Fandom: blessing or burden?

Twin Peaks and fandom in the Usenet days

Over the past few decades, fandom and the internet have become entangled to such an extent that it's almost impossible to talk about fandom without talking about the internet. Through this medium, we keep people up to date with what we watch, read and play, and communicate with other fans to relive our favorite moments and share theories.

A rather early example of a show with an “online” fan base is the show Twin Peaks, that had its original run between 1990 and 1991. While it aired, the show was immensely popular, and had millions of viewers attempting to solve the great mystery: who killed the well-loved Twin Peaks resident Laura Palmer? In the days before the World Wide Web, the show gathered an almost cult-like following that corresponded through a Usenet newsgroup. Usenet works through a series of servers, and when someone uploads anything to their server, each server exchanges information with all other servers in a network. In this case, that network was the newsgroup alt.tv.twinpeaks. The newsgroup emerged shortly after the pilot episode aired on April 8, 1990. During the show's runtime, over a hundred posts were made each day. Topics included episode recaps, the exchange of sound clips, analysis of the dialogue, discussion about the actors, discussions about director David Lynch's other works, the exchange of information about the geographical setting of Twin Peaks and the swapping of addresses for the exchange of VHS recordings of episodes.

In From Audiences to Media Subjectivities: Mutants in the Interregnum (2013), Jack Bratich describes how fans are more than “just” an active audience, and that they produce their own culture. Through the creation of a community, the audience has the opportunity to increase its power. In addition to creating a community in which people can interact with fellow fans, they also create their own “world”. In explaining his use of the word "world", Bratich argues that a fictional world is not generated by its original text, but by the fans that interact with it (Bratich 2013: 18). In the case of Twin Peaks, we can observe both this creation of a community and the creation of a "world". As mentioned above, the newsgroup allowed fans from all over the world to create a community and exchange data, and it allowed them to create and elaborate on their own theories and guesses regarding the mystery, fueled by the help and input of other fans. To an extent, the world created by the fans started merging with the “real” world: to fans, Laura Palmer's murder turned into a real case that needed actual solving, and they started completely picking apart every episode in a attempt to gather clues and evidence.

However, not even this powerful fanbase could render the show untouchable. ABC, the television network that aired the show, feared a loss of audience interest, and put pressure on David Lynch and his co-creator Mark Frost to reveal Laura Palmer's murderer halfway through the second season. Lynch and Frost were not too happy to oblige, wanting to stay away from this reveal until the show's finale, but they eventually gave in. As they feared, this decision did not have the desired effect: while the episode that revealed the solution to the mystery was one of the show's most-watched, it eventually ended up doing more harm than good. Rather than gaining in numbers, the show's audience started to shrink as interest decreased. To make matters worse, Twin Peaks was moved from its original time slot on the channel to a slot that was more inconvenient for viewers. This combination of factors lead to the announcement of an indefinite hiatus in February of 1991 (Connely 2011: 2).

The online fanbase feared for their show's life, and the Usernet newsgroup ended up gaining even more functions than before. The production of fanfiction and fan-made scripts skyrocketed in the shows absence, showing that the fans were now even more spurred on to expand their world. This interaction and exchange with others allowed them to be “outlaw fans” that created a narrative suitable to their own wishes and expectations (Thiel-Stern 2013: 6). The audience of the show now more than ever gained its own audience (Thiel-Stern 2013: 13), as people turned to these fanworks to fill the gap Twin Peaks left. Furthermore, Usernet users started rallying for the continuation of Twin Peaks. They formed a kind of committee, jokingly called COOP (Citizens Opposing the Offing of Peaks) and initiated a letter writing campaign to ABC, requesting the network to let the show continue (Harris 1991). Their discontent with the network's actions may be seen as an example of fan antagonism, a disagreement between the show's fans and its owners (Bratich 2013: 19). Their pleas were eventually heard, and Twin Peaks returned for another few episodes to conclude the season, and with it, the series. The communication between fans and the network turned out to be valuable (Bratich 2013: 19), and seeing as the fans were rewarded for their efforts. Not only were they empowered as fans, but they had a direct hand in the continuation of the show. They reached a hybrid state between being a passive audience and an active producer. However, many unfortunately felt that the show never returned to its former glory and quality.

Twin Peaks' online fanbase saved the show from its untimely end, giving a clear example of the power an audience can have. However, one could also make the point that the fandom was what endangered the show in the first place. Through their combined enthusiasm and interest, the fans always seemed to be at least one step ahead of Lynch and Frost. Fan theories got more and more complex as people put their minds together, which led to the fans having immensely high expectations. Over time, this likely made it more difficult for the show to keep its audience satisfied. Therefore, this might have been what eventually drove ABC to panic and play its trump card early.

In 2014, news broke that Twin Peaks will make its return to television in 2017. It will be interesting to see what the show's fanbase will look like in the Web 2.0 days. The fans from back in the Usernet days may return, but they will undoubtedly be joined by a new generation of fans as well. At this moment, two years before the show will air again, it is already a hot topic on several forums and blogs. Time will tell how the audience will partake in shaping the show this time around.

Thesis:

Though it might seem mainly beneficial, an active fan culture might pose a threat to content creators.

BB / LB / YB / FM / MM

Sources:

• Jack Z. Bratich (2013), ‘From Audiences to Media Subjectivities: Mutants in the Interregnum’, in: Kelly Gates (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, Volume VI: Media Studies Futures. Malden & Chichester: Whiley-Blackwell.
• Thomas Connelly (2001), 'Twin Peaks: Surrealism, Fandom, Usenet and X-ray Television', in: Culture Critique, 2 (1).
• Mark Harris (1991), 'Saturday Night Dead', in: Entertainment Weekly, March 1991.
• Shayla Thiel-Stern (2013), ‘Beyond the active audience: Exploring new media audiences and the limits of cultural production’, in: Radhika Parameswaran (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, Volume IV: Audience and Interpretation. Malden & Chichester: Whiley-Blackwell, pp. 389-405.