CMST 3K03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Participatory Culture, Reality Television, Moral Authority
22 Oct 2017
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Document Summary
Fans and fandoms, and their relationship to official or mainstream culture: growing antagonism btwn producers and audiences. Reappropriation of marginal or undervalued subcultures within popular entertainment and commercial mass culture. Mass culture serves to depoliticize and distract the public from more urgent social and political concerns. Transforms audience into non thinking autonomous viewers oblivious to world around them. Scardaville : fan protests, petitions saved critically acclaimed but ratings challenged tv series like x files and roswell in their early seasons, audiences can assert their will. Other series that ended up cancelled like freaks and geeks aired more eps than would have been possible without fan intervention. Still other series, like futurama, family guy, arrested development, and gilmore. Girls have been revived after cancellation thanks to efforts on parts of fans: reboots and extensions b/c of fan devotion. Fans of cancelled soap operas like another world and one life organized lengthy letter-writing campaigns and even staged protests outside television studios.
