Brigid Cherry, Cult media, fandom, and textiles: Handicrafting as fan art. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016, paperback, $39.95 (216p) ISBN 9781350071339.
[1] In Cult Media, Fandom, and Textiles: Handicrafting as Fan Art, Brigid Cherry provides a deep and detailed dive into a tradition of fan production that is well-known and often shared within fandom but very rarely discussed in fan studies: knitting and crochet. The study is based in communities hosted on the internet platform Ravelry, a little-known (to non-knitters) but massive site that grew from a database of yarns and patterns into a vibrant social ecology sometimes described as "Facebook for knitters," as in Kathleen Cubley's (2011) column introducing Ravelry on craft publisher Interweave's knitting blog. This case study of material fan production should ignite work that changes the terms of persistent debates around gendered fan traditions, the nature of remix production, and the mainstreaming of fandom.
[2] Within fan studies, a binary division has developed that often categorizes fan production as either "textual/transformative/female" or "material/affirmational/male" (31). Cherry argues that this binary clearly needs to be revisited, given that textile handicraft is manifestly material and over 99 percent of the fannish knitters and crocheters of Ravelry identify themselves as female (64). This book mostly approaches this revision by showing that women also produce material and mimetic works, forms of fannish production usually associated with male fans. Mimetic fandom is a mode of production that seeks to replicate objects seen on screen with a high degree of accuracy, such as in prop replica and cosplay (Hills 2014; Scott 2015). Cherry adds to theories of material fan production by recognizing "emblematic," in which "the work uses or incorporates logos, character likenesses, iconic objects, or elements of the text," as well as "interpretive," in which "the work is inspired by the text, but does not overtly reproduce identifiable elements," approaches to material fan production as well (100).
[3] Hills coined the term "mimetic fandom" in part as a way to move beyond the gendered divide in analyses of fan production. Cherry expands on this theoretical move by arguing that the sociality around, for example, researching a pattern design for a Doctor Who scarf is key to understanding mimetic fandom. This is a promising avenue for further discussion, particularly as mimetic and emblematic crafting comes under legal threat in cases like Fox and the BBC's actions against, respectively, Jayne hat knitters and a free pattern for knitting Doctor Who Adipose toys. This line of research also has to contend with continuing gendered discrepancies in how fans and industry relate, as Scott argues that despite male and female participation in mimetic fan practices, "gendered binaries around fannish professionalization not only persist" but reinforce a hierarchy wherein male fans are able to professionalize their labors and female fans are not (2015, 147).
[4] One of the refreshing aspects of the study is its embrace of a fannish promiscuity that felt, at least to me, very true to life on Tumblr, at cons, and in reading fics that designate themselves "Avengers—All Media Types" rather than paying attention to strict canonical boundaries. By situating her analysis within the boundaries of Ravelry, Cherry is able to explore how individual fans embrace multiple texts at the same time in their handicrafting, rather than focusing on production related to one particular fandom. In vidding fandom, this has sometimes translated to a feeling that "vidding is my fandom" or, more broadly, a "fandom is my fandom" stance that emphasizes dedication to fan practices as such. These knitters and crocheters are different. Many have only weak connections to organized fandom outside of Ravelry; their fannish promiscuity demonstrates the "hybridity and fluidity of fan interests and identities" rather than dedication to craft or the idea of fandom as such (86).
[5] Cult Media, Fandom, and Textiles raises a third important question: What does fan studies do in a convergence culture where "we are all fans now" (Cherry 2016, 196; Booth 2017)? There are two strands to the idea that fandom, as a mode of living and of engaging with media, is more widespread in the contemporary moment. The first is the expansion of fannish practices to more casual audience members and more mainstream spaces, both outside the bounds of organized fannish communities. The second is a move by media industries to engage with fans and valorize certain modes of fan production, with widely varying degrees of success. The case study of fan handicrafting speaks to both of these threads in a novel way. Instead of starting with an organized, bounded fandom facing dispersion or corporate entanglement, Cherry's case study of Ravelry and fannish fiber arts has been a hybrid fannish/mundane and gift/monetized environment from its very beginning.
[6] Knitting and crochet are hobbies with long histories that, while historically far less stigmatized than fandom, have often been disparaged in both mainstream culture and some feminist scholarship, given their associations with women, the elderly, and domesticity. A significant portion of the fans mentioned took up their hooks and needles out of fannish desire, learning to knit so they could make a Harry Potter scarf or teaching themselves a new technique so they could follow a difficult lace pattern replicating the Legend of Zelda triforce design. One might, then, have expected friction between mainstream and fannish knitters together on the same platform. But this has largely not been the case. A non-fannish crocheter, for example, might easily use a fan-created My Little Pony toy pattern to make a gift for their daughter or niece. Fannish yarn dyers' micro-businesses are similarly just as at home selling on Etsy and advertising on Ravelry forums as are non-fannish indie yarn dyers. Cherry argues convincingly that fan handicrafters on Ravelry demonstrate "one way in which fans are no longer marginal" (196).
[7] Some argue that such mainstreaming makes organized fandom less powerful and more open to co-optation by outside companies or institutions. This argument raged with particular ferocity, for instance, in North American anime fandom and continues to do so in relation to fan fiction (Close 2017; De Kosnik 2009; Stanfill 2018). Cherry disagrees with the co-optation thesis, arguing that "for handicrafters generally handmade is always best"; thus, fan handicrafting need not fear co-optation (196). I do not necessarily disagree. But an opportunity for a more nuanced analysis is missed here. Fannish insularity and full-on corporate co-optation are no longer the only options in a time of fannish entrepreneurs, including the independent yarn dyers and podcasters Cherry discusses. Also largely left out of the analysis is the impact of the Ravelry platform itself, which is a very small, privately owned company sustained largely by carefully curated advertising. Fan activists have argued for the importance of fan-owned platforms, such as Archive of Our Own (De Kosnik 2016). Ravelry is not such a platform, but neither is it the distant corporate behemoth of YouTube or even LiveJournal. I look forward to more debate about the political economy of fan handicrafting and what it, given its long history of mixing monetized and gift economies, could suggest for fandom as a whole.
[8] The structure of Cult Media, Fandom, and Textiles comprises an introduction, two chapters that provide context for the analysis to come, four chapters focused on analytical approaches to fan handicrafting, and a brief conclusion. The first background chapter situates the book in the context of both craft and textile studies and of studies of fan production. The second explains Cherry's methodology; provides basic information about fan handicrafters, such as demographics; and describes the Ravelry platform. Spelling out her methodology of participant-observation, focused follow-up interviews, and material-semiotic analysis of objects created is a good practice for the field, as is doing some brief quantitative work to introduce the space. Cherry gives the breakdown of her participants' genders, ages, and national origins. I wish that there were also mention of race and ethnicity in this demographic breakdown. Race has been too long left out of analyses of fan identities and traditions, resulting in blind spots around African American acafandom and the impoverishment of theories of pleasure and identity in fandom (Wanzo 2015; Klink and Minkel 2016; Pande and Nadkarni 2013).
[9] The remaining chapters focus respectively on fan handicrafter identity, how fan handicraft can be understood as fan art, the relationship between fan handicraft and narrative, and a Bourdieu-inflected analysis of status and economy within fan handicrafting. Cherry brings some of her own experiences into the analysis via auto-ethnography at the start and conclusion of the text. In that spirit, I must confess that my reading was regularly interrupted by trips to Ravelry to look up the patterns, yarn dyers, projects, and groups she referenced! This is well worth doing, particularly for readers who, like me, are also crafters. But it also stems from a frustration with the publishing process—even the digital version of the book has black and white instead of color photographs, making it difficult to follow some of the discussions about yarn color.
[10] The book is very rich in examples of fan practices that will be new to non-handicrafters. Ravelry's Nerd Wars, for instance, is an event in which knitters and crocheters form teams themed around their fandom (such as the Brass Octopus team for steampunk) and participate in challenges wherein members craft things and make posts to the Nerd Wars forums. The crafters must explain how their project fits into the given challenge or ties in to a particular fandom—and projects are often creatively tied into multiple fandoms so as to count in different challenges or fulfill multi-fandom challenges. Cherry points out similarities between these short explanations and fan fiction writing practices of "crackfic, flashfic, and drabbles" (137). Such events are key in developing the kind of nomadic fan identities mentioned previously. They also provide a venue for fan handicrafters to write brief narratives, from simple explanations of how the knitter created a scarf while watching True Blood to more complex role-play that situates the crafter and their friends inside fannish story worlds, putting down zombies with long metal straight needles or crocheting in the Slytherin common room.
[11] Cherry describes fan handicrafting as an ecology, in a similar way to Turk and Johnson's (2012) analysis of Hawaii Five-O vidding fandom. This allows her to highlight the sociality around handicrafting and the impact it has on knitting and crochet as fannish production. She builds on the rich sociality within Ravelry to respond to calls for more emphasis on social, rather than cultural, capital in fan studies. Cherry brings in examples of fannish podcasters and indie yarn dyeing businesses that address micro-celebrity, ultimately arguing that handicrafting BNFs are more friendly and mutually sociable with other fans and handicrafters than likely to stand on hierarchy (175).
[12] The book sometimes reads defensively in its comparison of fan handicrafting with more oft-studied forms, such as fan fiction or vidding. Cherry writes, for example, that "fan handicrafting is not obviously a form of narrative fan production in the same way that fan fiction is… Nevertheless, as shown through the examples discussed in the previous chapters, the social aspects of handicrafting and the opportunities for sociability offered by the Ravelry fan groups open up spaces in which fans can play with the text" (136). This is a shame, as it misses an opportunity to adapt and nuance theories developed around fan fiction, vidding, and art according to the insights provided by handicrafting. When Cherry does revise or add to theories of fan production, such as with her identification of mimetic, emblematic, and interpretive fan works mentioned earlier, the new and different dimensions that crafting's materiality brings to fan production and affective responses are clear. This taxonomy of fan production in particular will be useful to future studies in the way it links memetic and emblematic works, usually seen as material-only approaches, and interpretive works, usually seen as a fiction or vidding-only approach.
[13] Cult Media, Fandom, and Textiles will certainly be of interest to scholars of material fan cultures, from collecting to cosplay to model building. Its wealth of closely observed case studies is an excellent resource for researchers with a wide variety of concerns around production and identity. It provides a fertile jumping-off point for key questions in fan studies going forward, particularly around multifannish identity and the apparent mainstreaming of fannish practices.