The Cult Afterlife

In this article, I consider why Firefly and Cowboy Bebop failedor were perceived to have failedupon their initial transmission as television texts.I then outline in what forms the two programmes were officially and unofficially remediated, considering how each remediation challenges or reinforces fans' feeling of ownership over the text.Finally, I examine how Firefly and Cowboy Bebop gained cult status.My argument is underpinned by the protectiveness the fan communities have for the texts and how the shows are set apart from and in opposition to the mainstream.I strive to maintain a balance between the official and unofficial remediations of each text as I argue that both the active fan communities and the respective television and film producers played a role in the texts gaining cult status after initial release, despite, or because of, their early deaths as broadcast texts. Defining CultCult, in my work, refers to a status that a text acquires, gained through textual characteristics that are predisposed to be picked up by cult fans.Matt Hills asserts that cult texts can be analysed through "family resemblances", where texts possess a network of similaritieseither overall similarities or similarities of detail."Cult status" holds no absolute definition and rather than considering "cult" a genre, it can be better understood that cult media possess similarities.Hills argues that an "Endlessly Deferred Narrative" is the biggest link between unrelated cult texts.Cult status then relies on "undecidability"; the leaving of space for interpretation and speculation.The hyperdiegesis of the cult text is the creation of an expansive narrative space, where only a small portion of the narrative space is seen directly in the text, but the whole of the narrative space operates in accord with the internal logic of the text.iii It is for this reason that