WELCOME TO THE ABSOLUTELY ACADEMIC HOME PAGE!

THIS IS THE FIRST ACADEMIC SITE ON THE WEB DEVOTED TO ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS- AND WE'RE UNDER CONSTRUCTION, SO BEAR WITH US...

This site is devoted to particularly "intellectual" inquiries into the television show Absolutely Fabulous. It was inspired by conversations in and around fabulous academic writing being done on nationalities, sexualities, and global t.v. in a class taught by Katie King in the Women's Studies Department at the University of Maryland. Our framework is a specific American Feminism which is grounded in recent postmodern theories of reception, the body, and performance, with a British Cultural Studies spin and the influence of Queer theories.

The page is divided into four sections which address issues of production, distribution, and reception of global TV as embodied by AB FAB, and provides cool lonks to other related sites throughout the world. Just click on images and highlighted words to be connected! The site is organized as follows:

• GLOBAL ABFAB: A "hotmap" of the world on which users may click certain geographical locations and be linked to either issues of media surrounding that country, or to a pre-existing ABFAB website from that country (usually in the native language.) Critical discussions of the distribution of global TV, producers, and a look at women viewers and infastructural hardware.

• ABFAB FANDOM: Issues of consumption, reception, agency, as well as race, gender, and sexuality, and addresses coalition building amongst "frozen social relations" and institutions of power. A sub-heading of this section will deal with sexuality, slash writing, and have links to particualrly queer pages. A shoort analysis of the ABFAB film _The Last Shout_ which engages the question of homo-textuality and musing on the uses of feminist camp sensibilites. Are Patsy and Adina "more than friends"? Cool video clips and paste art in the tradition of slash ecriture.

• TRANSNATIONAL ABFAB: The shifting meanings of class, sexuality, and nationality withiin the global media economy. Does "Americanization"= feminisation? How do American viewers consume ABFAB- What are the appeals of English culture and how is it presented? How are American characters represented? How is the program receieved in its "Mother Country?" The disappearing boundaries among the "horizontal" organization of electronic communities. Analyses of video sales, advertising, cable and sattellite TV (especially the vertical integration of Comedy Central,) and the internet.

• THE ARTISTS: The "real" Patsy and Eddy. Info on Producers, directors, and secondary characters who have appeared in other British and American film and television. Access. Power structures. Private/public viewing spaces. First hand ethnographies.

Hopefully, you will be constuctively titilated and intellectually challenged.

London when they should be "setting a good example" for women- or should they?
To contribute to our on-going research, answer the following AbFab questionaire:
1. Age
2. Gender
3. Race/Nationality
4. Sexuality
5. How often do you watch?
6. Where do you watch (at home, etc.)?
7. Where do you access AbFab (cable, satellite, video)
8. With whom do you watch?
9. What other activities do you do while watching?
10. What do you find most pleasurable about the show?
11. Who is your favorite character and why?
12. If you could change something about the show aht would it be?

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This page was written and designed by April Householder (stoni@wam.umd.edu) Aand Beth Blauer (xanadu@wam.umd.edu) at the University of Maryland.

Last updated 4/15/97