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Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat's Great Game of Fandom: Investigating The Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s Great Game of Fandom: Investigating the Creator-Text-Fan Relationship of BBC’s A Thesis Presented to the Department of Communication and Arts at Roskilde University In Partial Fulfilment of Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts English & Communication Presented by Marie Sophie Kindler [email protected] / [email protected] Studienr.: 58727 Under the Supervision of Ebbe Klitgård Submitted on 28th of June 2017 Abstract This thesis is investigating the reciprocal relationship between author, text and fan. Approaching the modern realisation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes phenomenon, this thesis focusses on BBC’s television series Sherlock. Written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the show is critically acclaimed for its accomplishment to update the Victorian stories without losing its loyalty to the source text. Because of its production approach, the series is particularly interesting for participatory audiences, which is why it gathered an enormous fanbase. Additionally to their intertextual adaptation approach (that references previous interpretations as much as the canon itself), Gatiss and Moffat’s self- declared “fanboyness” attracts fans who celebrate the co-writers for their fannish motivation. However, the ambiguity of Gatiss and Moffat’s fan-producer behaviour has considerably blurred the lines between official production and fandom. Therefore, discursive-struggles between the fans and the co-writers testify the important role of authors for fan audiences. While the fans acknowledge Gatiss and Moffat’s creative power, they contest the ways in which it is wielded. This becomes apparent by looking at the queerbaiting controversy that unleashed in January 2017, shortly after Sherlock’s final episode. While fans enjoy the co-writers’ “great game of fandom” that occasionally teases their participants with riddles and false pretence, queer fans denounce Gatiss and Moffat for their continuous “gay jokes”. Using reception theory, this thesis analyses how the so-called “Johnlock-Shippers” interpret Sherlock as a gay romance between the main protagonists. It is revealed that the writers’ extra-diegetic discourse plays highly into the reading of the Johnlock-Shippers. Because of the authors’ knowledge about their fans’ obsession with Sherlock and John’s unexplained sexuality, it is discussed why the fans disapprove of Gatiss and Moffat’s handling of homoerotic subtext that was not intended to lead to a big reveal in the final episode. The thesis concludes with the perception that the series fails to fully acknowledge or understand the fan, despite its fan-driven approach. Because of the sensitive topic of LGBT-representation in the media, the queerbaiting case reveals how fans put their trust in the creators of their fan object and how perceived irresponsible behaviour is contested with the usage of new media. Table of Contents Abstract 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Problem Area ................................................................................................................................. 5 1.2 Research Problem and Problem Formulation ................................................................................ 9 1.3 Methodological Approach and Structuring Questions ................................................................ 10 2. The Great Game of Fandom ........................................................................................................... 12 2.1 Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s Sherlock ................................................................................. 12 2.1.1 Sherlock as a Coded Validation of Fan’s Collective Intelligence ........................................ 12 2.1.2 Sherlock and the Disposition to “Fanboy” Knowledge ........................................................ 17 2.1.3 Sherlock and Perceptions of (Non)-Heterosexuality ............................................................ 23 2.2 The Johnlock Conspiracy (TJLC) ............................................................................................... 31 2.2.1 The Johnlock-Shippers’ Reading of Sherlock ...................................................................... 32 2.2.2 Fanon and Shipping TJLC .................................................................................................... 43 2.3 The Queerbaiting Controversy .................................................................................................... 48 2.3.1 Reactions to Sherlock’s Series Finale .................................................................................. 48 2.3.2 The Failure of the Authors? .................................................................................................. 54 2.3.3 The Creator-Text-Fan Triangle ............................................................................................ 56 3. Discussion ......................................................................................................................................... 62 4. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 66 4.1 Recommendation for Further Research ....................................................................................... 69 List of Works Cited List of Figures Appendix Plagiarism Disclaimer 1. Introduction I’m very wary of people that aren’t fans of something. I mean, it’s kind of weird not to freak out over cool things. Mark Sheppard, Actor Today, certainly almost everyone is a fan of something or someone. As the quote above illustrates, being passionate - or even slightly obsessive (“to freak out”) – about the things that positively attract and emotionally involve us, is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, it seems to make us more likable; let us appear as normal (as opposed to “weird”). However, as the Oxford English Dictionary points out, it has not always been that way. Tracing the origin of the word “fan” back to the late 19th century, the OED describes it as an abbreviation of fanatic (“fan, n.2.”). This early comparison of fans with fanatics recalls the usage of the latter word in context of religious and satanic practices. Alluding to religious maniacs, “fanatic” was primarily used as an adjective to characterise “behaviour that might result from possession by a god or a demon” (“fanatic”). Referring to the works of Grossberg (1992) and Jensen (1992), Kristina Busse reflects on this negative sentiment about fans that had prevailed until very recently. She states, “fans of popular culture [were] often dismissed […], and media fans in particular [were] frequently represented as displaying unhealthy, obsessive, even pathologic behaviour” (131). Looking back to the late 19th and early 20th century and to one of the oldest mass media fandoms will help to understand such notions. It was back then that the new forms of mass media and popular culture had caused huge and enthusiastic audiences, leading fans to come into focus of public attention. Nacy Reagin and Anne Rubenstein ascribe it to ideal preconditions that organised fan communities emerged, “as the most deeply engaged fans began to seek each other out” (3.11). Even though this happened over a hundred years ago, Scott Brown compares it to the “fandom as we know it – zealous, fractious, hydra-headed, and participatory”. How is it that the late 1800s and early 1900s were such a fertile ground for fans and their endeavours? Michael Saler suggests looking at issues of modernity and enchantment of the Western civilisation. Max Weber’s captured the zeitgeist of the turn of the century when he described “the disenchantment of the world” (155), an abolishment of “delight and astonishment at the wonders, marvels, and mysteries” in favour of “rationality, secularism, democracy, urbanisation, industrialisation, and bureaucratisation” (Saler 138). Because of scientific progress (e.g. Darwin’s theory of evolution), the rapid 1 industrialisation had resulted in an urbanisation of mass culture that “seemed to rule out any divine purpose of legible meaning to existence” (ibid.). Saler argues, however, that the “widespread association of modernity with disenchantment is too simplistic” (138), and therefore goes on to outline one way in which modernity and enchantment have been brought together in what he terms “ironic imagination” (139). In his view, the turn of the century provided enough venues for people to “exercise their imaginations” (141), such as illustrated newspapers, magazines, libraries, museums, and films. This in turn created a modernist “double consciousness” (139), a widespread recognition “that perceived reality was to some extent an imaginative construct, and that rationality itself was beholden to imaginative insights and desires” (142). Saler makes the allegory to the experience of being aware that one is dreaming while one is dreaming. He goes on to illustrate how the mass culture of the time produced “worlds of the imagination that gratified the sense of wonder without denying modernity” (144). Several writers of the period successfully addressed “marvels and wonders” in combination with “empirical detail and apparent scientific objectivity of the realists” (ibid. 142). Creating the genre of New Romance, writers like H. Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, and Arthur Conan Doyle
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