Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth

Contemporary Ethnography

by Camille Bacon-Smith

A study of the worldwide community of fans of Star Trek and other genre television series who create and distribute fiction and art based on their favorite series. This community includes people from all walks of life—housewives, librarians, secretaries, and professors of medieval literature. Ninety percent of its members are women.

Genres: Nonfiction, Fandom, Feminism, Pop Culture, Star Trek, History, Historical

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Jinjifore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite the controversy in the fan community surrounding this book--particulary among fans who feel that Bacon-Smith selectively edited and even distorted their words--I have to say that her observed experiences in fandom tallied with my own more often than not. Especially at the time of her writing, there were very few sympathetic treatments of the fan community, and even fewer studies where the author had anything more than a cursory knowledge of fandom.[return][return]Fandom has changed a great deal since Bacon-Smith published this book. Fan fiction, and especially slash fiction, is no longer an underground secret. The internet has opened up the world of fandom to anyone with a computer and a phone line, and even the super-secret circuit archive she wrote about is now available online to anyone who cares to look for it. This book is, I think, an important record of media fandom at the time of its writing, and shows fans and fandom churning on without the spotlight of internet scrutiny turned on them.

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a cultural studies classic monograph and well worth that title. Deploying ethnography, Bacon-Smith investigates female fan communities. The conventions, the costumes, the fan fiction, the friendship. It is methodologically successful and theoretically considered. It offered a critique of Henry Jenkins and textual poaching, particularly with regard to female sexuality.

I have read all of the fan studies research published in the last 5 years. Most of it is absolutely dire, simple, anti-theoretical and - to be frank - blokes celebrating the size of their fandom. This careful and dignified book remains the 'go to' text to understand fandom in its complexity and political dissonances.

[Roxana Chirilă · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the first books on fandom (and one of the first), focusing on fandoms such as Star Wars and Blake's 7. While one can tell that Bacon-Smith is an outsider who doesn't really become one of the fans herself, her "snapshots" of fan realities back in the day are quite precious, especially to someone who became a fan in the age of the internet (like, say, me).

[Kifflie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an ethnographic study of female fandom. It's pre-internet, published in 1992, so in some ways it's amusingly out of date. Still, as someone who's been part of female fan communities off and on since 1997, I think Bacon-Smith has basically captured what makes us tick; we're nerdy outsider women who enjoy certain shows, certain movies, certain books, and certain characters and we want to play with them -- and the bonus is that we're able to find others who speak the same language. And I think it's as true for us now as it would have been in the seventies and eighties when the only way to share fics was through printed zines.

Reading this also made me very aware of how many fandoms I've belonged to over the years, and how much stuff I've collected as a result.

Some of the academic and linguistic language was over my head, but I skimmed through those parts, and I don't think I missed the major points of the book.

[A · Rating 2 out of 5]

In fairness, I was warned that this book was extremely dated. But the whole vibe was, "Behold! I shall embed myself in the ranks of these crazy, deviant wackadoodles," and you know, I took that personally

[Elisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written at about the same time, and covering the same subject, as Henry Jenkins' seminal Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, this book at first appears to be a more dry and academic treatment of the same subject. In fact, it is a much more detailed and in-depth study of the community and the products it creates, including the psychology behind them and the culture they construct. An excellent if slightly dated read for anyone interested in fans, fandom, and fan fiction, as well as the women's culture that grew up around them in the 70s and 80s.

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very similar in structure and content to Textual Poachers. Also published in 1992 and therefore contains no information on the X-Files Internet fandom phenomenon. This one was also full of underlining from my previous reading and again I underlined a bit more. I only had three fandoms X-Files, Starsky & Hutch and The Professionals. I have read some Star Trek and like TP, this book is mainly about Trek fandom. Excellent source book about a subject with few well researched histories. I did a little research recently about which fandoms have the most posted stories. Currently, there are only two archives and none of these four fandoms is represented in the top 30 or 40. I remember all of those archives on Geocities, Tripod, Angel etc. that vanished with stories. All of those personal websites and host websites that disappeared overnight. I have on my computer 7000 X-Files stories...every one Mulder/Krycek and I know I don't have every one ever written. That totally excludes all the Mulder/Scully shipper fic, all the Mulder/Skinner, all the noromo, all the het fic, all the case fic, all the canon fic. 90% of all X-Files fic has not been transferred. I have 6000 Pros stories on my computer...there are 2700 on A03. So much has been lost but the phenomenon continues and is still growing.

[Arthur B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mainly valuable these days for offering a snapshot of the fandom scene as it existed before the Internet really got into high gear. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...

[MaryZurowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this one for my dissertation and had a great time.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve seen a few reviews from the time that critique bacon-smiths discussion of hurt/comfort- specifically that it’s not as central to fan fiction in general as she makes it out to be (while praising her unpacking of the Mary Sue story) which is so odd considering in the year of our lord 2022 Mary Sue has almost disappeared from the Internet vocabulary and hurt/comfort fic is still alive and kicking. Anyway who am I to say if this book is good but I’ve been thinking about it nonstop since I read it

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enterprising Women es una de las obras fundacionales de los estudios de fans y tras haberla leído entiendo porque. Al igual que Jenkins en Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Baco-Smith hace un trabajo increíble en intentar explicar y teorizar sobre un fenómeno que era totalmente desconocido por la academia. Obviamente, desde su publicación muchas cosas han cambiado y el texto se encuentra en muchas partes desfasado, pero al mismo tiempo permite contextualizar corrientes actuales y ver que las modas en el fandom tienen una relación más profunda de lo que parece.

Mi única pega es el enfoque etnográfico, o más bien, el intentar adornar este enfoque con cierto aire de objetividad y distancia con el objeto de estudio cuando la propia autora reconoce que paso 8 años de su vida interaccionando con esta gente. No creo que esta cercanía haga menos válido todo lo que aporta la autora, pero hubiera agradecido que se reconociera la "subjetividad" de una forma más clara en el texto. Pese a todo, una gran obra.

[Jen Show · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the defining texts of the academic study of fan culture, and remains near the top of my list of favorites. Before Henry Jenkins came along and made socially and academically acceptable to be an "aca fan", Camille Bacon-Smith paved the way with passion, thoughtfulness, and a lot of honest interviews. The text was written during a time when fan created works were relegated to the underground zine market or clandestine conventions, which makes for an interesting contrast with the freedom and resources available to internet savvy fans of pop culture. The book is well researched, and remains relevant a decade after being published.

[Ginger K · Rating 3 out of 5]

A snapshot of tv fandom from when physical mailing lists were still the order of the day. Some of her theories into the culture of female fandom are insightful and interesting and others miss the mark, but either way they're worth reading.

[Jules Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

Given the poor quality of the research in the fandom I know from the inside, I'm disinclined to trust the research on the other fandoms covered in the book. There are also hearsay reports that the author did not obtain consent to publish some of the personal statements quoted in the book.

[Zauberlehrling! · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the book recently and I am still kind of stunned about it.

[Chérie On Top · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did i finish this book or did it finish me ?