the feminist librarian reads

Fans & Fantasy: 50 Shades of Canon | tiptoe39 @ SpoilerTV

We watch these stories not for what we know we’re going to see but what we don’t know and can’t see. The mysteries that still aren’t solved, the resolutions that haven’t come yet. And trying to fill in those holes is fertile ground for discussion.

tiptoe39:

This week’s column. Hope you enjoy it.

Based on a lot of the comments from last week’s article, it seems that many of you reading this column have a very strict definition of canon. And yes, what’s scripted and filmed and acted and aired is the narrowest definition of canon. But I submit to you that if that’s where canon stopped, and there were no further questions to ask, TV wouldn’t be nearly so riveting. We watch these stories not for what we know we’re going to see but what we don’t know and can’t see. The mysteries that still aren’t solved, the resolutions that haven’t come yet. And trying to fill in those holes is fertile ground for discussion. It’s the reason we have forums and speculation and columns like this one. There is room for the individual imagination in interpreting art. And in a medium like TV, which focuses almost exclusively on the outwardly expressed and the newsworthy, there are plenty of blanks to fill in. And sometimes those blanks are filled in not solely by fans but by people involved in the creative process.