Neo-Cult and the Altered Audience: Reviving Cult TV for the Post-TV Age

Abstract

From The X-Files to Friends, Gilmore Girls to Twin Peaks, revivals of beloved TV series have dominated the airwaves and streaming services over the last decade. The media landscape has changed significantly since these series’ original airings, however, and webisodes, video games, social media hashtags and fan communities exist alongside—and act upon—the “original” text. By focusing on The X-Files and Twin Peaks revivals this chapter theorizes the return of cult television series as neo-cult. I use the concept of the dialogic to argue that if cult is defined dialogically between text, audience, industry, the media and the academy, neo-cult emerges through discourse recalling the series’ earlier iterations as cult being reflected and amplified, thus resulting in the revived text becoming a self-referential cult text or neo-cult.

Introduction

Over the past decade, revivals of beloved TV series have dominated the airwaves and streaming services. Yet, for shows like The X-Files and Twin Peaks, which originally aired in the early 1990s, the media landscape has changed significantly with webisodes, video games, social media hashtags and fan communities existing alongside—and acting upon—the “original” texts. Announced in 2014, the return of both shows was received with a mixture of anticipation and consternation by fans. Lauded as cult texts during their original runs, both shows returned to a significantly changed media environment: industrial shifts from TV II to post-TV; developments in the ways fans and producers interacted with each other; and an increasing discourse of nostalgia—all of which impacted upon the ways audiences responded to the shows. This article examines the revival of cult television in the post-TV era, arguing that revivals of formerly cult TV shows like The X-Files and Twin Peaks can be considered neo-cult. I argue that neo-cult merges formerly distinct categories of cult, quality, and popular television through a focus on transmedia storytelling, audience engagement and loyalty, marketing, and nostalgia. I suggest that if the original meaning of “cult” was difficult to pin down, it becomes even harder to identify in the current era. A new definition is thus required, taking into account changing discourses, the role of nostalgia and the fundamentally transmedial nature of the genre.

Introducing the concept of neo-cult allows us to move beyond the binaries of cult and mainstream in order to recognize the growing industry attention to audiences for these texts and the changing ways that people think about fans and fandom. The self-referential nature of the discourse surrounding neo-cult texts enables the producer to capitalize on the original market that existed for the show while simultaneously using the legacy of the cult fandom to appeal to a new generation. I therefore begin this article by considering the impact that remakes, reboots and revivals have on popular culture and their audiences before moving on to provide a way of thinking about neo-cult texts.

The X-Files premiered in 1993 and ended in 2002 but following the release of the 2008 film The X-Files: I Want to Believe fans mobilized on social media in the hopes of persuading Fox to greenlight a third movie. Although unsuccessful, Vulture subsequently published an interview with Chris Carter during the summer of 2014 in which he confirmed that conversations had been held about a reboot (Adalian 2014). This was eventually confirmed in March 2015, with David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson reprising their roles as Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (Munn 2015). Twin Peaks premiered in 1990 and ran for two seasons before it was canceled in 1991; a full-length film, Fire Walk With Me, which served as a prequel to the series, was released in 1992 and tie-in books have also been published. It was announced on October 6, 2014 that a limited series would air on Showtime, written by David Lynch and Mark Frost, with Lynch directing (Schrodt 2014). Most of the original cast had returned, and the series—which was shot like a featured film using a “block shooting” format from a 500-page long script—consisted of eighteen “parts.”

Coverage of the revivals was, at first, confused: Fox network’s press release referred to the new series of The X-Files as “the next mind-bending chapter” of the show and a “momentous return,” while Carter suggested the event season was a return after “a 13-year commercial break” (quoted in Wilson 2015). Lynch (2014) suggested, in a typically cryptic tweet, that the “gum you like is going to come back in style” leading to rumors of a reboot, while Frost emphasized that the new episodes of Twin Peaks were not a remake (a new version of an old text that maintains the basic plot but changes other elements) or a reboot (a new start to an established franchise which begins the story again with no reference to previous installments) but a continuation of the series (Jeffery 2014). The press, however, reported that both shows were to be rebooted. This is significant when considering notions of neo-cult text; as I will demonstrate, the discursive framing of the original text as cult, reiterated in discussions of the returning text, is key to the formulation of the new text as neo-cult.

Remakes, Reboots, and Revivals

In the introduction to Remake Television, Lavigne (2014) points out the pervasiveness of reboots in contemporary popular culture, whether “they take the form of reboots, ‘re-imaginings,’ or overly familiar sequels” (p. 1). Offering a range of texts, from Game of Thrones to The Office and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles she asks to what extent can we consider adaptations, prequels, sequels, and transmedia context remakes—in stark contrast to Leitch (2002) who argues that while novels are adapted for the stage, comic books are revived by new artists, and plays are reinterpreted by new performers “only movies are remade” (p. 37). Of course it is perfectly possible for television shows to be remade, particularly in an era which has seen earlier TV shows refined and updated for a new audience (e.g., Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who or Saved by the Bell to name a few). Scahill (2016) suggests that remakes are “normally made as an act of reverence toward the original” (p. 317), though Leitch (2002) argues that, unlike the sequel, “The audience for remakes does not expect to find out anything new in this sense: they want the same story again, though not exactly the same” (p. 142). A remake, then, would see iconic imagery, shots, characters and storylines re-created albeit with new actors. A reboot, on the other hand, has “become a popular way to promote films and other media forms that revisit familiar narratives with an altered origin story, narrative approach, or artistic aesthetic” (2016, 317). The 2016 reboot of the Ghostbusters franchise, for example, saw an all-female crew of ghost hunters each with their own origin story leading to a new origin story for the ghostbusters unit as a whole. Responses to the reboot were broadly negative, which speaks to the point Urbanski (2013) makes about reboots having an extra narrative burden: “not just telling a compelling story but also handling the expectations from canon” (p. 7). Certainly fans of both The X-Files and Twin Peaks expressed concern when rumors about the shows’ returns began circulating.

Tryon (2013) argues for an intertwined notion of the reboot, “one based around esthetic and economic attempts to revive familiar Hollywood franchises through the promotion of textual novelty and another around technological and industrial ideologies of progress meant to invigorate interest in theatrical moviegoing through promises of technological novelty” (p. 433). Updating The X-Files and Twin Peaks for the twenty-first century, with stories like Wikileaks and Edward Snowden permeating the press, and increasing technological advances in IT, engineering and robotics, would certainly speak to the esthetic and economic attempts to revive the franchise. However both showrunners highlighted the use of existing characters and actors, arguing that the series would be brought into the present day while still retaining the aspects original fans had loved. The shows were neither a remake or a reboot—a new term was needed. While discourse surrounding Twin Peaks swiftly moved from reboot to revival, discussions on the status of the new X-Files took longer. ¹ Various phrases had been used to describe the news season, from “reboot” to “event series” to “Season 10’ and eventually “revival.” This worked to reposition the 2016 X-Files as part of the series canon, continuing the storylines beginning with the original series premiere in 1993. This discourse provided evidence that “Straying too far from the heart and soul of a familiar narrative can be disastrous” (Urbanski 2013, 7) yet it also reinforced the layering of cult discourse that turns the new series from cult to neo-cult.

Discursively Framing Cult and Neo-cult

“Cult” is a term familiar to most consumers and purveyors of pop culture, yet its precise meaning can be difficult to pin down. In order to propose the definition of neo-cult in relation to specific revived texts, it is therefore important to revisit some of the ways we consider texts as cult. Pearson (2010) notes that the term “cult” defies precise definition despite its universal application and suggests that

[i]n the media, in common usage, and sometimes even in academia, ‘cult’ is often loosely applied to any television programme that is considered offbeat or edgy, that draws a niche audience, that has nostalgic appeal, that is considered emblematic of a particular subculture, or that is considered hip (p. 9)

Jancovich and Hunt (2004) suggest that, rather than any textual characteristics, cult TV should be understood through its audience and the ways they appropriate the text and Gwenllian-Jones and Pearson (2004) acknowledge that “cult television’s imaginary universes support an inexhaustible range of narrative possibilities, inviting, supporting and rewarding textual analysis, interpretation, and inventive reformulations” (p. xii). Yet these possibilities also exist in programs that are not considered cult by contemporary definitions, such as soaps and reality TV series. Holmes (2004) points out that much of the criticism levelled at reality TV by the “quality” press “expressed a distaste for shifts in cultural conceptions of fame as part of a broader negative response to the use of factual programming as primarily entertainment” (pp. 111–2) and her invocation of the quality press here speaks to a broader cultural issue in terms of the divide between quality, cult and popular genres.

As Lavery (2010) suggested in the introduction to The Essential Cult TV Reader, “Cult and mainstream, obscure and popular, esoteric and exoteric – the boundaries have blurred” (p. 2) but the question remains who sets those boundaries? Despite the fact that they encourage audience devotion and analytical and critical engagement, reality TV and soap operas are not regarded as cult because of the ways in which they have been discursively framed. Despite discussions in academia about the ways in which audiences engage with these “low brow” programs, there exists in wider discourse a disavowal of these texts in relation to more quality television. ² Johnson (2005) argued that a “new kind of quality television” emerged in the early 1990s—“quality/cult” television (p. 56) and this development forms one element of the progression from cult to neo-cult TV. As Jenner (2015) further argues, “‘quality’ and ‘cult’ need to be viewed as not always separate. Neither one is exclusively defined through text. Rather, they are discursively produced, fluid, flexible and often overlapping” (p. 10). This discursive production is central to the articulation of both cult and neo-cult television. As I have suggested, cult TV is defined neither textually nor through its audience. Rather, as Hunter (2016) argues, it “is a discursive formation, in other words a term of art constructed by tough agreement by audiences, distributors, critics and so on as it circulates through culture” (p. 3). Cult as a term thus continues to be formed discursively in relation to the media, industry transformations and the development of fandom, and this discursive formation also plays an important role in understanding texts as neo-cult.

Neo-Cult, Transmediality and Nostalgia

Cult TV is often discussed in relation to the forms and functions of the genre that have grown alongside the different stages of television’s development. Yet, much like the term cult, these distinctions contain far more slippage than might first appear. Indeed, with the terms post-TV and TV IV now being used by academics to understand the industrial and transmedial processes at work in creating television content we begin to see new ideological eras, marked by changing means of narrative and underpinned by changes in industry and politics. Reeves et al. (1996) suggest that the “revisioning of the American television experience [during the TVII era] is most clearly manifested in the current prominence of cult TV” (pp. 30–1) and if the technological changes of the early TV II era made it possible for producers to develop new kinds of storytelling, it also allowed media fans to develop new strategies for engaging with texts. Similarly, the technological changes of the TV IV/post-TV era have allowed for multiple other ways for media fans to engage with texts. Increasingly, TV IV offers an additional way of understanding television, becoming an era of branding, increasing digital distribution platforms and increasing audience interaction, with each of these creating opportunities for fans and producers to interact in new ways. In addition to multiple viewing points of a text, the rise of transmedia storytelling also multiplies the access points to a text itself.

Contemporary transmedia storytelling has “become less about promoting a central television programme or film, and more about creating a coherent, deliberately cross-platform narrative experience” (Evans 2011, 20). Transmedia storytelling is a strategy used to maintain an audience during periods where a TV show is off air either during a hiatus or between episodes, as with the publication of The X-Files season 10 comics, announced in 2013, which served as a continuation of the original TV series. ³ As Bourdaa (2014) suggests, “Transmedia strategies rely on fans and fandoms to spread the official content and new information on the franchise within or beyond the community, using social networks and forums to promote the shows” (p. 20). Short (2011) notes that “While Twin Peaks was one of the first television series to initiate online discussions, prompting posters to wonder if the show’s writers were influenced by their suggestions, this has become an implicit strategy, with writers on many contemporary cult series regularly monitoring fan discussions and occasionally responding to ideas within shows” (p. 9). The rise of social networking sites in particular has opened additional channels of communication between fans and producers and this was a key element of Fox’s marketing strategy for the 2016 X-Files.

Fox undertook a social media heavy marketing campaign in the lead up to the Season 10 premiere which included a rewatch of the first nine seasons and two films, using the hashtag #201daysofxfiles; a #findthex campaign on Twitter, which required fans to tweet in order to unlock new context; the development of X-Files specific Snapchat filters; and screening the first episode of Season 10 at New York Comic Con in 2015 followed by a Q&A. This campaign not only engaged original fans, who had often been early adopters of new media, but enabled new fans and interested viewers to engage. As Hills (2013) argues in an article on fan textual productivity, “considering textual productivity in the digital age [. . .] means considering different types of textual productivity” and suggests a need to distinguish between “explicit” and “implicit” participatory culture (pp. 137–8). For Hills, sending a tweet or updating a profile picture on Facebook to reflect a fandom can be counted as implicit textual productivity as it involves little effort; explicit participatory culture is driven by motivation and participation in a fan community and manifests in explicit action. Although fans are a key part of the neo-cult text’s audience, other viewers engage in implicit textual productivity and this not only constitutes a large part of the neo-cult audience but, I would argue, is a requirement for a text to be considered neo-cult, rather than cult. Rather than an often small, dedicated fanbase which engages in textual productivity—fan fiction, fan art, fan videos—audiences of neo-cult texts are able to join the fandom without undertaking any fan labor. Marketing for Twin Peaks The Return, for example, contained many ancillary materials including action figures, badges, bobbleheads, lunch boxes and Funko Pop figures. These drew on nostalgic appeal to the original text, but enabled fans to purchase rather than produce objects through which they could perform their fandom. This appeal to nostalgia was thus circulated both within and outside of fannish spaces and proved a powerful marking tool for the neo-cult text.

I noted earlier that the discursive framing of cult television, taking place in academia, the media and fan communities, is a key element in affording text a cult status, and this is even more important in relation to neo-cult texts. Media discourse surrounding the revivals continuously referred to the shows as cult, with headlines such as “Cult hit ‘X Files’ to return” and “Twin Peaks: Everything you need to about the return of the cult TV show” reaffirming the shows’ status as cult while pre-emptively applying the term to the forthcoming series (see Grant Cumberbatch 2017; Kelly 2015). Discourse from the networks also, however, drew explicit connections to the original shows, positioning the revivals in relation to their nostalgic appeal. As discussed Fox’s press release referred to season 10 of The X-Files as “the next mind-bending chapter” of the show and a “momentous return,” while Carter suggested the event season was a return after “a 13-year commercial break.” Not only were the series’ statuses as cult texts reinvigorated and applied to the revivals, however; new media technologies were utilized to yield intense interest during the pre-production and production phases (Jones 2022). Short (2011) argues that both Twin Peaks and The X-Files were “designed to yield intense interest during production, aiming to keep viewers guessing about narrative intrigues (and taking advantage of new media technologies such as the VCR and Internet in encouraging close attention)” (p. 2). If this was the case for the series’ original runs, it is even more applicable for their revivals.

New Media and the Importance of the Audience

As I have outlined, there have been crucial contextual and industrial differences between the original series and the revivals, and these differences define the texts as neo-cult, yet the increasingly participatory nature of digital media is also key in cementing that definition. Jenkins (1995) argues that Twin Peaks fans were among the first to use the internet to facilitate discussion around the show, writing that the alt.tv.twinpeaks list “emerged within just a few weeks of the series’ first aired episode and quickly became one of the most active and prolific groups on the system” (p. 53) and this fan interest has not waned: Weinstock and Spooner (2016) argue that “fan fidelity and enthusiasm not only persuaded ABC to run season two to its completion, but has found expression over the past quarter decade or so in a variety of forms” (p. 14). Much like Twin Peaks fans, X-Files fans are considered “among the first to use cyberspace to create their own virtual fan culture and specialized interest groups” (McLean 1998, 3) and Lowry (1995) suggests that “fan reaction to the series has become as much a part of The X-Files story as the show itself, from the conventions that have sprung up around the country to the hours of chat about the series whipping around each week on the Internet” (p. 239). Although rumors circulated that writers and producers lurked on message boards to gauge fan reactions to the show, it wasn’t until the advent of new social media sites that the boundaries began to blur (Jones 2013).

The emergence of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter provides fans with news ways of communicating with both other fans and with media producers, and has led to a larger number of people engaging in fannish activity. David Duchovny briefly blogged about his experiences of filming I Want to Believe in a blog set up by Twentieth Century Fox, David Lynch maintains a Twitter profile and Frank Spotnitz maintains a blog through his production company, and this use of social media has enabled both fans and producers to engage in different kinds of conversation and activism. As I have already outlined, Fox used social media to engage new and returning audiences in the lead up to the season 10 premiere, and Twin Peaks fans similarly used Twitter to draw attention to the show after news that it was to be revived was announced. This celebration turned to activism after Lynch announced in 2015 that he would not return to The Return due to “budget constraints.” Fans took to the social networking site to air their disappointment as well as to campaign for Lynch’s return, a campaign that was also supported by the original cast (Williams 2016). Lynch and Showtime eventually overcame their disagreement and Lynch returned to produce eighteen episodes—twice the number originally agreed—to much celebration from fans.

Fans were not, however, the sole target for the revivals and social media enabled wider audiences to connect with each other, providing the opportunity for casual or new viewers to express their opinions, access more information and discuss the series with others. The term “fan” thus becomes increasingly aligned to “audience” and practices previously considered reserved for the most dedicated viewer become more mainstream. Crucially to the neo-cult text, a neo-fandom began to form in which discourses of nostalgia were circulated within the fandom and were articulated by both “original” fans and new viewers.

Conclusion

In this article I have outlined the arguments for considering revived texts such as The X-Files and Twin Peaks as neo-cult rather than cult. A combination of quality TV, cult hallmarks and fan engagement differentiate neo-cult TV from quality TV or cult TV, and neo-cult TV engenders greater audience engagement and producer interaction than shows which are not neo-cult. Per Jancovich and Hunt I argue that, just as cult TV should be understood through its audience and the ways they appropriate the text, so too are audiences central to understanding texts as neo-cult. Importantly, however, I suggest that neo-cult appeals to a wider audience who may be uncomfortable with the label “fan,” but nonetheless engage in fannish activity, facilitated by the internet and social media. Fannish practices and behaviors are increasingly moving into the mainstream and neo-cult allows us to recognize and theorize these shifts. Neo-cult texts move beyond the cult/mainstream binary proposed by early academic analysis and allow us to see more clearly how changes in the nature of the market relate to changes in the nature of audiences. ⁴

The nature of the market and the convergence of industry, media, academic and audience is also key to the way that the concept of the dialogic influences what is a neo-cult text. If cult is defined dialogically between text, audience, industry, the media and the academy, neo-cult emerges through discourse recalling the series’ earlier iterations as cult being reflected and amplified, resulting in the revived text becoming a self-referential cult text - or neo-cult. This certainly applies to discourse around The X-Files and Twin Peaks where viewers were provided with multiple promises, interpretations and invitations to view, many of which called on the original series’ cult roots and fan practices to reinforce the nostalgic appeal to the original text. Indeed, these satellite texts extended to social media marketing and branding, and social media played a key role in reflecting and amplifying The X-Files’ and Twin Peaks’ cult status, turning them into self-referential cult texts: neo-cult. Although I have focused on two television texts in this article I suggest that neo-cult as a genre can be applied to others that emerge from the same industrial, participatory and dialogic practices. Neo-cult is useful for considering the ways in which genres continue to grow and develop with changing technological, industrial and transmedial practices. Considering neo-cult as a new genre allows academic analysis to keep pace with these changes while also acknowledging that audiences’ positions are changing and the ways in which we think about fans and fandoms require similar expansion.