Abstract
Author Francesca Coppa makes the reasons why she has written Vidding: A History clear early on, recounting a conference experience and the realization that the speakers didn’t know that vidding, a form of remix practice produced primarily by women and queer people, existed, and predated what they were talking about. This experience informs the twofold reason to create this project. From a theoretical standpoint, Coppa argues for vidding to be seen as a distinct practice and culture of production separate from similar objects and practices like anime music videos situating it as a theoretical heir to Laura Mulvey’s call for an alternative production in ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. Ultimately Coppa makes the case for vidding to be seen as an interdisciplinary site for media and gender studies. In telling this history, Coppa wades into the genealogical history of fandom studies and places vidding as a key influencer and byproduct of fandom practices. At the same time this reinforces and hardens the masculine feminine binary that exists in viewing fandom practices. Her reasoning for reinforcing this binary, something she does reconsider in the final chapter, is contextualized by the knowledge of how many histories written by men erase and marginalize non-male actors. This is an attempt to write them into history on the first draft, not on the second.
Vidding: A History is divided into five chapters with an introduction and can be further divided into three distinct sections. The introduction and first chapter lay the theoretical foundation for an understanding of vidding as a practice, object, and why it is worthy of and generative for scholarly discourse. Chapters 2–4 trace the development of vidding as a practice and the infrastructure of mutual aid that supported it. The final chapter considers this history and the development of New Media after 2007 and the role community activism played in lobbying for exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for noncommercial remix, the rise of video platforms and algorithmic driven social media. Coppa also uses this chapter to place vidding as a cultural practice within contemporary discussions of fandom studies and the unequal outcomes it has produced.
The first chapter lays a strong theoretical foundation for understanding vidding so that anyone who is only familiar in passing can meaningfully engage with the material. Citing Laura Mulvey’s ‘Visual Pleasure,’ Coppa returns to what Mulvey intended that essay to be, a manifesto for producing alternative gazes and productions by noting both formal aspects of vids and who is producing them. Coppa also builds ties to fandom studies by challenging aspects of Henry Jenkins’ Textual Poachers, Convergence Culture, and other producer-based frameworks.
The genealogical approach employed in Vidding challenges the technological periodization that segments the project. Did vidding begin with Starsky and Hutch fans or slide shows at Star Trek conventions? A reader could derive a defensible answer and miss the larger point that is being made in this people’s history. By iteratively tracing antecedents, Coppa explores cultural production, the murkiness of influence and inspiration, framing this as ‘a’ history with some self-interested sourcing limitations. This murkiness creates space for Coppa to theorize the effects this analog media practice has had on New Media and the now several generations of fandom who have grown up aware of but disconnected from the female-led culture of production in the final chapter.
Vidding is available as both a physical copy through the University of Michigan Press and as open access digital versions in pdf, epub, and on the University of Michigan Press Fulcrum platform through outside funding. The disparity between the physical and digital editions of this work is worth considering. This book has been reviewed by the pdf and browsing other editions. All digital editions feature hyperlinks to the archive of 135 vids Coppa has curated. The Fulcrum edition’s main difference is that it includes embedded versions of the discussed vids as well as an extended online appendix spotlighting 23 vids with roughly 500 words of textual analysis each. These features force considerations to why Vidding has to exist as a physical book and not just a feature-rich digital project. As a physical book devoid of hyperlinks, the reading experience is lessened due to a lack of easy access and in a few pages a deluge of vid citations that overwhelm Coppa’s narrative. Still purchasing a physical copy is necessary for continual development of these kinds of projects.
This project may be weakest as a book, but the digital editions manifest the strengths of the project which is its encyclopaedic repository of vids and how Coppa marshals them to explain technical and artistic developments, or why some videos were popular in different contexts. Her archive became signposts for the development of fandoms and technological progression from video copies of original Star Trek slideshows to contemporary Supernatural vids. Easy access to the vids is central to the experiential knowledge generation this book argues for in the first chapter. She does a fine job explaining the key points of vids and walking the reader through them with prose, but as she consistently reminds the reader: vids are an experience.
Francesca Coppa’s writing and approach are sound, producing a theoretically dense but readable history of something you have likely experienced but never been fully aware of. It is also likely not best experienced as a physical book and with the open access alternatives both experiential and accessibility differences make strong impressions. That accessibility and content is why parts of, if not the whole of, Vidding: A History could be added to the reading list of various classes. The first, second, and fifth chapters of this book could easily be introduced to syllabi for undergraduate media studies and fandom studies courses. With other chapters fitting in gender and women’s studies classes. Coppa makes a thorough case for the interdisciplinary value of vidding and what its history can tell us about contemporary fandom studies as it begins to turn towards challenging oligopolistic platforms and algorithmic sorting.
