I wrote before about fandom on the site; today, however, I don’t think I’ll write so much, because I don’t have any answers this time, only questions. And so I thought maybe the discussion could help, maybe not get those answers, but at least make clear to each of us where we stand on certain issues that, while admittedly minor in the great scheme of things, may not be so much today.
The word “fan” comes from “fanatic”; we know this much, and, quite frankly, that does not bode well; after all, if we normalized and accepted as common to us all -and it is likely that everyone has something they are a self-admitted fan of- the notion that there is *something* that drives us to the edges of sanity (“a person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially for an extreme religious or political cause”, per Google’s definitions) and that is alright… well, one could be surprised we haven’t seen the phenomenons we see today before. And certainly, “fanatism” isn’t anything new, of course; we all know of the Byron fans, or the story of the epidemic of imitation or suicides after Goethe’s Young Werther, or the throngs of teen girls shrieking for the Fab Four’s heads (or the non-teen girl who actually took the head of one). So maybe this discussion isn’t as much an issue of “what happens now”, but one of “what has always been happening”?
What has always been happening is, in simple terms, that we love things. That things make us who we are, to an extent, and are simultaneously a reflection of who we are, in all our complexity. This is FILM CRIT HULK, one of our most insightful and kind film critics today, talking about his own feelings about a franchise:
I cannot explain the depths of fandom I have had for this universe. It started with the original trilogy then moved into outright obsession. I legit wore the VHS tapes down to the nub. But it went on from there. I read every damn expanded universe book. I played every video game (will it get better than the original Dark Forces?). I read every diagram book. I can tell you intimate details of Slave I’s design or the mechanics of Bossk’s concussion rifle. I truly went through the depths of unpopularity for having such a nerdy relationship to Star Wars, but then moved on to the popular hope of return to prominence in eager anticipation for the coming prequels. But after my disenfranchisement with that experience, I found myself with a strange sense of disconnection with the world’s celebration of the thing I had once so very much loved. It’s weird watching “May the 4th be with you” parades now; seeing something that was seemingly so personal become so saturated and hollow. And now, it has all came back around, and I find myself having such push-pull with the new Disney movies and the different feelings they all seem to elicit.
I imagine his words echo with most, if not all, of us about our various objects of fandom; they certainly do to me. We love things, and they give us something nothing else can do. That is why I don’t use the word “love” lightly here; one can say any one of us likes many things, but there’s only one or two we can truly love, that we could go near that dreadful-sounding (when we truly listen to what it means, instead of the lightness by which the term is used regularly) “fan-dom”, the “fanatics’ dominion”.
Fandom today brings complicated issues to our attention. Issues of art versus commodity, for one. At what point can a piece of art be a product as well? Or at what point can a product be art? Do products -or brands- tell us something and deserve our love, like art does? Does art have a set value, as products do? Can we sell it and buy it, with all its potential, and expect things to be the same?
What is the place of the creator or creators? These are issues of formal ownership versus psychological ownership (see my essay above). Is the creator intrinsically connected to the art? Can the art be separated from the creator? What if they do bad things, unrelated to the art itself? If a creator sells their ownership away, is it the same? Can one creator be interchangeable? Should a creator be interchangeable? And what about the fans? Fans don’t own formally their objects, but sometimes, one wouldn’t think so, from campaigns on twitter, or petitions, or… more drastic measures; so just how much practical value can we give to psychological ownership, at a time when fans seem to be keen on pushing against the boundaries? What do we consider other forms of fan expression, like fanfiction, of all kinds? And how do we deal with the fact that fans are a heterogeneous lot that by definition will want to pull the same object in different directions?
Star Wars has provided the latest, clear example for many of these questions; should our object of fandom be daring, explore things, change the established order, question truths of the canon? In the words of Rian Johnson:
I want to be shocked, I want to be surprised, I want to be thrown off-guard, I want to have things recontextualized, I want to be challenged as a fan when I sit down in the theater…What I’m aiming for every time I sit down in a theater is to have the experience [I had] with ‘Empire Strikes Back,’ something that’s emotionally resonant and feels like it connects up and makes sense and really gets to the heart of what this thing is and in a way that I never could have seen coming.
Or should our objects be set in stone? Should we make sequels, prequels, reboots, remakes, homages, instead of things that change the existing, or wholly new things?
What is the meaning of being a fan of something, and what is the meaning of that something we’re fans of? That object is going to be extremely private to us, too (can we say that if it wasn’t so private, so personal to us, we wouldn’t be *fans*?), so what does that mean with the others involved in it? The creators, the owners, the marketers, the other fans? What is it that makes a fan at all, and who, if any, can decide who is and isn’t? If love is what makes a fan, who can say if a fan loves or doesn’t love something enough? Is a cosplayer more of a fan than a collector? Is a collector more of a fan than a non-collector? Is a grownup who saw a movie seventy times in the cinema more of a fan than a toddler who insists on seeing a movie every time he can? Who could make this distinction? Is gatekeeping just “cleaning house” of “bad fans” or people who are not really fans, or an obstacle to the freedom that is supposed to be inherent to fandom?
And what happens when our objects outgrow us, or we outgrow them, or we come to a fundamental disagreement in what we think and they say? Do we let them go? Can we let them go? Or do we hold on and try to change them, be it by pushing the boundaries of ownership, or writing our own fanfiction, or something else?
All of these answers may tell us what it is -and only what it is for us, maybe-, but what should it be? Should we be okay with all or parts of this? Can some things be fixable? Are some things a problem at all?
What is the measure of a fan? What kind of fan are you? What is right and wrong to what one loves? These are some of the questions we should be asking ourselves, if we want to start understanding something. So, go ahead, discuss; I did say I wasn’t going to write a lot today; maybe another time.