The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular MediaWith stories of hysterical teenagers and obsessive fans killing for their heroes, fans and fandom get a bad press. The Adoring Audience looks deeper into fan culture, particularly as it relates to identity, sexuality and textual production.Star-crazed adolescents camping on pavements for a glimpse of their adored figure. Obsessive fans who kill for their heroes. Housewives immersed in escapist fantasy. Hysterical teenage girls, soap addicts and rock music 'groupies'.Fans get a bad press. The familiar images of fandom are loaded with negative stereotypes and labels of deviancy. Yet in many ways we are all 'fans' and fans remain the most visible and dedicated of any audience. What is it that defines and motivates this intense admiration? And why is it so maligned and stigmatized?The Adoring Audience considers the relationship between fans, stars, media texts and media industries. From 'Beatlemania' to the Elvis worship, from science fiction fans and 'trekkies' to Madonna's imitators and Hollywood films about fans, The Adoring Audience examines the ways in which fandom relates to identity, sexuality and textual production. How does gender, along with age, play a significant role in fan representation and activity? What is the place of sexual fantasy in fandom, especially for the female fans? What of male sports fans? And why are female rock music fans classified exclusively as 'groupies' by the media? |
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Contents
| 9 | |
| 30 | |
| 50 | |
| 69 | |
| 84 | |
| 107 | |
Something More Than Love Fan Stories on Film | 135 |
Fans as Tastemakers Viewers for Quality Television | 163 |
Television Executives Speak about Fan Letters to the Networks | 185 |
A Glimpse of the Fan Factory | 191 |
Strangers No More We Sing Filking and the Social Construction of the Science Fiction Fan Community | 208 |
Index | 237 |
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Common terms and phrases
activity adolescent aesthetic audience Beatlemania Beatles become Cagney & Lacey campaign celebrity characterized characters child consumer context critical crowd David David Lee Roth defined desire discrimination dominant Elvis Presley Elvis's everyday fan community fan culture fan writing fan's fandom fannish fantasy fanzines feel female fans feminine filk sing filkers film film's forms gender girls groupies Hill Street Hill Street Blues identity ideology industry interests investment Jenkins Jerry letters lives Lou Grant male mass media mattering maps meanings media texts movie mundane musicians narrative newsletter obsessed organization participate particular performance pleasure popular culture production programs prohibition Quality Television relations relationship rock star role Rupert science fiction screaming sense sexual social songs specific St Elsewhere Star Trek story Swanson taste tastemaker teen teenage textual Van Halen Vanessa Viewers for Quality VQT's woman women York
Popular passages
Page 110 - Imaginary scene in which the subject is a protagonist, representing the fulfilment of a wish (in the last analysis, an unconscious wish) in a manner that is distorted to a greater or lesser extent by defensive processes.
Page 30 - Fandom is typically associated with cultural forms that the dominant value system denigrates - pop music, romance novels, comics, Hollywood massappeal stars (sport, probably because of its appeal to masculinity is an exception). It is thus associated with the cultural tastes of subordinated formations of the people, particularly with those disempowered by any combination of gender, age, class and...
Page 17 - personality" program, however, is peculiarly favorable to the formation of compensatory attachments by the socially isolated, the socially inept, the aged and invalid, the timid and rejected. The persona himself is readily available as an object of love — especially when he succeeds in cultivating the recommended quality of "heart.
Page 84 - Girls just want to have fun . . . witness the birth of eve - she is rising she was sleeping she is fading in a naked field sweating the precious blood of nodding blooms ... in the eye of the arena she bends in half in service — the anarchy that exudes from the pores of her guitar are the cries of the people wailing in the rushes ... a riot of ray /dios . . . (Patti Smith, 'Notice,' in Babcf) THE NEWS FOOTAGE SHOWS police lines straining against crowds of hundreds of young women. The police look...
Page 85 - pure" but to be the enforcers of purity within their teen society — drawing the line for overeager boys and ostracizing girls who failed in this responsibility.
Page 17 - ... personality you are goofy about on the TV screen is a hoked-up character, and any similarity between him and the real man is purely miraculous. This case is revealing, however, not only because it attests to the vigor with which a para-social relationship may become endowed, but also because it demonstrates how narrow the line often is between the more ordinary forms of social interaction and those which characterize relations with the persona.
Page 97 - Beatle and writing him a serious letter of proposal, or carrying placards saying, 'John, Divorce Cynthia.' But it was inconceivable that any fan would actually marry a Beatle or sleep with him (sexually active 'groupies' were still a few years off) or even hold his hand. Adulation of the male star was a way to express sexual yearnings that would normally be pressed into the service of popularity or simply repressed. The star could be loved noninstrumentally, for his own sake, and with complete abandon.
Page 62 - It assumes that authentic rock depends on its ability to articulate private but common desires, feelings and experiences into a shared public language. The consumption of rock constructs or expresses a 'community'. This romantic ideology displaces sexuality and makes desire matter by fantasizing a community predicated on images of urban mobility, delinquency and artistry. The second, often linked with dance and black music, locates authenticity in the construction of a rhythmic and sexual body. Often...
Page 103 - I've thought about it, I think I identified with them, rather than as an object of them. I mean I liked their independence and sexuality and wanted those things for myself. . . . Girls didn't get to be that way when I was a teenager — we got to be the limp, passive object of some guy's fleeting sexual interest. We were so stifled, and they made us meek, giggly creatures think, oh, if only / could act that way, and be strong, sexy, and doing what you want.
Page 24 - Denning fandom as a deviant activity allows (individually) a reassuring, self-aggrandizing stance to be adopted. It also supports the celebration of particular values - the rational over the emotional, the educated over the uneducated, the subdued over the passionate, the elite over the popular, the mainstream over the margin, the status quo over the alternative, (p. 24) Jenson argues that characterizing fans as 'other' in this way blocks analysis and proper understanding of how people actually interact...
References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, Lisa A. Lewis |
| Editor | Lisa A. Lewis |
| Edition | illustrated, reprint |
| Publisher | Psychology Press, 1992 |
| ISBN | 0415078202, 9780415078207 |
| Length | 245 pages |
| Subjects | › Psychology / Applied Psychology Social Science / Popular Culture |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |