Roberta Pearson

Fandom in the Digital Era

This essay traces the profound impact of the digital revolution upon fandom, looking particularly at debates within the fan and acafan communities. It argues that fans have always been at the forefront of media industry transformations, summarizes some of the common themes emerging in the debate, and considers the wider implications for the reconfigured relationships between producer and consumer in the digital economy.

‘I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere’?: The Holmes Franchise at the Centre and the Margins

This chapter argues that the Sherlock Holmes character has occupied a central position in popular culture for over a century, but has been relegated to the margins of media studies by the external and internal forces that structure the field’s research. Why do we hear of Sherlock everywhere in the media but, until very recently, have heard of Sherlock almost nowhere in media studies? And what can answering this question tell us more generally about the margins and the centre of media studies? The chapter first establishes Holmes’ centrality to popular culture and marginality within media studies. Using media studies’ marginalisation of Holmes as a case study, it then considers the forces that determine scholarly research and outputs; first those exerted externally by the publishing and higher education sectors and second those exerted internally by media studies scholars’ preferences and assumptions.

A white man’s country

Writing in 1991, Michael Kammen stated, ‘For more than a decade now, the connection between collective memory and national identity has been a matter of intense and widespread interest’. Kammen’s examples, ranging from Brazil to several Eastern and Western European countries, make it clear that he sees this interest as a global phenomenon, but the connection between collective memory and national identity has perhaps been most intensely debated in the historian’s own country, the US. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, as identity politics gained increasing validity, ‘minorities’ such as African-Americans and AsianAmericans pressed claims to an ‘authentic’ self-representation in the country’s influential signifying systems (the media, the schools, the museums and so forth). Simultaneously, a flood of immigrants from Asia and the global south sought refuge in the world’s remaining super-power. Social and cultural elites (educators, state officials, public institutions and the like) reacted to identity politics and immigration with approbation or alarm: some urged a full embrace of multiculturalism while others worried about the fragmentation ensuing upon the collapse of a common culture. This elite contention echoed that of the previous century, when Southern and Eastern European immigration, African-American migration to large urban centres and the ‘threat’ of a rapidly expanding industrial working class had led to similar concerns about American culture and identity. These parallel circumstances, vastly different in many respects but alike enough to be instructive, suggest that issues of collective memory and national identity achieve a high profile in periods of rapid change and reconfiguration. This might account for American academics and cultural critics recently taking great interest in the representation of history and memory. Kammen’s own magisterial

Sherlock Holmes, the De Facto Franchise

In May 2012 The Guinness Book of World Records announced that Having been depicted on screen 254 times… Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective, has been awarded a world record for the most portrayed literary human character in film & TV…Through a combination of films, television series, dramas and documentaries, Sherlock’s appearances beat the character of Shakespeare’s Hamlet by 48 portrayals to claim the record. (see “Sherlock Holmes Awarded Title”, 2012)