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analysis of homeless fans of the movie Die Hard is challenged by Kellner (1997), since such
fans’ “resistance to social authority...could serve to strengthen brutal masculist behavior.”
Scodari (1998) refutes Brown’s (1994) claims concerning female soap fans by
demonstrating that other subjectivities, such as age or race, can rupture their solidarity.
Kellner (1997) cautions that “resistance and pleasure cannot...be valorized per se as
progressive elements of the appropriation of cultural texts,” and that “difficult
discriminations must be made as to whether resistance, oppositional reading, or pleasure in
a given experience is progressive or reactionary, emancipatory or destructive.”
Another issue is the labor involved in maneuvering against the grain. Condit (1989,
p. 109) asserts that there is a “greater work load imposed on marginally situated audience
groups” which can have a silencing effect. Scodari and Felder’s (2000, p. 253) study of the
online culture of “Shippers,” X-Files enthusiasts who advocated a romance between the
series’ protagonists, demonstrates that active fans can become frustrated when the degree
of pleasure and empowerment they glean is insufficient to justify the time and effort they
expend “correcting” the given text to their benefit. Let us now turn to assertions made in
some existing studies of the fans of science fiction and fantasy television.
The Story So Far
Early examinations of fan-authored fiction written mostly by women and based in
science fiction (and other) screen texts savor the academic discovery of the phenomenon,
properly designating it a creative and/or active process mitigating the passive consumption
of hegemonic mass culture (see Russ, 1985; Lamb & Veith, 1986; Penley, 1991; Bacon-
Smith, 1992; Jenkins, 1992). Jenkins (1992) summoned DeCerteau’s (1984) concept of
“textual poaching” in characterizing fan fiction (fanfic) and other practices. However,
Scodari and Felder’s (2000) study ascertains that some claims of resistance made in this
prior research have been overstated. The very act of fans creatively laboring to adjust
commercial texts to their interests is remarkable, but their particular adjustments and/or
Convention