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The influenza epidemic of 1918–20 was one of the deadliest events in recent human history, killing at least fifty million people worldwide and at least 675,000 Americans in just two years. Yet, because of government censorship during the pandemic and a lasting cultural silence about the flu, we still have a great deal to learn about this period. In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, remembering the experience of the Spanish flu has become especially urgent. This essay argues that motion picture fan magazines, many of which are available digitally through the Media History Digital Library, are crucial archives of women's experiences during the pandemic. Interactive sections of these publications gave readers—especially women and girls—rare opportunities to publicly share their own experiences with the flu. Celebrity "convalescing profiles" expressed anxieties and established expectations for women during the flu pandemic. Revisiting these publications today reveals the importance of celebrity and sites of fan engagement in forging ideas about illness and health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fan culture has changed the whole entertainment industry, becoming "mainstream." Thus, its expressions necessarily shape franchise cinema, including Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The study reacts to this shift, aiming to explore how MCU movies incorporate images of fan culture and turn some of their support characters into "fans." The offered critical reflection on related theoretical outlines is intertwined with elements of discourse analysis. The authors focus on selected scenes from Marvel's superhero movies that depict and personalize fan culture. The examination is based on the assumption that such images function as efficient ways of celebrating and encouraging real‐life fan activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues on the attention deserved by the mounting visibility and combination of bromance, misogyny and women fan cultures surrounding contemporary Korean action cinema as they reflect actual hetero-male solidarity that excludes Korean women. Topics include a definition of the term bromance, the origins, modalities and effects of bromance, misogyny and women fandom in Korean action films, and how hetero-masculine hegemony transforms women's subcultures into misogynist media.

This article examines the celebratory reception of the many videos of Pathaan's 'dancing-fans' that circulated on social media during the film's release. It argues that an un-nuanced celebration of this vocal fan obscures the inaccessibility of the cinema theatre as a public space of leisure in neo-liberal India. Shot on mobile phone cameras inside cinemas, these videos were heralded as evidence of the 'return' of the Hindi film audience. The celebratory discourse around this new dancing-fan is in sharp contrast to the anxieties that such vocal fandom has historically generated in cinema discourses in India, being associated instead with the 'rowdy' lower-class fan, pejoratively termed the 'frontbencher'. The article suggests that the desirability of the contemporary dancing-fan reflects a professionalization of Hindi film fandom. It reads this as a new stage in what Tejaswini Ganti identifies as a process of gentrification that began with the emergence of Bollywood in post-liberalization India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the issue of fan-run museums. He mentions the Stars of the Galaxy museum in Mönchengladbach, Germany, which celebrates the Star Wars films, the role of fans in collecting and curating material for the collection as well as running activities, and the question of fans as a source of labor.

This article explores the ontological politics of the image in Tamil cinema. Its focus is a particular scene from the 2011 film Mankatha (Venkat Prabhu) in which the protagonist, played by the "mass hero" Ajith Kumar, is slapped by a character played by Vaibhav Reddy. Taking the image not simply as diegetic representation but as performative act, Ajith fans were enraged at Vaibhav. As I show, multiple ontological and political claims on what an image is intersect in and manifest as this performative image-act. This multiplicity provokes rethinking of arguments by André Bazin and others about "the" ontology of the film image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the Chinese fan translations of the film Carol and relevant paratexts by Jihua subtitling group, one of the most well-known Chinese lesbian fansubbing groups actively and explicitly advocating for LGBTQ rights in China, in order to develop an understanding of transnational and translational queer fandom in China. There are thriving fan translation communities in China that work to translate media products that are not officially imported into the country, including LGBTQ media. The article first puts forward a theory of translational fandom in order to explain the role of translation in fandom, before exploring how Jihua network uses fan translation as part of its queer world making, focusing on its translation of Todd Haynes's Carol, reviews of the film and the paratextual materials created by Jihua network that position its translation. Rather than solely importing ideas about female homosexuality through the film, we argue that Jihua has strategically used this film to make a cultural intervention in domestic debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the animetic movement in the films of director Kon Satoshi, including "Perfect Blue," "Millennium Actress," and "Paprika." Other topics include the use by Satoshi of animation techniques to explore the concept of fan within Japanese culture in his films, and the effects of filmic production and technology in the formation of the otaku fan culture.

The author discusses the impact of film tourism on the environment of motion picture locations. She mentions the uncivil behavior of movie fans who can be destructive to the ecological or social environments of a place, the cognitive dissonance between the place and its media representation, and the unpopularity in some places of fan culture.

Fan media practices, shaped by the advent of commercial narrative cinema in the 1910s, owe much to young female audiences. However, in-depth knowledge of these early fan communities is slim, having gone largely unexamined by silent-film historians. Focused on paper-based scrapbooks, tutorials, and correspondence crafted by movie-loving girls coming of age in North America during World War I, this article traces the tensile relationship established between a burgeoning male-presided film industry and the first demographic to be culturally addressed as "adolescent" and "screen-struck." By privileging first-person accounts of girl-led movie collectives from assorted walks of life, I introduce a richly diverse, if mostly unknown, reception archive that showcases the formative modes of spectatorial engagement, consumer participation, peer belonging, and affective subversiveness engendered by an audience historically deemed negligible or unproductive. Reading personal fan objects in tandem with newspaper articles urging girls to reuse film ephemera also reveals that the outbreak of World War I recalibrated how moviegoers and the US press conceived of appropriate film fandom and useful female labor. Visible and valuable due to their passionate attachment to the pictures, young female audiences came to be recruited to participate in war-relief efforts, their paper crafts and domestic upcycling contributing to the nationwide debate on resource scarcity, public female agency, and the decline of western civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifty Shades of Grey (FSOG) is argued to be a female-focused mainstream cult film that deliberately fosters a simultaneity of viewing modes. This multiple address highlights how the lauded qualities of cult texts are standard in feminine narratives that need to appeal to a large cross section of women. Cult discourse still depends on misogyny and masculinized distinction even when the mainstream mode seems to break down gendered fandom. Contradictions emerge because cult was traditionally defined against the mindless consuming of women. However, the cultish consumption patterns for FSOG are deliberately fostered by merchandising strategies. Thus, the same element that shows cult tendencies is used to denigrate the film as the antithesis of cult: women as consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the potential role and use of place in long-term fandom, via a case study of fans of The Prisoner and its main filming location of Portmeirion in North Wales. Much research on film tourism focuses on one-time encounters, but fans of The Prisoner have been visiting and revisiting Portmeirion regularly for over 50 years, potentially developing a different sort of relationship with it. Based on interviews with 16 long-term fans of The Prisoner and participatory observation on site, we develop the concept of the "fan homecoming," a return visit to a familiar fandom-related place, and show how this relationship with place can shape long-term fandom. In facilitating repeated and ritualized practices, being able to regularly gather with other fans, and providing a "safe vault" for the fandom and its memories, place is shown to have an integral role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the growth and development of audience research in the motion picture industry. The four primary areas of research include content analysis, audience analysis, response analysis and analysis of social control. A list of the social values of motion pictures is provided; it incorporates the cultural and sociological aspects in films. The use of box office receipts is discussed among other methods for measuring audience characteristics. Several audience data collection methods for market researchers are described, including standing outside the theater and conducting interviews.

The article offers information on the female film reception by analyzing the scrapbooks handcrafted by a Chicago-based schoolgirl Edna Vercoe. Topics include Amelie Hastie’s book "Cupboards of Curiosity: Women, Recollection and Film History" feature silent film actresses' memoirs, cookbooks and doll's houses; Vercoe’s scrapbook-making as a historical peephole into female film reception; and female film receiver distinguish the film creation from the onset of American narrative filmmaking.

This article presents the hashtag activist movement #wheresrey, along with additional paratextual responses to the controversial lack of Star Wars toys featuring The Force Awakens' female protagonist, as a rich site of paratextual convergence that allows us to explore the gender politics of media franchises. Specifically, this article suggests a growing need to consider how media industries alternately hail, mobilize, and marginalize their imagined franchise fan bases through paratexts. Although scholarly work on paratexts has explored their gatekeeping functions, this article strives to bring pre-existing paratextual theory in more direct conversation with gendered franchising and fan discourses. At the center of this analysis is a call for a more robust theorization of toys and action figures as the paratextual objects that most consistently and starkly reflect a franchise's presumed demographics, while still affording a great deal of agency in the creation of user-generated paratexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic scholarship addressing transnational cult fandom, particularly Western cult fans forming attachments to films outside their cultures, has frequently addressed the issue of exoticism. Much attention has been paid to how Western fans are problematically drawn to artefacts outside of their own cultures because of exotic qualities, resulting in a shallow and often condescending appreciation of such films. In this article, I critique a number of such articles for merelyassumingsuch processes without proffering sufficient supporting evidence. In fact, I argue that a number of such exotic-oriented critiques of transnational cultism are actually guilty of practising what they preach against: an insufficient contextualization of fandom and a tendency to downplay the messiness of empirical data in favour of generalized abstractions. Further, I argue that the constant critique of fans as avoiding contextualization has not only been overstated but stringently used as a yardstick to denigrate fan engagements with texts as improper. As such, fans are often ‘othered’ within such articles, a process mirroring the ways they are accused of othering distant cultural artefacts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the double role of Shah Rukh Khan in the Bollywood film "Fan," directed by Maneesh Sharma in which Khan played the role of both a Bollywood megastar and the obsessed fan. Topics covered include inversion of the conventional relationship between the fan and his star when the star in "Fan" pursues the fan, impact on the present narrative of the stardom of Khan, and the Indian fan culture depicted in "Fan."

The article examines the dynamics that apply to contemporary modes of star and fandom especially in India in the context of "Fan," a Bollywood film starring Shah Rukh Khan in a double role of the star and the obsessed fan. Topics covered include relation between the fake and real star/fan, dynamic between interchangeability and singularity, fan stereotypes depicted in the film and the two types of fandom in India, namely the mimetic fandom and the gift-bearing fandom.

An essay which examined the role of paratexts and their relationship with film to understand stardom, fandom, authorship and industrial practices in Bombay cinema through the sample chronology of paratexts in the film "Fan," starring Shah Rukh Khan is presented. Topics covered include centrality of the Internet as a venue for the circulation of the paratexts, short videos focusing on fandom and the cultural aspects of fandom in the context of darsan and nazar, two looking practices in India.

The article discusses the increasing fan following of motion pictures among women in the 1910s in the U.S. Topics discussed include the role that imitation of movie actresses played in the increase in fan following, the works of film theorist Jackie Stacey on this, and the role of movie magazines in creating fans.

Because of the close links between the Tamil movie industry and politics, and the position of fans in this, everyday engagements of fans with their actors are generally overlooked. This article focuses on how fandom unfolds in the familial space in Tamil Nadu state, South India. Brothers fight over images, newlywed couples insert movie stars in their wedding photography, and fathers take a son to their favorite star to get him back on the right track. I argue that fandom is inflected in familial relationships as well as being informed by them. Further, I argue that personalized images of movie stars play a crucial role herein. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Begun in 2002 in response to the release of the first New Line Cinema film in December 2001, The Stupid Ring Parody bills itself as the "Earth's largest Tolkien parody." At over 300,000 words, its claim is likely to be correct. Stupid Ring is written in the form of a screenplay, and it follows The Lord of the Rings closely, parodying virtually every episode. Given the length and depth of the parody, and the obvious appreciation of and close attention to Tolkien's works with which it was written, Stupid Ring provides a fertile ground for examination of the many and varied strategies of humour employed by its creators. Drawing as it does on material from the film, from the greater body of Tolkien's legendarium beyond The Lord of the Rings, from the fandom culture that developed around the films, from other The Lord of the Rings parodies, and from other works of humour from popular culture, Stupid Ring is broad enough in scope to be the subject of several papers. In this paper, I study the construction of the parody as a text, by exploring the following strategies of humour: breaking the fourth wall; metatheatrical commentary by the characters/actors; engagement with the fan culture of which the parody is a part, and use of source materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines questions of agency, identity, and fan-industry collaboration underpinning the fabrication of an exclusively feminine personification of excessive film fandom. Dubbed "the screen-struck girl," this white, adolescent figure was presented in American fan magazines and popular newspapers of the 1910s as a pathological consumer and a self-erasing aspiring star. However, in autobiographical letters to the press, girl fans proudly self-identified as movie bingers and aspiring actresses. Investigating girl fans' willing and public adherence to such a pejorative stereotype, I complicate our understanding of early twentieth-century female fan agency and its relation to Hollywood's burgeoning press machine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bernie Su and Hank Green's online adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice ([1813] 1995), the Lizzie Bennett Diaries (2012, LBD hereafter), offers a new authorship device and a potential way to negotiate the current tensions engendered by struggles over cultural production and reproduction on the Internet. A great part of LBD's success, confirmed by the many awards the series received, was its complication of authorial power and textual ownership. Fans occupied the same space as characters to become characters themselves; producers became viewers who carefully followed fan responses and incorporated them into the storyline; fans' blogs and texts developed character arcs, deepened understanding of characters themselves and moved the narrative as a whole; and producers entered fan spaces to discuss narrative developments. However, while LBD does offer some possibilities going forward, it also illuminates the tensions between existing and emergent production paradigms created by an increase in Internet participatory culture that remain to be overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the highlights of the "Cult Cinema and Technological Change" conference which took place at Aberystwyth University on 15-16 April 2014. The conference considered how technology has impacted reception and distribution of cult cinema. Topics covered include fandom and technology, informal cultism, and cults, subcultures and the mainstream.

Beginning with a discussion of the development of a transnational approach in Film Studies, this article argues that Miguel Gomes' transnational and festival-award-winning film Tabu (2012) engages with Portugal's legacy of colonialism, which is still part of living memory, by adopting a self-conscious, cinephilic address. Just as Gomes deploys a strategic, transnational cinephilia in his self-presentation through interviews, so Tabu as a film text may also be analysed through cinephilia, in particular, through its characterization of a cinephile protagonist in its contemporary Part 1, and its redeployment of silent cinema and Hollywood films about Africa in its 1960s-set Part 2. While recognizing shared filmic references flatters the viewers' knowledge, Gomes simultaneously stresses their lack of knowledge by also gesturing towards the unrepresentable. As the world of the unnamed Portugese colony in Africa begins to self-destruct, the unrepresentable unborn child indicates a postcolonial experience that lies beyond the reach of Gomes' cinephilic world. The article concludes by returning to the scene that connects Parts 1 and 2, and arguing for the centrality of the character of Santa in acknowledging this unrepresentability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the decline of the male movie fan in the early 1910s in relation to one of silent film's first serial franchises-G. M. Anderson's Broncho Billy series. Much has been written in recent years about the rise of the female fan during this period, but few scholars have sought to explain why studios and other media so actively courted the female spectator in favor of the male audience that had sustained early hobbyist and fan publications. Looking at a Broncho Billy-inspired shooting from 1914,1 argue that the decline of male fans (as subjects to whom the film industry at large, and Essanay Studios in particular, appealed) was intimately related to anxieties over feeblemindedness, mental illness, juvenile delinquency, and adolescent violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the commentary track narrated by actor Jack Nicholson that is a special feature on the DVD release of the 1975 motion picture "The Passenger" directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Topics discussed include the use of commentary tracks as a marketing tool to sell motion pictures to cinephiles and DVD commentaries as separate vocal or voice performances.

An essay is presented on film festivals and fan communities in the U.S. Topiccs include why people gather in groups to watch movies in front of a big screen, the role of digital technology in the kind of movie-watching people are engaged to like computers and cell phones, and the creation of film festivals to attract audiences.

This article offers a condensed account of Asta Nielsen's interaction with the Swedish National Censorship Board in 1911 after the banning of her film In dem großen Augenblick/The Great Moment for screening in Sweden. Her strategy, publishing open letters and inviting representatives from the press to non-public screenings, set the standard for other film companies dissatisfied with the slew of bans issued by the Board. A Nielsen letter to young movie fans, published in facsimile in a Swedish fan magazine in 1920, is translated to illustrate a different type of press interaction a decade later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how being an action-adventure fan resonates with articulations of national identity, attitudes toward other nations, and fear of global terrorism in the United States, Denmark, and Egypt. Action-adventure film relies on global Hollywood production, yet the reception of this genre works quite differently in the cultural contexts of communities and affinities of fans. Being an action-adventure fan appears to bear a close relationship with a tendency to exhibit fear of global terrorism and to conceptualize Americans as heroes, particularly among U.S. audiences. Danish and U.S. fans seem more likely to want to cast Egyptian characters as villains than their non-fan counterparts, whereas Egyptian fans prefer Danish characters to be villains. Limited characterizations in this genre inspire and reinforce the imagined scenarios of fans in which American heroes are justified in crucifying foreign villains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights regarding the works of author John Updike. According to Miranda Updike, the daughter of John, her father loves movies and he really felt the real affection for the movies and cinemas. He states that John emphasizes the Day's professionalism instead of the movie magic which transformed the girl next door into America's la-di-da happy virgin.

This essay discusses two strategies applied by film studios to regulate the female extra for economic and public relations advantage. It explores the use of the strategies during a struggle between the industry and cultural custodians over the impact of films on female fans. It examines the formation of an institutional structure in the industry and a narrative to legitimize the social influence of films.

Visiting the settings of popular films and TV series has become a growing niche in the tourist market; however, little is known about what makes these visits so appealing. The present research used the case of James Bond ‘pilgrims’ to explore this issue. Twenty-three interviews were conducted with James Bond fans who had visited one or more Bond film locations in recent years. These interviews indicate that the ‘media pilgrimage’ into the world of Bond contains playful as well as serious elements. By tracing the world of Bond and temporarily becoming part of this liminal landscape, fans create the opportunity to embody and perform an imagined masculinity. On a theoretical level, this paper contributes to the literature on media pilgrimages, by showing how the symbolic boundary between inside and outside the media is tightly interwoven with other power configurations – in this case, patriarchal notions of masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which discusses how debates among cinephiles, or motion picture enthusiasts, indicate how the motion picture industry may respond to technological changes. The author discusses how developments in digital technology led to suggestions that motion pictures were in decline and comments on the reaction of film critics to the article "The Decay of Cinema," by Susan Sontag. She comments how cinephilia relates to film preservation.

The article discusses the attendance of film festivals by cinephiles, or motion picture enthusiasts. The author notes how the article "The Decay of Cinema," by Susan Sontag, suggested that the decline of attendance at motion picture theaters due to the ability to view motion pictures at home reflects a decline in cinephilia and comments that the viewing of motion pictures at film festivals represents a classical cinephile practice. She notes that film festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) have been criticized for focusing more on celebrities than motion pictures.

The author describes how the interaction between official and fan-based media generated anticipation for the 2006 film "Snakes on a Plane," ensuring its status as a prefabricated cult film. She observes that following a blog post by screenwriter Josh Friedman in 2005, the film inspired an expanse of online fan production before its release, influencing both its production and its reception. She concludes that the cult phenomenon produced by the film signifies the move from considered reception towards pre-emptive celebration in the fan community.

An essay is presented which discusses contracts for actresses at motion picture studios in Hollywood, California during the 1930s. The author comments on actress Barbara Stanwyck's success in negotiating a higher salary through a contract dispute with film studios Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures and notes how some actress remained independent by not signing long-term contracts. She discusses how magazines for motion picture fans offer information on actresses' business strategies.

The article argues that a visual effects cinema may deal with the issue of cinephilia. According to the author, the development of digital visual effects was not able to cover the presence of cinephilia, which is considered as the discursive scar of pleasure in films. On the other hand, its visibility intensified, in conjunction with the awareness of its possibilities. The author refers to the sequences of the film "Star Trek: Nemesis" that feature model work, sensual digital imagery and sounds.

The article compares the motion pictures "Vertigo," directed by Alfred Hitchcock and "Mulholland Drive," directed by David Lynch in terms of influence on the viewers. Vertigo is about hunting and dangerous burden in the past. It was released in 1958 but until now, still, it captivates moviegoers and moviemakers. It has been used as reference by several motion pictures such as "Obsession," "Body Double," and "There Something About Mary." It also has made the Vertigo tour in San Francisco, California popular. Like "Vertigo," the movie "Mulholland Drive," has also created an obsessive effect on the viewers. It is shaped by a powerful revisionary encounter with Vertigo. The movie is about a woman Betty Elms who comes to Hollywood to become an actress.

Students enrolled in an undergraduate mass communication course were asked to estimate self and third-person effects on learning, attitudes, and behavior after reading a movie plot synopsis that contained 6 versions of a rating, ranging from PG-13 to R, with varying degrees of sexual content. This study introduces media content that is neither harmful nor persuasive, as is often the case in third-person effect research, and this study also incorporates an age-based media rating system into a third-person framework. Respondents in this study considered others to be more affected by media messages along cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions; however, contrary to other third-person studies, we found perceived social distance to outweigh perceived likelihood of exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]