Introduction

For this assignment, I chose an audience that actively resists Barbie –this applies to the assignment requirements because Mattel Inc wishes to punish Barbie for Barbie’s copyright infringements. These Barbie fans who engage in textual poaching and show resistance come face-to-face with a monolith that wants to enact vengeance and solidify an empire of consumerist profit. I will use Mark Napier, the webmaster of The Distorted Barbie (http://users.rcn.com/napier.interport/barbie/barbie.html) and the AntiBarbie Club (http://www.antibarbie.com/). These websites will demonstrate how the audience’s shared experiences allow them to reconstruct the ideological values that Mattel Inc. had inscribed in Barbie.

This audience resists Barbie because of its foundational influences on today’s society. Steiner (1988) says individuals may fight the media by removing themselves from their “role as consumers or by actively struggling against the ideas and images projected [by the media]” (p. 3). Mark Napier is a perfect example of this “struggle against the media’s ideas and images” because he clearly states that:

I created this site to explore Barbie’s phenomenon. Not Barbie as a toy or collectable, but Barbie as a symbol culture has developed, absorbed, shaped, and been shaped by. The site is a visual exploration. (www.detritus.net).

For Napier, his struggle to resist the Barbie phenomenon has come under fire by Mattel In, so this struggle justifies Barbie’s influence. Barbie is a site of work for Napier because he connects this to his daily social experiences (Livingstone, p. 351). It is, therefore, relevant to his life. In this way, Mark Napier is attempting to shape “[his] media culture” (Livingstone, p. 339) by “[beginning his] Barbie awareness program” (www.detritus.net). Mark Napier resists the Barbie paradigm. His resistance comes in the form of informing and allocating a resistance movement, perhaps, to produce a paradigm shift against Mattel Inc. Those who agree with Napier are “contributing to the process of shaping and co-constructing their material and symbolic environments” (Livingstone, p. 339). This means that Mark Napier and those who agree with his statements about Barbie can reconstruct reality following their beliefs. They may not influence Mattel Inc, but their influence is indirect, as it affects the Barbie audience. They aim to ensure audiences know how Barbies are created and solidified in a materialist culture.

Napier and the critically conscious fan community engage in textual poaching that, for Mattel, intellectually infringes upon Mattel’s rights. Since these images appear to impact the original Barbie make-up intentionally, The Distorted Barbie performs experiments that children have conducted for centuries on the Barbie. These experimentations that children have been engaging in have not appeared in Mattel’s consciousness; however, once they are spread through the media, he does not positively react to these images and does not engage in discourse about why this fan community distorts Barbies but files lawsuits and court action. Several cases have ruled these court proceedings free speech and parody. For example, Mattel filed a trademark infringement lawsuit in September 1997 against Aqua for their hit song “Barbie Girl,” which resulted in the decision that it was a parody.

This fan community considers Barbie a prime source of intrigue and knowledge from society. This is what website designers have created against Barbie.

The Barbie critical audience is the interpretive community that provides the “frame” for oppositional readings. These critical consumers have framed Barbie’s issue as a social construction. Mark Napier’s fan community contextualizes Barbie’s consumer relations problem. Mattel’s widespread use of Barbie is integral to its success in the industry and against its competitors. However, Napier and his interpretive community find that Barbie is a deliberate construction of many negotiations related to the ideological promotion of materialist consumption. Barbie perpetuates a desire for these consumers. In The Distorted Barbie, Mark Napier outlined six websites Mattel Inc took down. He explained that their interpretive community was attacked by their ideological resistance to materialist culture.

Steiner (1988) states that “readers construct meaning according to assumptions and strategies they adopt under their participation in a specific interpretive community” (pg. 3). Essentially, the Barbie community is a collective that agrees that problems arise from Barbie’s dependency. The Anti-Barbie Club (www.antibarbie.com) is widely renowned as one of the leading websites that promote passionate hate towards Barbie. On their “About Anti-Barbie” page regarding why they were doing what they were interested in, they stated that:

Anti-Barbie was formed in late 2002 by ex-Barbie doll collectors who finally had enough of Barbie’s negative impact on society. Mattel Inc’s actions are stupid and devilishly evil, but greedy, callous, devious and just plain not very considerate (www.antibarbie.com).

This interpretive community finds it necessary to deconstruct Barbie’s connotations because Mattel attempts to separate it from their influence. In this way, they must align themselves as a collective so that their efforts can slowly reverse Mattel’s hostility towards them. Their power becomes more remarkable as a whole, and so will their interpretive community. Furthermore, their opposition frames will grow stronger the more Mattel resists.

Oppositional voices

Oppositional voices are minimal because of Mattel’s aggressive corporate structure. This structure intends to remove any opposition to the Barbie copyright. Mattel Inc understands voices like Mark Napier’s as inflicting his original message that Barbie is necessary for young girls. In a letter to Mark Napier, Mattel’s lawyer wrote, “Mattel’s copyrights concerning the BARBIE character are therefore extraordinarily valuable” (October 10, 1997: www.users.rcn.com). Mattel’s lawyer wrote that Napier must “immediately take whatever steps are necessary to remove this page from the Internet and prevent the further publication of its contents, and (ii) confirm to me in writing that you have done so within five business days” (www.users.rcn.com). In this way, oppositional voices may be diminished by the producer’s legal protection of intellectual property.

The producer (Mattel) and the oppositional voices (Napier) are equally influenced. However, more power rests with the producers. This is because producers encode the messages into the text, stated Hall, and audiences simultaneously decode them “according to diverse discursive contexts which are themselves socially determined” (Livingstone, p. 343). This is because Napier is part of the ideological state apparatus whereby his polysemic readings of Barbie are limited by his society’s ideological institutions (Napier is Catholic). However, Napier can spread his influence through his “awareness program,” which is perhaps a different form of power that audiences use. Although Mattel’s work is his copyright (Barbie), Napier’s distortions influence Barbie consumers into a new way of receiving their Barbie products. In this way, Napier’s power is semiotic Robinhood. He uses symbology and intertextual references to other forms of popular culture and mainstream religion to bring another way of interpreting Barbie into perspective. This grants him an influence different from owning Barbie’s intellectual property.

As stated before, Mattel does not willingly subside his hostility. According to Doss (1999), Mattel fails to realize how beneficial the fan community’s discontent is. Since Mattel primarily focuses on Barbie’s economic benefits, so he approaches his audience as puppets of consumerism rather than an intellectual audience who may or may not enjoy Barbie. Although the fan community can only partially concentrate their influence like Mattel, they can collectively spread their experiences.

The Barbie fan community utilizes the easy distribution and cost-effective strategy of disseminating their discontent with Barbie online. This is an essential medium for this audience and, therefore, the only medium that will allow them to expand their knowledge of Barbie simultaneously. In addition, they can contact other resistance groups. Furthermore, this audience finds it exciting to keep in touch with other resistors online, mainly through sharing experiences. In addition, the Internet’s versatility and flexibility give them a complete understanding of their social and cultural institutions. The medium of choice is optimal as it guarantees anonymity and allows users to share information about their past experiences with Barbie.

Naturally, this is a highly intelligible audience because they can frame their interpretations based on their experiences. Mark Napier’s experience began when he was in camp, and it helped him see how another girl used Barbie. He then became very interested in how Barbie nestled into this consumerism ideology. Napier and the others felt their experiences were necessary. Their experiences led them to review how significant Barbie’s impact had been on society.

The Barbie Fan Community

The Barbie fan community reads differently but understands Barbie’s introductory text. Those who enjoy Barbie contribute to the dominant reading Mattel Inc. prescribed. These collectors often wield a hundred dolls each. According to Abercrombie & Longhurst (1998), some enthusiasts maintain satisfaction with Barbie, which is consistent with hyper-consumerism. Grossberg called this a hyper-consumerist sensibility, and although these fans understand the exact text resistors do, their gratification intensifies and leads to multiple Barbie products. Mattel Inc. wishes to target these consumers. Otherwise, Mattel would react hostile to other decoding methods.

Consequently, the polar opposite lies in a collective that feels that Barbie threatens the moral institutions that govern the individual. It replaces these moral beliefs with materialist ideologies. Essentially, the individual as a consumer who willingly negotiates their identity with the material goods they purchases replaces the individual as a human being. These oppositional readers believe that sharing their experiences with other like-minded (interpretive community) individuals is essential.

Livingstone suggested that audiences respond in three ways: relevance, realism, and relativism. Livingstone says this fan community uses bearings because they make “connections…with one’s own life” (p. 351). This, in turn, must rely on the realistic component of what they respond to—Barbie. The audience needs to contextualize Barbie’s reality (Livingstone, p. 351) because they will redefine their culture based on their interests. Lastly, relativism allows the audience to foresee and consider how they formulate their texts. The audience responds polysemically, according to Fiske and Livingstone. One fascinating fact is that this audience does not share the same experiences that Kitzinger (1998) concludes. Because this audience responds to different backgrounds, this audience is diverse because interest in Barbie can stem from several factors.

The difference between interpretation and reaction is that interpretation results from assigning denotations and connotations about a text or object, forming codes/conventions of critical analysis. These fans engage in interpretation discourse rather than reacting to completely undermine Barbie. These individuals respond non-physically and intellectually. However, Mattel’s reaction is intellectual, not legal.

In her essay, Brown (1997) outlined how conservative leaders attempted to reconfigure their image to suit a more acceptable power position. For conservatives, Hillary’s appearance showcased weakness and required masculine assertiveness to emphasize her strength. Meanwhile, feminine activists pushed for a more feminine political leader. This resulted in a prenuptial disagreement about Hillary’s look. This led to difficulty controlling Hilary’s appearance since audiences could decode it very differently.

For Brown (1997), it was clear that political powers may not necessarily be able to perform their will as they please. There were gaps in how corporations and political systems governed society, particularly intellectual property. Popular icons and brands cannot wholly be pulled away from these cracks in the system, the “leaking” hegemonic powers that seek to control all facets of knowledge. Because of these uncertainties in maintaining intellectual property, fans feel it is their opportunity to extrapolate on issues corporations seek to avoid.

Barbie Fan Community Response

What is particularly interesting is how the critics of the Barbie community can re-locate Barbie’s ideological values. Much like how Doss (1999) described how the Elvis fan community reconstructed Elvis’ image in velvet paintings, this Barbie critical community is reconfiguring Barbie’s image to recapture their childhood moments. However, the Barbie vital community is reprogramming the ideological foundations Barbie rests on out of their disgust for it. In contrast, in Doss’s (1999) essay, the Elvis fan community did this because of their love for Elvis.

Producers feel that their intellectual property is a part of their image and threatens their intellectual property once fans engage in creative activities. Essentially, fans believe they have a stake and should be able to control some of the things they consume. Producers are concerned that their texts’ trademark and artistic value is being questioned, while fans believe their textual creations are theirs for analysis. Mark Napier is an individual who attempts to shine a light on the abundance of Barbie dolls in society. He feels that Mattel’s Barbie is the construction of ideological normativity, for example:

Barbie’s history is important to us all. When an icon carries this much weight in a society, it becomes so present, so commonplace that it becomes almost invisible, taken for granted. When this happens, we must dredge our collective memories to see what awareness we can dislodge. (http://users.rcn.com)

Pick any icon. Barbie is an excellent subject for symbol inquiry. She can be found everywhere and crosses international and religious borders. She is available to children and is part of their education and growth. She is a product of the modern commercial image-making industry, in some ways the same industry that produced Ronald Regan, Kate Moss, Nintendo and the Persian Gulf War. What stories does this icon tell? (http://users.rcn.com)

Therefore, Mattel’s intellectual property becomes a source of interesting discussion about Barbie’s dependency on American society. Mark Napier is highly intelligible and remains ideologically aware of the conditions that wrought Barbie’s success and the ideological values it inscribed. Napier repositions Barbie’s values and Mattel’s intellectual properties to discuss the dangers of carrying and relying on such symbols. Mattel found it threatening that Napier would write these remarks. He would not want the general public to be educated about the dangers of this “ubiquity” that Napier describes.

Mattel Inc. does not realize that “fandom diversifies…[as] it moves from cult status to the cultural mainstream” (Jenkins, 2000, p. 161). Jenkins (2000) argues that fans engage in intellectual discourse over the Internet as it is the newer, more readily accessible form of communicative inquiry. Unlike other similarly hateful Barbie websites, Mattel’s decision to censor specific texts like The Distorted Barbie faces many challenges.

Conclusion

The Barbie critical fan community is interested in society’s ideological investments in Barbie over time. These investments are the ones that Mattel Inc. wishes to maintain. However, they directly conflict with fan communities and the shared experiences of online users. Mark Napier is an exceptional example of this struggle to extrapolate the reasons behind Barbie’s success in The Distorted Barbie. As an arena of ideological struggle, Mattel Inc. and Barbie haters worldwide find that their questionable statements about dependence on Barbie in childhood must be deconstructed. Napier feels that children are given the ideological necessities of “making it” in this world (hyper-consumerist sensibilities) rather than a sense of affective enjoyment of the world itself. Even though textual reproductions may seem horrid, they are parodies Mattel Inc wishes to terminate. Essentially, Barbie is an excellent example of a place where producers and audiences engage in discourse. It is wrought with legal disputes, cease and desist letters, and physical retaliation against a curse they call “Barbie.”