Decoding Resistance: Fanfiction and Audience Agency in Indian Television

Abstract

Fanfiction, a term for creative works based on existing works by fans, has been gaining attention for its diversity and cultural bearing. When readers/audience part take in the production of meaning within an established fictional world, the decoding mechanisms tend to challenge seemingly static premise of the established text. This paper attempts to read a fanfiction of the popular Indian television serial Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon, to understand the how interpretive communities attempts to bridge the gap between encoded meaning and alternative readings. The study analyses the serial and its fanfiction titled Being Selfish through the theoretical frame work of Stuart Hall’s Encoding/Decoding model of communication.