Consumption Communities/Interpretive

Communities:Janice Radway’s Romance Readers and Thomas O’Guinn’s

Central Midwest Barry Manilow Fan Club

Big Questions

How do the commodities we consume acquire meaning?

How does the meaning we attach to commodities reflect mass-mediated consumer culture?

How does the meaning we attach to commodities reflect social factors such as gender and class?

O’Guinn and Radway

Methodology and Interpretation

• Similarities?

• Differences?

• Where do Radway and O’Guinn come down on the Fiskean notion of consumption-as-transgression?

Janice Radway

Published Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature in 1984

Pioneer in the field of reception studies

What is reception study?

“Interpretive Communities”

Different groups of readers read in different ways.

Radway views readers as parts of “interpretive communities,”

groups of people who “by virtue of a common social position and demographic behavior, unconsciously share certain assumptions about reading as well as preferences for reading material” (54).

Janice Radway, “Interpretive Communities and Variable Literacies: The Functions of Romance Reading” (1984)

Conventions of Romance Fiction

A Central Love Story: The main plot centers around individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. A writer can include as many subplots as he/she wants as long as the love story is the main focus of the novel.

An Emotionally-Satisfying and Optimistic Ending: In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.

The Romance Book Buyer

(Statistics from Bowker® Market Research, Q2 2012, New Books Purchased and RWA's 2012 Romance Book Consumer survey)

Women make up 91 percent of romance book buyers, and men make up 9 percent.

The U.S. romance book buyer is most likely to be aged between 30 and 54 years.

The greatest percentage of romance book buyers (39 percent) have an income between $50,000 and $99,900.

Forty-four percent of romance book buyers consider themselves "frequent readers" (read quite a few romances); 31 percent are "avid readers" (almost always reading a romance novel); and 25 percent are "occasional readers" (on and off, like when on vacation).

Readers have been reading romance for a long time: 41 percent of romance book buyers have been reading romance for 20 years or more.

Popularity of Romance Fiction

(Source: Business of Consumer Book Publishing 2012)

Romance fiction generated $1.368 billion in sales in 2011.

From 2007–2011, romance was the second top-performing category (based on consolidated ranking across the NYT,USA Today, and PW best-seller lists).

Romance fiction sales are estimated at $1.336 billion for 2012.

74.8 million people read at least one romance novel in 2008. (source: RWA Reader Survey)

Statistics drawn from http://www.rwa.org/

Importance of Social Context

“[I]t became clear that romance reading was important to the Smithton women . . . because the simple event of picking up a book enabled them to deal with the particular pressures and tensions encountered in their daily round of activities.” (169)

Experienced guilt – rationalized reading practices

Reading as Escape

“Reading . . . connotes a free space where they feel liberated from the need to perform duties that they otherwise willingly accepts as their own. At the same time, by carefully choosing stories that make them feel particularly happy, they escape figuratively into a fairy tale where a heroine’s similar needs are adequately met.” (175)

Interpretive Community

“[T]hrough romance reading the Smithton women are providing themselves with another kind of female community capable of rendering the so desperately needed affective support. . . . The romance community, then, is not an actual group functioning at the local level. Rather, it is a huge, ill-defined network composed of readers on the one hand and authors on the other” (179)

Emotional Rewards of Romance Reading

“Ultimately, the romance permits its reader the experience of feeling cared for and the sense of having been reconstituted affectively, even if both are lived only vicariously.” (180)

How is this gendered?

Is this transgressive?

See Radway, last 2 pp. of essay

O’Guinn and the CMBMFC

Why do we devote so much attention to celebrities? Why do "we live in a society bound together by the talk of fame (Braudy 1986, p. vii)?" Why do celebrities matter so much to us; and from the perspective of consumer research, why do they sit at the center of so much buying and consuming?

O’Guinn’s Methodology

The informants were all women. Most were in their mid thirties to mid forties. Socio-economic status varied, but was typically observed to be lower middle class. We saw no men, but were told that there were a few male members. [Most males mentioned were Barry impersonators.] Interviews were conducted in three places: a small restaurant, the home of the CMBMFC president, Bobbie, six hours prior to a Barry Manilow concert, and in a backstage press area secured exclusively for our use before and after the show. Besides the author, five graduate assistants, three men and two women, participated in the fieldwork.

Celebrity Fandom as Religious Experience

“expenditure of time and money”

“invoking Barry's name and spirit . . . makes important rituals and life events . . . more special, or sacred”

“[fans] often referred to [Barry] in terms of a significant other, most typically as lover, husband or friend”

“Barry is able to provide the emotional support and understanding they need” 

“Barry's specialness occasionally borders on the miraculous.”

Like most religions, this church has a mission; there is work to be done. Among the important duties are taking care of Barry, protecting him from bad fans, recruiting new followers, and always being there for him.

Shrines and Relics

Fanaticism and Consumer Culture

While it is sometimes argued that extreme or marginal forms of behavior such as fanaticism are both qualitatively and quantitatively distinct from their more "normal" expression, it seems difficult to explain one without the other. The very fact that Graceland and Mann's Theater exist and flourish means something apart from fanaticism. Likewise, the significance of the Touching Greatness phenomenon exists beyond the dispositional properties of individuals. It says something about the stage of a society's development (Alberoni 1972), our collective needs, motivations and values, and how these are expressed through consumption.

Photograph of a woman with Barry Manilow’s name tattooed on her wristshttp://www.ellentv.com/2010/09/22/a-hardcore-barry-manilow-fan/