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

economistic theory, alongside Abercrombie and Longhurst audience continuum, to
establish a unique and generalised understanding of a fan‟s cultivation.
Cultivation Theory
Definition of cultivation
Shanahan and Morgan‟s (1999) definition of fan cultivation is the primary theory to
which my research subscribes; while they are biased towards this theory, being
“teachers and practitioners of the techniques” (p. 3), they consistently defend the
“merits of cultivation theory” (p. 3) because they have practically applied it. According
to Shanahan and Morgan (1999), cultivation is “the process within which interaction
through messages shapes [and] sustains the terms on which the messages are premised”
(p. 12). While cultural and audience research focuses on the effect generated, cultivation
theory is focused on the influences, which generate the effect. This definition leads one
to believe cultivation may be the hidden step before storytelling‟s process of instigation,
that process which generates an active response from the audience. Considering
cultivation is “a way to talk about „influence‟ without talking about „effects‟”
(Shanahan & Morgan, 1999, p. 12), instigation appears to be a result of cultivation.
Cultivation‟s connection with storytelling comes from the theory‟s original
methodological purpose of examining modern storytelling, namely television:
“„Cultivation‟ builds on the assumption that the major impacts of television materialise
by means of the way it exposes people to the same images and metaphors over and over
again” (Shanahan & Morgan, 1999, p. 12). Sherlock Holmes is essentially a serialised
narrative that, through its transformation into a franchise over time and media, would
respond to cultivation analysis and its emphasis on the repetition of images and
metaphors. In terms of examining the degrees of fandom and how media cultivates
these degrees, cultivation theory, with its focus on influence, has proved to be the most
adequate method of analysis for this research, as it encourages qualitative ethnography
and textual analysis.
Cultivation theory and culture
Cultivation theory is entirely appropriate for studying modern storytelling and the
mediums used to generate instigation. Cultivation is “what a culture does” (Gerbner, as
cited in Shanahan & Morgan, 1999, p. 15). According to Gerbner, culture is a “system
of stories and other artefacts – increasingly mass-produced – that mediates between
existence and consciousness of existence” (as cited in Shanahan & Morgan, 1999, p.
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