gretchening

My Little Pony and Vidding Cultures/Audiences

This My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fanvid got linked all over my Twitter feed, and I love it enough that I had to go and watch the first few episodes of the show. I was pleasantly surprised, both by the vid and the show! I think from a perspective of gender representation (and the diversity of same! not everything is pink bows--but pink bows aren't denigrated, either. It is really wonderful) the show is unusually top notch, and it's popular enough to make it noteworthy in terms of this class. I also think it's important in terms of the website project I'm beginning to think about--to keep in mind that there are entire cultures built around pretty sophisticated creative fan responses to texts, and that our little blog sites are not going to succeed if we pretend they exist in a safe contained vacuum.

I don't follow YouTube vidding culture as much as I follow blog-based fanvids (though many of the vidders I follow also crosspost their work to YouTube, the culture of commentary and critique and recommendation I am primarily involved with happens on blogging platforms like livejournal.com), and most of the vidders whose work I do follow vid live-action sources, usually television shows that already have a significant fan following. I have been a co-curator of the Vid Party at WisCon, which has meant I've been involved in some interesting discussions around live media vidding cultures and anime music video (AMV) cultures. For a brief overview, see the Fanlore article on AMVs. Without getting into the very different cultures of interaction and commentary and platform and just looking at the fan products themselves, in general (but with many exceptions!) live action media fanvids tend to focus on emotions, relationships, the personal arcs of characters, and/or creating new narratives from canon sources, while AMVs tend to focus more on technical mastery of effects, layers, and original animation to create a sensory experience that is often more abstract than narrative. Creators of media fanvids tend to skew overwhelmingly female, AMV creators tend toward male.

For reference to live action vids, and also because I think it's an interesting blend of skills drawn directly or indirectly from both communities, here is a Harry Potter fanvid we showed at the event I helped organize in May which includes source from the first 7 films and reflects a lot of the emotional connection and fannish nostalgia about the impending final film, as well as a certain amount of technical skill in the use of layers and effects, which are becoming more widely accessible as the software programs become more sophisticated and the culture of remix video creators gets larger and more complex in terms of skill, creativity and experimentation, and mentorship:

Which brings me back to the My Little Pony fanvid! This show, ostensibly for young children, has been remarkably popular among adults, including a significant male contingent known as 'bronies' (which is very unusual, especially considering the target demographic for this show is little girls). Not unsurprisingly, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (MLP:FIM) is a very popular fandom for fanvidding, and even has its own acronym (PMVs--Pony Music Videos). What I find interesting is that these PMV vidders seem to take conventions from media fanvidding and amvs, but don't necessarily come from either background conceptually. For instance, the "Fabulous Bringjoys" vidder paid attention to synching characters' mouth movements with lyrics, a concern highly valued/critiqued in AMV circles but almost completely ignored in live action vidding communities. However, the focus on character work and the detailed interplay between the footage and the lyrics harks more toward live action vidding values. The animation is mostly unedited apart from clipping, as well--the lack of effects and the focus on more literal vs. abstract narratives make me read this as more a live action vid than an AMV.

This great thing about this vid in particular is that it sets up what should be an incongruity--the song is a rock song by an all-male American band (My Chemical Romance), and the official music video and album describe a gritty, violent sci-fi post-apocalyptic world reminiscent of Mad Max or Blade Runner. To set pretty sparkly ponies to this song should be a straight up parody, but it actually seems to function on a more interesting level, pulling out a narrative from the video source of strong, empowered, courageous and personally diverse pony characters standing up against enemies and fighting and sacrificing for causes they believe in (a narrative thread which is borne out by the canon source). In that sense, the song upends the viewer because it actually works on a straightforward level--showcasing the ways in which the pony characters are powerful and committed as opposed to the gendered stereotypes we might assume about their stories based on the color palette and obvious intended audience for the show. Narratively, it's NOT a stereotypical 'girl' show and cannot thus be 'dismissed' (though I feel the need to insert a comment here about why we feel the NEED to dismiss 'girl things', or that we as a culture automatically expect girls to be interested in pink non-threatening characters and situations)--sexism is alive and well, and this vid does a pretty good job of highlighting that in a peculiarly performative and fun way.

The whole My Little Pony phenomenon is kind of heartening from a feminist perspective--after watching the first few episodes I clicked around YouTube and found several filmed class presentations of bronies giving talks about the show, and seeing teenaged/early 20-year-old guys talk earnestly about the positive aspects of a cast of almost entirely female characters is really heartening.

The question of audience, though, is really tricky for me, especially in context of LIS629 and focusing on the needs of children in a way I don't habitually do. Obviously the online fannish presence for this show is overwhelmingly adult, and possibly majority male. What, then, about the INTENDED audience--little girls? Kids who want to explore transmedia possibilities are more likely than not to find related content that's not appropriate for or intended for them, simply because adult males already have significant presence in most internet spaces, and their access to technology and skill to use it effectively mean that adult creations like this fanvid are more likely to get widespread interest than something created by a ten-year-old and posted to youtube about their favorite show. A cursory googling reveals a great deal of marketing aimed at children, with the only significant web space intended specifically for kids being the Hasbro website, which is great for some kinds of experience but for more active/creative things, you are not likely to find a platform supportive of remix video content or other user generated content like fanfiction or fanart.

Moreover, since so much remix video work (or, to extend the question, fan-fiction and fanart) is self-taught or mentored between amateurs in order to gain the technical skills necessary, as well as entry into one of many cultures surrounding this form of creative expression and commentary, and that kind of thing is less likely to happen on company-sponsored sites. I think it's important for kids to have spaces to meet one another and help each other gain skills, not only technical skills but also collaborative and critical, active engagement skills, that will serve them well as media consumers. In a fandom like MLP:FIM, where is the appropriate space for children to create that community?