Weeks 9/10 Cult TV

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

The fan of cult television plays a pivotal role in the longevity and status of a series. What a show like Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer may have lacked in wider audience and network funding certainly made up the difference in cult followings and fan base.

Hills (2004) reinforces the fan role in cult television by going on to assert that it is the fine balance between premeditated construction and an enthusiastic fan base that firmly plants a TV show in this category. He asserts that siding with one or the other is overly simplistic and the nature of cult TV is hardly that. Jostein Gripsrud is quoted in Hills (2004) as defining fandom as the point “when an enthusiasm for a cultural object or other… takes on a totalising, defining role in people’s lifestyles and identities.”  

It seems that the Cult Television Phenomenon is not a phenomenon at all, but rather the planned execution of a series that fits the criteria of a production worth writing fan fiction about.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer achieves cult status by taking advantage of both industry television criteria and the fan collective. New media plays a patent role in the fan sphere by continuation the active and enthusiastic relationship outside the one hour a week viewing time. This can be seen in the omnipresent cult TV fan presence online and in the world of fan-zines, comics and conventions. Starting at the ubiquitous Facebook page, the manifestations of fandoms ‘fan out’  from  there; fan sites, episode guides, production histories, appreciation societies, fan fiction, e-bay memorabilia stores and so on, all of which is true for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It is use of new media formats linking fans beyond their living rooms that are developing the inter-textual characteristics of Cult TV.

We can conclusively argue that despite large followings and subscribers, it is the fan base and following via new media fields that make Cult TV a sub-genre of Western popular culture, as opposed to a series falling into a clearly defined genre of its own doing.