Making My Own Happy Ending: Music and Emotion in Doctor Who

8/3/2019 Making My Own Happy Ending: Music and Emotion in Doctor Who

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Katharina Freund

University of WollongongAustralia


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What are vids?y Fan-made music videos

yAppropriate pre-existing film and television texts and

edit them to musicyVids often convey meanings not intended in the source

material


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Who are the vidders?y Online community on Livejournal.com (LJ)

y Over 90% female

y Over 82% aged 18-35y Most probably white, English-speaking, and from the

United States, United Kingdom, or anotherWestern/European country


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Struggle Over Meaningy Media-savvy female audience consuming media

products created mostly by meny How the text does or does not provide pleasure or

conform to desires of the vidder

y Ongoing struggle for discursive dominance (Johnson2007)

y Fans adapt the text to suit their unique interpretations

and interestsy Open source text (Hellekson & Busse 2006)

y Taken up and reworked in postmodern, multivocal, andintertextual fashion (Stasi 2006)


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Fialka,

American vidder, living in UK.


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- Buffyann, French vidder.


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Gwyn, American vidder.


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What do vidders want?y Complex, well-developed characters

y More character-driven drama

y Exploration of relationships between characters(romance, friendship, tragedy)

y Fleshing out characters that were ignored / not centralto the core storyline

y Most popular vid types:y Character studies

y Relationship (shipper) vids


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DoctorWho?y New series: 2005 present

y Rebooted by Russell T. Davies (writer, executiveproducer)

y The Doctor travels through time and space with a

human companion using his TARDIS

y The Doctor is a Time Lord last in existence,extremely long life (regeneration)


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10th Doctorwith Martha

(FreemaAgyeman)and Donna

(Catherine Tate)

9th Doctor(Chris

Eccelston)and Rose

(Billie Piper)

10th Doctor(David

Tennant)

with Rose


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The Audiencey Childrens/family show

in UK

yHills (2006): cross-generational appeal

y Trend in BBC promos:action, monsters, aliens,

running, gadgets, yelling,desperate to survive,foes, mad science, etc.


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A Damaged Doctory Angst vid

y Character studies of

Doctor exploring dark,painful elements verycommon

y Emphasis on emotion:

y Close-up framingy Black & white

y Slow motion & overlays


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Manipulating Genre Conventionsy Genre:

y A cultural category

y Helps to understand context and meaning of eventsy Genres and emotion

y Many series straddle different genres

y Doctor Who as sci-fi adventure series

y Romantic, dramatic, comedic elements

yVidders shift and manipulate genre conventions,drawing on media literacies


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Shoshanna, American vid fan.


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Fandom is in the details.y Scholars tend to focus on textual wholes or themes

y Fans focus on particular moments:y

Revelations of back storyy Nods to old series

y Highly emotional moments with overtly markedperformance

y Fans love to pick out and dwell on textual moments,perhaps more intently and routinely than casualaudiences, and certainly just as much as reviewers, clipshows, and award ceremonies like to nominate them.y Hills, 2008


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The Impossible Relationshipy Focus on intense

emotional relationship

between Doctor andCompanion

y Slow ballad for song,lyrics support vid story

y

Designed to evokeparticular mood inaudience


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Emotional andCriticaly Standing too close, reading too much into it, experiencing

the melodrama too closely

y But able to be engaged and distant viewers simultaneously:y Not only do the viewers critique the programmes themselves

(the directors work, the plot, the camera angles) but they canalso see through to the political agendas embedded in thestorys narrative. And yet, at the same time, they findthemselves emotionally drawn into the story and its

characters, and experience a sense of connectedness to theworld.y Mankekar 1999 (quoted inGorton 2009: 68)

y Vids can be critical of or at odds with source material


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Jo, Welsh vidder.


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Dont Lose Yourself!y Characters exit from

show strongly disliked

y

Demonstrate fannishlove and support forcharacter of Donna

yVid seeks to re-claim

charactery Lyrics as voice of fans


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Paradigms and GenderyVids organized paradigmatically

y Relationship of paradigms to gender

y Gendered reading and interpretation

y Jenkins (1992), Turkle (1995), Flynn (1986), Bury (2005)

y Must be careful to avoid essentialism

y A guide, rather than a framework


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Music and Emotion in Love!y Shipper vid

y Explicitly addressing

implicit theme in texty Music directs

interpretation andemotional response

y Connects string ofimages together

y Gorbman (1987), Brown(1994), & DeNora (2000)


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In ConclusionyVids explore or highlight emotional elements of a

televisual text

y

Advanced manipulation of genre conventionsy Correcting or re-claiming elements of the text

overlooked in the original

y Drawing out a feminine reading

y Music functions as suture, connecting scenes anddrawing out desired emotions


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Are there any questions?


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Referencesy

Baym,Nancy K. Tune in, LogOn: Soaps, Fandom, andOnlineCommunity.New MediaCultures. Ed. Steve Jones.ThousandOaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000.

y Brown, Royal S.Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1994.

y Bury, Rhiannon.Cyberspaces of TheirOwn: Female FandomsOnline. Digital Formations. Ed. Steve Jones. New York:Peter Lang Publishing, 2005.

y DeNora, Tia. Music in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

y Flynn, Elizabeth A., and Patrocinio P. Schweickart, eds.Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, andContexts.Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.

y Gorbman,

Claudia. Unheard Melodies:

Narrative Film Music. Bloomington, I

N: Indiana University Press, 1987.

y Gorton, Kristyn. Media Audiences: Television, Meaning and Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009.

y Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse, eds. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities on the Internet:New Essays. Jefferson,NC: McFarland & Company, 2006.

y Hills, Matt. "The Dispersible Television Text: Theorising Moments of theNew Doctor Who." Science Fiction FilmandTelevision 1.1 (2008): 25-44.

y Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and ParticipatoryCulture. New York: Routledge, 1992.

y Johnson, Derek. "Fan-Tagonism: Factions, Institutions, andConstitutive Hegemonies of Fandom." Fandom: IdentitiesandCommunities in a Mediated World. Eds. JonathanGray, Cornel SandvossandC. Lee Harrington.New York: NewYork University Press, 2007.

y Mittell, Jason.Genre and Television: FromCop Shows to Cartoons in AmericanCulture. London andNew York:Routledge, 2004.

y Plantinga,Carl, and Greg M. Smith, eds. Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion. Baltimore & London: JohnsHopkins University Press, 1999.

y Stasi, Mafalda. "The Toy Solider from Leeds: The Slash Palimpest." Fan Fiction and FanCommunities on the Internet:New Essays. Eds. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse. Jefferson,NC: McFarland and Company, 2006.

y Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet.New York: Touchstone, 1995.

Making My Own Happy Ending: Music and Emotion in Doctor Who

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