2 - Personal Meanings, Fandom and Sitting Too Close to the Television

Summary

What are the requirements for transforming a book or a movie into a cult object? The work must be loved, obviously, but this is not enough. It must provide a completely furnished world so that its fans can quote characters and episodes as if they were aspects of the fan's private sectarian world … I think that in order to transform a work into a cult object one must be able to break, dislocate, unhinge it so that one can remember only parts of it, irrespective of their original relationship with the whole.

(Eco 1986: 197–8, cited in Jenkins 1992: 50)

Henry Jenkins explains the way ‘texts become real’ by recalling the moment in The Velveteen Rabbit (1983) when the Skin Horse tells the Rabbit that ‘“Real isn't how you are made. It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become real”’ (Bianco 1983: 4, cited in Jenkins 1992: 50). A more contemporary example can be found in Toy Story 2 (2000) when Woody (Tom Hanks) believes he is truly loved because his child owner has put his initials on the sole of his foot. Indeed, when the toymaker paints over these initials, in an effort to ‘repair’ him and thus increase his collectable value, Woody feels truly lost for the first time. The marks on a well-loved toy represent signs of love and attachment in a similar way turned-down pages and a broken spine might indicate affection for a favourite book.