Download Teens as fans

TEENS AS FANS
FMS 394:
Lesson 14
GUIDING QUESTIONS
What do we mean by “fans” and “fandom”?
How has teenagers’ fandom shaped film over
time?
How are different fan groups regarded by
mainstream culture?
What does the fandom surrounding the
Twilight saga tell us about teen audiences in
the 21 st century?
FANS AND FANDOM
 One of the most
common features of
discourses of fans and
fandom(s) is
pathologization.
 “The obsessed individual
or the hysterical crowd”
(Jenson, in Lewis, 1992).
 What separates “fans”
from other audience
members and media
consumers?
 Intensity and Activity
TEEN FANDOM AND THE CULTURE
INDUSTRY
 Discourses of fandom often infantilizing; teen fans dismissed.
 Rock music, but also film
 Rock and roll teen pics and Cleanpics
 In the late 1970s, teen boys facilitate the re -birth of the
“blockbuster”
 Star Wars
 In the early 1990s, teen girls demonstrate their box of fice
power
 Titanic
 In recent years male fandom is more legitimated with the rise
of “fanboys”
 Nerd culture
 Who is excluded from this? Is it really all that great to begin with?
TWILIGHT FANDOM AND CULTURE
 “When adolescent girls
flock to a group, they
are telling us plenty
about how they
experience the
transition to
womanhood in a
society in which boys
are still very much on
top.”
-Susan J. Douglas on The Spice
Girls in The Nation (1997)
CONCLUSIONS: TEEN FILM TODAY