An example of my own
engagement with cult media relates to the comedy TV show Friends. I watch Friends
on Netflix and follow fan accounts on Instagram, which post funny video scenes
of Friends several times a day. By
watching and actively ‘liking’ the video clips that are shared by other fans, I
participate in the cult fandom – we are sharing cultural capital.
After the TV shows’ last live
broadcast in 2004, 12 years ago, fans still talk about and watch Friends. Official merchandise is still
on sale, there are active fan accounts on social media (which didn’t even exist
when the last show was broadcast), and there is regularly rumors and a longing
for a ‘Friends reunion’. Gwenllian-Jones and Pearson (2004: xvi)
talk about how cult TV has become “a meta-genre that caters to intense,
interpretive audience practices” affording “fans enormous scope for further
interpretation, speculation and invention”. This shows how Friends is a cult media text/fandom.
What attracts me to Friends is probably that it is
relatable. I had always refused to watch it before the first time that I did
(September 2015), because I thought that it was ‘crap’ – even though I had
never watched it before. Friends
tells a story of six friends trying to make it in a big city, which is somewhat
similar to me. The comedy aspect is also comforting, it’s something that I like
to spend my time doing.
The endlessly deferred
narrative is something that drew me in, since the first episode I wanted to
know if Ross and Rachel would end up together, and they did finally come back
together in the last episode of the last season. Even when I watched the series
for the second time, I was still hooked on the endlessly deferred narrative. I
think that if there was no endlessly deferred narrative then I would not have
continued watching for 9 seasons. There has to be something that I want to go
back for.
The endlessly deferred
narrative didn’t even end when the show did. Did Phoebe and Mike have children?
Did Ross and Rachel get married? Did Joey go to Chandler and Monica’s every
year to watch the Superbowl? We’ll never know. Perhaps because the endlessly
deferred narrative was never solved, it means that there was never a death of
the show. It continues to live and be a cult text because of something called
hyperdiegesis. Hills (2002:104) talks about how hyperdiegesis is “the creation
of a vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever
directly seen or encountered within the text, but which nevertheless appears to
operate according to principles of internal logic and extension”. Cult fans can
create their own narratives and theories for the show, and as Jenkins (1992)
said, this world rewards re-reading due to richness and depth. Interestingly,
as a cult fan of Friends, I have
never created my own narrative or theories for the show, as I like to enjoy the
text as it is, and as it was meant to be. This is because I don’t want to take
anything away from the creators of the show, I like being a consumer and an
audience member – I don’t want to be a part of fan labour.
References
Gwenllian-Jones, S. and Pearson, R.E. (eds.) (2004) Cult
television. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hills, M (2002) Fan cultures. London: Routledge.
Jenkins, H. (1992) Textual poachers: television fans and
participatory cultures. London: Routledge.
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