As a feminist scholar (and fashion fan) I frequently find myself returning to the problem of the body. Traditional trappings of femininity like make-up and nail polish and “feminized” interests like dance, fashion, and romance offer the body as a site of creativity, pleasure, and identity play but also something that is monitored, shaped, and disciplined. The contributors to the “Bodies” section in Elana Levine’s edited collection Cupcakes, Pinterest, and Ladyporn: Feminized Popular Culture in the Early Twenty-First Century explores this tension by examining how pregnancy apps, fandom-centered fashion blogs, nail-polish blogs, and televised gospel performances all negotiate the complex intersections of technology, gender and embodiment.

That this section is called “Bodies” (plural) is significant, because–despite looking at very different media forms with disparate relationships to the idea of the body–all four pieces in this section explore an investment in how these media work to provide community for their users. Throughout the chapters in this section there were four key threads: an exploration of how these female-targeted media dealt with tensions inherent to the presentation of the female body, the way in which the imagined user and their investment effected the platform, how the technology interacted with these concerns, and the fostering of a female community around these technologies.

Community

In “Mothers, Fathers, and the Pregnancy App Experience” Barbara L. Ley lists the facilitation of a community of mothers (and to a lesser extent fathers) to-be as an important feature of pregnancy apps, alongside their prominent informational and organizational features. “Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance All Night! Mediated Audiences and Black Women’s Spirituality” by Beretta E. Smith-Shomade looks at how a community based around shared spirituality can share profound religious affective experience through the viewing of gospel and religious performance on television. My own chapter “Fashioning Feminine Fandom” touches on how fashion blogs organized around specific fandoms (Dr. Who, video games, or Disney for example) bring together a community of (mostly female) fans interested in expressing their fandom through sartorial engagement. Some of these communities have become significant enough to hold real-world meet-ups.

Michele White’s “Women’s Nail Polish Blogging and Femininity” also addresses the community dimensions of beauty blogs, exploring how they become spaces for not only creative expression but for communities that guide and support one other’s nail art. White notes that while these communities often discursively emphasize the creative elements of nail art, some advice-giving practices end up reinforcing more problematic gendered messages about the woman’s body as a constant project to be worked on towards a normative “ideal.”

Body Presentation

It is the discussion of the photographing of nail polish bloggers hands that seemed to evoke this disciplining of the female body in White’s work, as the quality of the nails themselves (not their designs) are evaluated. She found one blogger’s advice to others on how to photograph their nails so they did not appear “fat,” indicating that even when the goal was creative artistry it is difficult to present the female body without opening it to such scrutiny.

Similarly, Ley found that while pregnancy apps generally provided their users with helpful prenatal information, health advice, and tools, at times some of these tools, like weight and behavior tracking functions, had the potential to facilitate a similar scrutiny of the pregnant body. Ley, in her focus on reviews of these pregnancy apps, draws attention to a key issue in the analysis of feminized popular culture–the experience of the media’s actual users–when she notes that for most reviewers these trackers were not experienced as disciplinary but rather gave the users a sense of control and made some tasks easier. My chapter looks at how most fan-centered fashion blogs de-center a focus on the body altogether. Unlike the majority of fashion blogs, fan-centered fashion blogs generally present images of outfits without showing wearers of these outfits. Because there is no body being photographed, it is the use of clothing and accessories to express an interpretation of a media character that is evaluated as opposed to the appearance of a woman’s body, the fit of the clothes, etc. I also argue that fan-fashion blogs can function to unmoor characters from their embodied associations by interpreting macho super-heroes as prom outfits or hyper feminine Tinkerbell as athletic wear or androgynous jeans and t-shirts.

Here, removing the image or specific referent of the body allows this form of fashion blogging to play with fashion with minimal discussion of body type, weight, or evaluations of attractiveness. Smith-Shomade’s chapter emphasizes the possibility of the female bodies’ presentation outside of the contexts of objectification and surveillance by looking at how women in Gospel-competition television shows like Sunday Best present an embodied experience of faith that can be shared by viewers.

Technological Medium

Smith-Shomade considers the impact the television medium itself has on facilitating an intimate affective connection between the person performing on screen and the viewer allowing them to share an embodied spiritual experience. Here the media form–the television screen–can connect multiple bodies and spirits. Ley’s chapter mentions how the intimacy of the smartphone screen and its visualization of the fetus as separate from the mother’s body through the app can reinforce problematic political narratives about the fetus but also allows the user to “share” her pregnancy with others in a new way through its visualization on the device.

The contrast between White’s and my own chapters also show how the significance of the technological differences between the presentation medium chosen for each blog (posting a photograph vs. building a collage with Polyvore) affects the ways in which the female body is or is not scrutinized.

Thematic Focus

Finally, each contributor considers how the thematic focus of each platform under discussion shaped its relationship to gender and embodiment. For Smith-Shomade the emphasis on faith and spirituality structures the context in which both the viewer and the text present the female singers, understanding them not simply as performers to be scrutinized but as participants in a faith community in which these kinds of spiritual experiences present an important space for African American women to take part. I argue that the emphasis on fandom as the focus that shapes the bloggers’ creative engagement with fashion both allows for fashion blogs that emphasize creativity and interpretation and de-emphasize consumption and beauty paradigms while carving out a space for a femininity and female fans to connect in traditionally “masculine” fandoms gaming culture. Ley attends to this issue by considering how pregnancy apps often marginalize or diminish the role of the father in the pregnancy experience and assume a married, heterosexual, cis-gendered user base, which ultimately has ideological problems and consequences for the apps’ usability for some reviewers (like fathers).

These four threads provide only a glimpse into the pieces featured in the “Bodies” section of the anthology, but they illustrate the significance and complexity of the issues identified in these chapters.

Post by Mark Gallagher, University of Nottingham

This post continues the ongoing “From Nottingham and Beyond” series, with contributions from faculty and alumni of the University of Nottingham’s Department of Culture, Film and Media. This week’s contributor, Mark Gallagher, is an Associate Professor in the department. Today’s entry is the second installment in a two-part post, and resumes with the third point in a five-point diatribe. Part One of this two-part post appears here.

Avengers: Age of Ultron opens with a battle scene that recalls a comic-book splash page. But don’t be fooled.

3. As a magnet for fandom, superhero movies violate the implicit contract between producers and consumers. At the risk of bowing to nostalgia, I point to the letters pages of 1970s Marvel comics for their evidence of fan engagement and for editors’ own discursive efforts at artistic legitimation.

A Thongor fan weighs in on Creatures on the Loose‘s letters page.

On one side, consider the hair-splitting response of one 1973 letter-writer to Marvel’s horror-fantasy series Creatures on the Loose, a fan distressed with the company’s depiction of obscure pulp-lit creation Thongor of Lemuria. (You know, THAT Thongor of Lemuria.) “Thongor just does not sound like the Thongor I know and love,” writes the aggrieved reader, Brian Earl Brown, before lavishing praise on the (soon-to-be-cancelled) series.

Fandom is of course about returns on investments of time in the form of (sub)cultural capital. Brown’s implied engagements with neo-pulp novelist Lin Carter‘s 1960s Thongor stories licenses him to judge the adaptation’s fidelity, and to weigh in subtly on transmedia style considerations (by noting the difficulty of adapting Carter’s “deceptively simple and lucid style”). Still, as purveyors of fantasy adventure, pulp fiction and comic books appear complementary textual forms, and both in the realm of low culture, hence the letter-writer’s concern with fidelity rather than legitimation.

Soon enough, though, readers and editors did take to the front lines (or at least comics’ letters pages) to argue for comics’ place in the landscape of art. Consider in this respect Marvel editors’ own sympathetic response (also in Creatures on the Loose, in early 1974) to another reader’s losing battle to legitimate his favored leisure form.

More dispatches from the id on the Creatures on the Loose letters page.

Addressing the letter-writer’s experiences of being “ridiculed, scorned, pitied” and more, Marvel’s editors note not only that “college courses in the literature of comics are springing up all over the country” but also, prophetically, that “filmmakers are studying the techniques” of then-prominent comics artists. Uh-oh.

Fast-forward 40 years, to the present. With the question of artistic legitimacy either resolved or simply abandoned—either way, think pieces about the merits of “graphic novels” appear less commonplace in the current climate than in the 1980s and 1990s heyday of Art Spiegelman‘s Maus (1991) and Joe Sacco‘s initial dispatches from war-ravaged Central Europe—mainstream comic books and their cinematic offshoots may now lack the fundamental transgressiveness that lent them vitality in the 1960s and beyond. Thanks to longstanding distribution practices, comics remain a fundamentally niche product. Recent digital-distribution initiatives notwithstanding, for the past thirty years in the U.S., serial comics have been sold only in specialty comic-book stores, limiting their readership to those people who set foot in such stores. Yet by serving up this niche commodity in adapted form to all four key quadrants of the filmgoing population, rights-holders Disney and Time Warner deplete the subcultural capital of their properties and their readerships.

4. Superhero movies relocate film-industry resources from more original material and siphon talent from richer projects. Many people involved in superhero films’ production are doing the best work they ever will, which is a compliment or insult depending on one’s judgment of the finished product.[2] Others—particularly actors given the visible evidence of their work—appear to be squandering their considerable talents. Mark Ruffalo may use his Avengers paychecks to bankroll his political activism and to appear in films that make greater demands of his craft, but his normally prolific output slows to a trickle in the Avengers films release years of 2012 and 2015.

Elizabeth Olsen shows off her casting-a-spell pose on The Daily Show.

Elizabeth Olsen delivered an impressive debut performance in Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) but as the Avengers’ Scarlet Witch spends much of Age of Ultron frozen in a “I am casting a spell” pose (as she memorably demonstrated on a Daily Show appearance preceding the film’s release).

Scarlett Johansson has enjoyed a succession of compelling roles, but any bipedal runway model could just as well play her Black Widow character in the Iron Man and Avengers series given the role’s limited requirements. (#1: Look good in body-hugging outfit. #2: Talk sassy.) Is the sprawling Avengers franchise the price we pay to get Under the Skin (2013)? I hope not (but note to studios: please do give us another Under the Skin, even if you wouldn’t fund the first one).

Some actors—Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in the X-Men films (2000-2014), and Robert Redford in last year’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier—have benefitted from scripting that allows them to, in a word, act. Perhaps no one loses if Jessica Alba’s work in the 2000s Fantastic Four films (2005, 2007) prevented her from making Into the Blue 2, but certainly many people with talents in front of and behind the camera turn down other film projects in favor of the high visibility (and possible residuals) of tentpole superhero films. (Sure, I know too the scientists who could be developing the next Internet are instead hard at work on iPhone fart-simulation apps, but still.) Even those whose performance styles suit the material well can be ill-served. The Iron Man role, for example, limits Robert Downey Jr. to vocal and facial performance in support of his body double or CGI avatar’s screen image. He’s skilled at both but is capable of much more.

Age of Ultron literally gives Robert Downey Jr. little space to act.

5. Superhero movies pollute film discourse. Like Donald Trump’s Presidential candidacy, superhero movies appear a harmless diversion but actually refocus the cultural conversation in unproductive ways. As dreadful acronyms such as “MCU” and “Phase 3” (the latter meaning, “we’re determined to run this thing into the ground”) infiltrate entertainment discourse and popular consciousness, one might reasonably assume that superhero films represent some kind of high-water mark of contemporary cinema.

Many other high-calorie multiplex products occupy comparatively less intellectual real estate—the Transformers series (2007-2014), for example, does not excite viewers and commentators in the way recent superhero adaptations have done. To me, more than anything, a film such as The Avengers looks expensive. As a vehicle for directorial artistry, or acting talent, or narrative complexity—or for more expressly technical categories such as impressive cinematography, sound design and visual effects—it’s pretty unmemorable. Like most other Hollywood superhero films, its contribution to film economics is substantial, its contribution to film art is negligible, and its contribution to film culture is dare I say dispiriting.[3]

Make what you will of this lament from an aging white male who finds his cherished Rosebud replaced with a 160-horsepower Ski-Doo. And credit superhero films with managing to make even fare such as this summer’s Jurassic World—the “why not another one?” sequel to a calculated-blockbuster franchise that sprang to movie life in full bloat over two decades ago—appear fresh and original. But perhaps the violation I feel is instead resentment at receiving studio superhero behemoths at the wrong moment. After all, I thought Watchmen (2009) was one of the year’s best films—if the year was 1989. And Quentin Tarantino’s remarks in a New York magazine interview last month ring at least partly true for me:

The Black Panther’s first appearance, in a 1966 Fantastic Four issue.

I wish I didn’t have to wait until my 50s for this to be the dominant genre. Back in the ’80s, when movies sucked—I saw more movies then than I’d ever seen in my life, and the Hollywood bottom-line product was the worst it had been since the ’50s—that would have been a great time.

Still, this year, even de facto industry cheerleaders show signs of unrest. Media outlets trumpeting spotty opening-weekend performances for recent releases such as Ant-Man and Fantastic Four (both 2015) appear to exhibit exhaustion with the superhero phenomenon, and perhaps for oversized tentpole releases generally. As for me, I’ll start looking elsewhere for costumed characters onscreen, whether it’s the pleasingly ridiculous tussling models of Taylor Swift videos (de facto superheroines all, but sullying no previous creations), or better yet, the delirious art mutants who parade through Ryan Trecartin’s outlandish chamber dramas. Just keep me thousands of miles away from that Black Panther movie, because I like that character just fine in two dimensions, on yellowing newsprint.

[1] Preview of corrective coming attractions: for an international, and more level-headed, take on this trend in contemporary cinema, join us on September 24, when Nandana Bose contributes to this column with her analysis of recent Bollywood superhero films. For other recent, thoughtful takes on superhero films, head over to Deletion for its current “episode” on sci-fi blockbusters, and particularly to the entries from Liam Burke and Sean Cubitt.

[2] In this respect, I have only praise for the giant canvas afforded Sam Raimi for three Spider-Man films (2002-2007) and for Anthony and Joe Russo’s helming of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) as a 70s-style conspiracy thriller.

[3] Consult the comments section of this link for raves about The Avengers‘ rumored $260 million budget, which for many fans translates into sure-fire “epic” quality.

Post by Mark Gallagher, University of Nottingham

This post continues the ongoing “From Nottingham and Beyond” series, with contributions from faculty and alumni of the University of Nottingham’s Department of Culture, Film and Media. This week’s contributor, Mark Gallagher, is an Associate Professor in the department. Today’s entry is the first in a two-part post, with the conclusion appearing tomorrow.

As the 2015 summer movie season winds down, let this modest scholar now go on record as saying I hate superhero movies.[2] Clearly this is a headline-worthy news flash: another snobbish egghead rails against consumerist popular culture. Beyond trying to prove that such a view is at all novel or should matter to anyone, I have worked to develop some kind of empirically sound hypothesis, or at least a not totally argumentatively unsound one. What follows is a five-point screed (prevented by blogging convention from being a 500-point screed, though even this condensed rant may test the limits of readers’ patience). It’s no Defence of Poesy, but read on anyway.

1. Superhero movies repackage subcultural esoterica and sell it back to us in bloated, unrecognizable form. Or, speaking personally, movies such as 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man, the 2013 superhero sequel Thor: The Dark World, and this year’s repackaged Fantastic Four cynically monetize my childhood objects of wonder. Did the baby boomers, I wonder, feel this way when the 1960s were endlessly repurposed for later generations’ consumption? Maybe they found themselves in a warm cocoon of familiar pop cult as the world around them evolved, both in and not in their own image. As for me, when confronted with entertainment spaces and referents repurposing youth-centric popular culture from deep in the past century, I feel I’m inhabiting an adolescent dystopia far more disturbing than anything presaged in Lord of the Flies (1954) or Wild in the Streets (1968). Message to Paramount, Columbia, Fox, Universal, Warners and Disney (and of course, Marvel Studios): please stop.

Or if not, let the rest of us submit, with or without protest. Earlier this year, Ta-Nehisi Coates, award-winning journalist and student of systemic power imbalances, gave an interview to New York magazine published in print as “The Superheroes Won.” Coates flags up comics’ familiar selling points for progressives—Marvel has long had more than zero black characters, and even a Native American X-Man for five minutes in the 1970s—but says little about the grindingly market-centric logic now animating corporate rights-holders, or the fairly small slice of the population that actually reads comic books. (Sources indicate that comic-book sales have risen in recent years though still speak chiefly for and to white men.)

On superhero comics and films, Coates does make a plea for the unmoving image, arguing that “superheroes are best imagined in comic books.” He continues:

The union between the written word, the image, and then what your imagination has to do to connect those allows for so much. I always feel like when I see movies, I’m a little let down by the [digital] animation. […] Avengers movies will always disappoint me. X-Men [movies] will always disappoint me. […] I feel sorry for people who only know comic books through movies. I really do.

All the glitz of comic conventions in 1973.

I share Coates’ sentiments and would go further to address the ways this production trend infects larger constituencies, including film journalists and reviewers who labor to accommodate it. A popular coping (read: denial) strategy in this regard is to tune out corporatism in favor of ostensibly utopian fandoms. Reporting on this year’s consumer showcase Comic-Con (which not that long ago was a glamour-free used-collectibles bazaar), the New York Times‘ A.O. Scott remarks of comics and superhero culture that “What were once subcultural pursuits have conquered the mainstream.” He continues: “What was once a body of esoteric lore is now a core curriculum, and what was once a despised cult is now a church universal and triumphant.”

Would that I could join in Scott’s even-handed, or mostly celebratory, appraisal. Corporate product has undoubtedly spawned legitimate fan cultures that allow for myriad forms of self-expression and contingent identity formation. In moving comics materials from dispersed subculture to the center of a globalized monoculture, though, studios and their corporate parents dilute the artistic and political qualities that accompany subcultural production and circulation. The 2000s and 2010s wave of comic-book adaptations, particularly the as-yet inexhaustible roster of Marvel films both before and after the company’s 1999 acquisition by media giant Disney, sharply limits opportunities for creativity and imagination on the part of both producers and receivers. Ironically or not, superhero films’ outsize scales foster an inverse degree of imagination (though Dumb Drum‘s sweded trailers are pretty wonderful). Which leads into my second point…

2. Superhero movies distort the scale of their modest origins. At the time of Disney’s purchase of Marvel, Disney chief Robert Iger claimed that “Marvel’s brand and its treasure trove of content will now benefit from our extraordinary reach.” I don’t know if he then let out a maniacal laugh, or spoke those words in an ominous Darth Vader voice, but it sounded portentous to me. Five years later, the gifted, and highly opinionated comics writer-creator Alan Moore observed that “I found something worrying about the fact that the superhero film audience was now almost entirely composed of adults, men and women in their thirties, forties and fifties who were eagerly lining up to watch characters and situations that had been expressly created to entertain the twelve year-old boys of fifty years ago.” Moore muses further that “this embracing of what were unambiguously children’s characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence.” (An odd claim, perhaps, coming from a professed black-magic practitioner, but a notable point nonetheless.)

Moore’s charge could be leveled too at any film since the 1890s adapted from children’s stories, fairy tales, newspaper cartoons and more. Moore in this instance ignores comic books’ expanding audiences—comics were of course popular among soldiers in the 1940s and 1950s, and beginning in the second half of the 1960s, increasingly among university students and eventually graduates, to name just a few groups beyond preteen boys.

Still, his remarks indicate the degree to which a decidedly low-budget cultural form with discrete readerships became, in glossier cinematic form, not just legitimate but omnipresent. The Onion tweaked this emerging sensibility, and the increasingly recognizable figure of the Gen-X comic-book nerd, in the still-novel headline “Area Man Has Far Greater Knowledge Of Marvel Universe Than Own Family Tree” (a cautionary tale for those of us who also, like the article’s Area Man, can better gloss comics chronology than our family medical history).

Area Man’s pop-cultural literacy may now pay modest dividends in the form of semi-useless knowledge deployable in film consumption, though he may have to divest himself of any emotional attachments to familiar characters and storylines. Or for maximum outrage, he could curl up with Iron Man 3 (2013), which not only offered up the dismal cliché of a precocious orphan boy who helps our super-inventor hero get his mojo back after a first-act crisis but also tramples on the legacy of the armored character’s longest-running adversary, the Mandarin.

The Mandarin in his first appearance, in 1964.

Apparently not seeking to offend Chinese audiences with the Cold War Orientalism of the comic-book Mandarin—instead, it was superfluous scenes only appearing in the mainland-Chinese release that roiled audiences there—the filmmakers reimagine the character as a connotative Arab terrorist.

The film does not explain why this nowhere-near-Chinese foe would be called “the Mandarin,” but it matters little, as this Mandarin turns out to be nothing but a for-hire actor with no integrity. Perhaps Ben Kingsley—excuse me, Sir Ben—appreciated the meta-joke here. So much for the fiendish Mandarin as comics readers had known him, though.

Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin in Iron Man 3, styled as an Arab terrorist.

I don’t mean to suggest that textual fidelity is an essential criterion of judgment. In any case, film adaptations of comic books are not really comparable to serial comics anyway. Abundant film sequels aside, the recent wave of superhero television adaptations, such as Netflix’s atmospheric, psychologically-minded Daredevil (2015–) or the CW’s vigilante family melodrama Arrow (2013–), more closely match comics’ serial narrative form. As preconceived event movies, superhero films mirror the event comics Marvel and DC began publishing extensively in the 1960s—miniseries, giant-size issues, annuals that culminated epic serial storylines, and the like. Reviewing this year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron in Sight and Sound, Kim Newman reminds us that “these get-togethers feel like comic-book annuals or crossover events,” packing the screen (or page) with minor characters and subplots (most of which take us to other films or television series for completion, or help fill out toy-store shelves with expanded merchandise lines).

Why is Age of Ultron 141 minutes long? Not only because of its closing credits (clocking in at a mere 7 ½ minutes), but also because of its padding with character subplots that will continue in later films and TV series. Why does Thor depart mid-film for a bath in mystical waters? We may never know (or need to), though the film’s editing by committee and focus group apparently played some part. Even shortened from director Joss Whedon’s over-three-hour pre-release cut, the film’s surfeit of story compels viewers to search for explanations in other Marvel franchise film and TV output, if not diverting us back to the characters’ comic-book sources.

Comics fans have tended to read annuals more out of duty than enthusiasm, hoping for resolution of protracted storylines rather than nuance and narrative depth. Multiplex patrons may approach superhero movies with the same attitude, but lacking any extended-chronology alternative aside from derivative minor-character tie-ins such as ABC’s brand-named Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013–). Even this might be less objectionable than the parallel permanent-first-issue trend, with characters’ origins retold in slightly altered form with each successive reboot. (With the Fantastic Four’s 1961 first issue filmed three times since 1990 with ever-younger casts, I await 2022’s Fantastic Four Infants, with uniforms to match.)

The fundamental distortion of superhero films is one of scale. The superhero comic books of the late 1930s to early 1980s that form the basis for contemporary films (in the most recent vintage, last year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past adapts a 1980 storyline, and the Guardians of the Galaxy first appeared in comics in 1969, though last year’s film adaptation derives from a 2008 miniseries version of the group) were produced by small groups of men (and a handful of women) laboring over drafting tables in low-rent offices or spare bedrooms.

Action scenes in Avengers: Age of Ultron in comic-book splash-page style.

The comic-book Avengers in battle, as rendered by Don Heck in 1967.

Despite films’ occasional nods to comic-book compositions in action set pieces, a good deal more than the Benjaminian aura is lost when this artisanal work becomes the province of thousands of software technicians working in discrete teams on modular tasks. And back in comic-book world, Marvel now milks the long-ignored Guardians of the Galaxy characters for all they’re worth, with at least eight different spinoff comics series under way or announced. It’s hard to feel anything but cynical about this short-sighted franchise stewardship.

Return tomorrow for the gripping Part Two of this two-part post.

[1] For the record, I have given a lot of time to superheroes so can claim more than passing knowledge of the subject. If any value lies in asserting the depths of my interest, let me note that I am the proud owner of somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,000 comic books, including nearly all of Marvel’s 1970s output and beyond, and enough DC, Archie and indie comics to dampen my marriage prospects forever.

[2] This is not to say that certain forms of popular entertainment do not merit critical attention. I remain a proud contributor to the upcoming anthology The Many More Lives of the Batman (ed. Roberta Pearson, William Uricchio and Will Brooker, BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming). Stimulation and repulsion apparently are not mutually exclusive.

Fandom can either be a deeply lonely or incredibly connective enterprise, depending on what you happen to be a fan of. And expression of that fandom in a public forum has traditionally come with some element of risk. Increasingly, the fear of outing oneself as a fan of some phenomenon or other has dissipated as digital media enable an immediate dialogue between fan groups, and between fans and the objects of their interest (check out how Taylor Swift makes dreams come true!). What’s piqued my curiosity of late, though, is the way the podcast medium plays into fandom, as a venue that is tailor-made for delivery of content for incredibly segmented audiences.

Fan podcasts, or podcasts dedicated to discussing a specific cultural artifact, aren’t an especially new thing–The Whocast, made by and for Doctor Who fans, dates back to 2006. However, this single-serving podcast form seems to be having something of a moment. And oddly enough, much of this work seems to be coming from the comedy community. As a few examples, comedian Geoff Tate hosts a Cheers-themed podcast called Afternoon, Everybody! W. Kamau Bell and Kevin Avery launched Denzel Washington is the Greatest Actor of All Time Period last year. Kumail Nanjiani’s The X-Files Files is nearing its fiftieth episode. And Adam Scott and Scott Aukerman have spent two years on an on-again off-again project about their mutual love of the band U2, called U Talkin’ U2 To Me?

I want to talk a little here about U Talkin’ U2 To Me? partly because it’s probably the most listenable version of the fan podcast out there, even for those who can’t stand the nominal subject. The show isn’t really about U2 (except in certain moments, when it most certainly is), but instead uses the band as a platform to spring off into one diversion after another. Aukerman and Scott have managed to curate an entire world that revolves around their pop culture obsession, but only periodically dwells in it. A given episode of U Talkin’ is just as likely to include a 20-minute riff about Turtle from Entourage as it is to debate the relative merits of Rattle and Hum. The other reason to highlight U Talkin’ is that, in its latest episode, the hosts landed their dream guests: the four members of U2 themselves, whom they had the chance to interview in New York during the band’s run of shows at Madison Square Garden.

After the hour-plus interview concludes within that U Talkin’ episode (which is likely to be the series finale, seeing as it’s reached something of a natural conclusion), Aukerman discusses fandom at some length, noting the ability for large communities to gather around a single purpose and produce meaningful discussions about the work itself, forge connections with like-minded others, and generally have a good time. This is not an uncommon sentiment about fandom, certainly, and there’s a rare candor in Aukerman’s voice when he thanks all the people that reached out to talk about the podcast (fans of U2 or not) and what that connection means for him and Scott. The theme here remains on how this community helped to make a dream come true (meeting the band!) for Aukerman and Scott. And that’s where the platitudes and idealism of fan culture may need to be tempered a bit.

What goes unspoken here is that Aukerman and Scott’s experience with the object of their fandom is anything but common. It’s also an experience that’s predicated largely on their high status and cultural capital: their pre-existing industry connections and their own level of fame. The same is true for, say, Nanjiani, whose podcast tackles a different episode of Chris Carter’s sci-fi series in each installment. Nanjiani is accomplished as an actor, as well, and his X-Files love recently landed him a supporting gig on the forthcoming reboot. In a lateral example, we could even look at WTF With Marc Maron‘s recent booking of President Obama and the awestruck post-mortem episode that followed it. These are all high-status fans, and by privilege of access and talent have a much greater shot than the average fan to make these experiences happen. In a recent book, Barrie Gunter refers to the concept of “celebrity capital,” and it’s not much of a stretch to see a certain level of commodification at play here. It’s also a two-way street–we can see the benefits of exchange for U2 the band as well as for the U Talkin’ guys. Similarly, there’s some positive advance PR to be had for the X-Files in hiring an actor like Nanjiani who is a self-described “superfan” of the series.

I point this out not to say that Aukerman, or Scott, or Nanjiani, or Bell, et al. aren’t “real fans.” Listening to their work, it’s enlightening to hear the fun they have simply engaging with things they love. But they are definitely not ordinary fans, the kind who listen to these podcasts and enjoy them at least in some part because of the vicarious access they afford. The last two episodes of U Talkin’ are exhilarating. In the penultimate episode, the hosts detail their backstage encounter with two band members (including Bono’s offhanded acknowledgement of their enterprise, “We know more about you than you’d like”). Then there is the nervous, awkward, and ultimately charming interview with the whole foursome in the last installment. If we are to step back and reconsider this experience through the eyes of a couple of regular U2 fans, would the experience would even have registered as a cultural moment? Is it not part of the appeal that U2 themselves were thrust into a universe that had already been carefully constructed by a pair of media-savvy TV and podcasting veterans? (If you’re a regular listener, you’ll understand what a coup it was to get the band engaged in some of the many podcasts-within-a-podcast that Scott and Aukerman had established, like “I Love Films”).

Perhaps a broader discussion might lead to how these podcasts exist as entertainment products on their own terms, though it’s hard to disentangle them from their objects of analysis. Moreover, there’s a question on both sides of the microphone about what we want our celebrities to be, or perhaps just what we want to see in them. Maybe the success of this form comes not from engaging with the specifics of what the people we’re fans of are fans of. Maybe the appeal is in knowing they are fans, just like us.

[Note: This is the second of a three-part series highlighting some of Hannibal‘s unique contributions to the television world, in commemoration of its final week on NBC. See Part 1 here, and tune in tomorrow for the third installment. Finally, please note that this post contains spoilers through episode 3.9]

Throughout the series’ three-season run, Hannibal showrunner Bryan Fuller has asserted that he regards the show as fanfiction: an affectionate remix of elements from Thomas Harris’ novels Red Dragon and Hannibal Rising, as well as from previous adaptations of those works. Hannibal, then, is transparent about being one of many “proliferations of shared sources” that comprise the “metaphorical archive” of the fandom’s fiction (De Kosnik 119). In positioning the series as fanfiction, and he and his team as fanfiction writers, Fuller claims the identity and ethos of not just a fan, but a feminine-gendered fan, those most maligned and oft-mocked in many media depictions of fandom. With that ethos in hand, Hannibal-as-fanfic has chosen to intertextually and ardently acknowledge both the practices and the affect of its primarily female fandom—allowing Fannibals to see some part of themselves, of their fannish identity, reflected back with love from within the series itself.

Hannibal treats the repetitive nature of fanfic—stories that “play out” a multiplicity of variations of the same basic story—as a source of narrative strength: because in repetition, the series suggests, there is possibility (ibid). Within a fandom’s archive, as Will puts it: “Everything that can happen, happens. It has to end well and it has to end badly. It has to end every way that it can” (Hannibal, “Primavera” 3.2). The archive is always in the act of Becoming, and, as Abigail De Kosnik argues in “Fifty Shades and the Archive of Women’s Culture,” that ongoing evolution asks fans to repeatedly engage with the archive’s contents, old and new, and to determine for themselves which stories “satisfy, which . . . liberate, and which . . . alienate” (De Kosnik 120). In this way, fans perform a careful cultivation of their preferred variations of the narrative and sketch out their own corner of the archive—their “fanon”—which captures the story elements they most enjoy (ibid).

As fanfic—as a fan-authored text, albeit a network televised one—Hannibal openly acknowledges that it’s both a product of fannish cultivation and a participant in a wider ecology of fannish production. The events of episode 3.9, “…and the Woman Clothed with the Sun,” for example, underscore Fuller and company’s awareness of—and affection for—contributions that fans themselves have made to this shared archive during the series’ run.

In this scene, a reluctantly un-retired Will Graham is prowling the scene of the Tooth Fairy’s latest murder when he’s confronted by tabloid journalist Freddie Lounds. Will hasn’t seen Freddie years—since he pretended to kill her in order to impress Hannibal at the end of season two—but he’s clearly been keeping up with her work at Tattle Crime.

Will: I’m not talking to you.
Freddie: We’re co-conspirators, Will. I died for you and your cause.
Will: You didn’t die enough. You came into my hospital room while I was sleeping, flipped back the covers, and snapped a photo of my temporary colostomy bag.
Freddie: I covered your junk with a black box. A big black box. You’re welcome.
Will: You called us ‘murder husbands’!
Freddie: You did run off to Europe together.

GIF credit: http://televisiongif.tumblr.com/post/125603956066

What’s important here—aside from actor Hugh Dancy’s delicious facial expression—is that “murder husbands” is a fan-generated term, one that some Fannibals use to describe the gorgeous, gory relationship between Hannibal and Will. Specifically, describing the men as “murder husbands” underscores the deadly potential of their pairing, something explored with particular aplomb at the end of season 2, when Will not only pretended to kill Freddie but actually did murder one of Hannibal’s former patients—whom Hannibal had sent to kill Will. With Hannibal’s lethal cunning and Will’s own capacity for violence combined, some Fannibals believe that “Hannigram” could form a deadly power couple and wreak beautiful, terrible havoc.

While other TV series like the CW’s Supernatural have invoked fan-created names for slash ships within their diegesis, what makes Hannibal‘s move distinctive is that the way in which “murder husbands” was incorporated points to a canonization of not only fans’ terminology but also of the slashy interpretive practices from which it arose. That is, Freddie’s breezy response to Will’s frustration—”Well, you did run off to Europe together”—suggests that Fuller and his writers anticipated one way in which fans might interpret the pair’s adventures abroad during the first half of season three. Of course, the men didn’t really run off together—Hannibal fled and Will chased after—but Freddie, like many fans, reads that pursuit and their eventual reunion as romantic in nature.

Further, putting the term in Freddie’s hands seems utterly in character; after all, “murder husbands” makes for great copy. But she’s also spent a lot of time writing about Will and Hannibal: dissecting their relationship, giving their stories her own special twist, and even contemplating Will’s, uh, “junk”—in essence, Freddie makes a living doing female fannish work. Thus, in calling out the “murder husbands,” she acts as a savvy avatar for the series’ female fans.

Ultimately, the invocation of “murder husbands” doesn’t read as either a mocking of fandom or as red meat tossed to keep the Fannibals at bay, but rather as a meaningful incorporation of fannish practice into the diegetic narrative. The canonization of “murder husbands” reflects Fuller and company’s awareness that the shared archive of Hannibal fandom, of which the series is part, continues to evolve. By employing both fan terminology and interpretative practice within its narrative, Hannibal firmly positions both its own story and those of the Fannibals as co-equal parts of that archive’s transformative ecology.

In the context of the series’ cancellation, Hannibal‘s intertextual alliance with its fans is a source of hope a reminder that within the fandom’s archive, no matter what choices NBC makes, “Everything that can happens, happens . . . This is [just] the way it ended for us” (Hannibal, “Primavera” 3.2).

Post by Lauren Bratslavsky, Illinois State University

“You’re early. There’s an episode… houseguest arrives early and I’m unprepared.” Peg Lynch’s voice trailed off as she opened the door to let me in. At the time, she was 94 and still mentally composing episode plots for the long-ago radio and television program she created, Ethel and Albert. It was a show about nothing really: a miswritten phone message, a broken light bulb, a failed dinner party, and so on. I stumbled across her show when I was poking around my university’s special collections. I read some Ethel and Albert scripts and was amused. I researched what I could about the show, but was disappointed at the overall lack of information. I learned from the archivist that Lynch was still alive. I nervously called her up and asked her some questions about what it was like to work in radio and television, especially as a woman. Lynch didn’t think it was that special, or why anyone would care about her experience in the business, but she invited me to her home to meet her. I later learned this was one of her endearing attributes – that is, inviting people to her home and treating them lovingly as long lost relatives.

I was a bit stunned to see Peg Lynch’s obituary more than a week ago in The New York Times. I knew that her health had taken a turn for the worse and that this may have been the 98-year-old woman’s last leg. What surprised me was the fact of the obituary itself, which led to obituaries in Variety, LA Times, and elsewhere. It was not that Lynch didn’t deserve the lengthy write-ups and accolades of her work in radio and television; she was long over due for such recognition. I was amazed that her little-known career was finally gaining notice. For a few years now, I’ve queried radio fans and television historians whether they’ve heard of Ethel and Albert, which gained a nation-wide audience in 1944 to 1950, then a television audience from 1950 to 1956, and back to radio until the 1970s. For some, the characters rang a bell, but very few clearly recognized the show or Peg Lynch.

To be fair, there are many radio and early television programs that are obscure, and indeed unmemorable. What makes Ethel and Albert, and the later radio incarnation, The Couple Next Door, remarkable is that Peg Lynch created the show and wrote every single episode by herself and starred in both the radio and television versions. The only analog to Lynch’s creator-writer-actor career was Gertrude Berg. Berg’s career is well documented in the history books and broadcasting lore, most likely in part due to the notoriety associated with the blacklist as well as awards, as noted in her obituary. Lynch’s work, never touched by controversy or industry awards, became just one of the thousands of entries in program encyclopedias. Without mechanisms such as television syndication or lasting celebrity status, like that of Lucille Ball or Betty White, Lynch fell further into obscurity. Had it not been for an email sent by Astrid King, Lynch’s daughter, the New York Times most likely would not have picked up on the news of her passing. And then, write-ups of Peg Lynch, “a pioneering woman in broadcast entertainment,” would not have circulated as it did.

A page from Peg Lynch’s scrapbook, posted to her Facebook page.

Why is Peg Lynch’s career significant for radio and television history? While obituaries frame her as a pioneer, I think a more apt description is that she persevered in an industry that was constantly changing and predominately male. As outlined in her obituary and in far greater detail on her website, Peg started in radio as a copywriter in the early 1930s at a local, small-town radio station in Minnesota. When she asked for a raise that reflected her many responsibilities, which included such tasks as writing ad copy and a daily women’s program, she was denied. She quit and continued to work in different radio stations, making her way out of the Midwest and to New York City. All the while, she held on to her creation, Ethel and Albert, a middle-aged married couple who were known for their gentle and realistic bickering. She first pitched Ethel and Albert to NBC in 1944, who made her an offer but wanted 50/50 ownership over the rights of the show. Lynch walked way. Instead, Lynch secured a network deal around the time NBC-Blue turned into the ABC network. Someone at WJZ (NBC-Blue/ABC’s flagship station) got a hold of Lynch, offered her an evening slot and allowed her to retain full ownership. Ethel and Albert was not sponsored by one company, but rather was part of the co-op model of radio sponsorship. In 1946, Ethel and Albert was a short-lived test case for television at WRGB, GE’s experimental studio. Ethel and Albert remained on the radio until 1950, when Lynch was offered a real television opportunity: a ten-minute recurring segment on NBC’s The Kate Smith Hour. First, in 1953, NBC had Lynch turn her popular ten-minute segment into a half-hour network sitcom, sponsored by Sunbeam. Sunbeam dropped the live sitcom in favor of a different genre, the spectacular (as chronicled in Variety). CBS then picked up Ethel and Albert, sponsored by Maxwell House, as a summer replacement for December Bride in 1955 (an awkward promo for the switch over is on YouTube).

Despite decent ratings, CBS did not continue working with Lynch. I suspect this decision had something to do with I Love Lucy and CBS not wanting to have two programs featuring bickering couples, even if Ethel and Albert were far more subdued and realistic than Lucy and Desi. ABC aired Ethel and Albert’s final television run, which was sponsored by Ralston Purina (Chex cereal and dog food). The show ended in 1956, at another transition moment when sitcom production moved from New York to Hollywood and from live to film. As Lynch recounted in her oral history (available through the University of Oregon’s Special Collections), there was talk of moving the show to Hollywood, but she preferred to stay on the East Coast. And really, she was tired of the weekly pressures to write new episodes while rehearsing and performing live. After television, she did some commercial work. Oddly enough, Lynch went back to radio, penning a near-copy of her original creation but under the title, The Couple Next Door for CBS Radio. Lynch had a couple more runs on the radio in the 1960s and 1970s, specifically on NBC’s Monitor and then NPR’s Earplay. With the last radio show in 1976, titled The Little Things in Life, Lynch’s long broadcast career ended.

The story of Peg Lynch can serve as a sort of public service announcement to those of us who toil in archives and seek out broadcast history’s margins. Two points in particular come to mind: the materiality of broadcast’s forgotten histories and the active role we play in shaping the use and availability of the material record. First, echoing Laura LaPlaca’s recent Antenna post, if we focus on all that is gone (and resign to the fact of this lack), then we overlook “the broadcast archive’s extraordinarily expansive physicality.” Lynch’s creative output is indeed physically available, even if mentions and critiques of her work are largely absent from our histories. The initial radio and television broadcasts were ephemeral in the sense that they were live broadcasts, moments of popular culture that began and ended in their programmed time slots. But there is a whole swath of materiality that exists in various forms and locations. There are the paper materials that Lynch saved throughout her career: scripts, letters, and a few other paper materials. Lynch’s mother compiled news clippings, photos, and various correspondence into scrapbooks. Decades after the height of her career, Lynch received an invitation to establish an archival collection at the University of Oregon in 1969 (how and why that happened is a whole other story), so all those scripts, scrapbooks, and paperwork are open for research (and soon, there will be more).

Throughout the 1970s and well into the 2000s, the physical meetings and tape-swapping of old time radio fans sustained the memory and the audio record of Ethel and Albert and The Couple Next Door. The fan conventions seem especially crucial in the age before the internet, as in, a time before old time radio websites posted shows and interviews. The conventions, and later on, the fan websites, fostered networks of old and new fans (Lynch loved her fans and her fans loved her). Even more material records exist now that we can search databases of digitized trade publications (like this article in Radio and TV Monitor, written by Lynch about the benefits of marital bickering, that is available on Lantern). References to the production side of Ethel and Albert certainly exist in the vast NBC corporate archives. The audio tapes exist in physical form and circulate digitally on the web. And the live television program? Those exists, too. Nearly every episode was filmed on a kinescope, which Lynch owned and now safely reside at the University of Oregon.

Which brings me to my second point: As radio and television scholars, we participate in recirculating the canon as well as seeking out new examples that corroborate or challenge existing histories. Just the very act of taking an interest in a little-known program or writer can help broaden the scope of broadcast histories or refine particular stories, such as the case of a little-known woman who was among the very few people to create, write, and star in her own show. The Peg Lynch Papers at the University of Oregon had been mostly dormant since they arrived decades ago. The archivists had various priorities in their immediate purview – the limited resources in such an institution necessarily limits which donors to follow up with in their twilight years. Thus, active interest from a faculty member or a researcher can help call greater attention to little-used or little-known collections, especially those collections whose creators are still alive. Those kinescopes of every episode? Up until two years ago, those were under Lynch’s couch and in cabinets in her home. After my first visit to Lynch’s home, I told the archivists about my visit, including the films and the fact that Lynch was still relatively lucid and had stories to tell. I’m sure that those kinescopes, as well as more papers, audio tapes, and ephemera would have made it to Oregon, thus joining the rest of Lynch’s collection. But the oral history? The personal relationships? The chance to participate in a collective nudge to ensure the preservation of a so-called ephemeral broadcast history? That probably would not have happened without some active participation and good old phone calls.

We can celebrate all that has survived, while prodding to discover what else exists. And we can continue to draw from the canon, while interrogating the wealth of materials that exists in the hopes of broadening and refining our histories. So long, Peg.

Post by Patryk Galuszka and Blanka Brzozowska, University of Lodz

This post is part of a partnership with the International Journal of Cultural Studies, where authors of newly published articles extend their arguments here on Antenna.

Until recently crowdfunding mostly drew the attention of economists, who attempted to measure the efficiency of this new form of financing, and lawyers, who discussed its regulation. Viewing crowdfunding from the perspectives of cultural and media studies not only enhances our understanding of the phenomenon, but also has the potential to make a contribution to research into the relationships between artists and fans. However, crowdfunding poses quite a challenge for researchers. For one thing, there are several models of crowdfunding, each assigning different roles to project initiators and contributors. It is reasonable to assume that not all of an estimated number of over 1,000 platforms worldwide are clones of Kickstarter. In addition, artists’ statuses are different–we should take into account that the process of crowdfunding conducted by a star with a global following will take a very different form than a collection effort initiated by a debutant who in the beginning can count only on him or herself and family and friends.

MegaTotal (see Figure 1), the crowdfunding platform that is the subject of our analysis, operates according to a different model from that of Kickstarter.

Figure 1. MegaTotal.

The most important difference between MegaTotal and Kickstarter is the application in the former of investment mechanisms resulting in people who support popular projects receiving a return on their investment. In practice, this means that each and every payment (except for the first) is subdivided into two equal parts, where one part goes to the project initiator and the other is distributed among earlier contributors in proportion to their participation in the project (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Flow of capital between contributors and project initiators on MegaTotal. Each contributor’s payments and equity stake is represented by different color. Contributor 1 captures part of the funds paid by all the other contributors. Other contributors correspondingly enjoy proportionally lower capital flows. Source: The rise of fanvestors: A study of a crowdfunding community, by Patryk Galuszka and Victor Bystrov. First Monday, Volume 19, Number 5 – 5 May 2014

In effect, every contribution increases the account of the project, but also determines the position of the backer on the list of project “shareholders” (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. List of shareholders in this project

The flow of resources takes place in real time, which means that “profits” are transferred to the accounts of contributors in the service the moment the given project attracts successive contributors. As a result of this mechanism, contributors have additional motivation that is not present in donation-based and reward-based crowdfunding.

It may be said that crowdfunding incorporates qualities originating on a base of fan activity, such as claims to the rights to artist’s work and the striving to influence its development as derived from that right. Such qualities, however, presently go beyond the framework of fandom and mold a new dimension of consumer culture as such. Regardless of whether contributors can be termed as fans or not, analysis of crowdfunding should take into account the possibility of their active participation in the process of creating a culture product. What is being discussed is a phenomenon that is perhaps not totally transforming the production system (at least not at this time), but is presently decidedly behind a change in relations with consumers and an understanding of the role of the artist as such. The assumption that the currency of crowdfunding is the emotional involvement of consumers–not just their attention attracted thanks to efficient promotion–means that the new model cannot be easily compared to any standard whose foundation is the traditional marketing model.

Artists must find themselves within this new situation and simultaneously see the promotional and distribution potential of crowdfunding. To quote Ted Hope, advocate of America’s independent cinema movement and Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society:

To survive and flourish, today’s artist/entrepreneurs–and those who support them–must all embrace practices that extend beyond the core skills of development, production, and post-production of their art and work–and even reach beyond the attention and practice of marketing and distribution.

Our interviews with musicians who use MegaTotal support that argument. Crowdfunding requires that the project initiators themselves have specific aptitude and change their approach to the process of creating, promoting and distributing culture products. This corresponds very well with the argument that today artists (and those who do not engage in crowdfunding) are required to embrace entrepreneurial skills. Those artists who find this approach problematic should probably stay away from crowdfunding.

It should be noted that the character of the change taking place is more one of awareness than technology. This creates a new division among creators, negating the traditional one onto mainstream (a model in which the artist is passive and the label/publisher/studio divests him or her of freedom, but in exchange concerns itself with distribution and promotion) and “indie” (a model in which the artist is more active and fights for his or her independence, but often at the cost of a lack of publicity and counting on the loyalty of fans). The new division, though dictated by digital technology, primarily necessitates assimilation by artists and acceptance of a new attitude. The statement may be risked that the greatest potential in the development of independent creativity is actually hidden in this new model for promotion and distribution based on close contact with the consumer. It is thanks to the consumer that texts from the realm of “indie” can reach a significantly larger audience without losing anything of their “independent” character.

[For the full article, see Patryk Galuszka and Blanka Brzozowska, “Crowdfunding: Towards a redefinition of the artist’s role – the case of MegaTotal,” forthcoming in International Journal of Cultural Studies. Currently available as an OnlineFirst publication: http://ics.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/05/11/1367877915586304.abstract]

Post by Elana Levine, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

This is the third in a series of posts on my use of digital tools for a television history project. See part 1 and part 2.

Many of the digital research and writing needs I have been discussing in previous posts might apply to any historical project. Anyone who is grappling with thousands of sources in multiple formats might find data management and writing software useful to their task. But the work of managing audio-visual sources is more specific to media history. Television historiography, in particular, can be especially challenging in this regard, for series television includes episode after episode and season after season of programming — a lot of material for any researcher to take on.

In the case of my history of American daytime television soap opera from its beginnings in the early 1950s to the present, I face a task even more daunting than most TV history, for the genre I am studying has run 15-minute, half hour, or hour long episodes each weekday, 52 weeks a year, with individual series continuing this schedule for more than 50 years. Of course there is no way to watch all of it, or even to sample it in some representative way. Much of it no longer exists, for all soaps were broadcast live initially and many of those that started to be shot on video in the 1960s did not preserve the episodes — producers erased the tapes on an established rotation schedule. As far as I know, no public archive anywhere has all of the episodes of any US soap, although some of the shorter-lived ones do exist in complete form in the hands of media distribution companies or fan collectors. Fan archivists have preserved and uploaded to user-generated streaming video sites a massive amount of their private collections, taped off-air from the beginnings of the home VCR era to the present — there is more than one researcher could ever consume from the post-‘80s era alone.

But my point here is not to marvel at the voluminous output of soap creators and soap fans (although, wow!), nor to lament the disappearance or inaccessibility of so much of this crucial form of American popular culture (although, what a loss!). Instead I’d like to explain what I watch and, more specifically, how I watch, for that is entirely dependent on digital tools.

For the past 7 years, I have been integrating the viewing of past soap episodes into my daily routine. My choices of what to watch have been directed largely by availability. Other than episodes I have been able to see in museums and archives, my viewing has been focused on the limited numbers of soaps I have access to otherwise, of which I have tried to watch as many episodes as are available. Because I have been a soap viewer since the early 1980s, I have been less concerned with seeing programs from my own viewing history, although I am gradually integrating more material from the user-generated streaming archive over time. Instead, I have focused on the one soap that has been released in its entirety on DVD, Dark Shadows, and on soaps that have been rerun in recent years on cable channels, mostly the now-defunct SOAPnet, and on the broadcast network, RetroTV, which is carried primarily by local affiliates’ digital sub-channels.

In addition to daily reruns of just-aired soaps, SOAPnet reran select past episodes from a number of programs, but also aired a full run of ABC’s Ryan’s Hope from its 1975 debut through 1981 (the show aired originally until 1989). It also reran several years’ worth of Another World episodes from the late 1980s and early ’90s, and Port Charles’ telenovela-style 13-week arcs of the early 2000s. There have been other such instances, as in Sci-Fi’s rerun of Passions’ first few months in 2006. These repeats began airing around 2000, so I started recording them well before I was actively working on this project. As these repeats aired, I saved them first to VHS and then, once I abandoned those clunky old tapes, to DVD. DVD is a poor archival medium. But when I started doing this there were not the digital recording and storage options we now have. As with many other technological tools, what I did worked for me so I kept doing it.

I’ve watched much of this material over the past 7 years and am watching more every day. The recent addition of RetroTV’s rerun of the Colgate-Palmolive NBC soap, The Doctors, beginning with the late 1967 episodes, has further contributed to my archive. But how I do my viewing is where I employ digital video tools.

The author’s two-screen work set-up.

Because most of my episode archive is on DVD-Rs I have burned over the years, my process is to convert these DVDs to mp4 files. Software like Handbrake accomplishes this on my Mac, as did the now-defunct VisualHub. For content I access through user-generated streaming sites, I use downloading software, some of which is available for free online. I also use iSkysoft iTube Studio for its ability to download from a range of different such sites, and to convert those files to iPad-ready mp4s. Managing the files through iTunes, I transfer them to my iPad in week-long viewing chunks, moving them off my limited-capacity first generation iPad after I watch. This multi-step process can be a bit cumbersome, but it achieves some key goals that have allowed me to watch a lot of content over time.

One goal was that my episodes be viewable in an off-line and mobile capacity to increase my ability to watch any time and anywhere (such as airplanes and my community fitness center gym, which did not have wifi until the past few years). Another goal was for the episodes to be on a screen separate from my main computer screen not only for portability but so that I could multitask as I watch. My pattern for years has been to watch three episodes of half-hour soaps or two of hour-long soaps each working weekday. Skipping commercials, this means spending 1–1 ½ hours of my day watching. I rarely take the time to do that in a concentrated way. Instead, I watch the episodes each day while dealing with email or other lower-attention work tasks, and in a host of other times when I find pockets for viewing — doing my hair, making dinner, cleaning a bathroom, waiting for a kid to fall asleep — these, I assure you, are all excellent times to watch soaps. I also watch at the gym and occasionally in the living room, with earbuds, when someone in my household is watching something else (e.g., Teen Titans Go!) on the “big” TV.

I take notes on the shows when I notice revealing moments (in DevonThink), but daytime soaps were not made for one’s full attention at all times. They are excellent at using audio and video cues to signal narrative significance. When I was watching Dark Shadows (perhaps the slowest of the soaps despite vampires, werewolves, and time travel) I knew exactly when to pay close attention because of the predictable music cues. Each of the soaps I watch has its own such patterns, which I have picked up through my regular viewing.

The work of television historiography is distinct in multiple respects, but surely the volume of content one might consider is especially notable. While watching the programs one studies is a central part of our research, cultural studies has helped us to understand that processes of production and reception are equally significant. Still, this de-centering of the text may be puzzling to those more accustomed to traditional forms of cultural analysis. For my soap research, my often-partial attention to the text has become an unintentionally revealing experience. I’ve come to understand my viewing as the 21^st century digital version of the 1960s housewife glancing back and forth at the set as she irons, starts dinner, or moderates between squabbling siblings, an experience hilariously portrayed in a 1960 TV Guide Awards sketch. There may be no more fitting research strategy for a TV genre that has long served as a daily companion to its audience’s lives.

On April 12, 2015, Freddie Gray was arrested, and on April 19, 2015, he died in the hospital from severe spinal injuries. While it is unclear just how Gray sustained spinal cord injuries while in police custody and why he was arrested in the first place, it is clear that Baltimore police officers failed to get Gray the medical care he needed. Freddie Gray’s death has sparked protests in Baltimore as people question, critique, and protest the continued killings of unarmed black people at the hands of police in Baltimore and across the US.

But what has emerged differently in the protests and discussions around Baltimore is the contradiction between The Wire’s widespread popularity (1.8 million likes on Facebook) and the comparatively small support for the protests in honor of Freddie Gray (thousands protesting in the streets of Baltimore).

In other words, why hasn’t The Wire, which showed us how structural racism and an abusive police department defines black life in Baltimore, translated into collective social action? Why are there only thousands in the streets? Where are the millions of fans of The Wire? And why aren’t they supporting black folks in Baltimore?

My dissertation research provides at least a partial answer to that question. Examining cases of fan-based citizenship (including activism, volunteerism, and political participation), I investigate how we connect popular culture to political participation in a way that invites collective action. Through cases across television, movies, books, and sports, I find that fan-based civic appeals take significant community work and rhetorical work—that is, popular culture media almost never leads directly to collective action on its own. Like any social activism and community organizing, it takes hard work, coordination, deliberation, and discussion. It makes sense then that without a group of fans of The Wire emerging as leaders, providing organizational groundwork and constructing arguments that invite us to see The Wire as connected to our lives today, we see little collective action emerging as a result of The Wire fandom.

Protesters and supporters have pointed out another part of the answer as to why fans of The Wire are not at the protests in large numbers. They explain how the racism of our media industry and culture discourage audience civic action:

As audience members, we are invited to consume a narrative of black suffering. The show invites us to be consumers first and foremost, complicit in the structural racism that undergirds the media industry and our own everyday lives. The bad news is that this is widespread. The good news is that we don’t have to accept this situation as permanent. We can change how we, as fans, engage the story of black suffering on The Wire. We can shift from consumption to solidarity. Of course, we will need to counter cultural scripts, norms, and discourse to do it. But such change is possible, and quite frankly, desperately needed.

We can find a model for this kind of work in the Harry Potter Alliance’s (HPA) Darfur campaign. Through two podcasts and a series of blog posts, the HPA argued that the Harry Potter story called Harry Potter fans to take action to end the Darfur genocide by calling government representatives, divesting from companies implicitly funding the genocide, and donating money to Civilian Protection. On the surface, the story of Harry Potter would seem to have little to do with Sudan, genocide, and geopolitics in Africa (and it would certainly seem to have much less in common with Sudan than The Wire has with the Freddie Gray tragedy and resulting protests). But through sophisticated arguments that connected Harry Potter characters and values to the crisis in Sudan, the Harry Potter Alliance made the Sudan genocide relevant for Harry Potter fans.

The HPA made this argument by drawing connections between Lily Potter (Harry’s mom) and the mothers in refugee camps. By connecting Lily Potter with Darfuri refugees, the HPA a) helped fans understand the lives of women in the camps and b) transferred importance from Lily to refugees, giving fans a reason to take action. Protecting Darfuri refugees became a way to honor and protect Lily Potter.

Andrew Slack uses Lily as a way to understand the risk and sacrifice Darfuri refugee women are taking. In the second Darfur podcast, HPA co-founder Slack says, “we’ll be talking about people like Lily Potter in our world, mothers in Darfur who continue to risk everything to protect their children.” In November 2007, the Janjaweed militia were continuing to circle UN refugee camps, killing any men and raping any women who ventured outside of the camp. The HPA explains that refugees were forced to leave the relative safety of the UN camps in order to gather firewood nearby. Slack explains that, despite knowing they will likely be raped when they leave the camp, Darfuri women choose to take the risk so that they could feed their families. The HPA compares Lily’s demonstration of motherly love to that of the Darfuri women’s. Lily too made a sacrifice for Harry, protecting him from Voldemort’s deadly power. Lily also becomes a reason to take civic action. PotterCast co-host Sue Upton says in the podcast, “What better way to show our love for Harry Potter than to stick up for the women in this world who are doing the same thing for their children just as Lily did for Harry.” Protecting women in Darfur becomes a matter of showing respect for Lily Potter and showing one’s love for Harry Potter. Through the campaign, the HPA helped fans see intervention in the Darfur genocide as a public issue that was both relevant and important.

We can never know exactly what it is like to be another person. But we can stand in solidarity with them. The HPA demonstrates how we can translate a commitment to Harry Potter to a commitment to action to intervene in genocide, and it offers lessons for how we might translate a commitment to The Wire into participation in protests in Baltimore.

Indeed, popular culture media holds great potential to show us new things. And fan commitments and identifications hold great potential to push us to take action. Fans are powerful. But failing to connect The Wire with protests in honor of Freddie Gray represents a missed opportunity—one that we, put frankly, cannot afford to miss.

Miss Packnett calls us to take action:

Freddie Gray is not Dukie. But we must love Freddie Gray like we loved Dukie. We must help write a Season 6 through our protests and actions that create a safer, fairer, and more just Baltimore for black folks. #BlackLivesMatter.

Hello Again fanzine cover, May 12, 1974,

Post by Eleanor Patterson, University of Wisconsin-Madison

In 1971, radio fan Sal Trapani published an open plea in the old-time radio fanzines Epilogue and Hello Again to organize and support a convention for “golden radio buffs.[1]” Epilogue’s editor George Jennings added a note under Trapani’s piece, writing, “we are reaching a stage of development in the collecting of old radio where there should be enough interested parties to support the convention theme.” Indeed, by the early 1970s, fandom surrounding classic network era radio had exploded. Local “Old Time Radio” (OTR) fan clubs existed in many major cities, including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Buffalo, San Francisco, and others. Several prominent fanzines and newsletters produced for OTR collectors were being published and distributed. Many fans were producing fan shows that rebroadcast classic recordings of radio from their collections on local public, college, and commercial radio stations.

In October, 1971, the first radio fan convention was held in New Haven, Connecticut. Initially titled the Society of American Vintage-Radio Enthusiasts Convention, it would later be called the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention in 1976. While scholars like Elena Razlogova and Matt Hills have written about radio fandom, this area of scholarship has been largely ignored in critical media audience studies. I find this oversight even more surprising in the case of OTR fans, because their community has existed at least since August 26^th, 1956, when the Radio Historic Society of America (RHSA) joined together to trade tapes. The fan community continues to have a strong presence both online and in larger cities. This post is part of a larger research project, in which I intervene in radio history to consider the formation of a radio fan community that circulated residual radio from the classic network era.

Collecting radio as a hobby really began to take off in the United States in the late 1940s, when the post-war consumer electronics market expanded with hi-fidelity sound technology and a community of amateur audiophiles emerged. American hobbyists began the widespread collection of radio recordings after the introduction of magnetic tape reel-to-reel home recording equipment in the late 1940s by companies like Ampex and 3M. This small but engaged subset of the hi-fi culture used them to record programs off-air, reformat from transcription discs to tape, and/or duplicate programs from other hobbyists’ recordings. Radio collecting was very much a bootleg culture, because most radio producers never commercially released radio recordings. This is especially true for the genres radio collectors valued most, the popular drama, comedy, variety, horror, and science fiction programs that enjoyed long serialized runs via network or syndicated distribution- shows like Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar (which remains one of the most downloaded classic radio show on The Internet Archive). The lack of any official catalog or episode guide for collectors, in addition to the nature of obtaining radio recordings over the air or on the black market, made this collecting a collaborative bootleg culture.

Certificate sent to fans who joined the first official OTR club, the Radio Historical Society of America, which existed from 1956 – 77.

OTR fans have not, for the most part been productive in the tradition sense within fan studies. They did not poach elements from their favorite radio shows to produce their own fan fiction, fan vids, fan art, songs or other original fan media texts.[2] Certainly, OTR fans were very productive in the extensive amount of fanzines that were published, often at home using a mimeograph machine. Over OTR 10 fanzines emerged between 1966-1980. However, as Richard Belk notes, even the act of collecting is an act of production, because as they actively and selectively acquire objects for their collection, “Collectors create, combine classify, and curate the objects they acquire in such a way that a new product, that collection, emerges. In the process, they also produce meanings.[3]” I see OTR fan labor in building radio collections production in four specific ways.

First, their work is productive in acquiring radio recordings from disparate sources and bringing them together in their collections as archives of complete series. Fans tracked down recordings from radio producers who had been active in the classic radio era; they knocked on doors of local radio stations, taped broadcasts off the air, and even some were rumored to have stolen recordings from the networks archives in New York. The work collectors did amassing and circulating recordings introduced popular culture to radio as a physical object that could be collecting, exulted, and replayed on-demand at home. Second, OTR collectors created in-depth episode guides, known as “logs” within the OTR culture. This process included spending hours doing research in a local libraries’ microfilm, reading newspapers and radio magazines from the network era, and listening for clues in the broadcasts themselves. Third, OTR fans duplicated sound recordings. Fans experimented with DIY hi-fidelity sound recording practices, making equalizers, adjusting tape speeds, and experimenting with tape brands to reformat and improve sound quality. The labor invested in augmenting radio recordings’ sound quality through duplication and technological modification created essentially new sound recording artifacts. Lastly, OTR fans were productive in the meanings that emerging surrounding classic radio in a post-civil rights, post-women’s liberation movement era. Fanzines like Collector’s Corner and Hello Again published editorials and articles that debated whether programs like The Lone Ranger or Amos ‘n’ Andy are racist. Think-pieces on historical significance of female radio personalities like Agnes Moorehead or all-female radio stations like WHER of Memphis illuminated the often invisible history of women in radio. As OTR collectors debated and discussed the cultural significance of classic radio, they produced new affective relationships with these radio programs, while also establishing interpersonal relationships with each other.

The work of collectors unearthing, historicizing, and improving the sound of radio recordings resulted in the development of an unofficial archive of radio programs. Hilmes [4] has noted the critical neglect to radio’s artistic legacy by the broadcast networks, U.S. governmental archives and institutions of memory and culture, and by academics created an environment in which current practitioners and audiences are not aware of U.S. radio history. Considering this, and the absolute dearth of any official centralized radio archive during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s in the United States, radio fans’ collaborative work created an unofficial archive that made broadcast recordings available to the general public. Today, radio fans upload their collections to websites like The Internet Archive, and have donated their collections to the Library of Congress, where students, scholars and others have access to radio programs produced in the classic network era. Considering the complete disinterest of the original producers and networks in preserving these recordings, scholars and newer OTR fans are certainly indebted to work radio collectors did in the mid and late twentieth century preserving (and often improving the sound quality of) our radio heritage.

[1] Sal Trapani, “Convention?” Epilogue, Spring 1971, 13.

[2] Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, (New York: Routledge, 1992).

[3] Richard Belk, Collecting in a consumer society, (London: Routledge,1995), 55.

[4] Michele Hilmes, “The lost critical history of radio,” Australian Journalism Review, 36(2), 11 -22.