Today, the term “cult” is widely applied in relation to television series(The Prisoner, The X-Files, Friends),films(The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pink Flamingo, Titanic, Casablanca),novels (John Kennedy Toole’sA Confederacy of Dunces,David Lodge’sSmall World),¹ and the world of music (Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Velvet Underground,² Joy Division).

The term is just as readily applied to “classic” texts as it is to creations in the lower reaches of the cultural hierarchy (1970s children’s television programs such asGoldorakor Christophe Izard’sL’île aux enfants,gore or psychotronic films, second features or B movies). It can...

The British magazineCult Timesdescribes itself as “The Best Guide to This Month’s Cult TV” and presents its readers with a format composed of news, features, reviews, and a guide to “programmes on the UK’s terrestrial, satellite and cable channels.”¹ However, it does not simply provide a schedule ofallprograms on these channels; it lists shows that it defines as “cult TV.” The precise criteria for this selection are not specified, but the magazine does refer to itself as a “telefantasy guide” for “science fiction, fantasy and horror.” Unfortunately, such generic categories do not define “cult TV.” Not...

The formats of contemporary fan culture series such asBabylon 5 (B5),which spin their yarns over years, do not bear out Marshall McLuhan’s predictions of a short but intensive attention span for the television (and computer) generation. A predetermined story arc spanning five seasons forced viewers ofB5’s weekly episodes to wait years in order to unravel plot elements hinted at in the early episodes.¹ So-called arc episodes, in which the overall narrative is developed, are interspersed with more traditional episodes that develop shorter narratives in a familiar soap opera format. As this chapter will show, within its diegetic...

In December 1999 Patrick Stewart appeared as Ebeneezer Scrooge in Hallmark Entertainment’s version of Dickens’sA Christmas Carol,which aired several times over the holidays on satellite superstation TNT in the United States.Varietycommented that Stewart was such “a perfect piece of casting that it will be hard to imagine anyone else as the sour ol’ tightwad in years to come.”¹ But other critics wondered whether the man who had portrayed starship captain Jean-Luc Picard for seven years could persuade audiences to accept him as Dickens’s (in)famous miser. Critic Michael E. Hill, writing in theWashington Post,said that...

The desire to enter another reality is an old one. It has precedents in certain kinds of religious experience; in narcotic-induced hallucination; in our long fascination with dreams, visions, and madness; and in the experience of fiction in general—the notion of being lost in a book or movie. In the fantastic genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and speculative fiction, elaborate constructions of emphatically alternate realities are central narrative devices, meticulously imagined and described. In literature, the fantastic cosmologies of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hain universe, Gene Wolfe’s Urth, and J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth...

In theAvengersepisode “Epic,” crazed film director Z. Z. von Schnerk and his accomplices, quondam movie stars Damita Syn and Stewart Kirby (unwilling victims of contractual fine print, they would have us believe), kidnap Mrs. Peel and force her to star in a movie—a snuff film, yet—titledThe Destruction of Mrs. Emma Peel.Thus Uma Thurman, star of the 1998 filmThe Avengers,cannot claim the distinction of having been the first woman cast in the role of Mrs. Peel in a feature film. That honor goes to Mrs. Peel herself.

Still (as interesting as “Epic” is,...

WhenThe X-Filesbegan in 1991, it was widely considered by network executives—and even by star David Duchovny—a sure-fire failure in the making. Fox honchos focused all their energy onThe Adventures of Brisco County Jr.,another new series for which they had higher hopes.¹ Although its first year’s ratings appeared to bear out those negative expectations, an unexpected Golden Globe win for best dramatic series, critical kudos, and a fiercely passionate audience gave the show a buzz that ultimately made it, at least in the annals of the then fledgling Fox network, golden. Eventually,The X-Filesregularly...

Ken Gelder has described Fran Rubel Kazui’s 1992 filmBuffy the Vampire Slayeras standing alone among late twentieth-century vampire narratives in several important respects. For him, the film remains in every way “resolutely local,” while

we have seen other vampire narratives use local scenarios for their action—Stephen King’sSalem’s Lot,for example . . .Buffyrefuses to enlarge itself in the ways already noted in relation to King: [that is] to mythologise its community as American . . . or to monumentalise itself as part of a “classical” literary tradition (as Coppola’s film [also 1992] monumentalises itself...

Deciding what work counts as “production” and what as “consumption” is a difficult task for cultural theory. This essay emerges from a sense that this binary category is proving remarkably intractable in cultural analysis. Particularly—and surprisingly—it seems to me that research on the “active audiences” of science fiction programs continues to employ this conceptual binary—even as it apparently challenges it. I attempt to demonstrate that this is the case—and to suggest other ways in which distinctions might be made between different kinds of cultural production. Janice Radway, well known for her work arguing that audiences are...

Gutzbehal’s “Emma Pale” comes complete with brewing instructions, down to ingredients, mash and sparge specifics, boiling details, and fermentation.¹ The beer testifies to the enduring significance of a forty-year-old TV series that dates from the days when film was rarely used to record British television because the medium was not deemed worthy of archiving, let alone commemoration. But it lives on.

The Avengersran on British TV from 1961 to 1969 and was exported to scores of other nations—in fact it was the first UK show during prime-time sweeps on the U.S. networks. A hybrid of espionage and thriller,...

On 27 March 1997, police in San Diego discovered thirty-nine people dead in an upscale home on the city’s north side. The bodies were identical in every detail: a purple shroud covering each corpse—heads shaved, black pants, black Nike shoes, and black shirts. Detectives originally believed all of the victims to be male, but subsequent investigation revealed the majority of the bodies were those of women. In preparation for this “final exit,” many of the bodies had overnight bags filled with toiletries and clothing at their side, money and passports in their pockets. Confirming police suspicions, autopsies revealed that...

Imagine thatStar Trekconsists of just seven episodes. Imagine it had all stopped back in 1967: a first glimpse of the crew and the Klingons, a hazy outline of a different world and time, and nothing more. No films, no second-generation spin-off series, no merchandise. How many fans would there be? How many people would turn up for conventions? How many people would even remember that there had been a science fiction series calledStar Trekon television back in the sixties? How many people would have incorporated Trek lore into their daily lives? How many scholarly studies would...