English 680V: Visual Rhetoric in a Technological Age (Purdue)

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Keyword: Vidding
Definition: The act of making a fanvideo using clips of a favorite visual text and a favorite song.

1. Past uses of Vidding:
As per my PCA presentation, "vidding" is a new term for an old concept. Fanvideos began with the Kirk/Spock "slash" videos made by aiming a camera at a TV screen as an old VHS played the correct clip for the correct line of song. Vidding was used, according to Camille Bacon-Smith, as a way of soildifying a small community of women who wanted to see on screen an equal, mutal, loving relationship--a kind of equality they couldn't see in Real Life. These videos took hours to make and were a real labor of love (of the show). Today, vidding is used as propaganda for shippers (those promoting a romantic relationship) and as advertising for fanfics.

2. Personal Vidding Experience
My cousin Taylor began sending me vids in the fall of 2004, but I never really paid attention to them till she sent me a truly disturbing Harry/Snape video. When she informed me that these were quite common, and probably their own genre, I finally began to analyze them as separate from fanfic--as doing something different from simply exploring other possible narratives. It's the perversity that draws me and the quality of the vids that makes the topic worth study.

3. Social Consequences
While Bacon-Smith sees vidding as part of community-building, I'm not so sure her feminist utopia-via-vids has remained. The internet, while allowing us to archive, catalogue and preserve the vids, has also widened the community and allowed for "lurkers" or anonymous participant-viewers. The various shipping communities clash and argue via fanvid; vid-a-thons create piles of files just for the sake of producing more vids than the other side. LiveJournal is perhaps the only place where we can find the more traditional fan community still in existence; main pages ("communities") allow community members to post a blog that either discusses something in the fandom (Did you see last night's episode?) or allows them to "cut" to their own blog pages where they store their fan works. The Doctor Who "Time and Chips" page features about a hundred users who contribute about a dozen pages of blogs daily; each new chapter of fanfic gets a blog, each new vid gets a post, each icon, banner, manip is announced with love and excitement. Clicking on one of these blogs opens a new window which is directed to the fan's own page. LiveJournal thus acts as an announcement hub as well as a community where the original text can be discussed. LiveJournal is one of the easiest places to find vids outside of YouTube, particularly if you are searching for a very specific non-canon pairing (like Harry/Snape). LiveJournal allows for shippers to meet other shippers and for their enthusiasm to reach heights I don't think was possible before the internet. While vidding is only one part of these communities, it is quickly becoming a large part of them; even just two years ago vids were the stuff of techno geeks with Macs and were a rare find. Now everyone's doing it--or having one made for them.

5. Educational Consquences
As Henry Jenkins notes, convergence culture (i.e. Fan Culture) is all about a grassroots construction of knowledge--rhizomic, not arboreal. I think those who grew up with Fanfiction.net, Mediaminer.org and LiveJournal groups will be more adept to locating knowledge--although not as adept at recognizing its credibility. They are also more accoustomed to learning computer programs in an organic way: "Playing" with a program seems to frighten my students, but the experimental videos I see online don't seem to share that fear. Vidders post their first vids and ask for advice and comments. These fans will be more receptive to a composition theory that focuses on peer feedback and multiple revisions.