It’s hardly a controversial statement to say that the Academy Awards exist as an advertisement for the Hollywood studio system, an attempt to graft some degree of cultural status to a limited number of (largely non-mainstream) films, in the eventual hope of them achieving higher commercial status post-broadcast.

Hmm, let’s think about that. An audio-visual product that, through the use of editing, sound mixing and the addition of new graphics and footage, sells a product, with the eventual hope of financial gain through increased cinema attendance / DVD purchase / download… that sounds familiar…

Of course, the Academy Awards ‘trail’ the whole of Hollywood rather than one film – to extend this trailer metaphor, the whole show offers a ‘free sample’ of the stars, genres, behind-the-scenes information and (supposedly) spectacular visuals that make up modern Hollywood. The trailer itself is, of course, far too low a cultural object to receive an Academy Award: yet the trailer-esque ceremony is itself constructed OF trailers. Short promotional films for each film, performance, or stylistic aspect, dominate the running time of the show: in each case, while the assumption may be to nostalgically ‘remind’ the audience of the film/star/whatever, these function in the same way as trailers to those viewers who have never seen the film ‘advertised’ in those segments.

The term ‘trailer’ has always referred to a broader discursive field than simply ‘short promotional film for forthcoming feature’ (a quick look at trade press reports of the 1910s confirms / expands Janet Staiger’s initial list of what ‘trailer’ referred to: political advertising, strip of film, vehicular trailer, person who ‘trails’ behind, as well as promotional film) so it should come as no surprise that we could describe an entire awards’ show as a ‘trailer’ (it isn’t just the Academy Awards, or even film awards – BAFTA / the Emmys do the same for television, the Grammys for music).

Whether the Academy Awards counts as a trailer is open to debate: but in 1962, the awards were criticised in terms very similar to those adopted in broader criticism of trailers. Asking whether ‘the vast potential of the show as a promotional weapon… [was] adequately capitalised’ Film Bulletin stated ‘the captive [television] audience… were neither entertained…nor sold sufficiently on the joys and pleasures of motion pictures.’ (‘Is Oscar Doing His Job? Film Bulletin April 16 1962, p. 17) Replace ‘the show’ with ‘the trailer’ and the captive TV audience with a cinema one, and the parallels are compelling.

And, if you want further proof that the awards ceremony and the trailer share historical similarities, consider that the 1940 Academy Awards ceremony featured in its own ‘special free trailer’ in May of that year. Here, Warner Bros. released a ‘four-reel featurette on the industry’s national awards… made with the cooperation of all Hollywood studios and personally supervised by Frank Capra… It presents a survey of Academy Award winners from 1928 through 1939.’ (Showman’s Trade Review, April 6 1940, p.33) Despite being a compilation film that looked back at old ceremonies (and footage of the winners from the most recent) – that suggestion of memory and nostalgia again – this was special trailer produced for a show that was itself a trailer for industry. And you thought the 2015 ceremony was too post-modern and ‘meta’ for its own good…

Once news spread in the summer of 2012 that the immensely popular novel Fifty Shades of Grey was being turned into a movie, the Internet began to teem with speculations on casting for the roles of millionaire Christian Grey and his submissive girlfriend Ana.  Entertainment bloggers participated in heated debates about the appropriateness of certain actors for the role, and it was often difficult to determine if suggested names of actors came from inside Hollywood information or from mere speculation.  Fans of various actors created videos and artwork that was presented as “official” movie studio news to the confusion of some and the delight of others who were in on the joke. 

Since the film version of Fifty Shades will be released on February 13, I am especially interested in revisiting two key fan works that came from the 2012 casting campaigns led by fans.  By presenting themselves as “real,” authoritative texts, these paratexts blurred the distinction between canon (the official work) and fan works, since at the time of their creation there was no film – not even a screenplay. 

A fan video purporting to be the “official trailer” to the unmade film was posted on YouTube in 2012.  It was made by splicing old footage of various television and film projects of Matt Bomer and Alexis Bledel, the two actors cast by the fan creator as Christian and Ana.  This fan-created “official trailer” worked in several ways as a teaser for fans: teasing that the Fifty Shades film would eventually be created and released, teasing the audience into believing the film was already forthcoming, and teasing that Bomer and Bledel had been decisively cast.  But we can also think of this trailer as a fan response back to the media industries: showing producers and screenwriters what fans really wanted and expected from the filmic adaptation of the novel.  After the trailer generated confusion, it was relabeled as “unofficial,” though its content continues to follow traditional commercial film trailer conventions through the use of ratings warnings, a logo for Universal Pictures, voiceover, and scenes edited out of sequence for dramatic effect.
 

Hoax, however, is an overly simplistic description of the fan-created magazine cover.  For fans of Matt Bomer unacquainted with Fifty Shades of Grey, the Entertainment Weekly cover and the trailer may have seemed like real news about their favorite actor.  These works may also function as what Jonathan Gray calls “entryway texts” (2010, 18) that inspire fans to investigate Fifty Shades.  While I do not dispute the possibility that such works cause confusion about their authority, fan-created paratexts do not merely undermine a text: the confusion they spark prompts greater interest in the text itself.  For fans of Fifty Shades aware of the film’s pre-production process, the magazine cover and trailer serve as fan works that, like many other fan creations, skillfully tap into an important moment of cultural dialogue – here, the casting speculations.

The similarities between the fan paratexts and the “official,” studio-sanctioned paratexts, as well as confusion caused by sorting out which paratexts are “official,” call attention to the increasingly blurred lines between industry and audience.  Fan-created paratexts for the Fifty Shades of Grey film are an especially fruitful example of this, since the film is an adaptation of a novel, which itself originated as fan fiction about the Twilight universe.  It is therefore not easy to determine what the “official,” discrete Fifty Shades text is.  As Katie Morrissey explains: “In its transition from a lengthy work of fan fiction titled Master of the Universe by fan writer Snowqueens Icedragon to the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy by E.L. James, Fifty Shades blurs the lines between fan work and commercial fiction, amateur and professional, as well as the romantic and erotic” (2014, 2).

Although the impetus may be to sharpen or delineate boundaries between fan-created and official trailers, I would argue that the coexistence of these paratexts side by side only serves to add to the cultural experience of the text.  Abigail Derecho draws upon Derrida’s notion of the archive to similarly argue that fan works should be considered not as derivative or appropriative but as archontic – that is, building upon the archive that is the text itself (2006).  The fan-created trailer builds upon the archive that is the entire Fifty Shades franchise, just as the film builds upon the novels, and the official trailer builds upon the film.  While some fans may have ultimately been disappointed their favorite actors were not cast in the film, it is through the process of comparing the fan-created trailer with the official trailer, of sifting through the archive, that we derive pleasure.

 
Works Cited

Derecho, Abigail. “Archontic Literature: A Definition, a History and Several Theories of Fan Fiction.” In Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse, 61-78. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
 
Gray, Jonathan. Show Sold Separately. New York: New York University Press, 2010.

Morrissey, Katie. “Fifty Shades of Remix: The Intersecting Pleasures of Commercial and Fan Romances.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 4.1 (2014). http://jprstudies.org/2014/02/fifty-shades-of-remix-the-intersecting-pleasures-of-commercial-and-fan-romancesby-katherine-morrissey/

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Bridget Kies researches gender and sexuality in popular media at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the United States.  Her work has been published in the journals Transformative Works and Cultures and International Journal of the Book, as well as in several edited collection on television series.