Page 52 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

Understanding and theorizing cultural change 43

to certain programmes or stars within the context of relatively high media
usage. The next place is occupied by the cultist, who builds on such attach-
ments to focus media and audience activities around certain key programmes.
It can be hypothesized that cultists will also tend to interact more directly with
those who have similar tastes. Their media activities provided a particular
focus for modes of social interaction. Enthusiasts tend to be more involved in
actual production of artefacts connected to their fan and cultic activities. The
now ‘classic’ studies of fandom such as those of Star Trek fandom, point to the
writing of stories and the making of videos and paintings (see, for example,
Bacon-Smith 1992; Jenkins 1992; Penley 1992). Two of the most significant
and recent discussions of fan processes have shown the need for further
sophisticated discussion of the individual, self and identity in this context
(Hills 2002; Sandvoss 2005). Sandvoss, in particular, draws on consideration of
narcissism as one starting point. Aspects of this important literature will be
further considered in Chapter 9 and it is clear that this is an area where further
research and recent literature have much to add. However, Sandvoss’s general
point is well made:
For all the attention to the social and cultural context of fan consump-
tion in the approaches to fandom discussed so far, the psychological
basis of the pleasures, desires and motivations that form the relationship
between given fans and their objects of fascination have remained
comparatively unexplored and under-theorized.
(Sandvoss 2005: 67)
Sandvoss explores three psychoanalytic approaches ‘on the motivations
and pleasures of fandom’ (p. 94): Freudian, Kleinian and Winnicott’s idea of
the transitional object (which is also of significance in Silverstone’s (1994)
work). While all these approaches are used in Sandvoss’s work there are prob-
lems with them that reveal the scope for an alternative account. He argues for a
theory of self-reflection, ‘as fans are fascinated by extensions of themselves,
which they do not recognize as such’ (p. 121).
Self-reflections are manifested on a number of levels; in fans’ failure to
recognize boundaries between themselves and their object of fandom, in
a range of identificatory fantasies of resemblance or imitation, and in the
construction of readings of objects of fandom that move from a charac-
terization of the fan text to the characterization of the fan him- or
herself.
(Sandvoss 2005: 121–2)
While, it may be argued, this suggests at least by implication a measure
of pathology, which I am sure is not the intention, it does offer ways of think-
ing that once combined with other accounts can contribute to an account
of how individuals are constituted and reconstituted in a media-drenched
society. It should also be noted that this goes beyond the theorization of fans,
as it can be argued that these processes have more general pertinence, as will be
explored.
The final point on the continuum is that of the petty producer who
is reaching the point where enthusiasm is becoming professionalized into a