Sartorial Fandom

In recent years, geeks have become chic, and the fashion and beauty industries have responded to this trend with a plethora of fashion-forward merchandise aimed at the increasingly lucrative fan demographic. This mainstreaming of fan identity is reflected in the glut of pop culture T-shirts lining the aisles of big box retailers as well as the proliferation of fan-focused lifestyle brands and digital retailers over the past decade. While fashion and beauty have long been integrated into the media industry with tie-in lines, franchise products, and other forms of merchandise, there has been limited study of fans’ relationship to these items and industries. Sartorial Fandom shines a spotlight on the fashion and beauty cultures that undergird fandoms, considering the retailers, branded products, and fan-made objects that serve as forms of identity expression. This collection is invested in the subcultural and mainstream expression of style and in the spaces where the two intersect. Fan culture is, in many respects, an optimal space to situate a study of style because fandom itself is often situated between the subcultural and the mainstream. Collectively, the chapters in this anthology explore how various axes of lived identity interact with a growing movement to consider fandom as a lifestyle category, ultimately contending that sartorial practices are central to fan expression but also indicative of the primacy of fandom in contemporary taste cultures.

Gaming no longer only takes place as a ›closed interactive experience‹ in front of TV screens, but also as broadcast on streaming platforms or as cultural events in exhibition centers and e-sport arenas. The popularization of new technologies, forms of expression, and online services has had a considerable influence on the academic and journalistic discourse about games. This anthology examines which paratexts gaming cultures have produced - i.e., in which forms and formats and through which channels we talk (and write) about games - as well as the way in which paratexts influence the development of games. How is knowledge about games generated and shaped today and how do boundaries between (popular) criticism, journalism, and scholarship have started to blur? In short: How does the paratext change the text?

Contributions by Apryl Alexander, Alisia Grace Chase, Brian Faucette, Laura E. Felschow, Lindsay Hallam, Rusty Hatchell, Dru Jeffries, Henry Jenkins, Jeffrey SJ Kirchoff, Curtis Marez, James Denis McGlynn, Brandy Monk-Payton, Chamara Moore, Drew Morton, Mark C. E. Peterson, Jayson Quearry, Zachary J. A. Rondinelli, Suzanne Scott, David Stanley, Sarah Pawlak Stanley, Tracy Vozar, and Chris Yogerst Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen fundamentally altered the perception of American comic books and remains one of the medium’s greatest hits. Launched in 1986—“the year that changed comics” for most scholars in comics studies—Watchmen quickly assisted in cementing the legacy that comics were a serious form of literature no longer defined by the Comics Code era of funny animal and innocuous superhero books that appealed mainly to children. After Midnight: “Watchmen” after “Watchmen” looks specifically at the three adaptations of Moore and Gibbons’s Watchmen—Zack Snyder’s Watchmen film (2009), Geoff Johns’s comic book sequel Doomsday Clock (2017), and Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen series on HBO (2019). Divided into three parts, the anthology considers how the sequels, especially the limited series, have prompted a reevaluation of the original text and successfully harnessed the politics of the contemporary moment into a potent relevancy. The first part considers the various texts through conceptions of adaptation, remediation, and transmedia storytelling. Part two considers the HBO series through its thematic focus on the relationship between American history and African American trauma by analyzing how the show critiques the alt-right, represents intergenerational trauma, illustrates alternative possibilities for Black representation, and complicates our understanding of how the mechanics of the show’s production can impact its politics. Finally, the book’s last section considers the themes of nostalgia and trauma, both firmly rooted in the original Moore and Gibbons series, and how the sequel texts reflect and refract upon those often-intertwined phenomena.

Cosplayers: Gender and Identity is an examination of identity practices in cosplay, as expressed by cosplayers themselves. It challenges the assumed correlation between cosplay and cosplayer identity and considers the lived experiences of cosplayers engaging in the fan practice of sartorial performance. Through a series of chapters covering the blurring lines of gender, sexualized fantasy in real spaces, and nostalgia, the author argues that observational data run the risk of affirming normative expectations of identity in the absence of cosplayer narratives, and produce misreadings that generalize. The work develops and builds an understanding of a complex cultural system of art, engaging with multiple methodologies to make identity, fandom, and critical analysis on the parts of participants and observers alike. This is an accessible and innovative study suitable for scholars and students in gender studies, cultural studies, sexuality studies, sociology, and media studies.

This book examines the creative impact of licensing on the entertainment industry, how licensing practitioners’ occupational disposition is formed, and the role licensing professionals play in managing the circulation of intellectual property. Offering a study of the spatial logics and fantasies employed by the licensing field via its annual trade show, the Licensing Expo, this volume investigates how space and place are instrumental in both fortifying and exposing the political-economic, infrastructural, as well as ideological structures that constrain and enable participation in the licensing field. Further supplemented by participant observation and interviews with 23 industry professionals, the book explores how the licensing field understands its increasingly central role in the entertainment industry’s operations, and how it responds to changes in retail environments, digital platforms, and international markets, phenomena which have required a recalibration of the field’s occupational identity. An exploration of an understudied aspect of the entertainment industry, this book will primarily appeal to scholars within media studies, and those studying media industries, media franchises, and media work cultures. It will also be of interest to people studying consumer culture, brand culture, advertising, organizational communication, as well as fan cultures.

In Russia at the turn of the twentieth century, printed literature and performances - from celebrity narratives and opera fandom to revolutionary acts and political speeches - frequently articulated extreme emotional states and passionate belief. A uniquely intense approach to public life and private expression - the 'melodramatic imagination' - is at the center of this study. Previously, scholars have only indirectly addressed the everyday appropriation of melodramatic aesthetics in Russia, choosing to concentrate on canonical texts and producers of mass culture. Collective fantasies and affects are daunting objects of study, difficult to render, and almost impossible to prove empirically. Music and art historians, with some notable exceptions, have been reluctant to discuss reception for similar reasons. By analyzing the artifacts and practices of a commercialized opera culture, author Anna Fishzon provides a solution to these challenges. Her focus on celebrity and fandom as features of the melodramatic imagination helps illuminate Russian modernity and provides the groundwork for comparative studies of fin-de-siècle European popular and high culture, selfhood, authenticity, and political theater.

Now in a second edition, this textbook surveys the channels, platforms, and programming through which television distribution operates, with a diverse selection of contributors providing thorough explorations of global media industries in flux. Even as legacy media industries experience significant disruption in the face of streaming and online delivery, the power of the television channel persists. Far from disappearing, television channels have multiplied and adapted to meet the needs of old and new industry players alike. Television viewers now navigate complex choices among broadcast, cable, and streaming services across a host of different devices. From Networks to Netflix guides students, instructors, and scholars through that complex and transformed channel landscape to reveal how these industry changes unfold and why they matter. This second edition features new players like Disney+, HBO Max, Crunchyroll, Hotstar, and more, increasing attention to TV services across the world. An ideal resource for students and scholars of media criticism, media theory, and media industries, this book continues to offer a concrete, tangible way to grasp the foundations of television—and television studies—even as they continue to be rewritten.

For twenty years, Reverse Shot, a journal for film criticism and the house publication of New York’s Museum of the Moving Image, has been a home for movie lovers to find incisive, intelligent writings from a diverse group of the best critics working today. To celebrate the publication's run, MoMI has published this special anniversary anthology, which collects central pieces from the journal’s beginnings up through the latest releases. Broken into four chronological movements, this volume captures not only the films and filmmakers that Reverse Shot’s writers have championed and wrestled over but also tells a story of cinema’s progress and change over the first two decades of the 21st century. More than just for the many longtime readers of Reverse Shot, this collection is an essential reference for the past, present, and future of the moving image and a gift for anyone who cares about films and serious writings about them. “This New York-based publication has remained not only a beacon for quality film writing but also, in so many cases, the domain for the internet’s best piece on a given film. ... Digging into the earliest writings here affirms a site quickly setting an Olympian standard for online movie analysis, pole-vaulting even over many esteemed print publications with less space to play with on the page ... Any one essay gives you a taste of the levels of insight routinely put to bear by its shifting stable of contributors, including Nick Pinkerton, Genevieve Yue, Eric Hynes and Devika Girish.” —Sight & Sound magazine, March 2024