Rawle, Steven ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7908-8249 (2023) Learning from kaijū fans: genrifying, cultural value, and the ethics of citing fan-scholarship. Journal of Fandom Studies, 11 (3). pp. 99-116.

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Abstract

This paper explores questions of the value of fan scholarship in academia. Taking a look at the labour of anonymous and named kaijū fans, the paper examines the place of fan-scholarship in academic work and the composition and identities of many kaijū fan-scholars. It considers how the study of seemingly 'trash' cinema remains marginal in terms of its acceptance in academic study, but also how fans have tended to reject the work of scholars of their favourite films and TV shows, dismissing it as either too highbrow or as condenscending of those films and their own identities. Most problematically, though, such work has been accussed of overlooking, or sidelining, the contributions of fan-scholars to wider discussion about the giant monster film. Hence, this paper takes an auto-ethnographic approach to considering how fan scholarship can, or from an ethical standpoint must, contribute to processes of knowledge production, but also examines questions of fan labour and genrification in the construction of the kaijū canon online and how this relates to cultural value within the academia and beyond. In some sense, this questions dynamics of insider/outsiderhood in relation to both academia and fandom and the labour of both in understanding their subjects from both sides.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
DOI:	https://doi.org/10.1386/jfs_00076_1
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Films
School/Department:	School of the Arts
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/8077

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