Introduction
The article “Get a life” by Jenkins talks about two major issues that artist go through in their lives with their fans who see them through their live performances and also through reading. The fans who watch the plays performed by the artists do at times get addicted to the fantasy created through the plays. The addiction at times gets to a new level where the fans feel that they deserve to get emotionally attached to the artists as opposed to just remaining as passive fanatics (Lawrence and Jewett, 1977, p. 5-6). Apart from that, there are those fans who may just be interested in the plays without necessarily knowing the main characters. For instance, most ladies may like a program on the basis that their friends like watching the same programs and they claim that the programs are interesting. If asked any question about the characters that feature in those plays, such a fan may as well fail to identify even one of the characters.
Then there are those fans who at some point claim to be real fanatics to the extent of making close follow-ups on the personal lives of the artists. Such moves gets to a point where the fans get to know ‘’more” about the lives of the performing artists more than what the artists know. Some of the knowledge processed by such fans may be retrieved from unverified internet sources that are only interested in generating traffic. Chances also exist that the fans may get the details from word of mouth which is mostly treated as rumors. What the fans fail to know is that the artists they see on stage are not the same people they are most likely to meet in the streets. The personalities of those two people are in most cases different from one another. For instance, a lady may play the role of a prostitute in a given program but then such a person may not necessarily subscribe to the beliefs and behavior of such a cohort group. However, the fans may never be able to distinguish the two so that when they meet the artists on thestreets they still see them as prostitutes.
Being too nosy on the lives of the artists can at times make them (artists) angry and may be result in frustrations. The fans can at times become too concerned with the lives of the artists to an extent of making it their personal business. It gets to appoint that the artist feel confined within a certain societal cocoon that stops them from enjoying their lives since they are ever under constant scrutiny. When for instance, an artist is invited for a live televisions interview, thefans are asked to participate in the interview session through hash tags on the social media. In most scenarios, the fans decide to ask personal questions about the private lives of the artists instead of focusing their attention on the artist as a member of the entertainment industry.
Cultural hierarchies have been like an entertainment song to the fans who currently no longer know anything about such things. Most of the artists were accorded much respect in the past especially due to the fat that they shaped opinions and behavior pattern if the societies. However, all that has changed with the current generation of fanatics that views the artists as any other member of the artists. The situation eve gets worse with the female fans who even feel that they have the right to get into intimate relations with the artist they watch on stage or those that they watch on televisions. The author describes the fans as being desexualized through what he terms as getting intimate engagement with the mass culture. One of the fans asked captain Kirk whether he had kissed a girl before instead of asking questions that related to the progress or challenges faced by the artists in the industry. Similarly, the fans are described as people as people who are unable to distinguish between reality and fiction (Bordieu, 1979, p. 20-22). What they see on their screens is what they take to be the gospel truth especially with regards to the lives of the artists. Some were even heard asking whether they should concentrate on the movies, meaning that their attentions are focused on the wrong end target.
Textual poaching
Textual poaching occurs when readers of a certain book tend to make full concentration on whatever they are reading to an extent of travelling to all the places the authors mention in their work. The readers take their time to follow every step of the authors writing thereby making them poachers of the authors work. The readers tend to poses the authors work by building imaginary structures in their lives through the creative use of words by the authors of the books. Through the education system, scholars are taught how to make interpretation of texts they read from books, journals and even magazines. The personal choices in which such interpretations are made differ from one person to another. Teachers try their best to teach children how to interpret messages written in books and journals without interfering with the original intended meaning of the author. However, interpretations depend on personal abilities of individuals and how they digest the information they read from the texts. At the end of the day, most of the scholars end up making interpretations that fit bets within their personal understanding of what they have read. The original intended message of the author might be lost when everyone interprets the information in their own way thereby coming up with different versions of the same storyline.
Women and romance
According to Janice Radway (1983, p. 53), there exists a strong relation between women and their addiction to reading romantic novels. The author asserts that women do not become romantic by fault but by the chosen way of lifestyle especially through reading of romantic novels. In the year 1979 alone, Harlequin enterprises managed to sell one hundred and sixty eight million romance novels. A big majority of the end consumers were women, which therefore proves that women are naturally attracted to romantic affairs. For romance to exist in a woman’s world there must be a man that s involved. Proof is there to show that women, especially those that succeed in their life endeavors do enjoy romantic lifestyles with their male counterparts. Therefore men also play vital role in the general success of female. Women cannot have pleasure without theexistence of men within the same circle. They both must co-exist and partner to create the romance between them so as to make life enjoyable.
Women who read romance novels make their interpretations of what they read based on their affiliations to the mentioned groups in the books. If for instance a woman is not related to the group that the author tries to talk about, then such a woman may come up with a different interpretation that may differ with that of the author. On the flip side, if such a reader is affiliated to the mentioned women group, then such a reader might just want to make a positive interpretation of the readers’ ideas. Authors have a responsibility of monitoring the sales pattern of their books so that they are able to know the choice of the kind of books that the women love to read. The types of romantic books that the consumers choose are in most cases a true reflection of their real lives. Romance in women may therefore not die anytime soon so long as men still are in existence. Additionally, women spend a lot of their time reading romance novels making them romantic people by nature. The culture may not go away very soon since the readers pass the same skills to their offspring who also grow up having the same passions as their mothers. For the fans to fall in love with the artists they see in the theatres and televisions may not be their own liking but a factor orchestrated by their love for romantic books.
Re-reading is important to fandom because it takes place every day irrespective of the seasons and the time of the year. Moreover, through reading, one does not keep what they acquire from such reading; rather they use it in their creative ways to make progress in life. Re-reading also makes the interpretation of the author’s knowledge to make more sense than what was experienced during the first attempt. Fan criticize what the authors write as a way of trying to make the authors become better in what they do in shaping the societies mind frame.
Conclusively it is evident that the whole idea of poaching and symbolic creativity is so broad. With the changing society people are curious to make more discoveries and inventions in their areas of interest. This urge of knowing more is what leads to poaching. In this era of internet finding comprehensive information on any subject or object has been made very easy. This is another reason why poaching in regards to symbolic creativity is increasing by the day. Either way it is of importance to note that poaching is what leads to perfection. With artistes aware of the extreme extents that their fans go to with regards to their lives and works, they can only perfect it. They also try hard to live according to the expectations of their fans. With regards to books, the same has led to numerous new ideas being created so as to fulfill the desires of the readers as well as those of the authors. It was once said that great artistes never finished they just abandoned. That’s an explanation enough to the whole topic of symbolic creativity and poaching.
References
Baym, Nancy K. 2000 Tune In, Log on: Soaps, Fandom and Online Community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Janice A Radway. Women Read the Romance: The interaction of Text and Context. Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 53-78, 1983, Print
Jenkins, Henry. 1988. “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writings As Textual Poaching.” Critical Studies In Mass Communication 5:85-107
Jewett R, John Shelton Lawrence. The American Monomyth. New York: 1977, Doubleday.
Pierre Bourdieu. The Field of Cultural production: Essays on art and Literature. Cambridge 1979, Polity Press.
