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

negative connotation, for it no longer applies to a viewer with an obsessive disposition.
Sandvoss (2005), as stated earlier, finds “casual viewers identify themselves as fans” (p.
6), suggesting that the term refers to a self-defined state. Negative academic rhetoric,
however, continues to define the term “fan”, now a generic position within modern
popular culture, with historical disdain. Unless that is the scholar‟s focus, the term “fan”
should be academically updated to embody the casual and commercial meaning of the
word.
Similarly, more distinction needs to be made between community integrated fans and
solitary fans. Community fandom is often the example of fandom chosen by scholars
for examination; it functions as a sub-culture and provides ethnographers with a variety
of resources. The solitary fan, however, the position that I adopted, offers greater
academic insight into a viewer‟s personal relationship with a product. The independent
choices of a single fan, separate from their product‟s community and the cultivation of
others, offers up the opportunity to examine fandom pre-community and even post-
community, an opportunity that examines the core of a person‟s relationship with a
media text, not with other people. Examination into the solitary fan will also affect the
term itself. Currently, the term “fan” refers to an individual who is one of many; as my
research has proven, not everyone‟s cultivation resulting in their fandom is the same.
Academia must examine the solitary fan if it wishes to understand fandom as a whole.
Lastly, I find more time and energy should be dedicated to hybridising the role of
academic and fan. Hills‟s (2002) version of the academic-fan has the potential to evolve
into a legitimate ethnographic position, enabling researchers who possess a “native
expertise” (Bailey, 2005, p. 13) an opportunity to apply their fan knowledge without
that knowledge becoming an ethnographic hindrance. The practice of ethnography
remains incomplete if a research is unable to incorporate their pre-academic
involvement with a subject. Not only would this contribute to academia‟s overall
understanding of fans and fandom, but it would also push the boundaries of
ethnographic research and academic participation. Similarly, Saler‟s (2003) theory of
enchantment and the “ironic imagination” (p. 606), encourages the possibility of
balancing logic with enchantment, and if properly applied to ethnography, the
hybridisation of the academic and the fan. While it is our academic duty to conduct an
unbiased observation of society, we cannot continue to ignore the aspects of our society
that have the power to enchant even the most sceptical of academics.
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