[1] In her introduction to Vidding: A History, Francesca Coppa sets out her goals and ideas for the book: to create a history of vidding, and she is—as she is throughout—thorough in her explanation of why and how this is the case. She states in her notes on scope that "Vidding: A History is more properly titled Vidding: A History of Western, Live-Action Media Fandom Music Video, as it traces a narrow but cohesive cohort of mostly female fan vidders from the 1970s to now" (13). This clear and strong focus on the particular strand of vidding she is writing about is the core, the spine, of her work, and it is what makes the book a compelling and deep dive into this particular art and this particular history of it. In my own work (Svegaard 2019) I have credited Coppa with being the reason vidding has any academic study dedicated to it, as her formative (2008) article in TWC is the first scholarly work solely dedicated to vids and vidding. This present book can be seen as an apex and full account of that scholarship.
[2] Before diving further into the content, a note on format. Vidding: A History is available in three formats: physical book, ebook (ePub, pdf), and an online book. The online book is the most fitting and most accessible read for several reasons. It suits the concept of vidding and contemporary fandom culture very well to have an online definitive history book, but it also makes seamless the absolutely delightful number of example vids in the book. With the online version, vids are embedded directly into the text and accompanied by analyses, and for even more vids, mentioned for context, links are embedded, allowing the reader to be taken to a vid, watch, and go back to the text. It also offers one of my favorite features—clickable footnotes that are reverse clickable, as well as notes indicating where pages change in the print version for easy referencing. The ebook and book have DOI links to the vids, and for the ebook these are clickable, though at times line breaks have broken them and they need to be copy-pasted and corrected. This is a minor niggle, though. The process of following a link from the book is more complicated (though I love an actual book), for obvious reasons, and while typing a link out to watch a vid is a bit cumbersome, it is rewarding for the reader to do so. The many vids are the major benefit of the digital formats. Vids and vidding are fundamentally audiovisual experiences, and examples are always superior to summaries in text for these works. The embedding of vids in this manner is a delight, and I hope more work on audiovisual forms will take a cue from Coppa and her publishers.
[3] The book is structured in a logical and chronological manner. Chapter 1 asks and attempts to answer the question "What is vidding?" as a fitting way into the subject. With the first comprehensive analyses in the book, Coppa opens up the subject by analyzing vids in detail, showing the ways in which they function and are constructed with different goals in mind as well as the use of different techniques. This shows the efficacy of the example-driven writing on vids that is the core strength of the book. In addition, she outlines the many ways vids are like (and unlike) other audiovisual forms, which deepens the reader's understanding of the vid form. Here, Coppa writes simultaneously to audiences both familiar and unfamiliar with vids, a difficult task, yet one this contextualisation helps achieve.
[4] Chapter 2 opens the chronology of vids and vidding, focused on what Coppa terms "early vidding and its precursors" (67). Here, she opens by going deep into the start of vidding, its links to women's culture and to Star Trek fandom, something she has done before (Coppa 2008) but here can dedicate a lot more space to, resulting in a detailed and informative account of 1970s fan culture in the United States and the precursors to vidding in that space and time. This includes rich and entertaining routes through The Beatles promos and how avant-garde film is like vids. Chapter 3 moves on to the era that Coppa calls the "VCR Vidding and the Vidding Collectives (1980–1991)," which details the developments of this very fascinating—and underexamined—period of vidding. Again, the text is richly enhanced with the embedded examples along with explanations of both the history and technology of VCR vidding. The chapter also dedicates time to the links between early vidders, including the central role of the Starsky and Hutch fandom, and how vidding collectives were both organic and necessary constructions. Coppa goes through the genealogy of vidders in her particular sphere of research and includes a section about the "great houses" of vidding, where conventions and collectives are also connected through the technologically necessitated collectivism in this period. In this chapter, Coppa shows the practical, physical ways in which Turk and Johnson's (2012) "ecology of vidding" was a factor of this period. The ecology concept shows the (ongoing) iterative nature of vidding and the collective creative and interpretive communities that vidding appears to thrive in. In chapter 4, Coppa continues this as she moves on to "Conventions, Computers, and Collective Actions (1991–2007)." The chapter outlines the centrality of conventions Escapade and, later, Vividcon for the development and cohesion of this vidding culture, including a look at advice between vidders at the time. This organically moves into dealing with digital vidding in the early aughts and the advent of streaming—with its notable cons along with its pros. This chapter also shares vidding's side of the story of fandom's increasingly public face at that time, something that needs to be told, as fandom and fan studies alike still wrestle with what public/private divides mean in our current (social) media landscapes. The concerns of fandom's visibility is of special interest to vidders, whose work now sits alongside other video forms, most of which have music, often share platforms with it, and therefore also have (unintended) audience overlaps—up to and including artists involved with the works that vids are created from. Not least, this chapter also makes visible how important vidders were for the start of the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) itself, and it is therefore fitting that the chapter concludes with the OTW's DMCA exemption test case. (The fact that I here, in the OTW's journal, am reviewing a book written by one of these founders is not lost on me.)
[5] Chapter 5 is the final regular chapter in the book and is titled "Re/evolutions—Vidding Culture(s) Online," marking the now fully digital nature of vids and vidding. This chapter opens with the problems that the move to digital, online formats and interactions causes for vidders in a capitalist online world, where their work will be monetized or it will be eliminated, and where vids and the associated communities are increasingly difficult to find. Coppa also digs into the feedback loop between algorithms and aesthetics with some very interesting implications and investigates the relationships between GIF sets and vidding—current and historical—something that is a much needed addition to the understanding of both art forms. Finally, Coppa, who has rightly foregrounded vidding as a women-dominated and feminist-influenced art form, turns to look at the current environment of more intersectional feminism. She examines how vidding, as part of larger media fandom, has failed fans of color and is beginning to reckon with this, though Black fandom remains marginalized. On the final pages, Coppa looks ahead and wonders whether streaming will turn us all into niche fandoms/fans or whether there is still a place for communal fandom in a media world that no longer has a few big releases per cycle but instead an increasingly fast turnover of content. She envisions a future of further collaboration and community among vidders, perhaps not surprising given her history with facilitating exactly such things with regards to infrastructure, and it is easy to hope that she is correct.
[6] Another strength of the book is its online appendix, with its "Spotlight on" sections, which are referred to throughout the book. With an open access online edition, these are accessible to all readers with an internet connection. The spotlights are analyses/explorations of many of the vids included in the book, which dually function as extra context and example material for the book itself and as standalone explainers on vids and vidding. Coppa draws out what the vids do that make them stand out and/or why they are good examples, though she remains within the limits of the scope she set out in the introduction—a choice that could perhaps have been challenged in this section. Some of the spotlights are on other aspects of vidding than singular vids, such as on types of vid (e.g., character vids, comedy shorts), where the examples explain how this type of vid can be executed, while others add depth to parts of the book, such as the works of a particular vidding collective from the VCR era. All this extra material, comprising a second, accompanying book or, perhaps, the bonus DVD/extended edition, adds substantial value and enjoyment to the reader, be they casual or research oriented. I particularly enjoyed the spotlight on the OTW's test suite of fair use vids, which explains how and why the vids expanded the understanding of what transformative means in a fair use sense, and the one on vids about vidding, which is a genre I love. I predict I will spend a good deal of time going through all of the vids in the appendix more than once and look at Coppa's comments and analyses. In addition, this repository gives easy access to many vids that are otherwise hard to find, something that is a true delight for anyone interested in vids.
[7] As stated in the opening of this review, Coppa is careful to delineate her field of study and acknowledges its limits; this is both a strength and a weakness of the work. A strength because it allows for a richness of detail and depth that both shows knowledge/research and is very satisfying to read. On the other hand, the limits mean that it is difficult not to think about what is not present and what might lie over those horizons. That, however, is for others to hopefully write about. In the same vein, another strength of the book is Coppa's background as a scholar and how she brings that to the study of vids. In the tradition of fan studies where interdisciplinary work is a norm that is both a positive and negative of the field, this allows a particular view of vidding to come through, grounded in Coppa's work as a scholar within performance studies and English literature. Again, this leaves something behind, and because of my own work with vids and vidding, I notice the lack of attention to music the most, particularly in the analyses. Coppa does not ignore music and in fact has a description of the role of music in vids that I predict will be something I cite often from now on ("In a vid, the ear tells the eye what to see" [24]). Yet, the lack of music analysis in the otherwise rich examples is a weakness, particularly when vids that also innovate on that front are brought up. This becomes very clear with a vid like "Data's Dream" (Shadow Songs 1993/remaster Morgandawn 2004), where the musicality of the vidding is absolutely stunning, especially given when it was made (though the remaster may account for some of this). It is, as Coppa writes, beautiful and poetic, but it is also deeply musical, with an amount of synchresis even in the details that matches that of much later vids. Attention to music and musicality is also a distinct lack in the spotlight sections that are otherwise very informative and well executed.
[8] Ultimately, though, Vidding: A History must be judged on its own merits, what it is rather than what it is not. Given Coppa's own delineations and the strong narrative that comes out of it, this book is a success. It tells a story of US vidding from its inception to now and is not only extremely well researched and thorough but also well written and enjoyable to read. I do not think it is a coincidence that I heard of it through the vidding grapevine before the word reached me through the academic ditto; it truly does lend itself to a dual audience—a rare feat. This is a culmination of decades of research with, on, through, and about vids, vidders, and vidding, and it does what it sets out to do. As anyone who has read Coppa's writing before knows, she is dedicated to highlighting the vital contributions of women to fandom and vidding in particular, and this continued dedication is another strength of the book. I can only recommend anyone interested in fan history, in vidding, in video editing, or in women's history to read this book.