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

The fan
Sandvoss (2005) believes that “casual viewers identify themselves as fans” (p. 6). While
Sandvoss notes the triviality of the term, I consider this statement to imply fandom is a
self-ascribed state. When I began viewing Granada‟s Sherlock Holmes (1984-1994)
television series, I was certainly not a casual viewer; I already identified myself as a fan.
In my final model, the cultivated state of the fan relies upon the theories propagated by
Abercrombie and Longhurst‟s audience continuum (1998) and Bourdieu‟s working
class description (as cited in Hills, 2002, p. 48). As mentioned in my literature review,
Abercrombie and Longhurst (as cited in Sandvoss, 2005) define fans by their
relationship with a product. Sandvoss (2005), expanding on their theory, similarly
identifies a fan as a viewer who “intensely follows a particular cultural text or icon
almost exclusively through the mass media” (as cited in Sandvoss, 2005, p. 30-31).
Bourdieu (as cited in Hills, 2002) on the other hand, defines fans as working class
viewers and believes that their fandom is an “„illusory compensation‟ for [their] lack of
social and cultural power” (p. 48). Bourdieu speaks in a relatively derogatory manner of
a fan‟s consumerist nature, a nature I soon embraced, as I became, according to Hills
(2002), a fan-as-consumer, or a consumer-orientated fan, embracing their object‟s
commercialisation. When first introduced to Granada‟s Sherlock Holmes (1984-1994), I
obsessively consumed the product at an alarming rate, buying all seven seasons on
DVD from a variety of stores. The fan I became was as an “ideal consumer” (Cavicchi,
as cited in Hills, 2002, p. 29). I embodied the emotional symptoms of a cultivated fan as
set forth by Sandvoss (2005): “The clearest indicator of a particular emotional
investment in a given popular text lies in its regular, repeated consumption … [T]hose
who label themselves as fans, when asked what defines their fandom, point to their
patterns of consumption” (p. 7). My fandom at this stage mirrored consumer loyalty, an
interesting development considering one of the questions I asked myself during my
literature review was whether a viewer‟s loyalty to a product changed their position as a
consumer. I had answered “no, it simply makes them more invested”. While this answer
still stands, I feel it is now more important to ask whether a consumer‟s loyalty to a
product changes the position of them as a fan. For while I remained a consumer of the
product, I had simultaneously begun consuming enchantment. My position was that of a
consumer and that of a fan. Therefore, I consider the term “fan” an enchanted term for
the “consumer”; a theory that incidentally coincides with Sandvoss‟s (2005) opinion
that “the state of being a fan is part of our schemes of perception” (p. 3). Near the end of
Granada‟s series, I began to consume Doyle‟s original works; in ethnographic order, I
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