(Kristin Chenoweth) and Elphaba - Camera Obscura: Feminism ...

64 • Camera Obscura
17. In her lecture “Children, Youth, the Internet, and the
Production of Culture,” Susannah Stern stressed the value of
girls’ parsing out the details of a given performance, which
hones analytical skills (paper presented at the University of Texas
at Austin, 26 April 2006). See also Susannah Stern, “Virtually
Speaking: Girls’ Self-Disclosure on the WWW,” Women’s Studies in
Communication 25 (2002): 223 – 53.
18. When I started this research in the fall of 2005, fans either had
seen the show or owned the cast album. Discussions tended
toward accolades, advice for getting tickets, and comparisons of
the book and the musical. In the past year and a half, many more
people have seen Wicked all over the country, and many have seen
it multiple times with different casts. As I have been perusing
Web sites, I have been amazed at girls’ abilities to analyze
moments in the production in rich detail. It took me a while to
realize that bootleg clips from a number of productions circulate
on the Web on Google and YouTube, and that girls can watch
Wicked at home every day. In this way, even girls who have never
seen the show live can participate in discussions about an actor’s
performance choices or interpretations. Interestingly, when a
girl is able to see the show live, she still tends to be overwhelmed.
While I am pleased that many girls have access to Wicked in
some form, and no doubt this allows a certain degree of the
democratization of fandom, I also think that live performance
matters. For a history of different modes of spectatorship, see
Richard Butsch, The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to
Television, 1750 – 1990 (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2000).
19. See Matt Hills, Fan Cultures (New York: Routledge, 2002). Also,
while girls might be lying online about their ages or their
affection for the musical, I am taking their self-disclosures at
face value. While each post is unique, none is unusual in its
observations or expressions of attachment; thus trends are
observable.
20. Valerie Hey, The Company She Keeps: An Ethnography of Girls’
Friendships (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1997), 3.
21. Mark Steyn asks, cynically, “How can you have larger-than-life
characters with smaller-than-life actresses?” (Broadway Babies Say
Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now [New York: Routledge, 1999],
243).