Cult Collectors

Lincoln Geraghty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136474309
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

Cult Collectors examines cultures of consumption and the fans who collect cult film and TV merchandise.

Author Lincoln Geraghty argues that there has been a change in the fan convention space, where collectible merchandise and toys, rather than just the fictional text, have become objects for trade, nostalgia, and a focal point for fans' personal narratives. New technologies also add to this changing identity of cult fandom whereby popular websites such as eBay and ThinkGeek become cyber sites of memory and profit for cult fan communities.

The book opens with an analysis of the problematic representations of fans and fandom in film and television. Stereotypes of the fan and collector as portrayed in series such as The Big Bang Theory and films like The 40 Year Old Virgin are discussed alongside changes in consumption practices and the mainstreaming of cult media. Following this, theoretical chapters consider issues of gender, representation, nostalgia and the influence of social media. Finally, extended case study chapters examine in detail the connections between the fan community and the commodities bought and sold.

Topics discussed include:

• 
  
  

• The San Diego Comic-Con and the cult geographies of the fan convention
• Hollywood memorabilia and collecting cinema history
• The Star Wars franchise, merchandising and the adult collector
• Online stores and the commercialisation of cult fandom
• Mattel, Hasbro and nostalgia for animated eighties children's television

PART I

Stereotypes

1

CONTESTING COMIC BOOK GUY

Stereotypes of the Nerd, Fan and Cult Collector in Film and Television

In a 2008 article called “Wired’s Geekster Handbook, a Field Guide to the Nerd Underground” published online and in its magazine Troy Brownfield describes six types of geek, with their characteristics and beliefs outlined in a dating profile style list. Repeating most and updating some of the common nerd/geek stereotypes, Brownfield’s target audience would not find these particularly unfamiliar considering the magazine’s youthful tech-savvy readership and own staff. The article came with a photo that depicted the six types of geek: the fanboy wearing a Green Lantern T-shirt; the music geek with ear phones; the gamer holding a Wii remote; the gadget guy with a jacket full of convenient pockets; the hacker sporting a hoody; and the otaku dressed in a Japanese school girl outfit. Descriptions matched with images underline the ubiquity of cultural stereotypes but also the increased attention geek culture (as it is mediated in Wired and on screen) is receiving in the mainstream media. Such attention is not missing within academia either. Gary Hoppenstand, in an editorial called “Revenge of the nerds” in The Journal of Popular Culture, champions The Big Bang Theory (2007–present) for having “struck a responsive chord in its audience, giving hope that nerds have become at least an interesting topic for Mr. And Mrs. Average American” (2009: 810). Similarly, J.A. McArthur argues that “the transition from geek-as-sideshow freak to geek-as-intelligent expert has moved the term from one of insult to one of endearment” citing computer software designers and the founders of Google and Facebook as having brought geeks positions of power, wealth and respect in the cultural mainstream (2009: 61). Both pieces point to a renaissance in representations of nerd and geek culture and a renewed interest in nerd and geek texts in popular mainstream media.

Perhaps equally revelatory is the 2011 article by Patton Oswalt, again in Wired magazine, that warns of this geek revival. Suggesting now that everyone can claim some form of connection to nerd culture, displaying their fandom of a cult or mainstream text with similar techno-savvy gusto, nothing remains unpopular – even what was once loved only by a select few. He blames this phenomenon on the Internet and the increased access people have to images and texts from the past. As I have argued in the introduction to this book, old media texts are remediated and fans are able to again celebrate their favourite shows and icons from yesteryear. Oswalt appears to believe this is a backward step in the development of popular culture, threatening the very fabric of what it means to be a fan:

Now, with everyone more or less otaku and everything immediately awesome … the old inner longing for more or better that made our present pop culture so amazing is dwindling … Etewaf [Everything That Ever Was – Available Forever] doesn’t produce a new generation of artists – just an army of sated consumers.

Not wanting to repeat some of the issues I raised regarding negative conceptions of nostalgia and fan consumption in the introduction, I quote Oswalt here because his article’s whole thrust is seemingly based on the premise that the one true image of a fan/nerd/geek is that they are a minority, they should be seen as a special “other”, a group with special knowledge to enjoy and unlock the potentials of obscure texts that “normal” people can’t. This mirrors Brownfield’s Geekster Handbook, where he suggests there are six types of people who display characteristics one would not normally find in mainstream culture. What is troubling about both these articles is that in order to defend fan culture (albeit fans as part of nerd/geek culture) the authors are arguing for some kind of special status – or least to recognise special qualities in the character types. However, this unintentionally confirms to readers who might not ordinarily identify themselves in such ways that fans are a minority group, who value the unpopular and culturally obscure, and are solely defined by these stereotypes. Lumping fans with the nerd/geek paradigm also means the one remains entirely contingent upon, and connected to, the other.

I argue in this chapter that by separating the nerd stereotype from that of fan culture, we might get a better understanding of the personal, social, and cultural meanings involved with being a fan. Having a fan identity is important and so film and television that emphasise this, even only in part and using humour to do so, are instructive and necessary for the circulation of positive representations. They remind us that popular media texts play significant roles in the construction of said identities and therefore should be celebrated for doing so. As a consequence, I wish to examine a range of popular stereotypes of the nerd and fan circulated in the media, reappraising and reclaiming some of those that encapsulate the meaning of fandom. I contend that media representations of fan collectors are useful in that they remind viewers that fandom is a form of consumption, but consumption does not just mean consuming for the sake of it. Collecting is an active and discerning process that relies on many of the same strategies and processes fans employ in poaching and creating new texts. The collection can and should be read as a text and therefore the examples discussed in this chapter are illustrative of the productive and transformative processes that being a fan entails.

Freaky Fans

Stereotypes are often powerful mechanisms used to label and objectify people from various social, national, racial, and ethnic groups. Their dissemination through contemporary media is tied to the production of meaning and the pervasiveness of fear of the unfamiliar and the unknown in an increasingly global society. However, while stereotypes are used to construct an image of the other, they more often provide the first and most illuminating insight into how we see ourselves. Therefore, stereotypes help in the construction of identity, both the identity of the group being stereotyped and the individual or group who create and make use of the stereotype. Through language and the media we get a sense of who we are in opposition to those who we think we are not. The formulation of different types of people and social groups in our minds, or them, creates stereotypes that we use to help unify concepts about us. So, stereotypes may be harmful, often degrading, offensive and simplistic in their representation of the other but they are important components in the process of social identification. For Richard Jenkins, “Identity” denotes “the ways in which individuals and collectivities are distinguished in their relations with other individuals and collectivities”; “Identification” is “the systematic establishment and signification, between collectivities, and between individuals and collectivities, of relationships of similarity and difference” (2004: 5). Taken together, similarity and difference are the principles of identification, and are at the heart of the human world. Stereotypes, therefore, contribute to this since identity is our understanding of who we are and who other people are, and, reciprocally, other people’s understanding of themselves and of others (which includes us).

Taking this into account, we can understand the continued creation and circulation of stereotypes of fans and fandom in the media as signs of how groups within society are continually rearticulating and reasserting what it means to be a fan. Read this way, I would suggest that while some media representations of fans and associated fan practices stereotype them as “sad”, “weird”, “nerdy”, “freakish” and “juvenile” (or any other derogatory label fans have had applied to them) this merely highlights the fact that those who mediate such stereotypes are themselves trying to comprehend and justify their own identity as a fan. Or, more simply, we are all fans of something – and the repetition and intensity of fan stereotypes demonstrates that some people have not quite figured out what they are fans of. In many ways my argument about fan stereotypes is mirrored in Henry Jenkins’s recent appraisal of fan studies in the updated anniversary edition of Textual Poachers (1992, 2013). He asserts that, “Fan studies offers us some important glimpses into the ways that everyday people are adjusting to changes in the media landscape … As such, fan studies could be a key for understanding current debates about globalization, offering a somewhat more optimistic picture than generalized accounts of cultural imperialism” (Jenkins in Scott, 2013: xl–xli). Alongside our changing conceptions of fan studies, then, we should also reassess the representation and remediation of fan stereotypes to reappraise that shifting and ever-changing sense of the self in the media world.

Taking a holistic view of the past twenty years in fan studies we can appreciate the continued significance of fan stereotypes in that Jenkins uses the most famous, the William Shatner “Get a life” sketch on Saturday Night Live in 1986, as the platform to begin his seminal work on fans as poachers. The stereotype of the nerdy, basement dwelling Star Trek fan – unable to discern real life from what appears on the television screen – has not only permeated popular culture for nearly as long as the history of the series, it has become the ultimate stereotype from which all fan studies scholarship post-Jenkins has tried to distance itself. Subsequently, any and all recent media texts that have depicted fans and fan practices (whether well meaning and popular, fan-made or Hollywood) have been discussed in ways that proclaim their negativity and harmfulness. These discussions thus try to correct the stereotype rather than understand the necessary actions that have brought about those representations in the first place. So, for example, in Suzanne Scott’s interview with Henry Jenkins there is an assumptive connection made between the “Get a life” fan stereotype from 1986 and more recent media that depict fans, such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) and The Big Bang Theory. In one of Scott’s questions to Jenkins, she suggests that there is little difference between said representations and Jenkins’s answer implies that both examples still display and reinforce old stereotypes to the detriment of creating “an alternative conception of what it might mean to be a fan” (Jenkins in Scott, 2013: xv). Yet, what this exchange ignores is that both media texts (as I shall go on to explore later in this chapter) do conceptualise what being a fan means and what constitutes having a fan identity. That these films “trade in stereotypes” points to the fact that they are engaging with and depicting elements of how individuals are adapting to a changing multimedia society.

The popularity of media texts like The Big Bang Theory has reignited debate over the pathologising of fan behaviour. Joli Jenson describes how excessive fandom has been seen “as a form of psychological compensation, an attempt to make up for all that modern life lacks” (1992: 16). Negative stereotypes of adult fans as pathological others, who have not grown out of childhood, still form the bedrock for scholarship on contemporary fan representations. Fans, critics and academics alike have viewed the representation of Sheldon Cooper in particular as problematic since much of the comedy that stems from his character is based on his total lack of social skills and over-obsession with fan texts. For Monika Bednarek, Sheldon is “styled as someone who fulfils all the stereotypical character traits of a nerd/geek as well as some others that are shared with particular psychological conditions”, ranging from “arrogance, obsessive-compulsive and Asperger-like behaviour” (2012: 223). Indeed, the other characters on the show, also depicted as “geeks” or “nerds”, often deride Sheldon for the extreme behaviour he displays above and beyond their own circumstances. So, while The Big Bang Theory is seen as a positive show in that it creates a space in mainstream popular entertainment for fannish celebration, it negates that by reasserting stereotypes that audiences will recognise from the history of fans in film and television – namely, the antisocial “nerdish” fan. However, since The Big Bang Theory is a result of the popular media entertainment industry, should it be a surprise that those stereotypes are recirculated and rearticulated for a contemporary audience? Indeed, Bednarek does recognise this in her linguistic study of the series: “Like other media texts it thus both shapes audience stereotypes and is shaped by mainstream stereotypes in a reflexive relationship … The stereotypical styling of others is clearly tied to the production of entertainment” (2012: 223–4). This point perhaps helps to contextualise Larry Gross’s argument that “representation in the mediated ‘reality’ of our mass culture is in itself power” (1989: 131).

Such an evaluation of the series is clearly related to wider considerations of the fan stereotype and its relationship to how we understand ourselves compared to others and the social world we live in, as I have already outlined. For psychologists Martha Augoustinos and Iain Walker, stereotypes underlie the basic form of social representations and thus, I would argue, are important components in how fans communicate with other fans and interact with the social world around them.

Stereotypes are social representations: they are objectified cognitive and affective structures about social groups within society which are extensively shared and which emerge and proliferate within the particular social and political milieu of a given historical moment … They are social and discursively constructed in the course of everyday communication, and, once objectified, assume an independent and sometimes prescriptive reality.

(Augoustinos and Walker, 1995: 222)

One of the redeeming features of The Big Bang Theory for some critics is that it does have a dual address; that much of its humour lies in an in-joke that only the fans of particular media texts might recognise. Yet, what this admission of praise highlights is that there is recognition of social representations and therefore stereotypes are important in communicating that piece of knowledge or in-joke to those fans that will understand and appreciate it. The Big Bang Theory should then be considered a fan text that demonstrates what it means to be a fan and what being a fan in a world where “nerd” or “freak” stereotypes exist is really like. This concept applies to any of the fan representations discussed by Jenkins and others but I would stress that with each example there will be variations in the accuracy of the textual practices on display and differences between the levels of fan devotion exemplified by each character.

Academic literature that has focused specifically on the stereotyping of fans in film and television almost all evaluate representations of fan behaviour through the lens of the “nerd” or “geek”, but none really separate the actions and practices of the “nerd” or “geek” from that of being a fan. Thus the two social groupings become conflated and the stereotype of the “nerd” as that which inevitably entails an obsessive and enthusiastic appreciation of a media text like Star Wars or Star Trek becomes endemic. Indeed, Bednarek argues in her analysis of The Big Bang Theory that “Identities such as nerdiness are constructed through semiotic practices that include more than language but may also encompass hairstyles, clothes and accessories, activities, musical performances and other values” (2012: 224). However, her assertions exclude the word fan in this instance (in fact her entire article minimises the term fan in preference to “nerd”) and thus also lack recognition of the fact that being a fan of something means all of the above and more. Perhaps one step on the road to deconstructing the fan stereotype, while also recognising its importance and positive value in constructing a fan identity, is to detach it from the various and, I would argue, inherently different representations of the “nerd” found in popular media.

Nerds as Fans

Stereotypes accentuate elements of what it means to be a fan that correspond to the multiple and varied definitions of fandom offered by scholars. Those definitions also contribute to how we might understand and critique depictions on screen. For Nicholas Abercrombie and Brian Longhurst, media audiences can be categorised in one of three ways: “fan, cultist (or subcultist) and enthusiast, who are members of fandoms, cults (or subcultures) and enthusiasms” (1998: 138). These types are part of the same continuum and involve production and consumption. The authors describe “fans” as heavy media users, “particularly attached to certain programmes or stars … individuals who are not yet in contact with other people who share their attachments” (1998: 138). If a connection exists, it does so only on the level of consuming “fannish literature” or within “day-to-day contact with peers”. I find this description troubling in that it appears to be the very definition of fandom displayed in certain representations of fans (“Get a life” for example) and appears to emphasise, at the simplest of levels, that fandom is simply a mode of lone consumption. The term fan is thus diminished in favour of the next one on their continuum, the cultist.

Abercrombie and Longhurst view cultists as more the typical fan than the word fan actually involves, specialising in particular types of media and focusing their efforts on creating networks of other cultists who share their passion for a text: “Cultists are more organized than fans. They meet each other and circulate specialized materials that constitute the nodes of a network” (1998: 139). Whilst clearly seeing value in the nature of the cultist as a social person, the authors are by association denigrating the work of the previously defined fan because it is carried out in isolation – thereby again confirming the stereotype that fans in isolation are somehow not doing it right and are thus deviant in their detachment from the wider cultist community. Here, we might read the problems typically ascribed to the representation of Andy Stitzer as a 40-year-old toy collector living on his own in The 40-Year-Old Virgin as being framed by the notion that audience consumption has to happen in a cultist community or else the fan is a mere lone consumer, not actively engaged in sharing materials within a network. A point perhaps visualised in that the only group he seems to feel comfortable in the presence of is his toy collection which he displays all about his house. The celebration of “arrested development” in middle-aged fans is played up in this movie according to Henry Jenkins (Jenkins in Scott, 2013: xv), but what is more worrying is that Abercrombie and Longhurst appear to locate being a fan as part of childhood (1998: 138) – associating mere fannish consumption with pre-adolescence and immaturity. So, in effect, the stereotype of the fan as childish, underdeveloped and living in isolation is embedded in a scholarly definition which other media merely replicate in their depictions of fandom.

Prejudices against fans as consumers working in isolation continue in descriptions of Abercrombie and Longhurst’s “enthusiast”. Those audience members that share enthusiasms do so “based predominantly on activities rather than media or stars” and being located within a community means activities are typically focused on the production of new media texts intended for circulation amongst other enthusiasts (1998: 139). Consumption only exists for the benefit of the community, and the production of alternative texts in opposition to those made by the entertainment media industry is perceived as having more value. Here we see the definition of the fan enthusiast merge with that of the textual poacher, as outlined by Henry Jenkins, who is engaged in the organisation of their enthusiasm via a struggle against those who might take it away or change it. Fans, in this sense, “draw strength and courage from the ability to identify themselves as members of a group of other fans who shared common interests and confronted common proble...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Cult Collectors: Nostalgia, Fandom and Collecting
• Part I Stereotypes
• Part II People
• Part III Places
• Part IV Spaces
• Bibliography
• Filmography
• Index