Fandoms
For this video, I decided to focus on the Warner reading where she talks about fandoms, specifically fandoms consisting of black women. I chose to focus on this because my final project is about the underrepresentation of women of color in the music industry, and this article relates because it talks about the underrepresentation of black women fandoms. Warner talks about the fact that few people even realize that black women take part in fandom at all. To accentuate this point I used a clip from the show “Dear White People” where a group of black college students is gathered at a watch party for a show that resembles Scandal. This shows the reactions of the group when the female black lead is seen asserting her dominance over the white male. I wanted to show how fandoms that include black women not only exist but are interactive with media substance such as television shows. The second clip I used relates to Warner’s point about how black female fandom has to fill in the cognitive gaps that color blindness leaves open for mass identification. For this, I used a clip of Olivia Pope’s dad reminding her she has to work twice as hard to get half of what they have. On the surface, it looks like a normal father-daughter conversation, but the black female fandom knows that that is a conversation that many black women have had, relating to the sense of having to work twice as hard to get half as much.
Questions:
- How does the lack of representation of black female fandom relate to other areas of the media where black females are underrepresented (Movies, Television, Music)
- Do you think Color-blind casting is harmful to representation?
- How do you think the participation in a fandom enables black women to shift characters of color to the forefront?