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i'll just leave this here

On Franchise Fiction and Women

by Susana Polo | 3:32 pm, September 7th, 2012


Women read comics. Anyone at all engaged in social media knows this. Women read comics and are a driving force behind fandom. I think I could call them the driving force behind fandom and put up a convincing argument. Just think about it: what fandoms have driven America crazy in the last decade? Could anyone dissuade me from saying that they were Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games? Avatar may have put butts in theater seats, but you don’t hear about it… ever. No one is immersed in the world of Avatar except James Cameron and people who enjoy wearing Na’vi Zentai suits. The Avengers was pretty darn huge and, if Tumblr is any indication, a whopping portion of the people driving that fandom online do not possess a Y chromosome. Women engage in fandom to levels that men do not. When women get behind something, their sheer numbers and passion force it into the mainstream. That’s why you can name the actor who plays that werewolf kid in “Twilight” and probably sing at least the chorus to one Justin Bieber song. What do tween boys like? I have no clue. Sports? Probably sports. – Brett White, on Comic Book Resources.

I can’t sing the chorus to a Justin Bieber song, but I do see Brett White’s point. If there’s one thing I wish, it would be for a way to objectively quantify male and female fan… excitement or activity. The internet is a great place for fandom to live, but internet fandom is also perennially new, can be impenetrable to outsiders (like studio execs), and most importantly for large budget projects, is nearly impossible to demographically quantify. But White’s point can also be seen as a lesson on marketing: Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and The Avengers were marketed to be pleasing or at the very least unoffensive to as broad a spectrum of people as possible. That spectrum includes women.

And as his post argues (although it argues many things), this is a lesson that comics could stand to learn from too.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/willjim95 Maria Sansalone

    Does studying for a master’s in Oral Traditions and having a blog about dragons prove your point, I am part of the fan base … Interviewing for dragon fantasy and folklore, right here, right now: http://www.dragonfightsforgood.blogspot.com

  • http://twitter.com/AlexisTalbot Alexis Talbot

    I keep on trying to see if I can sing the chorus for one of JB’s songs, but every time I try I forget them, so I just go into one of the One Direction’s songs which also starts with baby. “Baby you light up my world like nobody else!”

  • http://www.facebook.com/kelsey.stilson.5 Kelsey Stilson

    It would be interesting to compare what demographic the book versions are marketed to verses the movie versions… Then we could compare that to who the author was writing it for in the first place!

  • http://twitter.com/Paraveina Caitlin

    I keep singing
    baby, baby, baby, ohh
    like a deadly green land mine, mine

    because of Husky’s parody of Baby haha.

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