Finnegan

Anja,

The public now has better access to Antin's Young Americans and to information about it than we had two years ago:

-- During the past year, the two most informative website about YA still online -- Strawberry Lane and the YA section of the official SONY website (Rawley Academy Online) -- both went offline, but we found the former preserved by Archive.org and have put the latter back online.

-- We have recovered the 2000-2001 YA section of Fanforum (Rawley Academy), a treasure-trove of information.

-- We've become aware of Jessica's Oxblood site, which includes ratings info.

-- We've learned what the online scripts are, and where they come from.

-- We've made a decent-quality English-language version of YA (by redubbing the French version back into English), posted it online in short clips, and made whole-episode downloads available (at Rawley Revisited).

-- We've correctly attributed that mysterious piece of music played during the JaHammer cotillion kiss scene, "That's No Lie."

That's a remarkable accomplishment for any fan community. And it does take a community: the parts of it that I've done, I couldn't have done alone. Hell, without the bootlegs on YouTube and the Chinese sites, and without Juli's scripts, I wouldn't ever have rediscovered YA two years ago; I'd still have nothing but a vague memory of a tantalizingly interesting summer 2000 show I knew I didn't understand. And as we've recently seen, both in contacting Juli and in contacting Jessica, this board of Fanforum continues to serve as an indispensable focus for the fan community.

And that's just the factual stuff -- it excludes any progress we may have made in understanding the show. That said, there's a lot that remains to be done. For example:

-- The Wikipedia article on YA might be improved.

-- It would be interesting to find out what YA original footage exists, what original production scripts still exist, and where they are located.

-- Somebody really does need to interview Steven Antin and/or Joseph Voci to ask about the narrative perspective, the apparent anachronisms, the whole apparent adult level of meaning that the WB teen audience could hardly have grasped in 2000.

-- Above all, we need a critical appreciation of YA published in an edited venue (not a fansite), something that a Wikipedia article could cite (Wiki rules prohibit citing fan material). The fact is that no article about or review of Young Americans published in any edited venue is based on viewing of more than the first four episodes -- most are based only on the first episode. Given that information one needs to understand the whole show is given only at the end of the last episode -- notably the information that Scout and Bella are not in fact half-siblings, and that Krudski is narrating not from the present but from some time long after the events he has recalled or imagined -- that means that no published review of or article about YA in any edited venue could possibly convey an understanding of the show.