Now every Thursday in a month through September 2018, ANIMATED INSIGHTS BY SHANNON MUIR takes you inside Shannon’s latest reflections on her passion for animation as a medium, and other animated insights about life. To catch up on all posts, check out the Animated Insights portion of the website!
In reading some articles on VOLTRON: LEGENDARY DEFENDER lately, I’ve seen references about the differences between the generations of fans of the show. For the 1984 original series, I see references to the fandom more or less consisting of now 30 to 40 year old males. Well, I’m living proof that isn’t true, but I will definitely concede that it made up the majority of the fan base.
There’s only a couple of sources that support this to an entertainment historian, and that would be direct interviews with fans of the time period, published information on the demographics advertisers hoped to reach, and the television ratings of who watched the show. It’s an intriguing thought that with social media, so much more data can be discovered about the makeup of the fandom of any intellectual property than ever before. I wonder what the long term ramifications of that will be, for animated shows or otherwise.
Until next week,
Shannon