Abstract
This chapter examines the social media communities that have sprung up around cult horror film. Looking specifically at feminist communities centered around the Soska Sisters, Asia Argento, and Anna Biller, Mathijs investigates how these communities utilize cultural capital and social ties to engender social change. Drawing on a qualitative content analysis and interviews, Mathijs concludes that Twitter’s role as a potential public sphere primarily centers on its ability to draw attention to commonly ignored topics. While Twitter allows for the formation of large, fluctuating communities, the smaller online communities common to Facebook are better able to instigate social change because of tighter social bonds and focused conversations.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter received approval from the Behavioural Research and Ethics Board of the University of British Columbia, under the ‘Fan Archiving’ project (H12-03631). The project involves research support and assistance ensuring a diverse range of gender and sexual trajectories. For more information, contact ernest.mathijs@ubc.ca or UBC’s Office of Research Services.
- 2.
Thank-you to Miki Hickel and Hannah Forman of Women in Horror Month for their generous interview time (interview conducted May 2019).
- 3.
The term social change needs to be understood in the sense used by Pierre Bourdieu, as change in the social conditions of living (this includes cultural conditions). In the context of this chapter, social change is largely confined to discourses around change in gender culture and politics and the social conditions of living related to those politics and culture. Feminism is seen as a spear point in efforts toward social change in that context.
- 4.
For a further elaboration on the conceptualization of the middle field as a site of activism, see Callison and Hermida (2015). It is interesting, for those in film studies, to see a strong connection with the reception (and indeed the narrative) of First Nation film apocalyptic horror short film Wakening (Goulet, 2013).
- 5.
They were categorized per platform, with IMDB reviews as an anchor point (to establish lexicon), and publicly available Twitter and Facebook comments as researchable mentions. YouTube comments were only used as checkpoints. All comments were captured in the period February to May 2019. Comments dated from December 2012 to May 2019 were used in order to capture the respective releases of American Mary and The Love Witch. The interviews with the Soska Sisters, Anna Biller, and Miki Hickel and Hannah Forman were carried out in April and May 2019. These interviews specifically asked about their social media use.
- 6.
The term ‘semiotics by instinct’ refers to the difficulties involved in analyzing words, mentions, and terminology that is consciously used as coded and double-coded. It acknowledges that users have deliberately added ambiguity to their vocabulary in order to signal that the usage of a term should mean it is to be understood in multiple ways. In that sense, it resists uniform and linear explanations, and it relies on analysts’ ‘instinctive’ understanding of the multiple meaning. It is a form of ‘getting it.’
- 7.
The term ‘myth’ really needs to be understood as ‘story of origin’ here, and not as antagonistic to ‘true.’ Also see Barthes (1957).
- 8.
My thanks go to Kate Egan for helping with gaining access to this information.
- 9.
Sylvia Soska’s response to a brief survey of Ginger Snaps fans (May 11, 2012), via email. Results of this survey can be found in Mathijs (2013). Thanks to Henry Ordway of the Ginger Snaps’ fan community for collating the responses. Henry passed away in September 2019. You were a kind soul, Henry, and we will miss you.
- 10.
Thanks to Shelby Shukaliak for collating social media responses to the critical reception of the Soska Sisters’ output. This was part of the AURA project F18-05788, University of British Columbia. The name and identifying details of this poster are available upon request but they asked not to be named directly in the publication.
- 11.
Anna Biller was one of several filmmakers whose films Mendik and Mathijs studied the reception of in order to determine ‘new’ cult films. See: http://www.cultsurvey.org (accessed 22 July 2019).
- 12.
Interview conducted by Eve O’Dea as part of the AURA project F18-05788, University of British Columbia.
- 13.
The thread is archived at: https://img.sauf.ca/pictures/2018-06-08/3e41c4f083fe45fb52208eb62122aa7d.pdf (accessed 08 June 2019).
- 14.
Much more research into this area of the unfocused reception of stars and their appeal for activist purposes is needed. Staiger (2000) is, again, a good starting point, especially the case studies of Silence of the Lambs. Also useful is research on the appropriation of Judy Garland’s status. See Hulsey (2016), and Staiger (1992).
- 15.
Facebook comments collected around #Rabid in the 10 days the Twitter account was suspended (it was reinstated on 20 July 2019) show the strong ties the Soska Sisters hold with their community on Facebook, in particular through a vocabulary (again, around blood as a female fluid that makes the political personal) that stressed firm allegiances between fan-followers, supporters of the cause, and the filmmakers (thanks once again to Shelby Shukaliak for monitoring this discussion). See, for instance: https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3572129/soska-sisters-got-banned-twitter-promoting-rabid-remake/ (accessed 19 July 2019).
- 16.
Dick Hebdige championed punk style, for that reason. Mikhail Bakthin and Umberto Eco said the same about the role of carnival. Philosophers of religion have made similar claims about heterodoxies and heresies (Hubert Dethier, Leopold Flam).
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Acknowledgements
Shelby Shukaliak and Eve O’Dea had a leading role in this research project as research assistants (AURA project F18-05788, University of British Columbia).
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Mathijs, E. (2020). Women in Horror, Social Activism, and Twitter: Asia Argento, Anna Biller, and the Soska Sisters. In: Bouvier, G., Rosenbaum, J.E. (eds) Twitter, the Public Sphere, and the Chaos of Online Deliberation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41421-4_12
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