"IT'S not a fairy tale ANYMORE": GENDER, GENRE, Beauty and the Beast. HENRY JENKINS III: "everything you've heard is true. It's not a fairy tale anymore" television guide profiled "the show that wouldn't die. And the fans who wouldn't let it die"
"IT'S not a fairy tale ANYMORE": GENDER, GENRE, Beauty and the Beast. HENRY JENKINS III: "everything you've heard is true. It's not a fairy tale anymore" television guide profiled "the show that wouldn't die. And the fans who wouldn't let it die"
"IT'S not a fairy tale ANYMORE": GENDER, GENRE, Beauty and the Beast. HENRY JENKINS III: "everything you've heard is true. It's not a fairy tale anymore" television guide profiled "the show that wouldn't die. And the fans who wouldn't let it die"
"IT'S NOT A FAIRY TALE ANYMORE": GENDER, GENRE, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Author(s): HENRY JENKINS III
Source: Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 43, No. 1/2, Audiences (Spring and Summer 1991), pp. 90-110 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20687932 . Accessed: 16/05/2014 22:32 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . University of Illinois Press and University Film & Video Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Film and Video. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "IT'S NOT A FAIRY TALE ANYMORE": GENDER, GENRE, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST HENRY JENKINS III Believe the impossible. Everything you've heard is true. It's not a fairy tale anymore, (from TV Guide ad for Beauty and the Beast's third season opener?Burke and Dunadee) Speaking of doing things the right way, anyone who starts a story with "once upon a time" should end it with "happily ever after." (Beauty and the Beast fan) The January 13, 1990 issue of TV Guide featured a profile of Beauty and the Beast and its faithful fans: "The show that wouldn't die ... and the fans who wouldn't let it" (Carlson 2). TV Guide sympathetically documents the massive fan culture which had converged around the program, the charity efforts of the Helper's Network and other local clubs, and the grassroots movement that had been directed in response to its initial cancellation and which had resulted in its much publicized return to the airwaves. While noting some fan dissatisfaction with plot developments in the program's third season, the magazine confidently con cluded that "most fans will remain loyal." Ironically, just two days before this issue hit the newsstands, CBS had cancelled Beauty and the Beast a second and final time. The series which "refused to die" was now officially dead and many of its loyal fans reacted as much with relief as with mourning. Beauty and the Beast fans, who only a few months before had seemed united in their efforts to save the show, now were sharply divided, unsure of how to respond to recent changes in the series' creative per sonnel and format. Most fans were deeply saddened by the departure of series star Linda Hamilton (who was pregnant and wanted more time to spend with her fam ily) and the producers' decision to brutally murder her character, Catherine. Some continued to urge loyalty to the program producers, expressing hope and confi dence that their creative integrity would find a way to resolve the difficulties caused by the star's departure: "Respect them enough to trust them; trust them enough to believe; believe them enough to know that they will satisfy us" (Herbert). Others remained equally loyal to their own metatextual conception of the series which they felt had been violated by the network and the series's creators: "I don't even recognize this as Beauty and the Beast anymore. Do you seriously think that this is what people want to watch?" (Kopmanis). Many expressed their sense of frustration and powerlessness, their in ability to protect their favorite series from being radically altered in the hopes of broadening its potential audience. The changes were widely perceived as motivated by a network desire to attract a more masculine audience, even at the ex pense of the program's committed female fans and their desires for a happy resolu tion of the characters' romance. CBS Henry Jenkins III is Assistant Professor of Literature and Media Studies at M.I.T. and has published extensively on aspects of film and popular culture in Camera Obscura, Cinema Journal, Critical Studies in Mass Communica tion, Wide Angle, and The Velvet Light Trap. Copyright ? 1991 by H. Jenkins III. 90 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions President Howard Stringer lent credence to this claim with some particularly ill conceived remarks at a network press conference about what he described as the "exotic" appeal of the "hot house" show: "I've gotten a lot of letters from nuns?I don't know what to make of that. Makes me very nervous actually. Were we target ing it just for nuns? I think we have to target priests, too" (qtd. in Ostrow). Con vinced that the program's survival de pended upon its ability to attract "priests" (and other masculine viewers) rather than an "exotic" following of "nuns" (and other female spectators), the producers not only shifted the series' focus from the love story towards more action-adventure plots but also killed the show's female protagonist, thereby foreclosing any pos sibility of a subsequent return to the core romance. The heated reception of Beauty and the Beast's third season brings into sharp fo cus a number of issues surrounding the political and cultural status of television fans. TV Guide and the network both fell into the trap of taking for granted the fans' unconditional loyalty to the series and its producers. Such a position is consistent with traditional representations of fans as cultural dupes and mindless consumers. We often speak of fans as if they were unquestionably accepting of any and all products associated with a favorite series or performer. The Beauty and the Beast fans, however, were anything but uncriti cal or passive; their membership within a larger community of fans and their public commitment to the program encouraged them to protest network actions which endangered its future and producer ac tions which violated their collective sense of the program's contents. Increasingly, the fans had come to recognize that their interests in the series were not necessarily aligned with the producers' interests and, indeed, in this situation, that the two were fundamentally opposed. One fan aptly de scribed the program's producers as treat ing the fans like trained dogs: "Since the end of May, it's been 'sit fans, fetch fans, rollover fans, beg fans,' and now I sup pose they'd like us to play dead, or at least quietly slink off, tail between our legs, whimpering softly and licking our wounds" (Landman). The bitterness of these remarks suggests the power imbalance that exists between media producers who have access to the means of cultural production and media consumers who must appeal to them for "scraps" of the types of narratives they would like to watch. Critics of the contem porary audience research paradigm often focus on the ways that economic barriers of entry to the means of cultural produc tion work to disenfranchise viewers from participation within television culture and thereby seem to preclude any effective form of popular resistance to program ideologies. Michael Budd, Robert Ent man, and Clay Steinman are critical of John Fiske's use of the metaphor of the nomad to refer to popular forces which are "uncontainable, restless and free" when they may "actually be powerless and de pendent. People who are nomads cannot settle down; they are at the mercy of natural forces they cannot control" (Budd, et al. 176). These writers correctly note that political intervention on the level of reception may be no substitute for a politics that is also concerned with condi tions of production. My own work, which draws insights from the theoretical formulations of Michel de Certeau, acknowledges these power im balances as the undesirable context within which popular readers must operate, yet it seeks to document the strategies by which fans try to overcome their alienation from popular culture and try to reshape textual materials in accordance with their own interests. For me, an interest in audience activism is perfectly consistent with work on the political economy of media owner ship, showing two sides of the same power imbalance. No account of fan culture makes sense unless it is seen as responsive JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) 91 This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions to a situation in which fans make strong emotional investments in programs and yet have no direct control over network decision-making. What is often forgotten by both advocates and critics of his theo retical position is that de Certeau does not promise an easy victory for the consumer in relation to these powerful systems of cultural production and ideological circu lation but rather provides a model for describing ongoing conflicts, "advances and retreats" as consumers seek to "poach" useful materials from the domi nant "scriptural economy" and to rework them to serve alternative interests. There is, however, a big leap between acknowl edging that audiences lack access to the means of production and saying that audi ences necessarily accept textually pre ferred meanings, though critics often col lapse the two into top-down arguments about the cultural power and ideological authority of the media industries. I would break with both the knee-jerk pessimism of the older critical studies par adigm and the easy optimism that charac terizes many recent accounts of audience response: audiences are not consistently resistant to textual ideologies any more than they are consistently blinded to their own interests; nor is all audience resis tance necessarily progressive. Rather, au dience response is a complex and dynamic process of conflicting demands and expec tations, a process whereby program mate rials are gradually, albeit imperfectly, fit into the context of the viewers' lived ex periences. The advantage of de Certeau's account over Stuart Hall's earlier "encod ing and decoding" formulation is the de gree to which de Certeau allows us to avoid a fixed or static categorization of audience response in favor of a model that emphasizes the continuous process of ap propriation and redefinition of cultural ma terials. That advantage is lost if we reduce audience response to sweeping claims about generalized popular resistance. No single synchronic record of audience re sponse can fully account for the constant shifts within the audience's relationship to the primary textual materials; rather, what is needed is a diachronic mode of ethno graphic writing that traces over time the process by which audiences move in and out of harmony with textual ideologies and begin to assert their own interests upon broadcast content. Fan culture provides a particularly fruitful site for research into this process of pop ular appropriation and ideological negoti ation. While many audience studies begin by constituting the audience and by fram ing an agenda for its responses (a process which holds not only for traditional media effects research but also for much so called "ethnographic" research), studying fan culture allows us to tap into a pre constituted community with an ongoing relationship to popular media.1 My study is truly ethnographic in that it investigates the practices, beliefs, and attitudes of a complex subcultural community rather than generating interviews with viewers arbitrarily assembled into a response group for the basis of a short-term re search project. Fans are already engaged in detailed discussions not only of pro gram content but of their relationship to television and already produce a broad range of artifacts which can be mined for the insight they offer into fan reception practices. This article will examine a variety of such materials in trying to trace the controversy surrounding Beauty and the Beast (club newsletters, letterzines, scrapbooks, fan fiction); I will also draw on discussions with members of a Boston area Beauty and the Beast fan club, North of Shangri La, including attendance and participation at their regular meetings as well as the results of an open-ended survey designed to solicit information about their broader viewing habits. While such discourse may or may not accurately reflect the personal responses of any individual Beauty and the Beast fan, that public discourse may be legitimately examined in order to locate 92 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions the categories and assumptions which fans share as an interpretive community and to analyze the process by which collective interpretations of the program text were formulated.2 This essay amplifies the fans' own under standings of the reception process by em ploying theoretical models drawn from the Cultural Studies literature, but it does not simply attempt to project my own critical response to the series on to fan culture; the essay was written with constant feed back from the fans cited and was reshaped in response to their criticisms. The result is not intended as a traditionally objective account of fan response (if such a thing were possible) but rather as an insider's ethnography written in direct collabora tion with the subcultural community it documents. Such an approach rejects an impossible ideal of objective distance (that often allows the researcher to map his or her own views onto the social experience of the subjects) in favor of a mode of scholarship which allows the cultural com munity a say within its own representa tion.3 I seek to record and analyze, then, the concrete responses of a specific fan com munity to Beauty and the Beast and make no claims that these fans are necessarily representative of the ways that the pro gram was received by non-fan viewers. Indeed, fandom as an interpretive institu tion imposes its own categories upon tex tual reception which reflect not only the broader social background of its member ship (categories of class, gender, race, etc.) but also the particular interests of fandom in sustaining its cultural commu nity and promoting its self-identity. Fan audiences adopt particular modes of re ception that work to facilitate their subse quent participation within fan culture; fan critics elaborate complex readings of the series which differ substantially from the transient meaning production that charac terizes more typical modes of television reception; fan critics draw upon the aes thetic traditions of the fan community in the process of translating interpretive un derstandings into a basis for their own cultural productions.4 Too often, Cultural Studies has moved from extreme exam ples of subcultural appropriations to broad generalizations about audience response without regard to the particularity of fan culture. What I am calling for, then, is a style of media ethnography which is historically informed and context-specific, which re jects the temptation to make quick and easy generalizations and instead tries to come to grips with the more difficult task of documenting the diverse and contradic tory quality of popular culture. By tracing fan response to Beauty and the Beast, a more vivid sense of the process by which fan critical practice moves from eager acceptance of a new text towards active resistance to its subsequent transforma tions is possible. More specifically, this article considers the place of generic for mulas within the fans' understanding of the series and their complex relationship with its producers. Once Upon A Time . . . Traditional notions of genre as a class of texts, a set of textual features and conven tions, or a formula by which texts are constructed do not seem adequate to the type of struggle over generic placement that surrounded Beauty and the Beast. For the most part, such models ignore the role(s) played by genre in the reader's efforts to make meaning from textual ma terials. Thomas Schatz's notion in Holly wood Film Genres, that genres represent a kind of tacit contract between media pro ducers and audiences, seemingly gives equal weight to the role of formulas in both encoding and decoding films, with Schatz speaking of a "reciprocal studio audience relationship" ("The Structural Influence" 97). His account, however, im plicitly favors the generic knowledge of JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) 93 This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions the filmmaker over the activity of the spectator. Schatz gives us little sense of the nature of the audience's expectations or how they originate; these expectations are read from the texts, rather than docu mented through audience response. What Hollywood delivers is presumed to be what the audience wanted, largely based on the economic argument that the indus try seeks to anticipate and fulfill audience demand. Schatz's examples are all films which fit unambiguously within a single generic category and therefore pose few problems about generic placement and in terpretation. The readers' decision to pur chase a ticket to such a film thus signals their acceptance of a set of conventional expectations about the likely development of the plot or disposition of the characters; once the appropriate genre is identified and accepted, readers simply interpret it according to those conventions. Most recent accounts focus even more explicitly on the ways that genre distinc tions structure the viewer's experience of given films, through, as with Schatz, this is typically characterized as a top-down process. Such accounts may discuss, of ten in highly sophisticated ways, the tax onomic problems encountered by scholars and critics in identifying the conventions and boundaries of particular genres, but take for granted that popular reading is determined, one way or another, by the reader's early and correct recognition of texts as belonging to particular generic traditions. Rick Altman, for example, sug gests that genre "short-circuits the 'nor mal' sequence of interpretation" and usurps the function played by the interpre tive community in making sense of the narrative: "Seen in this light, genres ap pear as agents of a quite specific and effective ideological project: to control the audience's reaction to a specific film by providing the context in which that film must be interpreted" (4). Dudley Andrew pushes this concept of a top-down control over meaning-making even further: "[Genres] ensure the production of mean ing by regulating the viewer's relation to the images and narratives constructed for him or her. In fact, genres construct the proper spectator for their own consump tion. They build the desire and then rep resent the satisfaction of what they have triggered" (110). John Hartley, writing from a different theoretical position, con tends that "audience's different potential pleasures are channeled and disciplined by genres," which pre-determine the range of their likely responses (qtd. in Fiske 114). These types of ideological genre analysis, then, offer us limited insight into the men tal life of the viewer; even when theorists seem to be suggesting a "contract" be tween media producers and media con sumers, that contract is, in fact, remark ably one-sided, a contract of adhesion allowing readers little more than the right to refuse engagement with a particular media product. The price of admission to the genre text is the surrender of individ ual judgment and social identity. If such models provide insight into the role of genres within the Classical Hollywood Cinema (though space alone requires me to concede that claim here), we should be suspicious about importing them into tele vision studies. If film scholars were forced to rethink the broad generic classifications of literary criticism (such as comedy and tragedy) into the much more specific cat egories of the Hollywood marketplace (such as screwball comedy, film noir, or the adult western), television critics are often forced to make the opposite move, creating relatively broad categories which reflect the blurring of boundaries between genres within network programming. Thus, David Thorburn sees melodrama as the dominant television form, a genre which includes "most made-for-television movies, the soap operas, and all the law yers, cowboys, cops and docs, the fugi tives and adventurers, the fraternal and filial comrades who have filled the prime hours" (539-40). David Marc offers a sim ilarly broad notion of television comedy, 94 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions while John Fiske makes large-scale dis tinctions between masculine and feminine forms of network programming. If the Hollywood studio system fore grounded distinct genres as consistently appealing to particular audience segments, television has relied upon a process which Todd Gitlin has called "recombination" to broaden the appeal of any given program to encompass a larger share of the poten tial audience: "The logic of maximizing the quick payoff has produced that very Hollywood hybrid, the recombinant form, which assumes that selected features of recent hits can be spliced together to make a eugenic success" (64). The networks thus promote series which belong not to a single genre but to multiple genres, hoping to combine the security that comes from building on past success with the novelty that may help to attract audience enthusi asm. Generic traditions are manipulated as well with an eye towards combining different demographic groups with dif ferent cultural interests into the type of large audience needed for ratings success. Beauty and the Beast is a textbook exam ple of this type of recombination process. The program was carefully constructed to build on multiple genre traditions in its quest for a larger rating share, though the polysemous address of the program also reflected creative differences between its producers and the network executives and sparked disputes with the program's fans. What remained unresolved throughout the series' run was precisely the question of its generic status and the interpretive strategies by which this text was to be understood. Most accounts credit CBS Entertainment Division President Kim LeMasters with originating the idea for a series based on Beauty and the Beast, following a viewing of Jean Cocteau's classic film version of the fable. LeMasters approached Witt/ Thomas productions about developing the idea into a series for possible airing in the 1988-89 season. As producer Paul Witt explained in an interview shortly after the show's premiere, "We didn't want an other monster show. We didn't want a show where the beast breaks through walls. We wanted something classy" (Oney 37). Writer Ron Koslow, hired to create the program concepts and to write its pilot episode, viewed the show as a chance to create a "classical love story in classical terms" as well as to explore his fascination with the mythic possibilities of a Utopian society existing underneath the streets of New York City (Kloer 4). Ko slow hoped to contrast the "frantic pace and intensity of New York" with the "lyrical romance of the underground" within a program that was intentionally constructed as a hybrid of many different genres and which might thereby attract a broad-based audience of women, men, and children (Gordon 26). Producer Witt similarly described the show as "con sciously designed to have a split personal ity." He continued, "Everything above ground is filmed in a stark, even brutally realistic style; everything below the sur face is shot through a vaporous haze in hope of creating a mystical environment (Oney 37).5 Interestingly, this format requires a curi ous crossing of traditional gender bound aries: the professional stories with the adventure plots center around Catherine in her own sphere of action, while Vin cent's world is the more domestic and relationship-centered. Catherine's job as an investigator for the District Attorney's office ("where the wealthy and powerful rule") provides a base for traditional ac tion-adventure plots with her professional activities, bringing her into contact with the harsher elements of contemporary life (street gangs, drugs, prostitution, child abuse, voodoo cults, subway vigilantes) and placing her in dangerous positions from which Vincent can rescue her.6 Vin cent's role as one of the leaders of an underground Utopian society ("a secret place far below the city streets . . . safe JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) 95 This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions from hate and harm") allowed the series to shift its focus to the dilemmas faced by this alternative community and its colorful members.7 The romance between the two characters provides a kind of bridge which links the two worlds together and thus allows smooth transitions between two very different generic traditions. As series writer Howard Gordon explained: It is a constant source of satisfaction for me that one week's episode may take us through the mean streets of Manhattan, while the next week may take us into the very bowels of the Earth, encountering mythic charac ters like Paracelsus. . . . The only necessary denominator is to have Catherine and Vincent involved in some organic context?though not necessarily with equal emphasis. The tough part here is to find some central subject which interfaces with both worlds, relying, hopefully, on only a modicum of coincidence. (26) In each case, the ongoing romance be tween Vincent and Catherine plays a sec ondary but important role, motivating their involvement in this week's plot with out becoming its dominant focus. Television critics praised the series for its generic innovations and advised against a return to the television formulas which the producers sought to transcend (Burke and Dunadee). Network executives, however, pushed the producers to incorporate more and more elements of conventional action adventure television into the series format as a means of insuring its success with traditional Friday night viewers. In a re cent interview, series writer George R. R. Martin suggests that the networks and producers were, from the beginning, sharply divided over the nature of the series and the audience which it hoped to attract: There were certain elements from the network right at the beginning that regarded us as a hairy version of The Incredible Hulk. If we were going to be primarily an action/adventure show oriented towards children with an obligatory beast-out at the second act's end, and a major rescue to end the fourth act, I really didn't want to be involved. But from talking to Ron Koslow, it became clear that his am bitions for the show were very high and that he regarded it as adult oriented drama. (Grosse 53-54) Martin recounts initial network resistance to any devlopment of the Tunnel World population or the more romantic aspects of the story, seeing it simply as "a cop show with a hairy hero who saved peo ple." From the very beginning, Beauty and the Beast appealed to female viewers and seemed capable of attracting a younger audience within its early evening time slot; yet, it appeared to perplex and even annoy male viewers. Only as the program began to gain a greater audience following were the producers allowed to break more fully with action-adventure formulas and explore the romantic and fantastic elements of the series. Yet, as ratings declined in the second season, the producers responded to pressures to broaden its audience base by trying to attract more of the male viewers drawn to traditional action shows. When male view ership was not forthcoming, the network cancelled the series, only to retreat from that decision in the face of an unprece dented grassroots campaign. Instead, the network again sought to manipulate ge neric formulas to "retool" the program towards a higher masculine viewership. Thus, Martin's account of the series' pro duction explicitly links its generic place ment and plot development to shifts in the network's perception of its ratings and audience composition. Crudely put, ro mance-centered episodes meant more fe male fans, while action plots held open the prospect of enlarging its share of male viewership. 96 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Those theories cited earlier which imply that recognition of genre predetermines ideological response do not seem applica ble to a text which evokes as many dif ferent genre traditions as Beauty and the Beast. The producers' sense of its generic categorization differs from that of the readers and both contrast sharply with the network's perception of the same pro gram. Publicity for the program signals multiple genre categories as more or less equally appropriate: some ads feature ro mantic images of an embracing couple on a moonlit balcony, promising "a love story of a different kind," while others showed a roaring Vincent, poised for ac tion, asking whether he was "Man or Beast?" (Burke and Dunadee). Minimally, then, the reader must determine which generic formula will yield the best results in appreciating and interpreting any given episode. Just as the producers sought to accent one or another generic tradition as a strategy to attract different audience segments (romance for women, action adventure for men), readers seem to have chosen to focus their emotional invest ment on some aspects of the program's formulaic structure as potentially reward ing while experiencing others as an ongo ing source of displeasure and dissatisfac tion. From Reading The Romance To Reading As Romance Peter J. Rabinowitz has suggested that genre study might productively shift its focus away from properties of texts and onto the "strategies that readers use to process texts," seeing genres as "bundles of operations," conventions, and expecta tions that readers draw upon in the pro cess of making meanings from textual ma terials. As Rabinowitz puts it, " 'reading' is always 'reading as' " (421). Beauty and the Beast will reveal different meanings and generate different pleasures if it is read as a romance or as an action adventure series, or to use Rabinowitz's example, Dashiel Hammett's The Glass Key poses different dilemmas when read as literature or as a popular detective story. Different genres evoke different questions which readers want to ask and provide different rules for assigning signif icance and structure to textual content. Rabinowitz distinguishes between four ba sic types of interpretive strategies: (1) "rules of notice" which give priority to particular aspects of narratives as poten tially interesting and significant while as signing others to the margins; (2) "rules of signification" which help to determine what types of meanings or implications can be ascribed to particular textual fea tures; (3) "rules of configuration" which shape the reader's expectations about likely plot developments and allow the reader to recognize what would constitute a satisfactory resolution of that plot; (4) "rules of coherence" which shape the extrapolations that readers make from tex tual details, the speculations they make about information not explicitly present within the story. The reader's experience, he suggests, thus requires an initial deci sion about what genre will be most appro priately applied to a given narrative and then the systematic application of those generic rules to the process of making meaning from the textually provided infor mation. Beauty and the Beast was "readable" within a number of different genres: as a fairy tale or fable which might provide "enchantment" to both children and adults; as a classical romance which must necessarily end tragically; as a more con temporary romance which might hold the possibility of a happy resolution of char acter differences; as an action-adventure story about a couple of crime-fighters who struggle to impose their own notion of justice upon the world; as the saga of an underground Utopian society's attempt to define and preserve its own values; as "quality television," a more nebulous cat egory comparable to Rabinowitz's notion of "literature," which would emphasize JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) 97 This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions the series' production values, serious so cial themes, literary references, and clas sical musical performances as an appeal to cultural respectability. Some of these ge neric placements would be mutually ex clusive?or at least were perceived as contradictory within fan and producer dis course; romance fans were not drawn to the show for its action elements and vice versa. Others (Romance, Fairy Tale, and "Quality Television") might be mutually reinforcing or potentially overlapping. Each reading, however, would foreground different episodes or different moments in episodes as particularly pleasurable or sig nificant (rules of notice) and would ascribe different meanings to them (rules of signif icance); each would make its own predic tions about likely plot developments (rules of configuration) and its own judgments about what would constitute a desirable resolution of the narrative (rules of coher ence). If the network and the producers sought to keep as many of these possibilities alive as possible in order to build a coalition of different audiences around the series, in dividual fans certainly privileged some readings over others in making sense of the unfolding series. Some fans were drawn towards the "tunnel world" as an imaginary community whose values offer hopeful solutions to contemporary social issues, adopting it as a model for their own social interactions and charity work. Other fans seemed to have been particu larly drawn to the series as an exemplar of a particular notion of "quality television," tracking down the sources of the literary references and musical passages quoted on the program or tracing the history of the character names and its symbolic im agery. Yet while these potential interpre tations of the program do not completely disappear from the readers' experiences of the series, most of the members of the Boston group were insistent that Beauty and the Beast was, first and foremost, a romance: "When you don't have that ro mantic element, the show goes down the tubes very quickly. You can do a show about the tunnel people and the tunnel world but that's not the major focus of the series. It's really about the love between these two people." Aired episodes were evaluated, primarily, according to how much they contributed to the unfolding narrative of Vincent and Catherine's love. Asked to identify their favorite episodes, the Boston Beauty and the Beast fans consistently pointed out episodes which had a strong romantic fo cus or which represented important shifts in the character relationships: "Once Upon a Time . . .," "Masques," "A Happy Life," "Promises of Someday," "Orphans," "A Fair and Perfect Knight." Some cited the episodes involving the character of Elliot Burch, the only signif icant rival Vincent faced for Catherine's affections, while others focused their praise on the episodes featuring the vil lainous Paracelsus, who threatens not only the romantic couple but the future of the entire tunnel world community. Expla nations given for these preferences consis tently emphasized the ways these epi sodes had contributed to the character relationships and the progression of the romance. They are about characters I love and are truly romantic or [are] just B&B episodes as opposed to formula TV "Cops and Robbers" episodes. These are episodes that emphasize Vincent and Catherine, their relation ship, and things, people, and inci dents (past or present) that affect their relationship, whether for good or bad. Many specifically opposed these relation ship-centered episodes to the more action centered episodes preferred by the net work executives: one woman said that she preferred "those without violence and guns." Indeed, asked to cite their least favorite episodes, many focused specifi cally on those episodes which contained the highest amount of violence or which 98 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions spent the greatest amount of time devel oping traditional action-adventure plots: "The Hollow Men," "The Outsiders," "Terrible Savior," "Dark Spirit." The fans complained that these episodes were "too ominous and dark," "concentrate on action without much character develop ment," offered formulaic plots and too much emphasis on "the problems of the guest star of the week." The action-focus of these episodes seemed irrelevant to their conception of the program's generic development ("didn't move the relation ship either forward or backward") and thus played a relatively minimal role in their interpretation of the series. Their conception of the program's generic de velopment, then, formed a solid basis from which the group could evaluate the merits of individual episodes. While indi vidual fans might have particular favorites among the aired stories, there is a high degree of consensus among the group about which stories came closest to ful filling their sense of the series and which fell far short of the mark. "Promises Of Someday" Fan interpretive practice consistently foregrounded the most romantic aspects of the series text?even within episodes that are otherwise dominated by action adventure plots. The Whispering Gallery, a popular fan newsletter, ran a regular column reviewing the individual episodes, focusing primarily on those plot elements which fans wanted to see developed more fully, trying to speculate about "What They Don't Tell Us." These reviews give insight into the rules of notice which fans applied in the process of reading Beauty and the Beast as a romance and the rules of signification as a focus for their atten tion. Consider, for example, one fan's discussion of "Terrible Savior," an epi sode frequently cited as one of the series' worst because of its focus on Vincent's violent struggle with a subway vigilante: It starts out with us not knowing whether Vincent and Catherine have seen each other often or whether the subway slasher incident has brought them together. . . . We also see that Vincent is sure of his relationship with Catherine and she is still testing and learning. . . . Why does she fear him? Does she not trust him yet? This is obviously the case when she pulls away from him, and Vincent almost strikes a lamp in his rage. We see Catherine's fear of Vincent change after she confronts him then has time to think about it. Vincent as always is forgiving, again. (The perfect man.) (Terhaar 5) Here, dramatic moments within a sus pense-centered plot are being read for the clues that they provide about the romantic relationship between the series protago nists, with gestures, looks, and vocal tones mined for their suggestion of a grow ing level of intimacy. The questions the fan chooses to ask about the episode orig inate from her sense that the series as a whole should be read as a romance rather than as an action-adventure series. Most of the first two seasons' episodes, fans insist, provide some moments which are meaningful primarily in terms of the char acter romance, even if those moments receive relatively little screen time and are often marginal to the primary plot devel opment: "No matter how grim it got, there was always a warm balcony scene at the end of each episode." Fan critics, then, focused their primary interest on such moments, offering elabo rate interpretations of each gesture or expression, trying to fit them into some overall progression of the relationship. Consider, for example, one fan critic's reading of such a scene from "Chamber Music," an episode otherwise dominated by Vincent's efforts to help a street kid turn away from drugs and towards the development of his musical skills: Catherine and Vincent are sitting in the tunnel entrance way listening to a JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) 99 This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions concert in the park above them. This is only the second time Catherine and Vincent have been out on a "Real" date that didn't involve a murder, chase or rescue . . . Are we going to see more of these little romantic times between Catherine and Vincent, where they are off spending time alone? . . . Farther into the scene, it begins to rain. Catherine begins act ing like a care-free child, playing in the rain, laughing exuberantly. I won der if Catherine has become much more comfortable around Vincent and finally let loose a little. Her ac tions and movements in the rain bor dered on the seductive side, and we see Vincent watching and enjoying this. What is he thinking about? He smiles and chuckles along with her giddiness, but there is a hint of maybe a little more of the physical (desire?) side of this relationship. (Burke) As this example suggests, the fans' exten sive mining of these meaningful moments for their insight into the characters' unspo ken attitudes and feelings leads directly into speculations about possible future narrative developments. These types of localized interpretations are the raw materials from which fans construct a more global analysis of the series as rules of notice and signification are supplemented by rules of coherence and configuration. Fans may, indeed, en gage in heated debates at this level of local interpretation and may disagree about how they read individual scenes or even the overall progression across scenes. Yet these disagreements occur within a shared frame of reference, a common sense of the series' generic placement and a tacit agreement about what questions are worth asking and what moments provide accept able evidence from which to answer such questions. A fan critic can thus evoke this same moment as part of a succession of scenes illustrating her sense of the ongoing development of the character relation ships: "Think back to 'Brothers' and 'Chamber Music' and 'Remember Love.' . . . Check out the sickroom scene in 'Ashes, Ashes' and the balcony scene in the same episode. The final scene in 'Brothers,' the date scene and the parting scene in 'Chamber Music' Don't tell me you don't see and feel Catherine turn on to Vincent" (Almedina). Here, the individual moments which form the basis for this larger interpretation no longer need such detailed interpretation; the scene from "Chamber Music" can be reduced to a brief reference, since her audience has already absorbed its local significance and fit it into their larger sense of the series' development. Generic expectations are being fit to the particulars of this program text; as rules of notice, signification, coherence, and con figuration are applied episode by episode to the unfolding series, the more abstract generic formula gets replaced by a pro gram-specific meta-text. The fans' meta text is always much more than simply the crude outlines of a generic formula; it has built upon all the information specifically provided in the aired episodes, informa tion offered by secondary sources (e.g., the "program bible," published inter views) and the foundation of fan specula tions about that information. Yet, its point of origins lay within the reading hypothe sis introduced by the viewer's decision to read the text as belonging to a particular generic tradition. As Rabinowitz explains: Literary works "work" only because the reader comes to them with a fairly detailed understanding of what he or she is getting into beforehand. I am not denying that every work of fiction creates its own world, but I am saying that it can do so only because it assumes that the reader will have certain skills to begin with. (423) The fans' predictions about future narra tive developments are grounded not sim ply in a sense of what types of stories 100 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions romances typically tell but also in their sense of what motivates these particular characters, what concrete problems they need to overcome, and what circum stances would allow them to achieve greater intimacy. Their interpretations must necessarily be confirmed and recon firmed by references to specific moments in the text. Nevertheless, their descrip tions of these characters and their prob lems still bear a striking resemblance to the conventions of the "Ideal Romance" which Janice Radway identified through her field work with the Smithton women. Radway characterizes romances as "exer cises in the imaginative transformation of masculinity to conform with female stan dards," describing the process by which men and women overcome gender differ ences in levels of intimacy and communi cativeness to arrive at a relationship of sharing and nurturing (Radway, Reading 147). The woman needs to learn how to read past the man's harsh and stoic exte rior towards "evidence of his hidden, gen tle nature" (139). The fans' Vincent is torn between his gentleness and his realization of a darker, bestial side which he fears will forever block his chances of romantic ful fillment. Only by resolving this contradic tion within his nature can Vincent hope for happiness with Catherine. Moreover, Radway suggests, the ideal ro mance deals with "the female push towards individuation and actualization of self," the female push for autonomy and personal identity within terms which are nevertheless compatible with the desire to reaffirm heterosexual marriage {Reading 147). The fans' Catherine is such a figure who must reconcile her desires for profes sional autonomy and for romantic affec tion, who must decide what course will best provide her the "happy life" she seeks. These characters function within fan discourse simultaneously as rounded and individuated characters whose moti vations must be explained through refer ence to program history and as narrative types whose future actions can be pre dieted, at least in part, according to ge neric formula. It is important to note that few of the members of the Boston Beauty and the Beast club regarded themselves as regular readers of popular romances or regular viewers of soap operas, though some ex pressed an interest in more classical works that told romantic stories, such as Wuther ing Heights or Jane Eyre, and many listed television series with romantic subplots (Remington Steele, Moonlighting, Scare crow and Mrs. King, and Dark Shadows) as particular favorites. Indeed, in discus sions, the women were often openly hos tile to the conventions of the popular romance, particularly those which they saw as undermining the autonomy of the female protagonist, what they described as a shift from women who are "very tough and feisty" at the book's openings into "Millie Milquetoast characters" as a precondition for their winning of the man's love. Those fans who did "occa sionally" read romantic fiction were quick to assert that the conventions of that genre were changing in response to "feedback from the female fans" and were beginning to reflect the greater possibility of femi nine authority and independence following marriage. Almost all claimed, however, that Beauty and the Beast was offering a style of romance which could not be readily found in other popular fiction. To understand the meanings these women placed on the romance, it is useful to consider their social status and ideological orientation. All of the women in the group worked outside of the home, some in traditional female service jobs (teachers, nurses), others within low-level or middle management jobs. Many of them were married, though some were single. Most were in their early to mid-thirties, though several were older. Asked on the ques tionnaire, all of the women identified themselves as feminists, though many qualified that label in some fashion: "yes and no," "Yes, but not strident about it," JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) 101 This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions etc. It is a group which differs sharply from traditional stereotypes of bored housewives eagerly consuming popular romances; rather, these were women who confronted the contradictory expectations surrounding femininity in the late 1980s, and who were trying to find ways to ac tively pursue careers without rejecting the possibility of some type of romantic com mitment or without losing aspects of tra ditional femininity that they saw as plea surable and attractive. If these women did not feel entirely comfortable as feminists, despite the degree to which their profes sional lives broke with traditional feminine roles and the degree to which some of them remained entirely independent of men, they also did not feel comfortable identifying themselves as consumers of popular romances, an image which might pull them too sharply back within restric tive notions of femininity. These re sponses suggest that the women had to have some way of reconciling their partic ular political commitments and their own lifestyles with their desire for romance, pushing towards some modification of ro mantic conventions in order to provide for a greater sense of feminine power and authority. Indeed, their emotional commitment to Catherine?a character who is torn be tween professional ambitions and a desire for a more traditionally feminine lifestyle or, read generically, between action adventure and romance subplots?might help them to explore their own ambiguous relationship to feminism. The characters are consistently described in ways that evoke a break with traditional gender roles, while simultaneously attaching to them the pleasures these women found in preserving and accenting traditional forms of sexual difference. Vincent can be sensitive without be ing wimpy. I think all women want a sensitive man but there are some men who have this sensitive side but then they lack a masculine side. I think he's a blending of both sides that's the most perfect. I find Catherine to be tough, resource ful, reliable. She can take care of herself. But she's also allowed to cry. ... I see her more as a person than as a woman. She's not like cer tain women on shows now who are stereotypical women's libbers. They're tough?they act like men, while Catherine is strong yet very feminine and I like that about her. The relationship between characters was seen, then, as one which would provide each room to explore the full range of their personalities, to exercise both their strengths and their vulnerability. The pro gram, they hoped, would provide a type of romance that was relevant to an age of changing gender roles, a romance not based on submission but rather on mutual trust and commitment. Vincent loves her?he loves every thing about her and accepts her for the good and the bad. ... He sup ports her whatever comes. Vincent taught her to feel other peo ple's needs and she's just grown so much [during the series] and of course, she gave it back to him. She let him know that he could be loved just the way he was, not out of grati tude for his help or out of pity be cause he's alone, but just because he's Vincent. If the conventional romance, as critics like Janice Radway or Tania Modleski have suggested, represents a male protagonist who will love the heroine above all others but only on the condition that she submit her desires and ambitions to his will, these women saw Beauty and the Beast as of fering the possibility of a type of relation ship which reflected their commitment to "the power, strength, and autonomy of women" without rejecting aspects of tra ditional femininity and masculinity that 102 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions they saw as desirable. Romantic consum mation, then, did not entail simply the fulfillment of the viewers' erotic fantasies, but rather posed an ideological solution, a reconciliation of differences, the possibil ity of trust and intimacy between two people who are so different and yet so alike. There is a confrontation and a resolu tion that has to happen. It doesn't have anything to do with people going to bed together. It has to do with completeness. It can be touching. It can be hugging. It can even be just standing looking at each other but the completeness needs to be there and for Catherine and Vincent, they never got it. We only get a hint of it. Such a reading of the program helps to explain why Catherine was a particularly pivotal figure for these women. As Rad way suggests, the heroine becomes the focus for feminine identification. If she can successfully negotiate through these conflicting demands, then her story offers hope for the readers' own efforts to repo sition themselves during a period of social change: "I saw a lot of myself in her. The character's gone through a lot of what I've gone through." The fans' expectations about the likely development of the series were very much bound to their hopes for the success of Catherine in resolving the types of dilemmas which they confronted in their personal lives, suggestive of the type of "emotional realism" fans seek in popular television texts.8 One member of the Boston fan club de scribed her sense of the program's overall plot trajectory: The first season saw the characters deciding to "pursue a relation ship together," a decision which is reached by the season's conclusion ("A Happy Life"); the second season should have "deepened" their relationship work ing to resolve the differences which sepa rate them, reaching a crisis point by the season's three-part finale; the third season should have begun with their realization "that they belonged together" and have started to "moved towards some of their dreams, towards maybe some kind of life together below, some kind of wedding or other symbolic ceremony. Then, at the end, they could have had Catherine ex pecting a baby or having a baby and have it end happily?play the thing through from beginning to end." Her Beauty and the Beast had always been moving towards a happy ending which would have resolved the difficulties separating the couple, would have re vealed them to exist largely within the characters' minds, and would have al lowed them the "satisfaction" of a tradi tional family life together. The other fans offered similar visions of a desirable reso lution for the series. I would like to have seen significant progress made in V & C's relationship throughout the season, perhaps re sulting in a wedding or some other commitment vows or ceremony by the end of the season. But not without a few obstacles to overcome along the way to make things interesting. Vin cent being able to come to terms with his dark side, which is essential if their relationship is to progress. Catherine and Vincent would have consummated their love, married, and had a child. [The series should end with] Cather ine moving into the tunnels. The consistency with which the fans re turn to these same images?marriage, sex ual consummation, birth?as a means of resolving this "perfect and impossible re lationship" points towards the degree to which they were relying upon familiarity with generic conventions to shape their experience of the series. The fans' projections about the series' development closely mirror Radway's ac count of the "Ideal Romance" formula: JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) 103 This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1. The heroine's social identity is de stroyed. [In "Once Upon a Time . . .," Catherine is mistaken for another woman and disfigured; Catherine re pudiates her previous engagement, rejects her place in her father's firm, and seeks a new life for herself.] 2. The heroine reacts antagonistically to an aristocratic male. [In "Once Upon a Time . . .," Catherine reacts with fear and fascination upon her first encounter with Vincent.] 3. The aristocratic male responds am biguously to the heroine. [Throughout the early part of the first season, Vincent desires Catherine and yet he sends her away ; Catherine fears Vin cent in "A Terrible Savior."] . . . 7. The heroine and hero are physi cally and/or emotionally separated. [In "A Happy Life," Catherine flees to New Jersey hoping to resolve her conflicting desires, planning to end her relationship with Vincent.] 8. The hero treats the heroine ten derly. [The characters embrace at the end of the first season.] 9. The heroine responds warmly to the hero's act of tenderness. [Cather ine comes to feel closer to Vincent as the second season begins.] 10. The heroine reinterprets the hero's ambiguous behavior as the product of a previous hurt. [The sec ond season offers several episodes exploring Vincent's past, including a story of his first romantic experi ences; the crisis which Vincent faces in reconciling his gentleness and his bestiality heightens throughout the season.] (Radway, Reading 134) Having successfully mapped through the series each of these expected movements within the romantic narrative, the fans came to anticipate the final completion of the formulaic plot. 11. The hero proposes/openly de clares his love for/demonstrates his unwavering commitment to the hero ine with a supreme act of tenderness. 12. The heroine responds sexually and emotionally. 13. The heroine's identity is restored. So grounded have these expectations be come in the fans' interpretation of textual specifics, in meaningful moments from the episodes, that they seem to originate not from an outside interpretive formula but rather from within the series itself. Beauty and the Beast appears to promise the type of romantic resolution that its producers had consistently denied: Vincent and Catherine must consummate their rela tionship and thus provide appropriate clo sure to this romantic narrative. "Feel The Fury" As Radway documents, romance readers often flip to the back of the book to confirm that the story's resolution will satisfy their generic expectations before they invest the time and money in reading it. "Dot," the book store employee who advised women which books would best satisfy their tastes, directed the Smithton readers away from stories that would frus trate their desires and leave them unful filled. The viewers of an unfolding televi sion series, such as Beauty and the Beast, have no similar means of verifying that the program will bring its narrative to an ap propriate resolution. Instead, the fans were forced to place their trust in the producers to provide them with the type of unfolding story they wanted to watch. The producers' persistent refusal to provide the viewers with precisely those plot de velopments (increased intimacy between Vincent and Catherine, Vincent's resolu tion of his personal conflicts, the achieve ment of some type of stable romantic commitment) was perceived as a betrayal of implicit promises made to them by virtue of the program's apparent reliance on the generic formulas of the romance. 104 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Many of the members of the Boston club expressed distrust that even if Linda Hamilton's departure had not forced the producers in other directions they would have delivered on the commitments they made to fans: "It would have been a lot more near misses. They never would have given us our romance." Their intense displeasure in the third sea son seems to have fed on several years of disappointments in the series' refusal to gratify their fantasies about the romantic possibilities between these two charac ters, a history of TV Guide blurbs promis ing romantic interludes which proved more teasing than gratifying, of scenes that edged towards romantic commitment, only to be interrupted or to have the characters back away from consumma tion. For many of the fans, the cryptic and hurried consummation ("lava flowing") that opens "Though Lovers Be Lost. . .," the third season premiere, was a "ludi crous nightmare" which denied the view ers precisely the types of warmth and intimacy they had desired for this couple. That moment was simply the last in a series of "insults" to their hopes and expectations: "They were tremendously electric scenes but afterwards you just felt annoyed." Initially, fans could find textual explanations for the couple's inability to achieve romantic fulfillment (the divisive influence of Father, Vincent's anxieties and fears, Catherine's desires for autono my). Yet, these explanations crumpled in the face of progressively more "teasing" and exploitation, forcing them to shift their anger onto the producers, who for whatever reason (early time slot, male anxiety about Catherine's relationship with a "beast," network interference) would not deliver to the fans what the series itself appeared to be promising. As fan culture emerged, as fanzine stories began to appear, they focused increasingly on the unfulfilled romantic possibilities of the material, representing ways that Vin cent and Catherine might overcome the obstacles blocking personal fulfillment? that they might escape from the tunnels to enjoy time together, that they could con summate their relationship, that Vincent and Catherine could become parents, liv ing in the "world below" and raising a new generation.9 The fanzine titles?Cas cade of Dreams, A Promise of Eternity, Sonnets and Roses, Tunnels of Love, A Life Without Limits, Crystal Visions, or Faded Roses?evoke the most sentimen tal images from the program world as a basis for new narratives which fulfull pre cisely those romantic fantasies being frus trated by the aired episodes. By the time the belated third season ap peared, the fan community had developed a firm sense of how the romance between Catherine and Vincent should be resolved. Each saw its resolution in somewhat dif ferent images and under different circum stances. Yet, a consensus had evolved within the fan community that the charac ters must overcome the intense differ ences which separate them and achieve the family happiness they had for so long been denied. This meta-text allowed some fans to deny the "authenticity" of the third season episodes, claiming that they were not part of the series canon and therefore not binding on fan speculations. I looked at it as a separate version of possible reality ... I don't choose to believe this is going to be the reality for these characters. In my mind, they are off living happily ever after and I will continue to read stories and write stories about them. ... I don't feel emotionally depressed about it because I don't feel any ownership of the third season. I don't feel that that's really what happened to the characters. For others, however, the televised images proved too vivid, their closeness to these characters too strong to allow them this type of distance from the broadcast events: "What should have been a joyous JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) 105 This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions time for Catherine and Vincent has turned into a terrible nightmare and I feel trapped in it with them" (Freeman 3). The Beauty and the Beast they had watched and supported was officially dead; its producers and the network had killed it, shifting the program's focus towards generic formulas that held no compelling interest for them. I think they were going for the heroic image, not realizing that when we saw Vincent, we didn't just see the heroic image. We saw the romantic Vincent. They did their best to build the per fect heroic image which meant that they had to provide an equally great villain. . . . The problem is that to do so they sacrificed the romantic side of the plot and that did it. That act of killing Catherine made him the great est villain I've ever seen. Nonethe less, they had given up forever the chance to go back and bring in the romantic element of Catherine, which is what they had that was so valuable to begin with. The fans felt no "ownership" of the third season episodes because the producers had violated the spirit of what had drawn these women to the text. Instead of the possibility of greater intimacy and ro mance, of a reconciliation of differences, the long-delayed consummation scene was reduced to a succession of quick and cli ched images of flowers blooming and lava flowing. So cryptic and confusing was the sequence that some fans have jokingly referred to Catherine's baby as the result of "immaculate conception." Rather than using consummation as a means of achiev ing greater trust between the two lovers, of resolving the conflicts which separated them, sexual intercourse broke the em pathic bond that joined them ; Vincent lost his memory not only of that moment but of much that transpired between him and Catherine. For two years, we've waited for that grand, passionate kiss of our dreams and what we get instead is mouth-to mouth resuscitation and not much of that! . . . The fact that Vincent never once remembered that anything had happened just makes it worse. For him, subjectively speaking, nothing did happen. And now that she's dead, nothing can ever happen . . . Why did the writers deny this experience to Vincent and Catherine (and to us) when they'll never have the chance again?! (DeLeon 3) From that moment, the program assumed the worst features Radway's readers iden tified in the "failed romance": Where the ideal romance appears to be about the inevitability of the deep ening of "true love" into an intense conjugal commitment, failed ro mances take as their principal subject the myriad problems and difficulties that must be overcome if mere sexual attraction is not to deteriorate into violence, indifference or abandon ment. {Reading 162) The series moved relentlessly to foreclose any possibility of romantic fulfillment for Vincent and Catherine, and in the process, took away much that the fans had found endearing about earlier episodes. Cather ine is brutally tortured and murdered; Vin cent goes on a rampage seeking vengeance for her death, his gentleness completely overpowered by bestial fury. Scenes of violence scarred the special places from previous episodes which had become so saturated with meaning and emotions through the fans' repeated re-readings of those scenes and which had become em bedded within the fans' own narratives; beloved characters were revealed as trai tors or killed. The producers sought to appease fans by the introduction of a new female protago nist, Diana, who many suspected was de signed to be a future lover for Vincent, a development which viewers felt would 106 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions only further undermine the "specialness" they had seen in the Vincent-Catherine romance. Let's face it, we can't have the ro mance back, because Vincent can never love anyone again as he did Catherine, and to have him do so would be to violate everything the writers established about their rela tionship and thus would be unbeliev able. (Rious 16) Moreover, Diana's strength and indepen dence pushed too far against romantic convention. Many fans felt she lacked those aspects of traditional femininity that had drawn them to Catherine, and there fore, she seemed less well suited to their needs to work through ideological prob lems: "Diana can take care of herself. She doesn't need to look to anyone for help. But I can't picture her on the balcony in a silk nightgown. . . . Catherine was all soft and Diana is all hard-edged." Several of the women suggested that they found Di ana's character interesting and that it might become the focus of a fascinating series but Diana did not fit well within their expectations for Beauty and the Beast. The tensions which had been building be tween fans and producers for months erupted publicly with some fans writing angry letters demanding its immediate cancellation and many breaking all ties with Beauty and the Beast fandom in the controversy which surrounded these de velopments. Letterzines and club newslet ters overflowed with painful expressions of the fans' responses to the third season. Many reacted with relief when the series was finally pulled from the air. Yet, it would be a mistake to describe this trau matic break between fans and producers as the end of Beauty and the Beast fan dom. The characters had established a coherence and stability within fan culture even after the series itself had ceased production. Fans could now turn their attention entirely to the creation and con sumption of "zine" narratives which more perfectly fulfilled their generic expecta tions and satisfied their desires for these characters. The infrastructure established during the long struggle to protect the series from cancellation now serves as the basis for an autonomous fan culture, drawing its characters from the aired epi sodes yet taking them in directions totally unimagined by the producers. Conclusion As we began, so we end?with fan frus tration over the third season and with questions about the complex and unstable relationship that exists between producers and fans. Fans often express a kind of worshipful awe of program creators, an awe that stems from their tremendous fascination and enthusiasm for the charac ters and situations offered them by popu lar media texts. They see themselves as fiercely loyal to the integrity of those texts, to the wealth of their visions, and the coherence of their characterizations. This attitude has frequently led outside observers to see fans as all-accepting and uncritical. Yet, as we have seen, what the fans support is often not the text which the media industry produced but rather the text which they have created through their collective discussions and interpretations of the aired material and their speculations about its likely development. Where the aired episodes break with the fans' own metatextual sense of the series, they are harshly criticized or rejected altogether. The fans' commitment to the program, the consensus about its contents which origi nates from within their own ranks, forms the basis for their assertion of a right to "police" producer actions, to protect the show from perceived violation or betrayal. They claim the authority to speak for the characters, a claim which often sets them on a collision course with the program producers who reserve the right to re shape the series in response to changing JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) 107 This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ratings and shifting pressures from the networks. The fans' reading of Beauty and the Beast as a romance does not represent a pro found break with the conventions of pop ular culture or even of this particular pro gram. The formulas they use in interpreting the episodes, if they do not originate within Beauty and the Beast, certainly gain their attractiveness through their reproduction elsewhere within the mass media. The fans' own reworking of those conventions, while substantial, rep resents little more than a local reform or inflection of ideologies already in much broader circulation. The fans were initially drawn to Beauty and the Beast rather than other broadcast programming precisely because they felt a compatibility between its world view and their own, because it seemed to speak of values which they shared and attitudes that they wanted to see publicly articulated. This closeness between fan, text, and producer, how ever, proved remarkably short-lived. Hav ing "embraced" the program as a focus for their own subcultural activity, fans remained sharply critical of aspects of the series content that violated their sense of the characters and the fictional world they inhabited. At a certain point, then, when the produc ers finally and irrevocably denied the plea sure which the fans sought from the series, their frustration overpowered their fasci nation. The fans were brought to the pain ful realization that their interests in the series were fundamentally incompatible with those of the producers and that no possible reconciliation of the two could be achieved. Even starting from a position that is relatively mainstream within Amer ican political thought and that is in sym pathy with this particular program, the fans found themselves at odds with the textual producers and were brought to a recognition of the limited power they can exercise within the dominant cultural economy. Rather than rejecting Beauty and the Beast entirely, however, the fans "poached" its materials, appropriated its cultural resources for their own use, and allowed the characters a life independent from that provided by the aired episodes. The characters seemed too vivid an expression of their desires to be simply discarded. The texts the fans produce still necessarily bear traces of the ideology that structured the original text, still bear re semblences to the characters and situa tions that drew them to this particular program, but they have been inflected through the fans' own ideological beliefs and reshaped to respond to their own desires and interests. The text must, in the end, be remade before it can become entirely theirs. Acknowledgment This essay is extracted from the forthcoming book, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Cut lure, by the kind permission of Routledge. Notes 1 For a useful discussion of the role of audi ence researchers in constituting the audience, see Radway. 2 There are, for example, several members of the Boston group who prefer the third season to the other two and who are often highly critical of the construction of Catherine's character within the first two season's episodes. These fans reflect larger sentiments within the fan community, although third season supporters are outnumbered by critics. It should not be assumed, then, that the account of fan response to the program offered here reflects absolute conformity within Beauty and the Beast fandom so much as general tendencies within the group. 3 This approach responds to movements within feminist ethnography to recognize the importance and value of "situated knowledge" and to alter the power relations between the ethnographer and the community. See, for ex ample, Clifford, Clifford and Marcus, Marcus and Fischer, Moore, Strathern, McRobbie, and Roberts. 108 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 43.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991) This content downloaded from 129.59.95.115 on Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 4 These aspects of fandom are discussed more fully in Jenkins, Textual Poachers. 5 For a detailed discussion of the ways pro duction design and visual style reflects these different generic traditions, see Battaile. 6 See, for example, "Terrible Savior," "Siege," "Now Way Down," "Beast Within," "Dark Spirit," "A Children's Story," "Temp tation," and "Everything is Everything," to cite only first season episodes which focus primarily on Catherine's confrontation of above-ground problems. 7 See, for example, "Song of Orpheus," "The Alchemist," "To Reign in Hell," "China Moon," "Chamber Music," "God Bless the Child," "Dead of Winter," "Masques," "Fe ver," "Ashes . . . Ashes," "A Gentle Rain," and "Ozymandius," for episodes that focus heavily on the tunnel world as an underground Utopia. For a useful discussion of the older and broader tradition of the underground Utopia, see Williams. 8 The term, "emotional realism," is derived from Ang; its relationship to fan reading prac tices is discussed more fully in Jenkins, Textual Poachers. 9 For a fuller discussion of fanzine writing as fan cultural practice, see Jenkins, "Star Trek." Works Cited Almedina, Patricia. Letter. The Whisper ing Gallery 8 (1989): n.p.. Altman, Rick. The American Film Musi cal. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987. Andrew, Dudley. Concepts in Film The ory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984. Ang, Ien. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London: Methuen, 1985. Battaile, Robert. "Beauty and the Beast." Theatre Crafts Nov. 1988: 28-35. Budd, Michael, Robert M. Entman, and Clay Steinman. "The Affirmative Char acter of U.S. Cultural Studies." 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