Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth (Contemporary Ethnography) - Hardcover

Bacon-Smith, Camille

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812230981 ISBN 13: 9780812230987

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991

Synopsis

"Enterprising Women" is a study of the world-wide community of fans of "Star Trek" and other genre television series who create and distribute fiction and art based on their favourite series. This community includes people from all walks of life - housewives, librarians, secretaries and professors of medieval literature. They take settings, plots and characters from "Star Trek", "Blake's 7", "Miami Vice" and other science fiction and action-adventure series and modify the settings, rework the plots, create new characters and invent new interactions among old characters. The fiction and art that result from this recreation are published in magazines called "fanzines" and sold through an intricate network of conventions, word of mouth, cross-advertising and catalogues. All of the community's publications are underground and are not sold for profit. Using a theoretical framework drawn from ethnolinguistics, mass communications studies, literary theory, the sociology of play and feminist studies, and calling upon knowledge gained from years of observation and participation in the fan community, the author demonstrates how members of the community use their fiction and art to help them cope with real-life problems and to find support and comfort in the community.

About this title

About the Author:

By Camille Bacon-Smith

Review:

"Enterprising Women offers a picture of one of the few models around for female community and self-affirmation. Rather than accepting the passive female images and consumer values purveyed by most TV shows, women fan-fiction writers have adapted television to their own purposes."—Women's Review of Books

"Bacon-Smith's many years of skillful ethnographic research and lucid prose help nonfans understand the cultural and theoretical significance of the fan-produced fiction, artwork, and social relations that make fandom so cohesive and critically essential to its members. . . . Both males and females in communications, sociology, ethnography, psychology, and women's studies will benefit from this fine book."—Choice

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0812230981
• ISBN 13: 9780812230987
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352