linked by Scully's crucifix.

The crucifix is one of the, if not perhaps the most, important symbols of Catholicism and Christianity. Serving as a reminder of Christ's sacrifice and love for all men, the crucifix symbolises the redemption of mankind and its use in The X Files must be considered. We know that the cross was given to Scully by her mother as a reminder that God is with her always. The cross remains with Scully throughout the course of the show, with the exception of her abduction by Duane Barry - through her cancer, the death of Emily and Mulder's illness, leaving us perhaps to wonder whether God was watching over her after all, and if he was how closely. The symbolism of the cross, is particularly important in relation to Scully's abduction, covering the episodes Ascension, 3 and One Breath, which has been compared by Karen Wolf to the crucifixion story:

Throughout "Duane Barry" (2x05) and "Ascension", frequent alien-abductee Duane Barry is representative of humanity while Scully is the crucified Christ...Scully has been sacificed quite literally for the "sins of our fathers", specifically Mulder's father and his cohorts' collusion with colonizing alien forces. In "Ascension", [it] can be said that Scully has experienced a symbolic death as a sacrifice to save humanity from its sins.

The absence of the cross, which Mulder looks after for Scully until she is returned, can be viewed symbolically as Scully's descent into hell, mirroring Jesus' experiences between his death and his resurrection as told in the Gospel of Nicodemus.

But it is not just Scully whose journey through the course of The X Files draws parallels with Jesus. The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati is, to me, one of the more obvious episodes to use the themes of religion, symbolism and sacrifice to get closer to the truth. From the episode's opening, with Mrs Mulder leaving her son lying in a hospital bed, crying out for her with a voice she can't hear, the viewer is drawn into making a comparison with Mary, mother of Jesus, who weeps at the cross for the son who has to die. Mary, we might argue, is passing her son into the arms of his father - God - who will care for him and reward him with a seat at his right hand. Mrs Mulder, however, passes her son into the arms of somewhere much more sinister - Cigarette Soking Man; the man once referred to as the devil by Chris Carter.

With CSM's arrival we are thrown into an altered reality, a dream sequence mirroring that of Martin Scorsese's 'The Last Temptation of Christ'. Much like Christ, Mulder is offered the chance to 'come down from the cross' and lead a normal life. AS Amy M. Donaldson says in her analysis 'Last Temptation of Mulder':

CSM, echoing the words of the guardian angel that appears to Jesus while on the cross, tells Mulder that he has suffered enough; he is not the Christ... Mimicking the angel, CSM takes his hand and leads him away from the scene of his siffering. Thus begins Mulder's greatest temptation.

There are quite clear parallels throughout the rest of the episode with the film: Mulder is led to paradise, lives the life of a normal man, and dies at an old age with Jerusalem crumbling arund him. It is apparent that Mulder, half-alien, half-human, is the key to humanity's salvation - much like Christ - and like Christ he may have to pay the ultimate sacrifice:

CIGARETTE SMOKING MAN: The fact remains, he's become our savior. He's immune to the coming viral apocalypse. He's the hero here. PROJECT DOCTOR: He may not survive the procedure. CIGARETTE SMOKING MAN: Then he suffers a hero's fate.

Sacrifice is a key theme in The X Files: Bill Mulder sacrificed his daughter for the sake of humanity; Mulder sacrificed Scully's health, Deep Throat and a normal life for his work on the x files; Scully sacrificed her relationship with her brother and her sister's life to support Mulder. In Amor Fati, those sacrifices are deemed minor, insignificant. Mulder cannot change the world - he is merely a small cog in a tiny machine.

MULDER: I thought that you died for my quest. DEEP THROAT: Yes, along with Scully's sister and the man you thought was your father and Duane Barry and even Scully's mysterious illness and on and on and on. You can let go of all that guilt. I'm here to tell you that you're not the hub of the universe, the cause of life and death. We-- you and I-- we're... merely puppets in a master plan. No more, no less. You've suffered enough. Now you should enjoy your life.

Of course, the reality is very different. Mulder lives the life that could have been - the dream life where all of the things he has lost, have been sacrificed for the X Files' cause, live just round the corner. While he is living the life that he could have had, the world is going to ruin:

VERY OLD MULDER: Oh, Scully! I knew you'd come. They told me you were dead. SCULLY: And you believed them. Traitor. VERY OLD MULDER: What? SCULLY: Deserter. Coward. VERY OLD MULDER: Scully, don't... I'm dying. SCULLY: You're not supposed to die, Mulder - not here. VERY OLD MULDER: What do you mean? SCULLY: Not in a comfortable bed with the devil outside. VERY OLD MULDER: No, you don't understand. He's taking care of me. SCULLY: No, Mulder, he's lulled you to sleep. He's made you trade your true mission for creature comforts. VERY OLD MULDER: There was no mission. There were no aliens. SCULLY: No aliens. Have you looked outside, Mulder?

Scully, as ever, comes to Mulder's rescue, bringing him back into the real world from his operating table crucifix. But Scully is only able to save Mulder because of the sacrifice that Fowley makes - risking her life to get Scully the pass key to the operating room where Mulder lies. Much like the role of decieving angel was perfect for CSM, Amy M. Donaldson argues that Fowley plays the seductive Mary Magdalene, 'working closely with CSM to keep Mulder lulled to sleep'. It could be argued that Fowley is more akin to Judas, betraying Mulder with a kiss for thirty pieces of silver (though we are never told the reason behind Fowley's alliance with CSM), but Donaldson argues that Scully is closer to the portrayal of Judas in 'The Last Temptation of Christ':

In "The Sixth Exctinction II: Amor Fati", Scully is Kazantzaki's Judas, right down to the blue eyes and red hair. She is the loyal friend who speaks the truth at all costs, more concerned with Mulder's quest than with his feelings. Like this Judas, Scully was sent by Mulder's enemies...but she was caught up in his charisma and integrity to become his closest companion.

Scully, like Jesus' follwers, is called to sacrifice a normal life - dates and family time - her sister, her ability to reproduce, for Mulder's quest. Deep Throat sacrifices his life when he takes on the role of Mulder's informant, and Fowley's 'eleventh hour martyrdom' sees her also being murdered.

Chris Carter once commented upon the importance of Scully's conflicting roles of scientist and believer:

The most difficult thing to reconcile is science and religion and so we created a dilemma for her character that plays right into Mulder's hands. So that cross she wears, which was there from the pilot episode, is all-important for a character who is torn between her rational character and her spiritual side. That is, I think, a very smart thing to do. The show is basically a religious show. It's about the search for God. You know, 'The truth is out there.' That's what it's about.

The X Files is, ulimately, a show about faith, but it is a show about sacrifice. The symbolism of Scully's cross, in both her role of scientist and believer and that of Christ's sacrifice, illustrate the underlying themes of the show, as well as the sacrifices that its main characters have to make to find the truth and finally believe.


Bibliography:
Blythe, Teresa (1999) 'Finding Religious Truth in The X-Files ', Gravitas: A Journal of Religion and Theology, 1: 1
Delasara, Jan (2000) Poplit, Popcult and the X Files: A Critical Explanation, McFarland & Co Inc
Peterson, Paul C.(2002) 'Religion in The X-Files', Journal of Media and Religion, 1: 3
Kowalski, Dean (ed) (2007) The Philosophy of The X Files, The University Press of Kentucky
Lavery, David, Hague, Angela and Cartwright, Maria (1997) Deny All Knowledge: Reading the "X-files", Faber and Faber
Yang, Sharon (ed) The X Files and Literature: Unravelling the Story, Unweaving the Lie to Find the Truth


Websites
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/35726
http://www.answers.com/topic/the-x-files
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=12667
http://community.livejournal.com/xfiles/2030305.html
http://www.faitharts.ie/xf.html
http://www.insidethex.co.uk
http://lylexf.livejournal.com/
http://www.munchkyn.com/xf-rvws/6thextinction.html
http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2000/04/28/chriscarter

Seeing is Believing: Reality, Truth and Fiction in Jose Chung’s From Outer Space

A repost of my 2009 xf_is_love piece.

This essay is something I've wanted to write for a long time - since writing my 3rd year dissertation on reality and fiction, in fact, and referencing Jose Chung's in that. Writing it was something I really enjoyed, though cutting the first draft down from 15000 odd words was pretty tough. I could have covered so much more on the subject, but I think it works as it is and I hope you all enjoy reading it. Huge thanks must go to truemyth for the incredibly insightful beta, the encouragement, the early morning emails getting excited over what else from the series fitted into the essay and the absolutely gorgeous cover.



I feel as though I should start this with a confession: I love Jose Chung’s From Outer Space. It’s one of my favourite episodes; the one that makes me laugh - and makes me think - whenever I see it. So it surprises me when I hear fans of the show dismiss Jose Chung’s as not being what The X Files is about, not being a real episode and certainly not being one of the best. I suppose when you look at it, to some extent, they have a point; The X Files as whole, to most people, is a show that looks seriously at aliens and government conspiracies. It talks about extreme possibilities, and feeds into the conspiracy theories that have been embraced by American culture. In contrast, and as with many of the scripts written by Darin Morgan, Jose Chung’s has a certain off kilter feel to it. It is more subversively funny than many X Files episodes, more keen to bend the reality of what we are seeing. But I still maintain that not only is Jose Chung’s a real episode, it is in many ways the epitome of what The X Files is about.

One of the show’s credos is ‘the truth is out there’, the tagline reminding us of this in almost every episode, and this search for the truth is the key element of the show. But the nature of the truth discovered on the X Files is never clear, and always open to interpretation.

From the beginning of Jose Chung’s we are encouraged to doubt what we see. The episode opens with a shot of the underside of a spaceship, moving slowly across the night sky, but seconds later the spaceship is revealed to be a crane; the camera panning giving it the appearance of movement. Likewise, the grey aliens we see appear to be the real thing, carrying out an abduction. That is until we hear their American accents and see their mouths moving under their masks. This opening sets the theme for the episode; that of truths buried beneath truths, of never knowing if what we’re seeing can actually be believed (“How the hell should I know?”).

Scully and Jose Chung, discussing the events of Klass County after the opening credits, give us a further indication as to the notions of truth we will see in the episode (emphasis mine):

SCULLY: Well, just as long as you’re attempting to record the truth. JOSE CHUNG: Oh, God, no. How can I possibly do that? […] I spent three months in Klass County and everybody there has a different version of what truly happened. Truth is as subjective as reality.

Here, we see Chung expounding a traditional metaphysical claim that Kant also subscribed to; there is the way that the world really is and the way that the world appears to us. Everyone has a different version of the world, of the events that happened in Klass County, and everyone believes those versions to be true. Jose Chung’s cleverly makes the point that we can never get past the way that things appear to us, and our knowledge is only of the appearance of things (the reality that we see), not things as they really are (the truth).  But Jose Chung could also be referring to the nature of truth in the X Files; that the truth changes, depending on who’s telling us what happened.

Take Samantha’s disappearance, for example. From the beginning of the series we are told that she was abducted by aliens, that this was the driving force behind Mulder’s entry to the FBI and the discovery of the X Files.

MULDER: I was twelve when it happened. My sister was eight. She just disappeared out of her bed one night. Just gone, vanished. No note, no phone calls, no evidence of anything.[…]I’ve been able to go into my own repressed memories to the night my sister disappeared. I can recall a bright light outside and a presence in the room. I was paralysed, unable to respond to my sister’s calls for help. Listen to me, Scully, this thing exists.

As the series progresses, however, we get told different truths about what actually happened to her up (which we may be able to pass off as continuity errors on the part of the writers, but are still presented to us on the show as true events). In Little Green Men we see that Samantha was taken from the living room while she and Mulder played Stratego (in earlier episodes such as Conduit we were told that she was taken from her bed); in The Blessing Way we are told that she isn’t dead – or at least not where Bill Mulder now is; in Paper Hearts the suggestion is that she was taken from her home by John Lee Roche and killed; in Closure we are told that she is dead, taken by the walk-ins and travelling through time in starlight.

We also see different truths relating to Samantha’s growing up. In Colony we are told that she was returned and placed with an adoptive family (whom Samantha refers to as aliens) who raised her as their daughter; in Redux II we are told that Samantha was taken to Cancer Man, who was referred to as her father, and grew up to have children of her own; in Closure we are told that she lived with Cancer Man where tests were performed on her before she ran away. 

Morgan plays with the idea of truth in Jose Chung’s to make us question the notion of truth we are presented with in the series. The truth on The X Files, much like the truth in Jose Chung’s is revealed to us slowly – when it is revealed at all.

MULDER: He’s never lied to me. I won’t break that confidence. I trust him. SCULLY: Mulder, you’re the only one I trust.

Only for it to be subverted later on:

MULDER: You were right, Scully. It’s a fake. He tried to deceive us. Now we’re alone on this. There’s no one we can trust. They went to a lot of trouble to put us on the wrong track.

Mulder’s ability to believe the different truths shown to him about his sister’s disappearance, about the people he can trust, can be reflected on a smaller scale in the different truths shown to us about what happened in Klass County; Jose Chung’s, therefore, acting as a microcosm to the nine seasons of the show.

Much like Mulder comes to realise that the truths he was brought up with are, in fact, lies, both Harold and Chrissy change their stories to reflect newer ‘truths’, illustrating the shifting nature of the truth seen throughout the show. Initially, Chrissy’s story is that Harold raped her, which changes to a typical abduction experience.

CHRISSY GIORGIO: I'm in a room... on a spaceship... surrounded by aliens. FINGERS: What do the aliens look like? CHRISSY GIORGIO: They're small... but their heads and their eyes are big. They're gray.

This later develops into a CIA cover up.

CHRISSY GIORGIO: Some men are lifting me off the ground... men in Air Force uniforms. MULDER: Air Force? FINGERS: Where are you now, Chrissy? CHRISSY GIORGIO: I'm in a room. In an office. I'm surrounded by men. Some are in uniforms, some are in suits.

Mulder underwent hypnosis several times through the course of the series in order to discover what had happened to Samantha and indeed it is a recurring theme through the course of Jose Chung’s.  Our thoughts and memories, like those of Mulder in The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati for example, may be the product of a force which implants false ideas and memories in our minds. A person’s mind is easily malleable, subject to suggestion and fiction. Ed Jerse in Never Again kills because of a talking tattoo – something we later discover is actually caused by ergot poisoning. Robert Modell, in Pusher, was able to convince people to do his bidding through the power of suggestion. Even Scully, in Wetwired, fell victim to subliminal messaging which led to her nearly shooting Mulder.

Under hypnosis, autosuggestion becomes a real possibility. The brain, as an instrument, is delicate and not foolproof; with the right equipment or knowledge, and perseverance, it is easy to fool it into believing something other than what has been experienced. The memory, just like any other piece of equipment, is subject to loss of data and, for want of a better phrase, file corruption. We even see this in Deep Throat, the second episode of the show, with the transformation the Air Force pilots go through.

MULDER: I think they re-wired that man's brain. Some kind of selective memory drain. SCULLY: The brain doesn't work like that, Mulder. You can't just go in and erase certain files.

Psychology has found this with allegations of False Memory Syndrome (FMS), a condition where false memories are implanted in a person undergoing therapy, who then believes that these memories are real. 

JOSE CHUNG: What is your opinion of hypnosis? SCULLY: I know that it has its therapeutic value, but it has never been proven to enhance memory. In fact, it actually worsens it since, since, since people in that state or prone to confabulation. […] JOSE CHUNG: I was, uh... interested in how the C.I.A., when conducting their MK-Ultra mind control experiments back in the '50s, had no idea how hypnosis went. SCULLY: Hmm. JOSE CHUNG: Or what it was. SCULLY: No one still knows. JOSE CHUNG: Still, as a storyteller, I'm fascinated how a person's sense of consciousness can be... so transformed by nothing more magical than listening to words. Mere words.  

Indeed, as stated by Scully, people suffering from FMS can suffer physical reactions in relation to an event which never happened.  The brain seems to rely on details rather than generalities to form and distinguish between memories. It seems that the key to this is sensory perception. Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus says “It is the sensory details that people use to distinguish their memories. If you imbue the story with them, you'll disrupt this memory process. It's almost a recipe to get people to remember things that aren't true.” Something Deep Throat himself also seems to be aware of – a lie is best hidden between two truths after all.

Returning to Mulder’s memories of Samantha’s abduction we can see this as a case in point; by remembering details of her disappearance, sketchy as they were, he created a ‘garden variety abduction scenario’ that he comes to believe is true. As Jose Chung’s  posits, if memories can be altered this easily, how can we really be able to trust ourselves and our judgements about the external world?

1ST MAN IN BLACK: No other object as been misidentified as a flying saucer more often than the planet Venus. ROKY CRIKENSON: Really? 1ST MAN IN BLACK: Even the former leader of your United States of America, James Earl Carter Jr., thought he saw a UFO once... But it's been proven he only saw the planet Venus. […] Venus was at its peak brilliance last night. You probably thought you saw something up in the sky other than Venus, but I assure you, it was Venus. ROKY CRIKENSON: I know... What I saw. 1ST MAN IN BLACK: Your scientists have yet to discover how neural networks create self-consciousness, let alone how the human brain processes two-dimensional retinal images into the three-dimensional phenomenon known as perception...yet somehow you brazenly declare that seeing is believing?

Can we really say that seeing is believing?

Peter Unger’s ‘mad scientist’ theory, and Hilary Putnam's 'brain in a vat' hypothesis, where Putnam substitutes the demon or god for a computer-system, suggest that the experiences we have when walking down the street, having dinner with Cancer Man or attending Diana Fowley’s funeral may not be as authentic as we believe them to be. Putnam proposes that we don’t know whether the experiences we have are ones that we actually go through, or whether they are generated by some form of electrical stimulus – that we are, in fact, brains in vats, imagining that we are people.

MULDER: But what do you do with the abductees? JACK SCHAFFER: Take them back to base. Let the doctors work on them. Nothing physical, they just mess with their minds. MULDER: Hypnosis? JACK SCHAFFER: At the base, I've seen people go into an ordinary room with an ordinary bunch of doctors...and come out absolutely positive they were probed by aliens. […] Don't you get it? I'm absolutely positive me, my co-pilot, and those two kids were abducted, but I can't be absolutely sure it happened. I can't be sure of anything anymore! MULDER: What do you mean? JACK SCHAFFER: I'm not sure we're even having this conversation. I don't know if these mashed potatoes are really here. I don't know if you even exist. MULDER: I can only assure you that I do. JACK SCHAFFER: Well...thanks buddy. Unfortunately...I can't give you the same assurance about me.

Assurances, in Jose Chung’s and The X Files as a whole, mean nothing. Nothing is certain – what we see, what we feel, what we touch; none of these, once we begin to question the fundamental nature of truth that we see on the show, can be declared definitively true.

The scene that takes place immediately after this exchange proves this point. It is told by Chung who says that the cook at the restaurant told a very different story. Mulder dines alone, asking one question for each piece of pie he writes. At no point does Schaffer, or any other Air Force personnel, enter the diner. Chung appears frustrated by the contradictory stories. Scully, on the other hand, unfazed. Should she really expect anything different after working on the X Files? Stories, truths, change in the telling – something we have discovered through the course of Jose Chung’s as well as the course of show.

So we’ve had the slowly revealed truths and the imprecise nature of hypnosis. What else does Jose Chung’s have that we can see in the show? Technology has always played an important part on The X Files. From the videotapes that aren’t Mulder’s (although they are kept in his drawers), to the ones that are – the alien autopsy video showing the Japanese scientists in 731; the still from a video in The Erlenmeyer Flask technology has been used as a means of showing the truth as well as hiding it.

BLAINE FAULKNER: You can't suppress the truth! The people have a right to know! Roswell... Roswell! MULDER: Hey! Does that video camera work? […] YAPPI: Is this actual footage of an alien autopsy? Or simply a well-made hoax? JOSE CHUNG: So this is footage of the actual autopsy you performed. SCULLY: This is so embarrassing. YAPPI: Who is that mysterious man who seems to be overseeing the proceedings? And what secret government agency does this autopsy doctor work for? SCULLY: But see? Whoever got ahold of this footage edited it in such a way as to delete all the significant findings.

Mulder and Scully, from being the characters who search for, and wish to uncover, the truth, are portrayed as part of the very government conspiracy that means to keep the truth hidden. In Jose Chung’s they are working for, not against, the truth though the video autopsy suggests otherwise. A pretty neat twist.

It has been said that Jose Chung’s is the first post-modern episodes of the show, though the series as an entirety can now be considered a post-modern text, and from an existential point of view argues that humanity is always alone and the truth is essentially unknowable. But I’d argue that, while those points are valid, Jose Chung’s is about more than that. Jose Chung’s, at its core, is about love. While it can be argued that it takes somewhat of a back seat compared to Chung’s quest to know the intellectual truth of the events in Klass County, it is there nonetheless: the episode begins with Harold declaring his love for Chrissy and ends with his declaration that he still loves her; Roky discovers that the way to enlightenment is through love (or lust at least); Chrissy discovers a more selfless kind of love in devoting herself to improving the world.

JOSE CHUNG: Then there are those who care not about extraterrestrials, searching for meaning in other human beings. Rare or lucky are those who find it. For although we may not be alone in the universe, in our own separate ways on this planet, we are all... alone.

Chung’s analysis of love – that we are all ultimately alone – is perhaps the one way in which the episode diverts from the ideas found in the show as a whole. Chung takes the existentialist view that we are all alone; we perceive the world through a veil of experience, opinion and belief that no one else shares. Jose Chung’s illustrates that perfectly, as we’ve seen: the events in Klass County differ according to each teller because they each experienced different things. If we expand that idea to include all aspects of human experience, then it’s a logical step to say that yes, we are all essentially alone. We can’t really know what the truth is, and while we may love other people we can never make an ultimate connection with them.

But The X Files, ultimately, doesn’t enforce Chung’s opinion. Folie a Deux, for example (often cited as the episode that illustrates Mulder and Scully’s love) can be regarded as illustrating love as a shared perception. It deals with similar themes to Jose Chung’s; there are people who see zombies and monsters, and people who can’t. The people who can’t don’t believe the people who can. Until the end of the episode Scully can’t see the monster that Mulder is faced with. At one point she even hopes that he’ll be able to see past the delusion.

MULDER: You have to be willing to see. SCULLY: I wish it were that simple. MULDER: Scully, you have to believe me. Nobody else on this whole damn planet does or ever will. You’re my one in … five billion.

But when she trusts what he says and looks at the world in the same way as him she sees what he sees.

SCULLY: The truth … as well as I under stand it. MULDER: Which is? SCULLY: Folie A Deux. A madness shared by two.

Of course Mulder and Scully have, by The Truth, have found love with each other (something it could be argued the fans knew about much earlier than the characters did), and Frank Spotnitz, in a Science Fiction Weekly interview, argues that this is perhaps the ultimate truth:

The final scene addresses this head on. You can’t get the truth. You can’t. There’s a larger truth, though: that you can’t harness the forces of the cosmos, but you may find somebody else. You may find another human being. That may be kind of corny and all of that, but that’s really it: Love is the only truth we can hope to know, as human beings. That’s what Mulder and Scully found after nine years. And that’s a lot.

Think for a moment about how The Truth ends. Mulder and Scully have found the truth that they’ve spent the last nine years searching for: they know that the date is set for colonisation, they know the conspiracy is real. Everything that Mulder has believed has become true, and Scully has been convinced of that truth along the way as well.

But the end of The Truth is, ultimately, about more than that. More than the truth, Mulder and Scully have discovered love. 

MULDER: I believe that I sat in a motel room like this with you when we first met and I tried to convince you of the truth. And in that respect, I succeeded, but ... in every other way ... I've failed. […] SCULLY: You've always said that you want to believe. But believe in what Mulder? If this is the truth that you've been looking for then what is left to believe in? MULDER: I want to believe that the dead are not lost to us. That they speak to us as part of something greater than us - greater than any alien force. And if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen to what's speaking, it can give us the power to save ourselves. SCULLY: Then we believe the same thing.

Even if you accept the idea in Jose Chung’s that we are all ultimately alone, The Truth shows us that love is still real, and possibly the only way we can get close to knowing an ultimate truth. Mulder and Scully, at the end of the series, believe the same thing. The worlds of perception, the veils of experience, opinion and belief, that have kept them apart for nine years, have joined. They believe the same; feel the same; see the same. In a world where the truth – where love – is essentially unknowable, that’s the biggest declaration of love there is.

So while Jose Chung may have not realised that love is the only truth we can hope to find, Harold did. That’s the beauty of Jose Chung’s; Chung himself doesn’t know this final truth, much like Mulder and Scully don’t get to know the whole truth about the conspiracy, but one of the minor characters does, just like the fans did.

Of course, there are other episodes which deal with the nature of truth and reality, Bad Blood being a prime example. From Mulder’s description of Scully mooning over Sheriff Hartwell to Scully’s account of Mulder’s rather exuberant morning greeting, the episode makes us question whose version of events is true. In the end, unlike Jose Chung’s, both are – Sheriff Hartwell doesn’t have buck teeth but Ronnie Strickland is a vampire. Bad Blood consistently finds itself at the top of fans’ episode lists, but for me Jose Chung’s will always be there first.

Mulder’s closing plea to Chung perhaps best sums up the episode– the conflicting versions of truth that we see – as well as the nature of the show itself.

MULDER: Don't write this book. You'll perform a disservice through a field of inquiry that has always struggled for respectability. You're a gifted writer, but no amount of talent could describe the events that occurred in any realistic vein because they deal with alternative realities that we've yet to comprehend. And when presented in the wrong way, in the wrong context, the incidents and the people involved in them can appear foolish, if not downright psychotic.

Even though there may be an underlying reality to the way the world is, it is covered by layers of fictions, fictions we see in Jose Chung’s and in The X Files; a point interestingly made in Milagro:

MULDER: Which is the truth? PHILLIP PADGETT: By their nature words are imprecise and layered with meaning. The signs of things, not the things themselves. It's difficult to say who's in charge.

Jose Chung, as a writer, is perhaps in the best position to realise this.

I could go on, I really could. There’s so much to talk about in relation to Jose Chung’s – post-modernism, metaphysics, existentialism, the constraints of language – that I scarcely knew where to being. I’d like to think I’ve covered aspects of some of these in this essay, while not straying too far from my reasons for loving this episode. I’d like to think there’s enough in here for the fans who don’t like it to dig out their DVDs, watch the episode again and think ‘maybe there is something to it’. I’d like to think there’s enough in here for the fans who do like it to dig out their DVDs, watch the episode again and think ‘yeah, we knew that’. But even if I haven’t been able to do either of those things, I’ve at least been able to write my own love letter to Jose Chung’s From Outer Space.

Jose Chung’s was the forerunner to Bad Blood, the episode that manages to poke fun at the show while becoming a mirror to what The X Files is really about. As David Duchovny says about Mulder:

When he matures he’ll realise that the truth is not something to be had. Mulder is very young because he really thinks there’s an answer.

Darin Morgan, in writing Jose Chung’s, shows us that there is, indeed, no answer. He cleverly plays with our ideas of truth, subverting what we know of reality and making us question all that we see.

SCULLY: You want my version of the truth. JOSE CHUNG: Exactly.

As we discover in the series, there is no definitive truth that can be agreed upon by each party. But there are other truths. It’s why Darin Morgan goes back to love: we may not be able to agree on whether the aliens were real or not; on whether Chrissy was raped; on whether Mulder and Scully were men in black, but we can agree on love. Love is the closest we can come to knowing that ultimate truth; that even if we can’t agree on what happened, we can agree that we love each other. We can sense a deeper reality by developing that closeness with other people and we can share their perceptions and see the world maybe a little more clearly. It’s what Mulder and Scully spent nine years doing, after all.


Bibliography

Richard M. Gale (ed):    The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics
René Descartes:    Discourse On The Method And The Meditations
Anthony Harrison-Barbet:    Mastering Philosophy
Plato:    The Republic
V.S Ramachandran & Sandra Blakeslee:        Phantoms in the Brain
Bertrand Russell:     History of Western Philosophy
Oliver Sacks:    The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Dean A. Kowalski (ed):    The Philosophy of The X Files

websites
http://www.bmfs.org.uk/site_pages/newspage.htm
http://www.commonsensescience.org/index.htm?phil.htm~main
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~ursa/philos/index.htm   
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/m/mccormickan/BrainsInAVat.html
http://www.transparencynow.com/decon.htm
http://www.insidethex.co.uk
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~felluga/sf/sampleAPaperMrO3c.html
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue265/interview2.html
http://emily-shore.livejournal.com/206797.html
http://community.livejournal.com/xfiles/1958283.html
http://community.livejournal.com/xfiles/1954166.html?thread=16845942#t16845942

The Death of the Author: Fan Fiction and the Creative Process

This was the first essay submitted for my MA in the Teaching and Practice of Creative Writing at Cardiff University. Now that the essay has been marked and returned, I figured I would be okay to post it to a public forum.

I'd like to say thank you to everyone who's talked to me about their fanfiction, everyone who's allowed me to cite them in this essay (I hope you don't feel that I've misrepresented you) and a huge thanks to bravenewcentury for taking a look at the first draft and providing me with valuable suggestions. I'm leaving this as friends only for the time being, as the essay is due in tomorrow and I don't want this version to be broadcast on the internet until the hard copy has been marked, but I thought some of you might be interested in reading, and I would appreciate any comments, criticism or feedback you might have.



The Death of the Author: Fan Fiction and the Creative Process

She has divided their time together into before and after. It makes it easier, somehow, to quantify their time this way; to separate their lives into then and now. Then, they were FBI; now they are fugitives. Then they were scientist and believer; now they are players in a government conspiracy. Then they were partners; now they are something she no longer knows how to describe. Before and after; then and now. Words used to disguise just how much her world has shifted.^[1]

The above quote is from the opening section of my short story about two former FBI agents on the run from the bureau they used to work for. Embroiled in a web of government conspiracies, alien abductions and the supernatural, they began a relationship, and became fugitives, accused of murder. My story tells of their experiences on the run, the strain it puts on their relationship, and the differences between their life now and their life investigating ‘The X Files’. The characters’ names are Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. They were created by Chris Carter, and my story is a piece of fan fiction.

Writers and academics have tried to define fan fiction (or ‘fanfic’) since its inception in the 1960s. Parrish has called it ‘writing by amateur fans of a particular media text or texts […]; commencing from (but not limited to) some of the characters and sometimes premises of that text or those texts; explicitly calling attention to itself as fan fiction; and published on the internet.’^[2] Jenkins writes that ‘[f]an writing builds upon the interpretive practices of the fan community, taking the collective meta-text as the base from which to generate a wide range of media-related stories.’^[3] The definition which I shall use in the course of this essay, however, comes from Sheenagh Pugh who suggests that fanfic ‘can be defined as fiction based on a situation and characters originally created by someone else.’^[4]

So, if fan fiction involves writing about the characters and situations invented by another writer, where is the creativity? To answer that question I feel have to talk about my fanfic and the reasons for writing it.

My experience with fanfic began in earnest in August 2008. The second X Files movie had been released in July and in the run up to the premiere I'd made a lot of new friends. Many of those new friends had LiveJournal (LJ) accounts and wrote X Files fanfic. While I hadn’t thought about writing fanfic, I wanted a space which would allow me to write more, and so I set up an LJ of my own. The trouble was I had nothing to write about; I hadn’t written anything in months, lacking both inspiration and inclination. I started my LJ by uploading old stories and essays, and then joined a few X Files communities. Those few turned into a few more, and then I stumbled across xf_drabble^[5], a writing community dedicated to X Files fanfic in the form of drabbles, short stories of 100 to 1000 words. The stories I read on there were good. They were well written snippets capturing a moment or a feeling, and they were stories about characters I had known since the age of 12. I found my inspiration.

The first piece I wrote for xf_drabble was inspired by a prompt posted by the community moderator – in this case, anniversaries. And this is where the attraction of fanfic to many writers comes in. When writing original fiction the world of the story has to be created from scratch. The writer may have an idea of who the characters are, what the landscape looks like, where the story will go, but the reader doesn’t. It’s up to the writer to entice them into that world, to build characters they want to invest time in, to promise them that the story is worth reading. That can be a lot of hard work. In fanfic, however, the world and the characters already exist. The reader has a wealth of knowledge about the world, which the writer can tap into. Writing a story about an original character celebrating an anniversary can be hard. Feedback from readers will be minimal, and struggling with the characters and the universe time-consuming and difficult. Writing a story about characters from a successful TV series, film or book which has readers ready and willing to give feedback, and a world which the readers are already familiar with and invested in, takes a lot of that difficulty out of writing.

Barthes says, in Death of the Author:

We know that a text does not consist of a line of words, releasing a single "theological" meaning (the "message" of the Author-God), but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original: the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture… a text consists of multiple writings, issuing from several cultures and entering into dialogue with each other, into parody, into contestation^[6]

This is exactly what the fanfic writers take part in – creating new pieces of writing from a text which, itself, is a combination of urban legend, previous TV shows and newspaper articles run in tabloid presses.^[7] The X Files, drawing on the myths and legends of the culture it appeared in, becomes part of the myths and legends of the culture in which fanfic writers emerge. The death of the original authors, the shows writers, gives birth to a new wave of fanfic writers, moulding, adapting and building on the traditions and cultures born within The X Files’ universe.

Fanfic writers traditionally fall into two camps: those who want more of the canon^[8], and those who want more from it. Writers wanting ‘more of’ the canon will write within the confines of the show. X Files writers, for example, may write case-files where Mulder and Scully investigate paranormal activity. Writers wanting ‘more from’ the canon, however, will take inspiration from elsewhere. Missing scenes, alternate universes, character vignettes: all of these are examples of ‘more from’. The original writers may not have concluded a storyline in the manner the writer desired – or may not have concluded a storyline at all – and so the writer decides to write their version of what did – or could have – happened. Verasteine, in a post on the X Files LJ community, concurs:

I often get an idea by watching the show and continuing on from where the credits roll. This is how I start to engage a show. Then I get to know the characters, which requires frequent rewatching of critical scenes and note taking on what I believe motivates a character. Often, from that motivation I get my fiction ideas. […] Once I know characters well, a little more plot will seep into my writing and I'll write more things independent from episodes or the current timeframe of the narrative.^[9]

Her writing process reflects that of many fanfic writers; there is an initial engagement with the original text – the canon – and the characters. From that engagement comes a desire to be involved in the canon, to take part in the writing of the myths that form that world. Often this takes the form of ‘more of’ – a way of learning more about the characters as well as ensuring the continuation of the canon that the fanfic writer has become invested in. ‘More from’ comes when the writer has exhausted canonical possibilities or has become more attuned to the characters they are writing about. Character motivations and relationships become more important, taking over from the desire to have more of the canon. Foucault, in What is an Author, says:

I seem to call for a form of culture in which fiction would not be limited by the figure of the author. It would be pure romanticism, however, to imagine a culture in which the fictive would operate in an absolutely free state, in which fiction would be put at the disposal of everyone and would develop without passing through something like a necessary or constraining figure.^[10]

While Foucault believed that fiction not limited by the constraints of an author was impossible, fanfiction seems to fit this notion. Fanfic writers aren’t limited by canon, original writers or creators; each writer sees something in the characters that others don’t and writes about their versions of those characters. Notions of authorship, indeed, are complicated further by the use of nom-de-plumes. Not only do these serve to anonymise the ‘real’ person behind the pen-name, allowing the author far more freedom than writing under their real name would,^[11] they remove the fanfic writer totally from their everyday lives, pushing them into the universe of the show, which they can then do with as they want.

Taking this notion further, Jenkins writes that ‘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’^[12] and that opinion is reinforced by many fanfic writers I have spoken to. Seasons 8 and 9 of The X Files were, for many fans, poor relations of the earlier episodes: the universe that fans had come to know and love had been damaged by the corporation; the myth had been spoiled. Fanfic was a way of reclaiming those earlier myths, repairing the damage to the characters and the show.

It is in this rewriting of the myth that I want to talk about the creative process. In my own fanfic I have written far more ‘more from’ than ‘more of’. This is, in part, because I am less interested in case files than I am with character relationships, but it is also – I feel – because I was an original fiction writer before I was a fanfic writer. I am used to creating my own characters and my own worlds; I enjoy puzzling over how the story will continue and which way the plot will take me, and I enjoy how my characters become real to me. Writing fanfic incorporates some elements of that; the characters are real to me because I’ve known them for 15 years, and the story often takes me in unexpected directions. But I am working with a world which has been created by someone else, a world which has boundaries and rules and a canon that I have to follow – at least while I am writing to that canon.  One of the ways I find myself able to make the characters mine while retaining their ‘reality’ is to use what I know of them as a starting point to delve into their histories. Scully, for example, is portrayed as a cool-headed, rational, almost cold figure in the show. I wouldn’t be able to write a story depicting her as a ditzy blonde if I wanted to keep her in character, but I would be able to write a story about an incident in her childhood – an argument with her brother – which turns her into the woman she becomes.

One of the other pleasures in fanfic is the alternate universe, the ‘what if…’ made real. In The X Files, Mulder’s sister was abducted by aliens; Scully was given cancer; the Lone Gunmen were killed. These are all part of canon – accepted events which the fans know happened. But in my alternate universe Fox Mulder could have been abducted instead of Samantha; Scully could have died of cancer; the Lone Gunmen could have been working for the Syndicate. Sheenagh Pugh writes:

For what it is worth, the characteristic that most strikes me in the fanfic writers (and readers) I know is a highly developed imagination. Though they live and work, often very successfully, in the “real” world, they cannot get enough of imagined worlds, fantasy worlds, and even within the fantasy they are always looking for alternative possibilities, other ways the story might have gone.^[13]

And that is the appeal, for me: creating something original from something borrowed; using existing characters and universe in new ways. The characters are not mine but the stories that I tell with them are. I can take the characters I know, take their experiences and histories, and create something new. The only limitation I have is that the characters remain in character. Everything else goes.

I started writing AU soon after I began writing fanfic.^[14] I began with drabbles, short snippets of missing scenes – things that could have been. And then I wrote longer pieces, including the story which starts this essay. One of my most popular fanfics so far is an AU where Detective Inspector Mulder and Dana Scully, prostitute, investigate the Ripper murders of 18th century Whitechapel^[15]. Initially written to a prompt (Mulder/Scully, Victorian England AU) it is now a work in progress, telling the story of Mulder’s search for his sister and the government conspiracy he becomes embroiled in against the backdrop of Victorian London and the myth of Spring-Heeled Jack. The challenge for me in this story is in keeping all of the canonical elements in place, in a setting totally removed from the canonical setting. The characters have to be in character: Scully has to retain the scientific detachment she does in the series; Mulder has to be misunderstood by those he works with; the Cigarette-Smoking Man has to be a shadowy figure in the background. But while this is going on I also have to build a realistic picture of Whitechapel in the 1880s and the conditions in which the prostitutes lived. I have to create and maintain a believable plot which will allow the readers to become invested in this new universe. It is in this tension between canon and AU that the creative process takes place: it is the line between canonical characters and original storytelling; the need to imitate the writing style that makes the characters who they are, while developing and maintaining my own, unique authorial voice. This is why I write fanfiction.

Amal Nahurriyeh, for the X Files Big Bang challenge^[16], wrote a post-series novel about colonisation, canonically intended to take place in 2012. In her author’s notes she explains why she chose to tell this story, and how she did it:

Second, canonicity and transformation. I'm a writer who wants to get as close to canon as possible in order to see what can be done to it; at the same time, I'm interested in doing transformative things to it… What I wanted to do in writing this was write a story that was almost--almost--something you could imagine being filmed as the third X-Files movie; a story that seemed to capture the spirit of the series, that seemed as if it could be canon, except not quite.^[17]

The idea of transformation in fanfic is not new, but it is powerful, and another area where the creative process applies. The fun, for me, in fanfic lies in taking the established canon, turning it on its head and making other fans and readers question the show in the light of my take on it. Taking characters like Cigarette Smoking Man and Diana Fowley and making them likeable and believable, with their own history, is a challenge – they are little more than stereotypes in the show and are vilified by many fans – but it is an enjoyable challenge and can imbue the series itself with that little bit more. The idea that Fowley was abused as a child – even if gleaned only from my pre-series drabble – could be enough to make the viewer rethink her adult actions. That’s the power of transformation.

The process of writing fanfic requires an engagement not only with the original text, but with other interpretations of it, and my fanfic is inspired by both of these; a drabble written about the events following Small Potatoes^[18]may make me want to write a vignette about Mulder and Scully’s relationship. A novel about colonisation may inspire me to write my own story set in that universe. Fandom, and fanfic’s part in that, is very much a community effort. The prevalence and popularity of challenge communities, prompt communities and fiction exchanges on Live Journal alone shows how they contribute to finding inspiration and engaging in the creative process. Among the communities of which I am a member are the drabble files, xf-santa, xf-is love and xf-bigbang^[19], and from these I gain inspiration and, more importantly, feedback. Fanfic readers, on the whole, are discerning readers. The biggest crime in writing fanfic is to write out of character and readers will pick up on any slight they feel their characters have endured. If you're good you'll get feedback telling you that you’re good. You'll get recommended to other readers, who in turn will leave feedback. If you're bad, however, you'll be told that as well – even if only through lack of feedback. Barthes expands on this futher:

there is one place where this multiplicity is collected, united, and this place is not the author, as we have hitherto said it was, but the reader: the reader is the very space in which are inscribed, without any being lost, all the citations a writing consists of…we know that to restore to writing its future, we must reverse its myth: the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author.^[20]

And fanfic epitomises that. Fanfiction is possibly the only genre where the motives of both readers and writers overlap. Both want to see the continuation of the universe they know and love. Both want to see their characters written well, but want something new to be brought to the universe as well. In fanfic the readers became the producers of new work, not simply because the reader is the space where the citations of writing are inscribed, but because – having the text play out upon them – they wanted to add to it. They wanted to fix what was wrong, to explore ambiguities, to get something more.

I began writing fanfiction because my own, original, writing was struggling. I couldn't find ideas anywhere and when I could I didn't know how to write them down, or at least write them down to a standard that I was satisfied with. Engaging with a world I knew, with characters I had seen develop, with fans who loved that universe as much as I did, gave me back that inspiration. Writing fanfic allowed me to write original fiction again, and to want to delve into worlds of my own creation. Writing fanfic gave me the feedback that I needed from readers who thought that I was good, who enjoyed what I wrote and wanted to read more. By taking part in the death of the author – the original author – by engaging in the text as a reader, and bringing my own experiences and beliefs to The X Files’ table I found myself as the author: rediscovered, reincarnated, reborn.


References:

^[1] See appendix one

^[2] Parrish, Juli, “Inventing a universe: Reading and writing Internet fan fiction,” 2007 Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, at http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd–08072007–170133/unrestricted/Parrish2007.pdf, accessed 4 November 2009

^[3] Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers Television Fans & Participatory Culture, Routledge, 1992, p.156

^[4] Sheenagh Pugh, The Democratic Genre Fan Fiction in a Literary Context, Seren, 2005, p.9

^[5] http://community.livejournal.com/xf_drabble/

^[6] Barthes, Roland, “The Death of the Author”, Aspen no. 5+6, 1967 http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/threeEssays.html#barthes (accessed on 21/10/09)

^[7] For example, in a 1994 interview with Sci-Fi Entertainment, Chris Carter, the creator of The X Files, cited Kolchak: Night Stalker as one of his main influences; the opening scene of the pilot episode of the show contained the notice ‘the following story is inspired by actual documented accounts’.

^[8] Material produced by the creator of a series; the ‘official’ story.

^[9] http://community.livejournal.com/xfiles/2399055.html?thread=23072079#t23072079

^[10] Foucault, Michel: “What is an author”, 1969, The Essential Foucault, at http://www.scribd.com/doc/10268982/Foucault-What-is-an-Author (accessed 21/10/09)

^[11] For example, instead of writing under the name Bethan, implying a gender and nationality, I write under the name memories_child, implying only a knowledge of The X Files through the title of a song used in the last film.

^[12] http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/18/business/in-tv-s-dull-summer-days-plots-take-wing-on-the-net.html?scp=363&sq=henry+jenkins&st=nyt (accessed 21/11/09)

^[13] Pugh, p.133

^[14] http://memories-child.livejournal.com/16438.html

^[15] See appendix two

^[16] http://community.livejournal.com/xf_bigbang  A ‘big bang’ challenge is a fanfiction/art challenge that challenges authors to write new fanfics of 20,000 words or more, and challenges artists to create accompanying artwork. The end products are kept secret until a set date, at which time the fic and artwork is posted to the community.

^[17] http://amalnahurriyeh.livejournal.com/38251.html

^[18] The X Files. Chris Carter (creator), Vince Gilligan (writer). FOX. 20 April 1997

^[19] http://community.livejournal.com/thedrabblefiles, http://community.livejournal.com/xf_santa, http://community.livejournal.com/xf_is_love and http://community.livejournal.com/xf_bigbang

^[20] Barthes, http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/threeEssays.html#barthes (accessed on 21/10/09)


Bibliography:

Barthes, Roland: “The Death of the Author”, 1967, Aspen 5+6, at http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/threeEssays.html#barthes (accessed on 21/10/09)

Busse, Kristina & Karen Hellekson (eds): Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, McFarland, 2001

CGB, Christine: “Coming out as a fanfiction writer”, 2002, diaryland, at http://zendom.diaryland.com/020404_18.html (accessed 4/11/09)

Foucault, Michel: “What is an author”, 1969, The Essential Foucault, at http://www.scribd.com/doc/10268982/Foucault-What-is-an-Author (accessed 21/10/09)

Harmon, Amy: “In TV’s Dull Summer Days, Plot Takes Wing on the Net”, 1997, New York Times, at http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/18/business/in-tv-s-dull-summer-days-plots-take-wing-on-the-net.html?scp=363&sq=henry+jenkins&st=nyt (accessed 21/11/09)

Jenkins, Henry: Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (Studies in Culture and Communication), Routledge, 1992

Jones, Bethan: “Fan fiction and the creative process”, 2009, LiveJournal, at http://community.livejournal.com/xfiles/2399055.html (accessed 4/11/09)

Larsen, Kris: “In Defence of Slash”, 2005, manfromuncle, at http://www.manfromuncle.org/krisl.htm (accessed 21/10/09)

Maccarillo, Lisa: “A conversation with
The X-Files' creator Chris Carter”, 1994, Mike Quigley’s Homepage, at  http://www.mjq.net/xfiles/sfechris.htm (accessed 21/11/09)

Melusina: “Sometimes Mondays are for meta - Writing against the tide of fannish assumptions”, 2009, Dreamwidth, at http://melusina.dreamwidth.org/756741.html?format=light  (accessed 21/10/09)

Mezzanine, The: “Why Challenge Communities Rock”, 2009, LiveJournal, at http://deird1.livejournal.com/173222.html?format=light (accessed 21/10/09)

Nahurriyeh, Amal: “Machines of Freedom: Author's Notes”, 2009, LiveJournal, at http://amalnahurriyeh.livejournal.com/38251.html

Parrish, Juli: “Inventing a universe: Reading and writing Internet fan fiction,” 2007 Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, at http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd–08072007–170133/unrestricted/Parrish2007.pdf (accessed 4 November 2009)

Pugh, Sheenagh: The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context, Seren, 2005

Urban, Madeleine: “About fan fic, trolls, original stories, and finding your way home”, 2009, LiveJournal, at http://madeleineurban.livejournal.com/50414.html?format=light (accessed 21/10/09)

Wills, Emily: “The Political Possibilities of Fandom: Transformational Discourses on Gender and Power in The X-Files Fandom”, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association 67th Annual National Conference, April 2002, 2009, All Academic Research, at http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/6/2/9/2/pages362928/p362928-1.php (accessed 21/11/09)