Refunctioning or Reinventing

Before yesterday I did not have a clear idea of what a zine was. Thanks to Michelle and her ever-so-helpful list of links to websites about zines and e-zines, I am starting to see what we're going to be working with in the coming weeks.

Looking at all of these zines I started thinking something that I often think about the Internet: where do these people find the time? I am always surprised that there are so many people who work so diligently to create websites, blogs, and, now that I know, zines. The opportunity to express a specific point of view, without censorship (I hope), without (great) cost and without any constraints in terms of format is obviously very appealing. The zines I looked at seem like obvious examples of refunctioning a pop culture product (magazines, of course) to produce something with a real message from a human being, instead of an over-produced, profit-driven, piece of junk food for the world to consume.

I think the same could be said for many websites and blogs, like this one. In fact, this is a perfect example, because there might be nothing on this blog that interests anyone other than me, but that should not matter. The beauty (and the problem) with these forms of communication is the lack of "regulation" that takes place in forums like television. As Mimi White points out, the narratives on television may become fragmented and seemingly diverse in order to appeal to a broad audience, but the format and general message contains obvious regulation (hegemony). There is no way that you would ever see a television show about the Women's Studies 320 discussion, because it is far too specific to draw the ratings needed to make a profit, but this discussion is published here on the web for anyone to read. We have taken the webpage and refunctioned it for our own purpose. I want to get started experimenting with the refunctioning of magazines for this next assignment. Now I just have to come up with something worth telling the world...