Category Archives: Image [&] Narrative

In this second Image [&] Narrative installment about the comics scene in Flanders, we touch on the issue of the Forgotten Sphere and appeal to media scholar Henry Jenkins in order to show how the notions of power and participation can shed light on the three-pronged structure we have hypothesised to underly the contemporary Flemish comics culture. This post engages with the first of the three spheres we have identified in post I.

Modes of Fan Practice: In which Participatory Culture Does not Seem to Agree with the Flemish Comics Culture (Part II)

In the previous blog post in this series I introduced the Strip Turnhout Festival and the F.A.C.T.S. convention and determined that the cultural praxes they each exhibited gave rise to the hypothesis that among the contemporary adult comics audience in Flanders three simultaneously existing spheres or orientations could be distinguished. The first sphere we identified was tentatively dubbed the “USA-oriented space”, the second sphere was called the “Franco-Belgian sphere” and the third sphere – the existence of which was mainly deduced by its resounding absence at the festival and the convention (in combination with its presence on other levels of Flemish (comics) culture) – was considered the “(European) graphic novel sphere”. No doubt the names I attached to each sphere at the time were only crude interim solutions in anticipation of the continuation of our investigation, but in their splendid imperfection they garnered comments which were very helpful for the further exploration of the spheres which we will undertake in this post. In this post, as a way of further understanding the spheres, I propose to have a look at their modes of cultural praxis.

One of the comments I received in particular stuck with me and proved a catalyst for further insight: the idea that in my three-fold division I had missed a fourth sphere which would then be “Japan-oriented”. While much is to be said for such a further delineation (there certainly is a group of comics readers in Flanders which is exclusively engaged with manga and/or anime and cares little for either superheroes, graphic novels or Flemish comics), in terms of cultural praxis (fan praxis) and overarching structure, it seems to me to be warranted to conceive of manga and superhero lovers as constituting one group. That is, I maintain that manga cultural praxis and comic book cultural praxis in Flanders 1) have a sufficient number of characteristics in common with one another to form a group and 2) differ from the other two groups sufficiently and on similar enough grounds to be distinguished from them as a group (this puts the nature of all groups relative to the others in a key position of course). The F.A.C.T.S. convention – which physically puts manga fans and superhero fanboys/girls in the same space – is of course an interesting point of departure here, but the (only) dedicated Flemish anime convention Atsusacon [1], indicates that gatherings focusing on manga or anime material share a number of structural traits with the experience of superhero comics fans in Flanders, the most obvious of which is of course the convention concept itself (as opposed to the festival concept for example). As the reader may recall, we have characterised the convention concept as revolving around the social fan experience more so than around the material which facilitates that experience. Thus, it should not surprise us that a change in facilitator material need not imply a change in cultural praxis or mode. Of course I do not mean to join the manga fandom and the American comics culture enthusiasts at any price. If both groups form a natural alliance in significant ways, they differ in others. The previously mentioned anime convention for example extends the material with which it engages beyond comics (Strip Turnhout) or popular culture (F.A.C.T.S.) to Japanese culture in general. In their interest in introducing the general public to said culture and in positioning themselves as “organizing an event that that [is] different than [sic] all the other events organized thus far in Belgium, especially those that are commercial in nature” (Atsusacon website) the Atsusacon initiative associates itself with the democratic principles and family-oriented nature of the state-subsidised Strip Turnhout initiative. Entry to this democratic realm is still dependent on our ability to purchase a ticket, however. In this case, practice does not make perfect (or at least practice is not congruent with the initiative’s apparent ambitions).

Let us now turn to the idea of the convention as a way to grasp the different modes of cultural praxis. Conventions seem geared towards fan participation and if we are looking to speak about the notion of participation in contemporary culture, we must of course consult with Henry Jenkins. In his report Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (2009) Jenkins and his co-authors describe participatory culture as follows:

A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created). (Jenkins et al. 3)

According to Jenkins and his colleagues, the praxes, behaviours, and competences associated with this culture are “play, simulation, performance, appropriation, multi-tasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation, networking and negotiation” [2] (Jenkins et al. 4). While Jenkins primarily seems to connect these elements with the possibilities of the personal computer and the web 2.0 revolution in the report (he seems to focus on video games in particular), his book on convergence culture, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006), stresses the fact that contemporary participatory culture should be conceived of as distributed across a multitude of platforms and media (including the convention hall we can presume – indeed, Jenkins stresses time and again how neither convergence nor participation are bound to a specific kind of technology). Key to Jenkins’ assessments seems to be the difference between the consumer and the prosumer (or participant), a difference which contrasts the power and agency, or “bottom-up energy” (Jenkins et al. 9) associated with participation with the lack of these elements in consumers. It seems interesting to me to use this idea of power in connection with the practices Jenkins has identified in order to come to a better grasp of the spheres.

Out of the three proposed audience spheres, it is the USA-oriented one that seems most closely aligned with the participatory tenets (Jenkins’ theory is focused on the US so this should not come as a surprise, similarly, the relative youth of the members of this sphere is conducive to associating the group with participatory culture). But such an impression seems largely to be a mistake based on certain elements which are important for (or which are prerequisites for) a participatory culture, but function quite differently in Flemish comics culture. The social aspect of the USA-oriented sphere is arguably the most salient example of such a prerequisite. From the list of participatory practices, however, only two elements stand out that are also applicable to our sphere: performance and transmedia navigation [3]. Collective intelligence, in the form of fora, might be a third element, but this is a practice that is shared with the Franco-Belgian realm, although it is less pronounced in that sphere. What stands out in this sphere – and the situation at F.A.C.T.S. echoes this observation – is that while interaction is not ruled out and indeed is inscribed into the structure of the sphere), it always comes at a price that disempowers the members of the group and keeps the true participant or even creator role out of their grasp. Probably the most striking example of this phenomenon at F.A.C.T.S. is constituted by the lines of costumed convention goers who spend great amounts of time and (usually also) money in order to obtain a signature and a vague acknowledgement of their existence from their idol-creators. Such a situation stands in stark contrast with the phenomena described by Jenkins in Convergence Culture such as the practice of “spoiling”, whereby bodies of participants work together via social media to unravel the products they are supposed to consume, thereby influencing the decisions made by officially sanctioned creators (Jenkins 25-58). From this point of view, it makes sense that the participatory practices exhibited by this group of comics enthusiasts are those less geared towards the generating of extra benefit for the consumer in the form of knowledge and understanding (and as we all know, knowledge opens a path to other prized goods). Comics and especially fandom itself are the alpha and the omega of this group, their processes yield little cognitive benefit, they are not “prosumed”. Thus, the members of this sphere can be said to form a performative, social, fan culture, but not a true participatory culture as the culture lacks involvement with consumer agency.

In the third part of this series I will elaborate on the second and third sphere (the “Franco-Belgian” sphere and the “graphic novel” sphere). If sphere one is a gathering of “social fans” we will show sphere two to be a group of “material fans” and sphere three not to be a sphere of “fans” at all.

References

“Info Atsusacon and how it started”. Atsusacon. Ganbaro vzw. n.d. web. 3 Apr. 2012.

Jenkins, Henry et al. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 2009.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006.

Charlotte Pylyser is a PhD student at the Catholic University of Leuven. She operates from a literary studies and cultural studies background and her research concerns the Flemish graphic novel in particular and issues of culture and context with regard to comics in general.

She sits on the editorial board of Image [&] Narrative.

[1] – Next to Atsusacon – which is only to be organised for the second time in July 2012 – two older anime conventions exist in Belgium (they take place in Brussels on an annual basis): Japan Expo Belgium and Made in Asia. While these conventions also target Dutch-speaking manga and anime fans, they are primarily Francophone initiatives (note that they are also geared towards the general Japanese cultural realm).

[2] –

Play — the capacity to experiment with your surroundings as a form of problem-solving;

Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery;

Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes;

Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content;

Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.

Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities;

Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal;

Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources

Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities

Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information

Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

(Jenkins et al. 4)

[3] – It is hard to get an exact read on how wide-spread the appropriation phenomenon (with fanfiction as its most prevalent representative) is in Flanders. While there are no doubt writers of fanfiction amongst the members of this sphere (they may or may not write their stories in Dutch), the phenomenon seems too marginal for it to be awarded the status of “cultuural praxis” in the sense of “shared cultural custom”. In itself this might point towards a failure with regard to the networking practice (using networks to disseminate a work amongst others).

In the course of the four installments I will be writing for this blog, I will attempt to briefly investigate some phenomena that have struck me during my (ongoing) investigation of the graphic novel scene in Flanders. In doing so, I do not intend simply to provide a descriptive overview of the scene. Instead I aim to capitalise on the particular nature and function of the Flemish production in terms of how it allows us to address certain existing questions in the domains of comics studies, literary studies and cultural studies, how it allows us to reformulate those questions and how it generates new questions in those domains.

Today:

The Strip Turnhout Festival vs. the F.A.C.T.S. Convention, In which the Graphic Novel [1] Shines by Virtue of Its Absence (Part I)

A couple of months ago, attempting to gain additional insight into my research object, I found myself attending the largest Flemish comics festival currently in existence: Strip Turnhout. Lest the Franco-Belgian connection fools the reader into associating this festival with the iconic Angoulême festival in France, I must emphasise that this festival is of rather more modest dimensions [2]. Strip Turnhout is a bi-annual festival. Founded in 1977 it runs over the course of two days (and one evening). The 2011 Strip Turnhout edition included expositions ranging from very mainstream material to the more experimental works of a Karrie Fransman or Douglas Noble (in 2011 the UK was featured as the guest country of honour). One might also browse the bins at the comics flea market (most comparable to the space called the “dealer’s room” by Matthew J. Pustz in his monograph on American Comic Book Culture (1999)) as well as partake of the now-standard cartooning performances to music. At the heart of the festival lies the comics fair, however, the space in which both more established publishers and independent newcomers display their wares and comics artists sign (or mark) their work. In Pustzian terms, this is a place where the artist’s alley and the publisher’s area come together, although it must be noted that the festival is not as rigorously structured as an American comics convention seems to be (one publisher had migrated into the exposition area for example). The comics which can be found at this festival – both in the dealer’s room and in the publisher’s area/artists’ alley – tend to be European comics. American comic books are nigh invisible and while some (expo) space is devoted to alternative comics, these are not the comics the fans or collectors seem to be interested in. Indeed, there are two audience sections at Strip Turnhout that truly stand out and whose attitude towards the festival is quite visibly different. One of these is overwhelmingly male and relatively advanced in age (this is the fan and collector audience), the other tends to be very young (these are the children who bring their mothers and fathers). The participation style of the former may be described as focussed, that of the latter as casual. One cannot help but notice the perpetuation of certain comics stereotypes in this distribution. The collectors gather in the dealer’s room, the flea market packed with older Flemish comics, or the comics fair where they have traditional or fantasy comics artists sign their comics [3]. The children tend towards mainstream expositions and events focusing specifically on mainstream children’s comics. As a result, while the biggest names in Flemish alternative comics do get to sign some copies of their work, in terms of audience (more so than in terms of the space they are awarded), the (Flemish/European) graphic novels seem to fall between the cracks at the festival.

The particularities of the Strip Turnhout festival struck me as all the more interesting because of the contrast they provided with a convention I had attended the year before in Ghent (we are of course still in Flanders here). This convention – called F.A.C.T.S. after its focus on fantasy, anime, comics, toys and space – also engages with comics, but it does so in a different way. Organised annually since 1993, this is a convention which seems to function much along the lines of the American convention. Originally very much a small-scale fan initiative, it has surpassed Strip Turnhout in terms of visitor turnover [4]. While some aspects of the convention are similar to what Strip Turnhout offers (the dealer’s room remains a fixture at both events, although what is dealt and how is quite distinct), others are decidedly unique to the F.A.C.T.S. initiative: movie guest stars, screenings of anime and sci-fi movies etc. Whereas these activities echo F.A.C.T.S.’ multifocal approach (an approach that arguably emerges from the nature of the cultural objects featured) one of the most visible characteristics of the convention can be connected to comics culture per se: costuming. In reference both to the American superhero tradition and (especially) the Japanese cosplay phenomenon, role-playing and dress-up are one of the most striking components of the F.A.C.T.S. convention. This dimension, along with the American and Japanese comic book culture, is completely absent from the Strip Turnhout festival. Additionally, Strip Turnhout is also far less commodified in comparison with the F.A.C.T.S. initiative, which is described by the organisers as a “buyers’ paradise” (F.A.C.T.S. website). While one may be put off by the merchandising tsunami that is F.A.C.T.S., something can be said for the strong economical or consumerist orientation that accompanies the convention in that it arguably forms an impetus to keep the convention more of an open system in terms of audience gathering [5]. In both respects, our general impression might be that the Strip Turnhout Festival exercises more (old world) restraint than does F.A.C.T.S., which – after the concept of a convention – seems to focus more on the (social) fan experience and less on that which facilitates the experience (the comics themselves). In contrast to the festival, the convention caters to an audience which seems to consists largely of adolescents or “younger adults” (15-35 age range), both male and female. Doubtless the inclusion of anime in the event facilitates the introduction of youngsters and women to the convention. Indeed, while the costume aspect makes it so that far more skin is shown at F.A.C.T.S. than is the case at Strip Turnhout, the increased presence of female fans in the fannish realm itself arguably makes the convention a less sexistically structured space. Additionally, the element of play and performance inherent in the costumes may also be said to neutralise the sexualisation of what they reveal in a way. Most striking, however, at F.A.C.T.S. has proven the nigh complete rupture the convention signifies with regard to the home production. The audience is quite Flemish (although the convention does have international appeal), but there are very few Flemish comics, graphic novels or artists in sight. Interviews with convention-goers point towards the fact that 1) while they may know some Flemish comic books, the ones that appeal to them are made either in the fantasy or the American comic book tradition and 2) they are not very familiar with the Flemish graphic novel. The latter point is in fact an understatement, these are comics fans who often had not even heard of the most well-known Flemish graphic novelists. At this point I found myself almost in a parallel universe (compared to my own research focus), a universe clearly made up not necessarily by comics readers, but by fans and American comic book culture enthusiasts.

As Pustz indicates in his book, conventions or festivals are an integral aspect of comics culture, of the experience of the form. Their dynamic (self-) positioning can therefore function as a site of revelation when it comes to changes (or changed constellations) in the culture. In this case I have introduced the festival and the convention as they seem to point towards a sort of moulting of the comic book culture in Flanders which – at the very least in terms of cultural praxis and audience – appears to have resulted in the emergence of three simultaneously existing spheres amongst the adult audience: a USA-oriented sphere, a more nostalgic Franco-Belgian-oriented sphere and a (European) graphic novel sphere. While at least two out of these three spheres are deduced from tangible events, I believe they are mobile concepts, if one allows for a case-by-case adjustment of the relationships between the spheres (and arguably provided that they are used within a context that touches upon culture and audience more than text). If cultural praxis is the element that allows me to speak of these spheres then we must flesh out the hallmarks of the practices and audiences associated with each sphere. Part II of my posts on the Flemish graphic novel will tend to this very question (among other things I will spend some time on the issue of convergence culture which we should not be too quick to apply to any of the spheres (in particular the USA-oriented one)).

References

“English, Strip Turnhout.” Strip Turnhout. Strip Turnhout vzw. n.d. web. 13 Feb. 2012.

“F.A.C.T.S. 2011 – 21st edition – Facts.” F.AC.T.S. – comics, sci-fi and anime festival. BVBA Con-Fuse. n.d. web. 13 Feb. 2012.

Pasamonik, Didier. “Angoulême 2012 : Les organisateurs annoncent une fréquentation en hausse et préparent le 40e Festival – Actua BD : l’actualité de la bande dessinée.” ActuaBD. ActuaBD. 30 Jan. 2012. web. 13 Feb. 2012.

Pustz, J. Matthew. Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi: 1999.

Charlotte Pylyser is a PhD student at the Catholic University of Leuven. She operates from a literary studies and cultural studies background and her research concerns the Flemish graphic novel in particular and issues of culture and context with regard to comics in general.

She sits on the editorial board of Image [&] Narrative.

[1] – Let me simply state that “graphic novel” should be considered in the Flemish (European) context in this text. For the sake of brevity, I am talking about this phenomenon: http://brechtnieuws.blogspot.com/, not so much about this one: http://www.dccomics.com/vertigo/.

[2] – While it is difficult to determine exactly how many people attend the festival (as it is free and there is no alternative control system), its website suggests that we ought to situate the visitor turnover capacity in the realm of 15000 people (Strip Turnhout Website). Simply as a means of comparison, Angoulême was reported to have welcomed something closer to 215000 visitors this year (ActuaBD Website). This number, too, is tentative at best, but it suffices for a sketch of proportions I believe.

[3] – Some examples: http://www.stevendupre.be/, http://kristofspaey.wordpress.com/.

[4] – As F.A.C.T.S. charges an entrance fee, more reliable visitor numbers can be provided. The event now welcomes around 20000 fans (F.A.C.T.S. Website).

[5] – Strip Turnhout is a state subsidised initiative, I plan to investigate the role of the (fundamentally important) subsidising policy in Flanders in another blog post.