Doctor Who, Ma’am: YouTube Reactions to the 2017 Reveal of the New Doctor

Eeken, Sophie; Hermes, Joke

doi:10.1177/1527476419893040

Cited by 10 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 25 publications

(33 reference statements)

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“…What we have gained is a shared understanding that popular culture is a key site for the production and reproduction of hegemony (Storey, 2018, p. 3). Nowadays we know that popular culture provides us with easy means to reflect on what binds and what divides us, whether such forms of cultural citizenship take progressive or conservative forms (Eeken & Hermes, 2021;Hermes, 2005). That it affords wholehearted immersion and excitement over issues that are deeply political, but quite possibly more properly belong in other realms.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Loss of the Popular: Reconstructing Fifty Years of Studying Popular Culture

Hermes

Teurlings

2021

MaC

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This article starts from the observation that popular culture resides in a contradictory space. On the one hand it seems to be thriving, in that the range of media objects that were previously studied under the rubric of popular culture has certainly expanded. Yet, cultural studies scholars rarely study these media objects as popular culture. Instead, concerns about immaterial labor, about the manipulation of voting behavior and public opinion, about filter bubbles and societal polarization, and about populist authoritarianism, determine the dominant frames with which the contemporary media environment is approached. This article aims to trace how this change has come to pass over the last 50 years. It argues that changes in the media environment are important, but also that cultural studies as an institutionalizing interdisciplinary project has changed. It identifies “the moment of popular culture” as a relatively short-lived but epoch-defining moment in cultural studies. This moment was subsequently displaced by a set of related yet different theoretical problematics that gradually moved the study of popular culture away from the popular. These displacements are: the hollowing out of the notion of the popular, as signaled early on by Meaghan Morris’ article “The Banality of Cultural Studies” in 1988; the institutionalization of cultural studies; the rise of the governmentality approach and a growing engagement with affect theory.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Loss of the Popular: Reconstructing Fifty Years of Studying Popular Culture

Hermes

Teurlings

2021

MaC

Self Cite

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“…Later, Steven Moffat (showrunner of Doctor Who, 2010-2017) dismissed the idea of creating a female Doctor by arguing that the series is not created 'for progressive liberals' (Walter, 2017: n.p.). When both Star Wars and Doctor Who introduced new female protagonists in 2015 and 2017 respectively, the announcements were met with a massive backlash from male fans who decried the 'taking over' of their fandoms by women (Austin, 2018;Eeken and Hermes, 2019).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Defining Conditional Belonging: The Case of Female Science Fiction Fans

Yodovich

2020

Sociology

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This article offers a rigorous conceptualisation of an undeveloped sociological concept: conditional belonging. It implements and develops conditional belonging in the setting of everyday life by examining female fans of science fiction. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with female fans of Doctor Who and Star Wars, this study defines conditional belonging as a liminal state in which new members are constructed as a threatening ‘other’ and required to demonstrate conformity to the community. Having to align with values established by veteran members disrupts the ability of those who conditionally belong to perceive their identities as authentic. Conditional belonging is explored in offline and online settings, exposing the tactics used online by female fans to ensure their belonging. Through demonstrating the ways in which conditional belonging is cultivated and enforced, this article contributes to a nuanced understanding of belonging, not as a binary condition, but a multi-layered, complex one.

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“…Elsewhere, one of us discusses how the storm of reactions to BBC's 2017 reveal of the new (female) Doctor Who is instructive. It demonstrates how changing the Doctor's gender perhaps was not the main problem irate fans and viewers had when complaining bitterly about the BBC's decision (Eeken & Hermes, 2019). Rather, gender becoming an unstable, undependable and unpredictable category was.…”

Section: Netnography: Gender and Legacymentioning

confidence: 96%

Casting for Change: Tracing Gender in Discussions of Casting through Feminist Media Ethnography

Hermes

Kopitz

2021

MaC

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The moment of casting is a crucial one in any media production. Casting the ‘right’ person shapes the narrative as much as the way in which the final product might be received by critics and audiences. For this article, casting—as the moment in which gender is hypervisible in its complex intersectional entanglement with class, race and sexuality—will be our gateway to exploring the dynamics of discussion of gender conventions and how we, as feminist scholars, might manoeuvre. To do so, we will test and triangulate three different forms of ethnographically inspired inquiry: 1) ‘collaborative auto-ethnography,’ to discuss male-to-female gender-bending comedies from the 1980s and 1990s, 2) ‘netnography’ of online discussions about the (potential) recasting of gendered legacy roles from Doctor Who to Mary Poppins, and 3) textual media analysis of content focusing on the casting of cisgender actors for transgender roles. Exploring the affordances and challenges of these three methods underlines the duty of care that is essential to feminist audience research. Moving across personal and anonymous, ‘real’ and ‘virtual,’ popular and professional discussion highlights how gender has been used and continues to be instrumentalised in lived audience experience and in audience research.

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Doctor Who, Ma’am: YouTube Reactions to the 2017 Reveal of the New Doctor

Cited by 10 publications

References 25 publications

The Loss of the Popular: Reconstructing Fifty Years of Studying Popular Culture

The Loss of the Popular: Reconstructing Fifty Years of Studying Popular Culture

Defining Conditional Belonging: The Case of Female Science Fiction Fans

Casting for Change: Tracing Gender in Discussions of Casting through Feminist Media Ethnography

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