ABSTRACT
One of the most complex elements of a program's presence in our culture has to do with what Ien Ang (1985) has called its ‘social image.’ We might define this term as the shared notion of a program's aesthetic worth, the class of its audience, and its positive or negative ‘effects.’ Ang observed that many of the ‘Dallas’ viewers in her study — both detractors and fans — clung to the ideology of mass culture, classifying ‘Dallas’ as ‘bad.’ As Ang suggests, we can trace such judgements back to the pronouncements of academics and other prestigious critics, but we might also consider the role fans play in circulating social and aesthetic opinions in our culture. A type of music, a star's media image, or a television series develops a following among people who both discover and create, in Dick Hebdige's terms, a ‘symbolic fit’ between certain expressive materials and their lives (1979, 113). By their activity in relation to the cultural form, they refine and enhance its social image while, as fans, claiming it as symbolic of their identity.
