Heritage Film Audiences 2.0: Period film audiences and online fan cultures

Abstract

In an update to my monograph Heritage Film Audiences: Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK (Edinburgh University Press, 2011), this paper explores currently evolving forms of online audience behaviour and participatory fan activity around contemporary period films. Its detailed focus is on the online reception, (re-)appropriation and remixing of key films originally released in the 1980s to 1990s which academic criticism has routinely constructed and denigrated as ‘heritage films’, but most centrally the gay love story Maurice (1987), a film which Web 2.0 activity now reveals to be the object of passionate fan investment, unexpected forms of fan productivity and crossover appropriation, and a growing following among unexpectedly young (female and male, sexually diverse) audiences. The paper outlines the key findings of the original Heritage Film Audiences study about the attitudes and pleasures of two contrasting sections of ‘the’ ‘traditional’ UK-based heritage-film audience in the pre-Web 2.0 era. It then maps the very different forms of online (participatory and productive) audience and fan activity around (some) ‘heritage films’ now becoming visible via YouTube, the IMDb, LiveJournal, Tumblr, and beyond, via a central case-study of the distinctive online fan culture visible around Maurice.

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