The Case Study of Sherlock Holmes (2009) - Scholarly Commons ...

Jenkins (1992), however, would disagree with this approach, as he is prone to reject the
“tradition that reads the audience from structures of the text or in terms of the forms of
consumption generated by the institutions of production and marketing” (p. 285).
Jenkins (1992) encourages researchers “to challenge [the] theoretical fiction that masks
. . . the actual complexities of audience-text relations” (p. 285). While I similarly wish
to examine the complexities of audience cultivation, I, unlike Jenkins (1992), cannot
disregard the recurring images projected by institutions because fandom itself can be
considered an institution.
Defining the Audience: Ruddock’s three points of antagonism
Ruddock (2001) believes that a “comprehensive discussion of audiences and how to
research them must . . . be sensitive to three points of antagonism” (p. 6). Firstly,
Ruddock (2001) wishes for the researcher to address their “motives for wanting to know
about audiences” (p. 6). Simply, I find fandom is an acute example of modern media‟s
influence on the viewer and the commercialisation of media products. “Secondly, these
divergent motives lead to different methodologies” (Ruddock, 2001, p. 6). While the
research‟s methodology is explored later in a chapter of its own, it is worth noting here
that I am approaching the audience qualitatively, placing myself ethnographically in the
position of an audience member and charting my personal development as a fan of
Sherlock Holmes. “Finally, the motives and methods driving a researcher are likely to
influence or even determine the results he or she . . . constructs” (Ruddock, 2001, p. 6).
At an early stage of my research, I drafted a three-level model of fan progression,
suggesting that a viewer‟s progress as a fan results in either an enamoured or educated
position. Depending upon a fan‟s process of cultivation, driven by the products they
encounter, it will result in an enamoured (biased) or educated (critical) position. While
this conclusion was indeed a pre-constructed outcome, my results will in fact depend
upon my findings that emerge from the research process.
Defining fans
Often the term fan, when explained by scholars, bears both an historical and academic
context. Grossberg (as cited in Bailey, 2005), for example, states the word “„fan‟ is
derived from „fanatic‟, a term with heavy connotations of extremism and irrationality”
(pp. 48-49). Similarly, ten years later Hills (2002) describes fandom as an overbearing
state. He describes a fan as being “somebody who is obsessed with a particular star,
celebrity, film, TV programme, band; somebody who can produce reams of information
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