The popular tv-show Xena provides proof that brands don’t always have full control over their product. Xena has produced a creative fan culture that now dominates the brand.
Xena: The warrior Princess (wiki) was a popular TV-show that aired from 1995 to 2001. It was so popular that it became a brand with its own merchandize and as so many popular brands it also produced its own sub-culture of creativity. Fans produce fanfiction and create fanart, like the comic Battle On!. Xena Fests are still organized, where fans gather to meet each other. Fans dress up like Xena and replay scenes or create their own scenes in real life role playing events. Although Xena is a commercial product that was merchandised and hyped for commercial gain, it still helped develop a creative culture.
Klein (1999) doesn’t have a very reasonable attitude towards brands. When I read her book No Logo I got the impression she thought brands are evil beings. The book caused a trend, as Chevalier and Mazzalovo (2004) describe it, towards no logo. Consumers blame brands “for all the evils of globalization” (Chevalier & Mazzalovo, 2004, p. 2). Klein doesn’t seem to call for political action, yet this is the message she conveys with her book. Klein states that brands don’t want to “sponsor culture but to be the culture” (Klein, 1999, p.30). I agree with her that brands sometimes want to be culture or, let’s rephrase it, that brands want to promote a certain lifestyle and with that a certain culture. However, I think that brands can never replace or dominate culture.
No Logo seems to convey that brands have the power to annihilate a culture. This is simply untrue and very exaggerated. Brands are not culture, they can be part of culture. And this is not negative or evil. As I’ve shown with the example of Xena a brand can add value to a certain culture and it can be a source for creativity. Also, culture and brands regulate each other. A brand can never dominate culture, because it needs culture to survive and to make money. Xena could have never been this successful without its fanculture. And although the show has stopped, the merchandise is still selling.
Xena is also a good example of a brand where the culture has taken over the dominant role. The fan community is now in control of the brand and keeps it alive. While before, when the show was still being produced, the brand was dominating the culture. The culture slowly takes over control, because fans still love the product, even after it has ‘gone out of production’. There is even a Xena museum that collects objects that were used on the show.
The Xena community is also very active on YouTube. At the time of the show, YouTube didn’t exist, now there are many users that still produce short videos about the Warrior Princess. Below is just a small grasp from these videos.
There are many music videos about the show and this one emphasizes the relationship between Xena and Ares:
This video refers to the sexy image that the show has:
This video emphasizes the relationship between Xena and Gabriel (Xena’s sidekick):
You can also find interviews with the actresses Lucy Lawless (Xena) and Renee O’Connor (Gabrielle) on YouTube:
Videos about the personal life with private footage of Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor:
Fans put videos about recent Xena conventions online:
Literature
Klein, N. (1999). No Logo: no space, no choice, no jobs: taking aim at the brand bullies. New York: Picador.
Chevalier, M. & Mazzalovo, G. (2004). Pro Logo. Brands as a factor of progress. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.