Gendered fandom in transcultural context- female-dominated paratexts and compromised fan culture

Abstract

This study aims to understand how Chinese audiences have consumed and engaged in BBC’s Sherlock as a transcultural fan with the help of digital media. Drawing on the transcultural and gendered fan studies and 36 qualitative interviews, this article interrogates Chinese Sherlock fandom within the hybridised transcultural flow of texts and identity. The key argument is that Chinese Sherlock fans have created a female-dominated fandom that updates the gendered fandom by enriching paratexts of Boys’ Love (BL) whilst China’s censorship has largely constrained fans’ homosexual productivity. On the one hand, the wide application of digital media technologies largely helps Chinese fans to access Sherlock transnationally and contribute to the global Sherlock fandom; on the other, the censoring mediascape in China has restricted fan prosumption, as erotic/homosexual fan work is not regarded as a canonical culture. This study thereby concludes, although Chinese Sherlock fans have been cultivated to circumvent the media censoring mechanism and produce fantexts outside China that features resistance power and fan intelligence, the compromised fan culture is understood as incomplete rebellion because Chinese fans have made concessions and the alternative choices are tacit by the national power itself.