Fan Sites by Abby S. Waysdorf

Author:Abby S. Waysdorf [Waysdorf, Abby S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Popular Culture, Travel, Special Interest
ISBN: 9781609387938
Google: yIVGEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Published: 2021-12-01T05:29:08+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

Friends and Corporate Places of Fandom

It is, possibly, the most popular television show of the 1990s, and one with a surprisingly long afterlife. Fans spanning generations continue to wear its merchandise and make reference to its catchphrases. It has been a site of a major battle between streaming services, with Netflix spending an estimated $80 million to $100 million to keep the show on its roster in 2019,1 only for it to leave soon after to anchor HBO Max. I am, of course, referring to Friends, the American sitcom about six young people living in New York as they figured out their place in the world and their relationships to each other. A massive success for its ten seasons on air, both in the United States and abroad, it has found a seemingly eternal life as a staple of reruns and streaming services, and has become remarkably popular among those who weren’t born when it first aired.2 Twenty-five years after it premiered, Friends seems stronger than ever.

Despite its popularity, Friends was not always thought of as a show with a fandom. It had fans, certainly, but not the sort of structured, “cult” fandom that is demonstrated in the other chapters of this book. Rather, Friends was held up as the opposite of these texts and their fans—it was mainstream, accessible, and everywhere, without the exclusivity and transgressive potential that cult fans see in their objects of fandom.3 It did not have a presence in the fan conventions and message boards that made up what is commonly known as “media fandom.” There was, after all, little potential stigma in watching one of the most popular shows on television, and little subcultural cache to be gained by supporting it. It operated in a different sphere of culture.

However, attitudes about fandom have shifted, and the borders between mainstream and fannish activities are now blurry. Being a fan, at least of certain texts and objects, carries less stigma, and at the same time, some practices of media fandom have spread out into other environments. There is recognition in the media industry that fandom can be of benefit to their products,4 through promotion and financial support, a trend that has accelerated as media audiences become more fragmented and there is an increased desire to hold on to the audiences that a show does manage to get. Having fans is now a way to continually generate attention to a media text and, through that attention, income and prominence.

This doesn’t mean that every aspect of fandom is desirable. Media fandom and its practices developed at a time when the industry took little notice of what fans were doing. This neglect led to a situation where fans developed a wide variety of creative practices that made transformative use of their favorite texts, from fan fiction writing to criticism to cosplay, often at odds with what the industry wanted.5 The structures of fandom itself were seen as an alternative space to challenge social norms, a mindset that often

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.