Revolutionary America from Concord and Lexington to Ferguson: Folk Transmediation of Historical Storytelling

Abstract

Revolutionary America from Concord and Lexington to FergusonFolk Transmediation of Historical Storytelling F andom and fans' cultural production may bring to mind heartthrob singers, blockbuster fijilms, or even homoerotic stories and art about pop culture icons of the past and present.Yet what if the hot new trend in fandom was neither a pouty teenage crooner nor a commercial fijictional world built from multimillion-dollar special efffects, but a source as dry as an 800-page history book, and characters with such sexy accoutrements as powdered wigs and wooden teeth?Alexander Hamilton's unlikely ascent as the subject of numerous fan discussions and remix works marks an important and seldom discussed trend not only within fan culture but also in scholarly discussions of transmedia storytelling structures.In his landmark 2006 text Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins argued that transmedia is primarily organized with a corporate, mass-media property at the center and amateur fan works accumulating at the periphery.Although Jenkins persuasively documented the powerful civic and social possibilities of remixing mass culture using this formulation, his work does not fully explore transmedia storyworlds organized around noncorporate centers, including works that reinterpret and remix the lives of historical fijigures like Alexander Hamilton (Jenkins, Textual Poachers, Convergence Culture, and "Fan Activism"). 1 Folk Transmediation of Historical Storytelling n 141 By transmediating the public domain instead of corporate private property and distributing amateur and professional works through similar digital platforms, fans and professionals collaborate in such transmedia networks on more even ontological and legal footing, which creates additional social, political, and artistic possibilities for digital connectivity and the future of storytelling.Examining a collection of historically-based "vids" (works of fan remix video art with a uniquely female-dominated forty-year history) through the lenses of participatory history and the spreadable culture of social justice media demonstrates the role fan creativity can serve in maintaining a lively public engagement with history.By rewriting and remixing the life of Alexander Hamilton, the AIDS epidemic, and the African American civil rights movement, modern professional and amateur artists are able to create a living "history of the present," not only to excavate the genealogy of modern problems but also to intervene in contemporary political storytelling by writing a new version of the foundational collective national past.As a result, fandoms with their root property in the public domain offfer an important curb against the encroachment of the media industry and allow for multilayered creative and civic interchange in a shared symbolic language.

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