"FILM ART" AND FANDOM
This aspect of fandom moves closer to the scholarly appreciation of film, since treating film as art and dignifying certain directors with "authorial" or auteurist status is a strategy that has historically characterized film studies, and that still retains more than a foothold today. So-called "auteur theory" was initially employed solely by intellectuals and cinephiles seeking to value film as a medium, and although it carried cultural cachet, it was also accessible enough for nonacademic audiences to appreciate (Taylor, p. 87). Moving from being an exclusive/elitist view of film held by French cinéastes, auteurism entered the US scene and became popularized to the extent that Hollywood incorporated its discourse into its own publicity. Auteurism is no longer just a critical approach, but also a commercial strategy for organizing how audiences may respond to film texts. Uniting filmmakers, scholars, publicists, and fans, the notion that certain privileged directors are artists has tended to create and sustain aesthetic personality cults around them. This type of "personality cult" also has been significant to certain organized fandoms, such as those surrounding offbeat, sleeper, quirky, and classical Hollywood films labeled "cult movies." These organized fandoms have tended to use auteur theory as a means of claiming to find artistic value within the terrain of independent film.
One of the most significant cultural activities undertaken by film fans, then, is the way in which they seek to invest the work of their preferred performers and directors with cultural capital, setting their tastes against what they perceive and construct as mainstream cinema. However, such an apparent detachment from "the commercial" is itself commercial, since these fans are still placed within a specific market. Though this is related to the debate over fandom's resistant capability, it can also be viewed as a matter of film fans' cultural practices. Cult-film fans seek to defend and value their favored texts, but by doing so they also hope to reflect their own aesthetic taste, for they can see "true" artistic worth where general audiences cannot. Such fan audiences' bids for distinction are especially clear in relation to genres that are frequently devalued in "dominant" film criticism, such as "trash" and exploitation cinema. Mark Kermode argues that horror fans actively perceive the genre's aesthetic value, whereas nonfans passively consume horror as if its representations are actual rather than aestheticized images of gore; he offers a convincing opposition between "active" fans who read horror films in relation to surreal genre precedents and "passive" nonfans who are characterized as reading horror films more naively.
In Kermode's account, horror fans are, crucially, "genre literate." Like fans of other genres or specific movie stars, they are expert consumers, able to trace generic histories and interpret new films in relation to countless preceding examples. This type of movie fan has a keen sense of intertextuality; thus, boundaries around "the text itself" tend to be partly dissolved by fans who,
SEE ALSO
Auteur Theory and Authorship
;
Cinephilia
;
Cult Films
;
Journals and Magazines
;
Reception Theory
;
Spectatorship and Audiences
;
Stars
Abercrombie, Nicholas, and Brian Longhurst.
Audiences: A Sociological Theory of Performance and Imagination
. London: Sage, 1998.
Barker, Martin, and Kate Brooks. Knowing Audiences: Judge Dredd—Its Friends, Fans, and Foes . Luton, UK: University of Luton Press, 1998.
Dyer, Richard. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society . London: British Film Institute, 1986.
Fiske, John. "The Cultural Economy of Fandom." In The Adoring Audience , edited by Lisa A. Lewis, 30–49. New York and London: Routledge, 1992.
Fuller, Kathryn H. At the Picture Show: Small Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture . Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.
Hills, Matt. Fan Cultures . London and New York: Routledge, 2002.
Jenkins, Henry. "Reception Theory and Audience Research: The Mystery of the Vampire's Kiss." In Reinventing Film Studies , edited by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, 165–182. London: Arnold, 2000.
——. Textual Poachers . London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
Kermode, Mark. "I Was a Teenage Horror Fan, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Linda Blair." In Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate , edited by Martin Barker and Julian Petley, 57–66. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.
Klinger, Barbara. "Digressions at the Cinema: Commodification and Reception in Mass Culture." In Modernity and Mass Culture , edited by James Naremore and Patrick Brantlinger, 117–134. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Meehan, Eileen R. "Leisure or Labor?: Fan Ethnography and Political Economy." In Consuming Audiences?: Production and Reception in Media Research , edited by Ingunn Hagen and Janet Wasko, 71–92. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000.
Sanjek, David. "Fans' Notes: The Horror Film Fanzine." In The Horror Reader , edited by Ken Gelder, 314–323. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
Stacey, Jackie. Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship . London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
Staiger, Janet. Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception . New York: New York University Press, 2000.
Taylor, Greg. Artists in the Audience: Cults, Camp, and American Film Criticism . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Barker, Martin, and Kate Brooks. Knowing Audiences: Judge Dredd—Its Friends, Fans, and Foes . Luton, UK: University of Luton Press, 1998.
Dyer, Richard. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society . London: British Film Institute, 1986.
Fiske, John. "The Cultural Economy of Fandom." In The Adoring Audience , edited by Lisa A. Lewis, 30–49. New York and London: Routledge, 1992.
Fuller, Kathryn H. At the Picture Show: Small Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture . Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.
Hills, Matt. Fan Cultures . London and New York: Routledge, 2002.
Jenkins, Henry. "Reception Theory and Audience Research: The Mystery of the Vampire's Kiss." In Reinventing Film Studies , edited by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, 165–182. London: Arnold, 2000.
——. Textual Poachers . London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
Kermode, Mark. "I Was a Teenage Horror Fan, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Linda Blair." In Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate , edited by Martin Barker and Julian Petley, 57–66. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.
Klinger, Barbara. "Digressions at the Cinema: Commodification and Reception in Mass Culture." In Modernity and Mass Culture , edited by James Naremore and Patrick Brantlinger, 117–134. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Meehan, Eileen R. "Leisure or Labor?: Fan Ethnography and Political Economy." In Consuming Audiences?: Production and Reception in Media Research , edited by Ingunn Hagen and Janet Wasko, 71–92. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000.
Sanjek, David. "Fans' Notes: The Horror Film Fanzine." In The Horror Reader , edited by Ken Gelder, 314–323. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
Stacey, Jackie. Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship . London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
Staiger, Janet. Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception . New York: New York University Press, 2000.
Taylor, Greg. Artists in the Audience: Cults, Camp, and American Film Criticism . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Matt
Hills
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