TY - JOUR
T1 - Fans, community, and conflict in the pages of "Picture Play," 1920–38
AU - Lanckman, Lies
PY - 2020/6/15
Y1 - 2020/6/15
N2 - Fan history remains a neglected subdiscipline of fan studies, in part
because of the methodological complications in dealing with a community
of fans who may be deceased. Fan magazines, and particularly fan
magazine letter sections, are a way for fan historians to access the
views and opinions of classic Hollywood fans of the 1920s and 1930s—a
community otherwise largely lost to history. Judicious use of the freely
available 1920, 1930, and 1940 US census records helps researchers
establish which letters were written by real, existing fans; further
census information can help establish a demographic profile of the fan
magazine community as a whole. Content analysis of fan letters
illustrates the preoccupations of particular fans, as well as the way
they established and negotiated particular codes of behavior within
their fandom. A focus on particular fans who wrote to the magazine
repeatedly over the course of multiple years can help historians
recreate the fannish journey traveled by now-dead fans over the course
of years or even decades.
AB - Fan history remains a neglected subdiscipline of fan studies, in part
because of the methodological complications in dealing with a community
of fans who may be deceased. Fan magazines, and particularly fan
magazine letter sections, are a way for fan historians to access the
views and opinions of classic Hollywood fans of the 1920s and 1930s—a
community otherwise largely lost to history. Judicious use of the freely
available 1920, 1930, and 1940 US census records helps researchers
establish which letters were written by real, existing fans; further
census information can help establish a demographic profile of the fan
magazine community as a whole. Content analysis of fan letters
illustrates the preoccupations of particular fans, as well as the way
they established and negotiated particular codes of behavior within
their fandom. A focus on particular fans who wrote to the magazine
repeatedly over the course of multiple years can help historians
recreate the fannish journey traveled by now-dead fans over the course
of years or even decades.
U2 - 10.3983/twc.2019.1745
DO - 10.3983/twc.2019.1745
M3 - Article
SN - 1941-2258
VL - 33
JO - Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC)
JF - Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC)
ER -