Is fantasy just fantasy? An ethnography of female fanship: viewing Sex and the City

This article is an ethnographic study of Chinese female viewers’ fanship on the American TV series of Sex and the City (SATC). It focuses on the micro level of SATC fans’ consumption of and interaction with the text, trying to explore the relationship between SATC fans’ selves and their fan objects, i.e., the intrapersonal pleasures, affection, and motivations among the fans, mainly by way of collecting and analyzing Chinese SATC fans’ discourse on how they make use of this television show on China’s biggest fandom website, Douban.com. The research findings suggest that SATC is so passionately received by its female fans mainly because the type and content of the show (a feminist text) can well satisfy their social and psychological needs—they choose to engage in SATC and utilize it as a resource for their own social lives and personal identities. The fans view it mainly for the therapeutic effect and empowerment it brings to them, rather than for entertainment or scopophilia.