Andrea Week 9

What role does Hills (2004) suggest the fans play in the construction of cult TV? How is new media central to this?

Hills (2004) say audience is one of the three major definitions of cult TV. “Cult TV can be defined through an analysis of fan practices, and depends on fan activities.” Being a fan of cult TV, it is not enough to have passion. Fans should be able to “analyze and critically appreciate one’s favored text; and attempting to ward off negative portrayals of fan cultures.”

In Hill (2004), he claims that fans organize TV programmes into an “intertextual network.” Sure I found it is difficult to discuss a single programme, or a single episode of a series. Different from soap TV, without the references and comparisons, it is so hard to follow the progress of cult TV; fans self-consciously use the term ‘cult ‘to describe these networks of texts as distinctive; fans of what is termed cult TV have organized themselves socially into ‘appreciation societies’. (Hill, 2004)The fan may organize communities, websites to communicate with each other. “Fans also produce commentaries, fan fiction, episode guides and production histories that all work to sustain the distinctiveness of fandom as a community that read the “intertextual network” (Hill, 2004), he also points out that fans of cult TV create a market for memorabilia.

So fans play a very important role in the TV industry. The argument of the cult TV was created by fans rather than by media producer, but as Hill (2004) suggest, “TV studies should endeavor to avoid such a producer/ audience or text/ audience stand-off, attempting more adequate definitions of cult TV.” Because he says, “where theorists side either with texts or audiences, have haunted academic work on cult film.”

Reference

Hills, M. (2004). Defining Cult TV; Texts, Inter-texts and Fan Audiences, The Television Studies Reader, in R. C. Allen & A. Hill. London and New York: Routledge.