As we’ve continued on with the Mass Media course we’ve primarily focused on that of the news, radio, and things of the like that help us with seeing, or even not seeing, the true world around us. Though, as we move into the final days of the course, we’ve begun to look more into more personal media consumption, some of which being TV shows and movies. Though this week we’ve moved into the more scientific reasoning as to why we use these as a means of escape or even rest.

This week we’ve talked about gratification theory and how it may explain just why we enjoy what we enjoy in our free time, or even tapping into the previous subjects like news and radio. Gratification theory explores the idea that we use the media to either escape, unwind, seeing ourselves in the media we consume (hence making us want to continue “connecting” with said character), personal identity, and more.

As a person who found it interesting that we, as a class, were discussing fandoms and shows of the modern era was honestly pretty interesting! Although i probably should have seen that coming in a media class, it’s a rarity (at least for me) to see much recent events occur in class and discussed.

This week’s subject actually put things into alignment for me. I had never truly thought of why we as people enjoy what we enjoy. I suppose a part of me just thought it was just the way things were and didn’t have an explanation. This especially put in perspective one of the more recent fandom incidences, that being the announcement in the show Supernatural that one of the main characters, male, had fallen in love with another main character, also male.

This may seem a bit out of place and it may be a bit strange to bring up, but as a person who had been in the fandom way back when, then gave up on it around the 5th season, to hear about now, in 2020, when i had lost interest back in 2009 was such a shock.

For me this serves as a perfect example of Gratification theory. On the grounds that after nearly 15 years since it aired back in 2005 that the simple announcement of a character’s feelings in the show Supernatural finally being canonical in the series got trending on Twitter and blew up the internet above the presidential election.

This series, although being as old as it is, got people interested enough to 1.) research it even when outside the fandom, and 2.) sympathize and even criticize the characters. I feel as though this is seriously the most modern look onto Gratification theory i could find.

Although i’m not in the supernatural fandom anymore, i find this extremely fascinating and even funny as far as the timing goes. I suppose my only question is,

Are there any fandoms you’re in, or used to be in that you feel fit in with Gratification Theory? Why?