Introduction

Abstract

When Cinema Journal asked me to provide a possible image for the cover of this issue, several came to mind. Yet trying to find an accessible, representative, legal, high quality picture proved difficult. In fact, my search for such an image metonymically illustrated many of the central concerns addressed in this In Focus. There are many amazing works of fan art and screenshots from fan vids (TV or film clips cut to music), but most of them require at least an understanding of the source text, if not the fannish context, to become comprehensible. Many of these images might not strike a casual reader as feminist because the feminist impetus lies in the way women manipulate and co-opt media representations. In addition, these images draw from copyrighted sources, so that most are on uncertain legal grounds, even as fans and scholars alike argue for their legality on transformative grounds.¹ Finally, the greatest—and possibly most telling—obstacle in obtaining a useful cover image is that of finding a source with sufficiently high resolution. Fannish art is grassroots and amateur, and predigital, third- or fourth-generation sources often produce deteriorated or low-quality images. Trying to showcase fannish creations is thus complicated by the very subcultural constraints that make it worth studying in the first place.