Fandom, the Next Generation

253 Pages·2022·1.231 MB·English

by  Bridget Kies, Megan Connor

Fandom, the next Generation
Fandom & culture
Paul Booth and Katherine Larsen, series editors
F A N D O M ,
t h e n e x t G e n e r a t i o n
edited by Bridget Kies and Megan Connor
university of iowa press, iowa city
University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242
Copyright © 2022 by the University of Iowa Press
uipress.uiowa.edu
Printed in the United States of America
isbn 978-1-60938-833-1 (pbk)
isbn 978-1-60938-834-8 (ebk)
Design and typesetting by Ashley Muehlbauer
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in
any form or by any means without permission in
writing from the publisher. All reasonable steps
have been taken to contact copyright holders of
material used in this book. The publisher would be
pleased to make suitable arrangements with any
whom it has not been possible to reach.
Printed on acid-free paper
Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the
Library of Congress.
For the fangirls who came before us and for the fangirls of the future

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Bridget Kies and Megan Connor
Part one: reboots,
revivals, and nostalGia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
“I Ain’t Afraid of No Bros”: The Generational
Politics of Reboot Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Bridget Kies
Reopening The X-Files: Generational Fandom,
Gender, and Bodily Autonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Bethan Jones
Missing Time: Twin Peaks, The X-Files,
and the Rise of Aging Fans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Siobhan Lyons
Truly, Truly, Truly Outraged: Anti-Fandom
and the Limits of Nostalgia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Andrew Scahill
Part two: Generations oF
endurinG Fandoms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Like Father, Like Daughter: The Intergenerational Passing of
Doctor Who and Star Wars Fandom in the Familial Context . . . . . . . . . 57
Neta Yodovich
Examining Pop Music Fandom through a Generational Lens . . . . . . . .68
Simone Driessen
Looking Back, Looking Bi: Queering a Lifelong
Fandom of the Baby-Sitters Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Megan Connor
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Fandom: A Community of Cousins . . . . . . . .90
Cynthia W. Walker
Fans of Female Film Stars in Turkey: The Case of Türkan Şoray . . . . . 101
Yektanurşin Duyan
“I Named My Daughter Ripley”: Fan Gifting and
Internal Hierarchies in the Alien Fandom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112
Janelle Vermaak-Griessel
“The Power of the Jane Austen Fandom”: Bridging
Generational Gaps with The Lizzie Bennet Diaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123
Meredith Dabek
Part three: Generational tensions . . . . . . . . . . . .133
Star Wars Fans, Generations, and Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135
Dan Golding
Roads Go Ever On and On: Fan Fiction and Archival
Infrastructures as Markers of the Affirmational-
Transformational Continuum in Tolkien Fandom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Maria K. Alberto and Dawn Walls-Thumma
“Fannish Sensibilities”: Fissures in the Sherlock Holmes Fandom . . . 161
L. N. Rosales
The Fandom Is a Welcoming Place Unless I Know More
Than You: Generations, Mentorship, and Super-Fans . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Mélanie Bourdaa
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Introduction
Bridget Kies and Megan Connor
The NBC sitcom Friends premiered in September 1994 to lukewarm re-
views as one of many in “the horde of 20-something comedies crowding
the schedule . . . [where] most young people do nothing but drink coffee.”1
By its finale ten years later, Friends had become a global phenomenon with
over 50 million viewers tuning in. The series’ success continued in syndi-
cated reruns in the United States and other countries during and after its
broadcast. When streaming rights for the series were bought by Netflix in
2015 for the steep price of $100 million, some twenty years after the pilot
was first broadcast, it was breaking news, and many longtime fans celebrated
the opportunity to revisit the series on demand.2
Revisiting Friends, however, calls attention to how television has changed
dramatically since the mid-1990s. Apart from aesthetic developments, such as
the decline in popularity of the laugh track, many social values have changed
since the series’ original broadcast. A crowd-sourced article on Buzzfeed,
for instance, lists the many problematic aspects of the series, including the
male characters’ disrespectful attitudes toward women, the use of antigay
and transphobic jokes (most often directed at Chandler and his father), and
the lack of any long-running characters of color.3 Another long-standing
joke on the series was that the character Monica (Courteney Cox) was once
overweight. In fact, rumors that Cox had anorexia were common during the
series’ original broadcast, and Cox herself admitted in 2007 that she was
too thin on the show.4 As Geraldine DeRuiter puts it in an insightful blog
post, the series frames Monica’s fatness as a problem she must surmount
to find success in her career and love life, but the real problem isn’t her
size; it’s that viewers “were told that her joy, and self-confidence, that her
mere existence was something to be laughed at,” that fatness is reduced
to a punchline.5 By today’s standards, in which fat shaming is understood
as a harmful form of unacceptable bullying, there is a worldwide obesity
epidemic, and overweight celebrities like Lizzo are featured on the cover of
British Vogue, jokes about “fat Monica” seem woefully out of touch.
New generations of viewers can become fans of Friends thanks to syndi-
cation and the convenience of streaming, both of which help longtime fans