1.2-Fundamentos jurídicos:

The study of franchise film opens up discussions into fandom which is a central phenomenon in understanding distracted spectatorship. This is particularly relevant because being a fan is one of the identities which distraction makes visible throughout the frontispieces, notebooks and distracted analyses. The fan has been negatively perceived and recent theories have set out to recuperate fans which this section will demonstrate with regards to the chosen franchise. This chapter will examine the rise in popularity of franchise films over the last twenty-five years and the ways in which it has been studied by film scholars. According to film theorist Kristin Thompson, whose work on The Lord of the Rings has been influential in this field, a franchise film is ‘a movie that spawns additional revenue streams beyond what it earns from its various forms of distribution’ (Thompson, 2007: 4). In this way franchises differ from serial genre production that has characterised much international commercial film production since the 1910s. Fans and franchises are often connected as franchise films encourage a different way of reading that is synonymous with fandom in that they provide a space that allows fans to engage with films in a particular way. This raises issues with analysing franchise films as fandom can be classified as a privileged way of reading. This means there is a certain amount of overlap between fandom and academic study due to the research processes involved in both. When examining fan cultures in relation to distracted spectatorship it is also necessary to identify how fans themselves are depicted within film theory.

In his 1992 book, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, media scholar Henry Jenkins depicts the various fan stereotypes, specifically in relation to Star Trek fans:

a. Are brainless consumers who will buy anything associated with the program or its cast; b. Devote their lives to the cultivation of worthless knowledge [...] c. Place inappropriate importance on devalued cultural material [...] d. Are social misfits who have become so obsessed with the show that it forecloses other types of social experience [...] e. Are feminized and/or desexualized through their intimate engagement with mass culture [...] f. Are infantile, emotionally and intellectually immature [...] g. Are unable to separate fantasy from reality (Jenkins, 1992: 10)

Jenkins’ point about the feminisation of the toxic fan figure has been taken up in feminist fan studies; his work has also included discussions of old and new media and analysis of how

producers and consumers interact in unpredictable ways (2006). As well as this Jenkins is at the forefront of fan studies and his work promotes the idea that fans are active, creative and critically engaged consumers of popular culture who are involved in participatory cultures through a variety of digital media (2006, 2009). The above quotation, though not Jenkins’ opinion, serves to demonstrate the negative connotations associated with the image of the fan. Film theorist Matt Hills explains what a fan is in relation to the media that they consume and how they interact with that media:

Everybody knows what a “fan” is. It’s somebody who is obsessed with a particular star, celebrity, film, TV programme, band; somebody who can produce reams of information on their object of fandom, and can quote their favoured lines or lyrics, chapter and verse. Fans are often highly articulate. Fans interpret media texts in a variety of interesting and perhaps unexpected ways. And fans participate in communal activities – they are not “socially atomised” or isolated viewers/readers (Hills, 2002: 1)

Hills’ work is important to this thesis because he establishes how media fans have been conceptualised in cultural theory. In particular, Hills’ 2010 work on Doctor Who explores the television show through the analysis of words such as “cult” and “mainstream”: as a fan of the show Hills also considers the role that fandom plays with regards to the television show’s return. The above quotation shows the variety of ways fans approach cultural material and the different ways they express that material to others. Alongside this, Hills considers the possibility that the development of digital media can create new forms of fandom. Sociologist John B. Thompson further discusses the importance of acknowledging the self in the field of fan studies: ‘the deep personal and emotional involvement of individuals in the fan community is also a testimony to the fact that being a fan is an integral part of a project of self-formation’ (Thompson, 1995: 224). Thompson has studied the influence of the media in the development of modern societies and has discussed the unequal relationship between media producers and the audience. The significance of the quotation is that it acknowledges the way fandoms produce and enable particular fan subjectivities. The relationship between the self and community is integral to fan studies as the individual fan is understood in relation to the wider fan community. In turn, the fan also understands their own relationship with a particular franchise through that fan community. This chapter will draw parallels between how both fandom and academia place emphasis on in-depth analysis of a single cultural object. The following section will discuss the methods that went into creating the case study notebooks, frontispieces and distracted analyses in terms of self-reflexivity. This is done to

indicate my own reflexivity and how it will reflect on my own position, not only as a gendered subject, but as a scholar and as a fan. As I am a female researcher the self-reflexive process considers how gender impacts on distracted spectatorship and the cinematic experience. Through this work the thesis contributes to the canon of fan studies and feminist fan studies to explore some of the key mechanisms through which fans interact with the mediated world which shape our cultural realities and identities. In order to productively discuss the relationship between franchises, fandoms and fans’ interactions with film the following section will unpack the significance of franchise films as an object of analysis.