The Effect of Fandoms on the Individual's Consciousness
After nearly 12 hours of revision (though I finished at 12:30, bitches!) and half a bag of Milanos, my fandom paper has been completed!!! And since some of you wanted to read it, I'm posting it here. Warning: it's very long (nearly 6500 words), but I think it's worth it, since it's such an interesting topic. So without further ado...
Almost everyone considers themselves a fan of something, whether it be of a sports team, a musical group, a television show, or an actor. No matter what a person is a fan of, however, his or her fandom or object of fan devotion will often have an enormous impact on the fundamental way in which he or she views the world. This phenomenon is not very well understood by the community at large, and researchers have only recently begun to treat this subject matter with the sort of seriousness it deserves. Fans are often the victims of a great deal of stereotyping and misunderstandings, which is largely due to the misconceptions that people are only fans of something because they have been duped by the media into enjoying something. The portrayal of fans in the media creates the overall perception that fans are so obsessed with their fandoms that they are incapable of focusing on the real world around them. Most fans never become so involved in their fandom that they become disengaged from reality, to the point where they believe that the characters and the world they inhabit are truly real, in the sense that the world can be visited or the characters are flesh and blood beings; but nevertheless, the impact a fandom can have on a person’s psychological makeup is extremely profound, even when they remain highly aware of the fictionality of their fandom. A fandom is much more than what a person likes; over time, it becomes an integral part of who he or she is. Fandom can become integrated into a person’s identity to such an extent that it can change the way they think or behave, though it rarely becomes such a huge part of their lives that they neglect normal social behaviors or cease all thoughts of the real world.
Fandoms, a word which refers to a collection of people who are fans of the same thing, exist in many different varieties, around anything from sitcoms to sports teams; and though many people, including most fans, see them as only hobbies they partake of in their spare time, there has been some research to suggest otherwise, that the psychological impact of a fandom or a fan text goes much deeper than a mere hobby. (In this paper, I shall refer to the object of a fandom, such as a television program a fandom is based around, as the “fan text,” though it will not always refer to something that is written down; and the word “fandom,” while the meaning is slightly more flexible, shall apply more to the community centered on such a text.) There are a few divergent attitudes towards the idea of the fan, though for the most part the media seems to agree that most fans are a menace of sorts, a challenge to their conventional way of life because they think, talk, and act differently from the cultural majority. One notable exception to this stereotyping -- the members of sports fandoms -- are accepted because their interests are seen as more masculine; this is an idea that I shall explore further later on in this paper, as well as the idea of fan texts acting as social surrogates for fans, the emotional connection fans feel for their texts and fandoms, the parallels fandoms have toward religious followings, and the way communities can form and diverge thanks to differing opinions on fan texts.
Social Surrogacy with Fictional Characters
We will start by examining the relationship a fan has with his or her fan text, which has its own unique characteristics that function outside the social structuring a fandom community provides. Researchers have been looking into the effects interaction with favored television shows can have on a person’s moods and behavior, and they have discovered a correlation between the affection people have for the programs and the social surrogacy studies done in the 1950s with infant monkeys, who behaved similarly around cloth monkeys as they would around their actual mothers. Researchers have not as of yet done much comparison with how people behave around their favored television shows as compared with their actions around their real life friends, but they have discovered that people do have similar reactions toward their favored programs as they do toward relationships with real people, at least when compared to other nonsocial activities. When interacting with a text, fans exhibit much of the same sort of social behaviors and attitudes indicative of adopting fandoms as social surrogates; fans not only start to develop more sophisticated social skills as a result of a text, but they can actual experience a heightened feeling of belonging and decreased senses of loneliness and rejection thanks to their favored television shows.
Parasocial relationships, such as the ones created between people and television shows, have a number of very intriguing characteristics. When watching or recalling their favored television shows, people “become more similar to their ideal selves, a phenomenon elicited by only the closest of relationships” (Derrick 353). Studies have shown that when in the presence of a parasocial relationship partner or when recalling such a relationship, people behave much as they would in the presence of real friends: they become more willing to talk about themselves, show more empathy, and demonstrate more social facilitation techniques (Derrick 353). It is apparent that to some extent, fans think of their fandoms as their friends, as they react to the ending of a television series in similar patterns as they would to the end of a relationship; and more studies have shown that people who watch more television feel as though they have more friends (Derrick 353). Part of this could be an intended side effect of exposure to the television narrative: Psychologists R. A. Mar and K. Oakley believe that one major function of a narrative is to mentally stimulate social interactions (qtd. in Derrick 353). These parasocial relationships created between people and their favored television programs serve in much the same way that close interpersonal relationships do, which at least partially dispels the attitudes many people have about fandoms as simply being hobbies people enjoy in their free time.
A study was recently conducted at the University of Buffalo attempting to discover the effects of favored television shows on people’s mental states, and it discovered that fan texts can create a sense of belonging, decreasing feelings of loneliness or rejection. Psychologists Jaye L. Derrick, Shira Gabriel, and Kurt Hugenberg conducted four different studies exploring this notion, and they discovered, among other things, that thinking about a favorite television program can guard against feelings of rejection or thoughts of threats to a relationship. They determined that people were using television shows (particularly the ones they experienced week after week, or day after day) to fulfill their need for belonging, which many psychologists agree is one of the fundamental human needs, with the same importance as food and shelter (Derrick 352). When compared with other non-social activities, subjects reported (using a subjective survey filled out before and after the experiment) an increase in self-esteem and the feeling of belonging, and a decrease in feelings of rejection. These results, interestingly enough, were not produced by just any television program, but only by a subject’s favored program, suggesting that whatever effect television had on the subjects went beyond mere escapism. Because of the parasocial relationships the subjects had with these television shows, they felt a sense of companionship with the characters in the shows, and a feeling that they belonged to the world, even if it was a world they could never physically visit.
The idea that social connections can be created, or at least simulated, by fictional creations such as television shows is rather disquieting to many people. It is important to note, however, that none of these aforementioned studies suggests that interaction with fandoms can be a replacement for real social interaction, an important implication which the media seemingly failed to pick up on when reporting this study and distilling the information for the general public. The headline related to this study on Yahoo! News referred to the fans in the study as “lonely hearts” (Hsu), and the article ended up implying that people who had such strong parasocial relationships with television shows and the fictional characters in them that they neglected to form relationships with real people. None of these studies suggest that television is a substitute for social interaction, and indeed most fans have active social lives outside of their fandoms. It seems likely that the media would prefer to think of fans as socially isolated people because their different paradigms are perceived as something of a threat to the social majority’s way of life; this is an idea I shall explore further in a later section.
Emotional Connections
The parasocial relationship fans have with their texts leads directly into an emotional attachment to the text, its characters and its world. The longer a fan remains involved with a text, the stronger an emotional bond it forms with the text, and this connection can affect the way fans think, and even the way they view the world, in some instances. The interesting thing about this connection is the way it can generate knowledge through the emotions a text causes them to experience. The logic fans use regarding their fandom stems from their emotional attachment to it; their devotion to the text becomes the means through which they glean any sort of knowledge from their fandom, whether it be trivia related to it or larger ideas about the world gained from interpretations of the text.
People who spend good amounts of their time pondering their fandoms are often looked down upon by the general population; there is the impression that simply because something is popular, it lacks the layers or narrative depth that makes it worthy of people devoting deep thought to it. (Jenkins 1992 16) People who spend their time trying to uncover the layers are seen, therefore, as uncouth or uneducated, and that they lack a certain fundamental taste level that would allow them to become functioning members of society (Jenkins 1992 16). According to Henry Jenkins, the founder of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program, these taste distinctions “determine not only desirable and undesirable forms of culture but also desirable and undesirable ways of relating to cultural objects, desirable and undesirable strategies of interpretation and styles of consumption (1992 16). The people who look down on fans fail to realize that all the best works of art throughout history have only become famous because of the emotional responses they generated in people; the fact that fandom artifacts exist in popular culture, and not in the more bourgeois fashion that Shakespeare or Beethoven do, does not change the fact that this phenomenon also occurs in fandoms. (And after all, Shakespeare was considered part of popular culture himself when he was first writing his plays more than 400 years ago.) Fan texts, though they may be popular, are worth examining closer because of the response they generate in people, not in spite of it.
Because of the intense emotions fans can display toward their fandoms, there is the general impression that the world of fandoms is free of logic, or that it uses logic to a lesser degree than emotion or instinct. Some of the posts left on online message boards, for instance, or the behavior some fans display when confronted with the objects of their affection (such as meeting one of their favorite actors in person) create the false impression that fans have, momentarily, lost all capacity to reason around their fandoms because of the high levels of enthusiasm and passion they display around them. However, it is because of their high levels of emotion in response to a text that fans become more capable of reasoning about them. The world of pop culture is shaped by emotional responses to a material, but it is not more interested in making us feel than making us think. Rather, “popular culture, at its best, makes us think by making us feel” (Jenkins 2007 3). Jenkins alleges that the only time any media or popular culture is truly “brain-dead” is when it fails to provoke any emotional response from its audience. (2007 3)
There is also the false perception that people only become emotionally connected to television programs because they have let themselves become duped by the media, by critics and advertising, when this is simply not true. Simple exposure to a fan text is not sufficient to make someone into a fan, or to make them develop any emotional attachments to the fandom. There must be something present in the text that a fan can relate to, whether that be a character, an emotion, an event, or a theme (the four key aspects of any narrative). Fans find something preexisting in themselves that allows them to form some sort of connection with a text, and it is this connection, rather than mere exposure to a fandom, that allows them to become fans. The simple fact of the matter is this: fans would not be so enthusiastic about a show-or any fandom-if they did not feel such a strong emotional attachment to the source material, if it didn’t make them feel anything. It is this attachment that causes people delve deeper into a fandom -- rewatching episodes or rereading issues of comic books, discussing episodes and story arcs with fellow fans, and even making fan creations such as fan fiction, which is itself a demonstration of a fan’s subjective interpretation of a text, a way for them to express what they feel the true essence of a fan text is. Fans engage in all these activities in an attempt to uncover all the narrative layers, to find the deeper meaning the producers have hidden in the text.
Many people question why fans choose to spend so much of their time displaying behavior described as “obsessive” over something fictional; fans are always aware that the characters they adore so much do not exist outside their imaginations, though thanks to the producers, the characters feel more real than mere constructions. These people wonder why fans don’t worry about anything more real, like issues relating to politics or making the world a better place. They do not seem to understand that to fans, the characters and world inside a text are, to an extent, real, even though they know they will never meet the characters face to face or experience their world firsthand. A strong emotional response, as neurobiologist Andrew Newberg claims, “enhances the [subjective] realness of an event” (Newberg 182). Fans know that events shown on their favorite television programs never really happened, but media fictions “encourage [them] to imagine a not-so-different world where [they] are told they did” (Couldry 142). It is possible that fandoms, then, could be considered an example of qualia, especially as no two people, not even two fans, will feel exactly the same way toward a text. For example, one person may see a character as a fictional person, while the same character may “feel” more real to another person; and two fans to whom a character seems “real” will have two differing opinions on exactly who that character is or what he stands for. The rational knowledge that characters, situations, and places shown on television are fictional does not lessen the attachment fans have with them. And, as illustrated in the children’s tale The Velveteen Rabbit, the love people feel for inanimate things can make them feel real to that person (Jenkins 1992 51).
The attachment to a show goes slightly beyond mere emotional response, as it can have an effect on the way people think and act thanks to exposure to a narrative. It has been shown in many other studies that narratives in a television program engage people in social processing, and even on the things they think about. After prolonged exposure to a certain favored television show (by watching it over a long period of time), a person will present thoughts and emotions that are congruent with the ones demonstrated in the narrative, and narrative exposure is related to the formation of more sophisticated social skills and abilities (Derrick 353). Possibly, thanks to neural plasticity, an emotional bond to a fandom creates new neural pathways that cause these thoughts and behaviors to occur; to my knowledge, no research on this idea has been performed yet, as the study of fans and fandoms is still a relatively new sociological field. However this emotional attachment has formed, whether the effects are neurological or not, the fact remains that it is a vital part of a fan’s thought process and, hence, of his or her identity.
Religious Parallels
Though it is clear that fandoms have a very specific role in the lives of their fans, one of the most common misconceptions that even scholars have is fandoms can be considered a synonym for religion, that fans and worshippers are one and the same. It is true that certain parallels exist between the two systems, but a fandom is by no means an actual substitute for religious practices. A fandom can be an important way for people, especially younger people, to find an identity and a community to belong to, and the belief in fictional characters is similar in effect to the belief in God, at least in the eyes of some neurobiologists; but fandom lacks some of the more important functions religions have, such as providing a moral code to its members. Fandoms and religions, while having similar effects on the individual, cannot be called one and the same.
The parallels fandoms have with religions are undeniable, especially in the case of fandoms that have a clearly-defined cultural identity. Some music subcultures, for instance, “provide participants with ritual activities and communal ceremonies, a philosophy and worldview, and cultural identity and community belonging” (McCloud 190). Some scholars, such as Michael Jindra, who examined the Star Trek fandom, who saw the fandom’s progression as something akin to a religious movement, thanks to the series’ origin myth, set of beliefs, the fandom’s hierarchical organization, and the creativity of its members (Jindra 30). There are many scholars who believe that the recent secularization of our society, with the number of agnostics and atheists rising from year to year, has caused people to find spirituality elsewhere, including through fandom (McCloud 191). However, this does not seem to be quite the case, as religion and fandom are coexistent even within the same individual. There are a great number of fans that still partake in organized religion, have very strong beliefs in God, and pray and go to church regularly without losing their interest in fandom: one Elvis fan described herself as having “Elvis sitting on [her] left shoulder and God on [her] right” (qtd. in McCloud 201). There is also the fact that fandoms do not seem to produce quite the same neurological responses that religious experiences do: there have been documentations of certain quasi-religious experiences, such as American football spectators experiencing the suspension of ordinary time; but this operates under the false assumption that such an experience is automatically religious (McCloud 195). As theologian Sean McCloud states: “One cannot imply that anything serving community and identity building functions is religious. This function could very well be part of a religious definition, but it cannot be the whole definition. That is because many movements, institutions, and activities in a society function to create and sustain community and identity.” (McCloud 195)
It is apparent, therefore, that the belief that fandoms and religions are equivalent entities is a false one. Perhaps part of the misconception comes from the religious-themed language fans can often use when talking about their fandoms, a tendency which springs in part from the attachment they have to their fandoms. The word “fan” itself has a religious connotation of its own: it is short for “fanatic,” a word which was originally used to refer temple servants but gradually came to have more negative connotations of religious frenzy (Jenkins 1992 6); the word “fanaticism” is often used to refer to any “excessive and mistaken enthusiasm” (qtd. in Jenkins 12). There is also the notion that many media fandoms have of “canon”, a word first used to refer to religious dogma but which has since been taken to also include all the “real” facets of a text, such as details about characters, events, and the setting. Persuading someone to become a fan of a text -- by making them watch episodes of a television show, taking them to a few soccer games, or giving them a CD -- is often referred to as “converting” that person, a word also used in religious context when talking about changing a person from one religion (or atheism) to another. At times, the religious-themed vocabulary of a fandom is taken to an extreme: Some producers, like Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), have been referred to as “gods” within fan circles and even by fellow writers, because of the near-omnipotence they have over the universes they have created (Espenson 3) and because of the extent to which fans revere the producer, sometimes going so far as to call the producer their “lord” or “master”. It is unclear exactly how much of this religious-themed language is meant to be taken seriously, and how much is only a joke. It seems clear, however, that because of the strong emotional attachments fans have to their fandoms, religious-themed language is the only words they know how to use to adequately describe their attitudes toward a fandom, as these words are the only ones our culture has provided.
Rather than serving a need religion fails to meet, I find it far more likely that fans use their fandoms as a way to find their own sense of self; as McCloud says, a fandom acts as a sort of “project of the self,” or “affiliational choices that act to establish self-identity and community” (McCloud 187). In the days of the Enlightenment and the Protestant Reformation, aspects of the self such as religion and profession were not something a person chose so much as something he or she was born into. In today’s world, our self-identities and communities are no longer provided for us; people’s “identities and interpersonal relations are not so much given as negotiated” (McCloud 199) by selecting their own religions, professions, personal philosophies, and even fandoms that help them govern which way they should think and act. People must make conscious choices regarding the lifestyle with which to identify themselves; in the words of social theorist Anthony Giddens, “self-identity has to be created and more or less continually reordered against a backdrop of shifting experiences of day-to-day life and the fragmenting tendencies of modern institutions” (qtd. in McCloud 199). A fan’s identity is rarely defined solely by his fandoms, or even by a single fandom; just as one can be defined by multiple characteristics such as gender, age, race, and religion, so can a fan be defined by more than one fandom, or even multiple characteristics completely unrelated to fandom.
Perhaps the best way to describe a fandom’s function in a fan’s life is to say it creates a sort of subculture, a community of fellow fans that provides a fan with a sort of safe haven from outside scrutiny (protection from the judgment of a world that does not believe fan texts to be worthy of such devotion, for example) and a support group that at least shares one interest with him or her. While friends and family members can share a fandom, these days fandom communities mainly function through the medium of the internet, as fan discussion forums have become one of the easiest ways to meet people who share a common fandom. The main function of a fandom, I believe, is to create a community of support for people who have been profoundly affected by interaction with a fan text, and while religions can serve the same function, there is another dimension to religious belief that fandoms seem to lack. I can only speculate that this is because fan texts are fundamentally known to be fictional, no matter how real they may seem; the Harry Potter books, for example, are known to be fictional, while The Bible is believed to be real. Despite this fundamental difference, a fandom can certainly become a part of a fan’s identity thanks to the psychological and emotional effects fan texts have on the individual.
Fandom Conflicts
I discussed earlier the way a fandom creates parasocial relationships between a text and a fan; but the communities that form around a fandom can also help a fan make interpersonal connections to people all around the world. For the most part, these connections are positive, as fans create their own support systems and groups of friends who share their interests within a fandom. However, these interpersonal connections can also function in the opposite way, as rifts can be created between members of different fandoms, or even members of the same fandom, thanks to differing worldviews that have been created by their subjective experiences with their fandom. One of the most fascinating things about fan culture is the seriousness with which fans often take their show and their fandom, and their fierce protection of a fandom when it is perceived as being under attack from outside sources. Defense of the fandom can be seen as something akin to patriotism, which is understandable because of the clear relation between fandom and identity.
When members of two fandoms get together to debate the merits of their various fandoms, particularly in the realm of sports, things can turn nasty very quickly. Because of the socioeconomic factors surrounding sports teams (the cities a team is based in, for instance) rivalries will naturally develop between two teams, and therefore the fans of each team will find rivals in fans of the opposing team. Oddly enough, it is this rivalry which helps sports fans find their identities: not only from being a fan of one team, but from being an automatic anti-fan of the other. The notion of the anti-fan -- or, as Jonathan Gray describes it, a member of the audience who approaches something in a negatively charged way (qtd. in Johnson 293) -- exists in nearly all fandoms, generally as someone who has previously experienced something and found it intolerable (qtd. in Theodoropoulou 317). However, it is this hatred that exists in sports fandoms without any good reason (other than the tradition left by geographic and socioeconomic factors when the teams first formed), and this helps anti-fans of team B form a more cohesive fan identity as fans of team A. These fans’ identities are formed “in relation to other identities, to the ‘outsider’ or in terms of the other: that is, in relation to what they are not” (qtd. in Theodoropoulou 322). Fans of the Yankees, for example, will be drawn together thanks to their hatred of the Red Sox, thus creating a cohesive fan community that functions on more than one level of identity, as Yankees fans will also see themselves as having all the good qualities that Red Sox fans, in their eyes, lack.
The rifts within a fandom are rarely as dichotomous as the divisions between sports fans are, and for the most part they stem more from the attachment to a text than the hatred of another group. Thanks to the emotional ties a fan has to his text, he will have a specific subjective idea of where he wants the narrative to go, and he always believes his idea is the best, even if it goes against the vision of the producers. As scholar Derek Johnson believes, each fan has his or her own perception of what an appropriate meta-text is for any work; that is to say, they all have a vision of where a fandom’s narrative is going to take them, and these visions can often differ greatly from fan to fan. This idea of a meta-text sometimes has to do with the development of a certain romantic pairing, such as the Buffy/Spike and Buffy/Angel relationships that Johnson cites from Buffy the Vampire Slayer; or the overall tone or themes of a fan text. The fans are hardly ever united in this vision, as, for example, some fans will be in favor of a certain romantic relationship between two characters, while others will be opposed to it. With any ongoing narrative, especially in genres like television shows that have new installments of the serial narrative every week, there will be certain installments, such as episodes, plotlines, and seasons, that some fans will love and others will loathe, because they may or may not believe that the directions the producers have decided to take with the narrative meshes with their chosen meta-text.
It is one thing for two fans to have differing opinions on a meta-text, but at times the conflicting ideas between two fans can lead to fragmentation of a fandom into different factions, each with its own distinct idea of what should happen in the narrative and each so passionate that there will exist a certain tension between factions. More often than not, this fragmentation occurs along ‘shipper lines -- that is to say, supporters of certain romantic relationships (relationshippers, or ‘shippers) will nearly always divide, not seeing their views as compatible with one another. For instance, most fans will not be equally supportive of both the Buffy/Spike and Buffy/Angel relationships in the Buffy series. Then there are those fans that believe romantic relationships should not have such precedence in the text or in the minds of “real” fans: in the opinion of one Buffy fan, if a text begins to focus too heavily on romantic relationships, “everyone ends up talking about baby names while genuine fans flee in terror” (qtd. in Johnson 289). Because anything relating to emotion is highly subjective, the emotional connections fans have with a text causes every fan to have differing interpretations on what in a narrative is most important, and because their knowledge is based in emotion, on how they feel about a text, their opinions are generally very strong. As Derek Johnson states, “fans do not easily agree to disagree -- differing opinions become co-present, competing interests struggling to define interpretative and evaluative consensus” (Johnson 288). This struggle to create a consensus between text interpretations nearly always fails, leaving most fandoms fractured into different factions, with fan majorities and minorities, and thereby echoing the structure of the mainstream culture as well.
Reverence vs. Vilification of Fandoms
On the whole, society looks down on fans, particularly those that are engaged in fandoms based around works of fiction. As previously stated, this is in part because many people outside a fandom believe fans could devote their attention to something more worthwhile, something that can contribute to society as a whole; or else that their object of devotion is too superficial or lowbrow to merit the attention and affection fans have for it. As stated previously, fans of popular culture are generally perceived to have “no taste” simply because they would rather watch their favorite television program than go to the opera; and because of this preference, there is the perception that fans are undereducated, uncultured, or uncouth, when this is certainly not true across the board. While fans for the most part are discriminated against or even slightly vilified, there does exist a certain double standard when it comes to sports fans: these are the only fans that are allowed and even encouraged to publicly demonstrate their love for a fandom, mainly because of how much society values sports and their ties to traditional masculine values. For the most part, however, mainstream society looks down upon members of fandom subcultures, and as a result fans may be reluctant to demonstrate just how much of a fan they are.
Regardless of the source material a fandom is based around, there is almost always a certain negative stereotype associated with being a fan of something, that fans are nothing but “geeks” or “crazy” simply because they consider themselves to be fans of something. Fans of science fiction texts particularly get a bad reputation, thanks to the innumerable stereotypical representations of them in popular culture. These stereotypes in the media are of socially inept and intellectually immature individuals who care about nothing more than their fandoms, amassing bits of minutiae about their chosen fandoms so there’s no more room for anything other bits of information about things society might consider more important. There is the perception that fans (particularly male fans) are stunted both socially and sexually, that they live in their mother’s basement (Jenkins 10), cannot carry on normal friendships, and have “never had any tiny bit of sex” (qtd. in Johnson 296). It is because of these stereotypes that fans will often conceal their true feelings about a fandom, not wishing to expose themselves to such discrimination and public ridicule for something they’re genuinely interested in. And thanks to the actions of particularly extreme fans, such as Charles Manson who killed people in the name of the Beatles fandom, have created the idea that fans are not only strangely alienated from the mainstream culture, but that they are actually dangerous to so-called “normal” members of society -- in the words of Henry Jenkins, “emotionally unstable, socially maladjusted, and dangerously out of sync with reality” (Jenkins 1992 13).Because of the negative perceptions of fans that the media has perpetuated, most people will not readily admit to being a fan of something, hiding from the general public the extent to which they are engaged in a fandom. Many fans remain “closeted” in a sense about their involvement with fandoms, only fully sharing their passion with fellow fans since they don’t trust the social majority not to judge them. Society has caused most fans to feel a certain sense of shame about their fandoms, forcing them to hide something that has become a part of who they are.
While male fans are perceived as desexualized and effeminate, female fans, meanwhile, have been given the label of the “groupie” or the “fangirl”, a notion that has existed practically since the word “fan” first appeared back in the early 1900s, in the context of critics saying women who were only going to the theatre to admire the male actors (Jenkins 1992 12). Fangirls, as they are portrayed in the media, are almost orgiastic in their love of their fandoms, and seem to be brought to sexual awareness by them. The best-known example of this trope might be the portrayal of Beatles fangirls during the Beatlemania of the early 1960s: as we see from The Ed Sullivan Show and A Hard Day’s Night, these groupies shriek at the sight of the Beatles and chase them around, trying to rip their clothes off, collecting memorabilia from these musicians like old articles of clothing. The idea of the fangirl has been greatly exaggerated in the mind of the public; while to some extent it is true that this kind of fan does exist, the kind of ecstasy a fangirl displays will hardly be her only way of expressing her love for her fandom. The idea of these fangirls reinforces the idea that emotional attachment to a fandom has caused fans to lose all sense of logic, and, as in the case of the Beatles, to become something of a slave to their instincts and hormones.
Sports fans, on the other hand, seem somewhat immune from such negative stereotypes that are ascribed to other fans (though that is not to say they are completely immune from stereotypes). Sports fans are more encouraged to show their support for their fandom, and this is perhaps because of the attitude society has towards sports. Not taking into account the physical benefits of athletics (because there are many sports fans who only engage in the fandom as spectators), sports are primarily a demonstration of masculine aggression, a display of testosterone that is almost war-like in its levels of aggression and violence. Because those who are exceptional at sports are primarily seen as being very strong in both physique and genetics, society values sports more than they do watching television or reading comic books. Therefore, sports fans are more immune from the stereotypes that plague fans of fictional works, for they are considered to be “real men”, displaying a certain kind of machismo in their overall demeanors, even in their cheers for their team (Theodoropoulou 325). Of course, there can be crossover between fandoms -- a sports fan can also be a Star Trek fan -- but it is the identity of the sports fan that a person will more overtly demonstrate, by wearing their team’s jersey or painting their face with the team colors before a game. Those who are fans of both sports and fictional works will likely emphasize their love of sports over their love of Star Trek, simply because they know which fandom is more highly regarded by the mainstream culture. Sports fans, immune from the stereotypes that are so intricately tied with fans of most other texts, are free to fully demonstrate their affection for their fandom.
Conclusion
It is clear, therefore, that a fandom has an effect on an individual that is much, much more profound than simply being a hobby, or something for a fan to do in his or her spare time. Even when not actively engaged in fan-related activities -- such as watching an episode of a favored show or a concert of their favored band or one of “their team’s” games, discussing texts with fellow fans, or making fan creations such as fan fiction -- a fandom continues to play a distinct role in a person’s psychology and the formation of his or her identity. The impact of a fandom is especially surprising when considering that most fan texts have a basis in fiction; but the emotional connections a fan has with a text causes those worlds described in those media fictions to seem real, at least in the mind of the fan. The impact on the fan is so great that it can be considered something akin to religious experience, albeit without some of the underlying neurological complexities inherent in true religious experiences. The social implications of fandoms, particularly the notion researchers are just developing about the parasocial relationships a fan can have with a fandom, are particularly intriguing to uncover, and it would be interesting to further explore exactly how experience with fandom relates to experiences with real interpersonal interaction. A fandom can fundamentally change who a person is, though this experience is never as negative as the media would have people believe, and the experience with fandom has a deep-seated effect on the fan’s consciousness.
Almost everyone considers themselves a fan of something, whether it be of a sports team, a musical group, a television show, or an actor. No matter what a person is a fan of, however, his or her fandom or object of fan devotion will often have an enormous impact on the fundamental way in which he or she views the world. This phenomenon is not very well understood by the community at large, and researchers have only recently begun to treat this subject matter with the sort of seriousness it deserves. Fans are often the victims of a great deal of stereotyping and misunderstandings, which is largely due to the misconceptions that people are only fans of something because they have been duped by the media into enjoying something. The portrayal of fans in the media creates the overall perception that fans are so obsessed with their fandoms that they are incapable of focusing on the real world around them. Most fans never become so involved in their fandom that they become disengaged from reality, to the point where they believe that the characters and the world they inhabit are truly real, in the sense that the world can be visited or the characters are flesh and blood beings; but nevertheless, the impact a fandom can have on a person’s psychological makeup is extremely profound, even when they remain highly aware of the fictionality of their fandom. A fandom is much more than what a person likes; over time, it becomes an integral part of who he or she is. Fandom can become integrated into a person’s identity to such an extent that it can change the way they think or behave, though it rarely becomes such a huge part of their lives that they neglect normal social behaviors or cease all thoughts of the real world.
Fandoms, a word which refers to a collection of people who are fans of the same thing, exist in many different varieties, around anything from sitcoms to sports teams; and though many people, including most fans, see them as only hobbies they partake of in their spare time, there has been some research to suggest otherwise, that the psychological impact of a fandom or a fan text goes much deeper than a mere hobby. (In this paper, I shall refer to the object of a fandom, such as a television program a fandom is based around, as the “fan text,” though it will not always refer to something that is written down; and the word “fandom,” while the meaning is slightly more flexible, shall apply more to the community centered on such a text.) There are a few divergent attitudes towards the idea of the fan, though for the most part the media seems to agree that most fans are a menace of sorts, a challenge to their conventional way of life because they think, talk, and act differently from the cultural majority. One notable exception to this stereotyping -- the members of sports fandoms -- are accepted because their interests are seen as more masculine; this is an idea that I shall explore further later on in this paper, as well as the idea of fan texts acting as social surrogates for fans, the emotional connection fans feel for their texts and fandoms, the parallels fandoms have toward religious followings, and the way communities can form and diverge thanks to differing opinions on fan texts.
Social Surrogacy with Fictional Characters
We will start by examining the relationship a fan has with his or her fan text, which has its own unique characteristics that function outside the social structuring a fandom community provides. Researchers have been looking into the effects interaction with favored television shows can have on a person’s moods and behavior, and they have discovered a correlation between the affection people have for the programs and the social surrogacy studies done in the 1950s with infant monkeys, who behaved similarly around cloth monkeys as they would around their actual mothers. Researchers have not as of yet done much comparison with how people behave around their favored television shows as compared with their actions around their real life friends, but they have discovered that people do have similar reactions toward their favored programs as they do toward relationships with real people, at least when compared to other nonsocial activities. When interacting with a text, fans exhibit much of the same sort of social behaviors and attitudes indicative of adopting fandoms as social surrogates; fans not only start to develop more sophisticated social skills as a result of a text, but they can actual experience a heightened feeling of belonging and decreased senses of loneliness and rejection thanks to their favored television shows.
Parasocial relationships, such as the ones created between people and television shows, have a number of very intriguing characteristics. When watching or recalling their favored television shows, people “become more similar to their ideal selves, a phenomenon elicited by only the closest of relationships” (Derrick 353). Studies have shown that when in the presence of a parasocial relationship partner or when recalling such a relationship, people behave much as they would in the presence of real friends: they become more willing to talk about themselves, show more empathy, and demonstrate more social facilitation techniques (Derrick 353). It is apparent that to some extent, fans think of their fandoms as their friends, as they react to the ending of a television series in similar patterns as they would to the end of a relationship; and more studies have shown that people who watch more television feel as though they have more friends (Derrick 353). Part of this could be an intended side effect of exposure to the television narrative: Psychologists R. A. Mar and K. Oakley believe that one major function of a narrative is to mentally stimulate social interactions (qtd. in Derrick 353). These parasocial relationships created between people and their favored television programs serve in much the same way that close interpersonal relationships do, which at least partially dispels the attitudes many people have about fandoms as simply being hobbies people enjoy in their free time.
A study was recently conducted at the University of Buffalo attempting to discover the effects of favored television shows on people’s mental states, and it discovered that fan texts can create a sense of belonging, decreasing feelings of loneliness or rejection. Psychologists Jaye L. Derrick, Shira Gabriel, and Kurt Hugenberg conducted four different studies exploring this notion, and they discovered, among other things, that thinking about a favorite television program can guard against feelings of rejection or thoughts of threats to a relationship. They determined that people were using television shows (particularly the ones they experienced week after week, or day after day) to fulfill their need for belonging, which many psychologists agree is one of the fundamental human needs, with the same importance as food and shelter (Derrick 352). When compared with other non-social activities, subjects reported (using a subjective survey filled out before and after the experiment) an increase in self-esteem and the feeling of belonging, and a decrease in feelings of rejection. These results, interestingly enough, were not produced by just any television program, but only by a subject’s favored program, suggesting that whatever effect television had on the subjects went beyond mere escapism. Because of the parasocial relationships the subjects had with these television shows, they felt a sense of companionship with the characters in the shows, and a feeling that they belonged to the world, even if it was a world they could never physically visit.
The idea that social connections can be created, or at least simulated, by fictional creations such as television shows is rather disquieting to many people. It is important to note, however, that none of these aforementioned studies suggests that interaction with fandoms can be a replacement for real social interaction, an important implication which the media seemingly failed to pick up on when reporting this study and distilling the information for the general public. The headline related to this study on Yahoo! News referred to the fans in the study as “lonely hearts” (Hsu), and the article ended up implying that people who had such strong parasocial relationships with television shows and the fictional characters in them that they neglected to form relationships with real people. None of these studies suggest that television is a substitute for social interaction, and indeed most fans have active social lives outside of their fandoms. It seems likely that the media would prefer to think of fans as socially isolated people because their different paradigms are perceived as something of a threat to the social majority’s way of life; this is an idea I shall explore further in a later section.
Emotional Connections
The parasocial relationship fans have with their texts leads directly into an emotional attachment to the text, its characters and its world. The longer a fan remains involved with a text, the stronger an emotional bond it forms with the text, and this connection can affect the way fans think, and even the way they view the world, in some instances. The interesting thing about this connection is the way it can generate knowledge through the emotions a text causes them to experience. The logic fans use regarding their fandom stems from their emotional attachment to it; their devotion to the text becomes the means through which they glean any sort of knowledge from their fandom, whether it be trivia related to it or larger ideas about the world gained from interpretations of the text.
People who spend good amounts of their time pondering their fandoms are often looked down upon by the general population; there is the impression that simply because something is popular, it lacks the layers or narrative depth that makes it worthy of people devoting deep thought to it. (Jenkins 1992 16) People who spend their time trying to uncover the layers are seen, therefore, as uncouth or uneducated, and that they lack a certain fundamental taste level that would allow them to become functioning members of society (Jenkins 1992 16). According to Henry Jenkins, the founder of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program, these taste distinctions “determine not only desirable and undesirable forms of culture but also desirable and undesirable ways of relating to cultural objects, desirable and undesirable strategies of interpretation and styles of consumption (1992 16). The people who look down on fans fail to realize that all the best works of art throughout history have only become famous because of the emotional responses they generated in people; the fact that fandom artifacts exist in popular culture, and not in the more bourgeois fashion that Shakespeare or Beethoven do, does not change the fact that this phenomenon also occurs in fandoms. (And after all, Shakespeare was considered part of popular culture himself when he was first writing his plays more than 400 years ago.) Fan texts, though they may be popular, are worth examining closer because of the response they generate in people, not in spite of it.
Because of the intense emotions fans can display toward their fandoms, there is the general impression that the world of fandoms is free of logic, or that it uses logic to a lesser degree than emotion or instinct. Some of the posts left on online message boards, for instance, or the behavior some fans display when confronted with the objects of their affection (such as meeting one of their favorite actors in person) create the false impression that fans have, momentarily, lost all capacity to reason around their fandoms because of the high levels of enthusiasm and passion they display around them. However, it is because of their high levels of emotion in response to a text that fans become more capable of reasoning about them. The world of pop culture is shaped by emotional responses to a material, but it is not more interested in making us feel than making us think. Rather, “popular culture, at its best, makes us think by making us feel” (Jenkins 2007 3). Jenkins alleges that the only time any media or popular culture is truly “brain-dead” is when it fails to provoke any emotional response from its audience. (2007 3)
There is also the false perception that people only become emotionally connected to television programs because they have let themselves become duped by the media, by critics and advertising, when this is simply not true. Simple exposure to a fan text is not sufficient to make someone into a fan, or to make them develop any emotional attachments to the fandom. There must be something present in the text that a fan can relate to, whether that be a character, an emotion, an event, or a theme (the four key aspects of any narrative). Fans find something preexisting in themselves that allows them to form some sort of connection with a text, and it is this connection, rather than mere exposure to a fandom, that allows them to become fans. The simple fact of the matter is this: fans would not be so enthusiastic about a show-or any fandom-if they did not feel such a strong emotional attachment to the source material, if it didn’t make them feel anything. It is this attachment that causes people delve deeper into a fandom -- rewatching episodes or rereading issues of comic books, discussing episodes and story arcs with fellow fans, and even making fan creations such as fan fiction, which is itself a demonstration of a fan’s subjective interpretation of a text, a way for them to express what they feel the true essence of a fan text is. Fans engage in all these activities in an attempt to uncover all the narrative layers, to find the deeper meaning the producers have hidden in the text.
Many people question why fans choose to spend so much of their time displaying behavior described as “obsessive” over something fictional; fans are always aware that the characters they adore so much do not exist outside their imaginations, though thanks to the producers, the characters feel more real than mere constructions. These people wonder why fans don’t worry about anything more real, like issues relating to politics or making the world a better place. They do not seem to understand that to fans, the characters and world inside a text are, to an extent, real, even though they know they will never meet the characters face to face or experience their world firsthand. A strong emotional response, as neurobiologist Andrew Newberg claims, “enhances the [subjective] realness of an event” (Newberg 182). Fans know that events shown on their favorite television programs never really happened, but media fictions “encourage [them] to imagine a not-so-different world where [they] are told they did” (Couldry 142). It is possible that fandoms, then, could be considered an example of qualia, especially as no two people, not even two fans, will feel exactly the same way toward a text. For example, one person may see a character as a fictional person, while the same character may “feel” more real to another person; and two fans to whom a character seems “real” will have two differing opinions on exactly who that character is or what he stands for. The rational knowledge that characters, situations, and places shown on television are fictional does not lessen the attachment fans have with them. And, as illustrated in the children’s tale The Velveteen Rabbit, the love people feel for inanimate things can make them feel real to that person (Jenkins 1992 51).
The attachment to a show goes slightly beyond mere emotional response, as it can have an effect on the way people think and act thanks to exposure to a narrative. It has been shown in many other studies that narratives in a television program engage people in social processing, and even on the things they think about. After prolonged exposure to a certain favored television show (by watching it over a long period of time), a person will present thoughts and emotions that are congruent with the ones demonstrated in the narrative, and narrative exposure is related to the formation of more sophisticated social skills and abilities (Derrick 353). Possibly, thanks to neural plasticity, an emotional bond to a fandom creates new neural pathways that cause these thoughts and behaviors to occur; to my knowledge, no research on this idea has been performed yet, as the study of fans and fandoms is still a relatively new sociological field. However this emotional attachment has formed, whether the effects are neurological or not, the fact remains that it is a vital part of a fan’s thought process and, hence, of his or her identity.
Religious Parallels
Though it is clear that fandoms have a very specific role in the lives of their fans, one of the most common misconceptions that even scholars have is fandoms can be considered a synonym for religion, that fans and worshippers are one and the same. It is true that certain parallels exist between the two systems, but a fandom is by no means an actual substitute for religious practices. A fandom can be an important way for people, especially younger people, to find an identity and a community to belong to, and the belief in fictional characters is similar in effect to the belief in God, at least in the eyes of some neurobiologists; but fandom lacks some of the more important functions religions have, such as providing a moral code to its members. Fandoms and religions, while having similar effects on the individual, cannot be called one and the same.
The parallels fandoms have with religions are undeniable, especially in the case of fandoms that have a clearly-defined cultural identity. Some music subcultures, for instance, “provide participants with ritual activities and communal ceremonies, a philosophy and worldview, and cultural identity and community belonging” (McCloud 190). Some scholars, such as Michael Jindra, who examined the Star Trek fandom, who saw the fandom’s progression as something akin to a religious movement, thanks to the series’ origin myth, set of beliefs, the fandom’s hierarchical organization, and the creativity of its members (Jindra 30). There are many scholars who believe that the recent secularization of our society, with the number of agnostics and atheists rising from year to year, has caused people to find spirituality elsewhere, including through fandom (McCloud 191). However, this does not seem to be quite the case, as religion and fandom are coexistent even within the same individual. There are a great number of fans that still partake in organized religion, have very strong beliefs in God, and pray and go to church regularly without losing their interest in fandom: one Elvis fan described herself as having “Elvis sitting on [her] left shoulder and God on [her] right” (qtd. in McCloud 201). There is also the fact that fandoms do not seem to produce quite the same neurological responses that religious experiences do: there have been documentations of certain quasi-religious experiences, such as American football spectators experiencing the suspension of ordinary time; but this operates under the false assumption that such an experience is automatically religious (McCloud 195). As theologian Sean McCloud states: “One cannot imply that anything serving community and identity building functions is religious. This function could very well be part of a religious definition, but it cannot be the whole definition. That is because many movements, institutions, and activities in a society function to create and sustain community and identity.” (McCloud 195)
It is apparent, therefore, that the belief that fandoms and religions are equivalent entities is a false one. Perhaps part of the misconception comes from the religious-themed language fans can often use when talking about their fandoms, a tendency which springs in part from the attachment they have to their fandoms. The word “fan” itself has a religious connotation of its own: it is short for “fanatic,” a word which was originally used to refer temple servants but gradually came to have more negative connotations of religious frenzy (Jenkins 1992 6); the word “fanaticism” is often used to refer to any “excessive and mistaken enthusiasm” (qtd. in Jenkins 12). There is also the notion that many media fandoms have of “canon”, a word first used to refer to religious dogma but which has since been taken to also include all the “real” facets of a text, such as details about characters, events, and the setting. Persuading someone to become a fan of a text -- by making them watch episodes of a television show, taking them to a few soccer games, or giving them a CD -- is often referred to as “converting” that person, a word also used in religious context when talking about changing a person from one religion (or atheism) to another. At times, the religious-themed vocabulary of a fandom is taken to an extreme: Some producers, like Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), have been referred to as “gods” within fan circles and even by fellow writers, because of the near-omnipotence they have over the universes they have created (Espenson 3) and because of the extent to which fans revere the producer, sometimes going so far as to call the producer their “lord” or “master”. It is unclear exactly how much of this religious-themed language is meant to be taken seriously, and how much is only a joke. It seems clear, however, that because of the strong emotional attachments fans have to their fandoms, religious-themed language is the only words they know how to use to adequately describe their attitudes toward a fandom, as these words are the only ones our culture has provided.
Rather than serving a need religion fails to meet, I find it far more likely that fans use their fandoms as a way to find their own sense of self; as McCloud says, a fandom acts as a sort of “project of the self,” or “affiliational choices that act to establish self-identity and community” (McCloud 187). In the days of the Enlightenment and the Protestant Reformation, aspects of the self such as religion and profession were not something a person chose so much as something he or she was born into. In today’s world, our self-identities and communities are no longer provided for us; people’s “identities and interpersonal relations are not so much given as negotiated” (McCloud 199) by selecting their own religions, professions, personal philosophies, and even fandoms that help them govern which way they should think and act. People must make conscious choices regarding the lifestyle with which to identify themselves; in the words of social theorist Anthony Giddens, “self-identity has to be created and more or less continually reordered against a backdrop of shifting experiences of day-to-day life and the fragmenting tendencies of modern institutions” (qtd. in McCloud 199). A fan’s identity is rarely defined solely by his fandoms, or even by a single fandom; just as one can be defined by multiple characteristics such as gender, age, race, and religion, so can a fan be defined by more than one fandom, or even multiple characteristics completely unrelated to fandom.
Perhaps the best way to describe a fandom’s function in a fan’s life is to say it creates a sort of subculture, a community of fellow fans that provides a fan with a sort of safe haven from outside scrutiny (protection from the judgment of a world that does not believe fan texts to be worthy of such devotion, for example) and a support group that at least shares one interest with him or her. While friends and family members can share a fandom, these days fandom communities mainly function through the medium of the internet, as fan discussion forums have become one of the easiest ways to meet people who share a common fandom. The main function of a fandom, I believe, is to create a community of support for people who have been profoundly affected by interaction with a fan text, and while religions can serve the same function, there is another dimension to religious belief that fandoms seem to lack. I can only speculate that this is because fan texts are fundamentally known to be fictional, no matter how real they may seem; the Harry Potter books, for example, are known to be fictional, while The Bible is believed to be real. Despite this fundamental difference, a fandom can certainly become a part of a fan’s identity thanks to the psychological and emotional effects fan texts have on the individual.
Fandom Conflicts
I discussed earlier the way a fandom creates parasocial relationships between a text and a fan; but the communities that form around a fandom can also help a fan make interpersonal connections to people all around the world. For the most part, these connections are positive, as fans create their own support systems and groups of friends who share their interests within a fandom. However, these interpersonal connections can also function in the opposite way, as rifts can be created between members of different fandoms, or even members of the same fandom, thanks to differing worldviews that have been created by their subjective experiences with their fandom. One of the most fascinating things about fan culture is the seriousness with which fans often take their show and their fandom, and their fierce protection of a fandom when it is perceived as being under attack from outside sources. Defense of the fandom can be seen as something akin to patriotism, which is understandable because of the clear relation between fandom and identity.
When members of two fandoms get together to debate the merits of their various fandoms, particularly in the realm of sports, things can turn nasty very quickly. Because of the socioeconomic factors surrounding sports teams (the cities a team is based in, for instance) rivalries will naturally develop between two teams, and therefore the fans of each team will find rivals in fans of the opposing team. Oddly enough, it is this rivalry which helps sports fans find their identities: not only from being a fan of one team, but from being an automatic anti-fan of the other. The notion of the anti-fan -- or, as Jonathan Gray describes it, a member of the audience who approaches something in a negatively charged way (qtd. in Johnson 293) -- exists in nearly all fandoms, generally as someone who has previously experienced something and found it intolerable (qtd. in Theodoropoulou 317). However, it is this hatred that exists in sports fandoms without any good reason (other than the tradition left by geographic and socioeconomic factors when the teams first formed), and this helps anti-fans of team B form a more cohesive fan identity as fans of team A. These fans’ identities are formed “in relation to other identities, to the ‘outsider’ or in terms of the other: that is, in relation to what they are not” (qtd. in Theodoropoulou 322). Fans of the Yankees, for example, will be drawn together thanks to their hatred of the Red Sox, thus creating a cohesive fan community that functions on more than one level of identity, as Yankees fans will also see themselves as having all the good qualities that Red Sox fans, in their eyes, lack.
The rifts within a fandom are rarely as dichotomous as the divisions between sports fans are, and for the most part they stem more from the attachment to a text than the hatred of another group. Thanks to the emotional ties a fan has to his text, he will have a specific subjective idea of where he wants the narrative to go, and he always believes his idea is the best, even if it goes against the vision of the producers. As scholar Derek Johnson believes, each fan has his or her own perception of what an appropriate meta-text is for any work; that is to say, they all have a vision of where a fandom’s narrative is going to take them, and these visions can often differ greatly from fan to fan. This idea of a meta-text sometimes has to do with the development of a certain romantic pairing, such as the Buffy/Spike and Buffy/Angel relationships that Johnson cites from Buffy the Vampire Slayer; or the overall tone or themes of a fan text. The fans are hardly ever united in this vision, as, for example, some fans will be in favor of a certain romantic relationship between two characters, while others will be opposed to it. With any ongoing narrative, especially in genres like television shows that have new installments of the serial narrative every week, there will be certain installments, such as episodes, plotlines, and seasons, that some fans will love and others will loathe, because they may or may not believe that the directions the producers have decided to take with the narrative meshes with their chosen meta-text.
It is one thing for two fans to have differing opinions on a meta-text, but at times the conflicting ideas between two fans can lead to fragmentation of a fandom into different factions, each with its own distinct idea of what should happen in the narrative and each so passionate that there will exist a certain tension between factions. More often than not, this fragmentation occurs along ‘shipper lines -- that is to say, supporters of certain romantic relationships (relationshippers, or ‘shippers) will nearly always divide, not seeing their views as compatible with one another. For instance, most fans will not be equally supportive of both the Buffy/Spike and Buffy/Angel relationships in the Buffy series. Then there are those fans that believe romantic relationships should not have such precedence in the text or in the minds of “real” fans: in the opinion of one Buffy fan, if a text begins to focus too heavily on romantic relationships, “everyone ends up talking about baby names while genuine fans flee in terror” (qtd. in Johnson 289). Because anything relating to emotion is highly subjective, the emotional connections fans have with a text causes every fan to have differing interpretations on what in a narrative is most important, and because their knowledge is based in emotion, on how they feel about a text, their opinions are generally very strong. As Derek Johnson states, “fans do not easily agree to disagree -- differing opinions become co-present, competing interests struggling to define interpretative and evaluative consensus” (Johnson 288). This struggle to create a consensus between text interpretations nearly always fails, leaving most fandoms fractured into different factions, with fan majorities and minorities, and thereby echoing the structure of the mainstream culture as well.
Reverence vs. Vilification of Fandoms
On the whole, society looks down on fans, particularly those that are engaged in fandoms based around works of fiction. As previously stated, this is in part because many people outside a fandom believe fans could devote their attention to something more worthwhile, something that can contribute to society as a whole; or else that their object of devotion is too superficial or lowbrow to merit the attention and affection fans have for it. As stated previously, fans of popular culture are generally perceived to have “no taste” simply because they would rather watch their favorite television program than go to the opera; and because of this preference, there is the perception that fans are undereducated, uncultured, or uncouth, when this is certainly not true across the board. While fans for the most part are discriminated against or even slightly vilified, there does exist a certain double standard when it comes to sports fans: these are the only fans that are allowed and even encouraged to publicly demonstrate their love for a fandom, mainly because of how much society values sports and their ties to traditional masculine values. For the most part, however, mainstream society looks down upon members of fandom subcultures, and as a result fans may be reluctant to demonstrate just how much of a fan they are.
Regardless of the source material a fandom is based around, there is almost always a certain negative stereotype associated with being a fan of something, that fans are nothing but “geeks” or “crazy” simply because they consider themselves to be fans of something. Fans of science fiction texts particularly get a bad reputation, thanks to the innumerable stereotypical representations of them in popular culture. These stereotypes in the media are of socially inept and intellectually immature individuals who care about nothing more than their fandoms, amassing bits of minutiae about their chosen fandoms so there’s no more room for anything other bits of information about things society might consider more important. There is the perception that fans (particularly male fans) are stunted both socially and sexually, that they live in their mother’s basement (Jenkins 10), cannot carry on normal friendships, and have “never had any tiny bit of sex” (qtd. in Johnson 296). It is because of these stereotypes that fans will often conceal their true feelings about a fandom, not wishing to expose themselves to such discrimination and public ridicule for something they’re genuinely interested in. And thanks to the actions of particularly extreme fans, such as Charles Manson who killed people in the name of the Beatles fandom, have created the idea that fans are not only strangely alienated from the mainstream culture, but that they are actually dangerous to so-called “normal” members of society -- in the words of Henry Jenkins, “emotionally unstable, socially maladjusted, and dangerously out of sync with reality” (Jenkins 1992 13).Because of the negative perceptions of fans that the media has perpetuated, most people will not readily admit to being a fan of something, hiding from the general public the extent to which they are engaged in a fandom. Many fans remain “closeted” in a sense about their involvement with fandoms, only fully sharing their passion with fellow fans since they don’t trust the social majority not to judge them. Society has caused most fans to feel a certain sense of shame about their fandoms, forcing them to hide something that has become a part of who they are.
While male fans are perceived as desexualized and effeminate, female fans, meanwhile, have been given the label of the “groupie” or the “fangirl”, a notion that has existed practically since the word “fan” first appeared back in the early 1900s, in the context of critics saying women who were only going to the theatre to admire the male actors (Jenkins 1992 12). Fangirls, as they are portrayed in the media, are almost orgiastic in their love of their fandoms, and seem to be brought to sexual awareness by them. The best-known example of this trope might be the portrayal of Beatles fangirls during the Beatlemania of the early 1960s: as we see from The Ed Sullivan Show and A Hard Day’s Night, these groupies shriek at the sight of the Beatles and chase them around, trying to rip their clothes off, collecting memorabilia from these musicians like old articles of clothing. The idea of the fangirl has been greatly exaggerated in the mind of the public; while to some extent it is true that this kind of fan does exist, the kind of ecstasy a fangirl displays will hardly be her only way of expressing her love for her fandom. The idea of these fangirls reinforces the idea that emotional attachment to a fandom has caused fans to lose all sense of logic, and, as in the case of the Beatles, to become something of a slave to their instincts and hormones.
Sports fans, on the other hand, seem somewhat immune from such negative stereotypes that are ascribed to other fans (though that is not to say they are completely immune from stereotypes). Sports fans are more encouraged to show their support for their fandom, and this is perhaps because of the attitude society has towards sports. Not taking into account the physical benefits of athletics (because there are many sports fans who only engage in the fandom as spectators), sports are primarily a demonstration of masculine aggression, a display of testosterone that is almost war-like in its levels of aggression and violence. Because those who are exceptional at sports are primarily seen as being very strong in both physique and genetics, society values sports more than they do watching television or reading comic books. Therefore, sports fans are more immune from the stereotypes that plague fans of fictional works, for they are considered to be “real men”, displaying a certain kind of machismo in their overall demeanors, even in their cheers for their team (Theodoropoulou 325). Of course, there can be crossover between fandoms -- a sports fan can also be a Star Trek fan -- but it is the identity of the sports fan that a person will more overtly demonstrate, by wearing their team’s jersey or painting their face with the team colors before a game. Those who are fans of both sports and fictional works will likely emphasize their love of sports over their love of Star Trek, simply because they know which fandom is more highly regarded by the mainstream culture. Sports fans, immune from the stereotypes that are so intricately tied with fans of most other texts, are free to fully demonstrate their affection for their fandom.
Conclusion
It is clear, therefore, that a fandom has an effect on an individual that is much, much more profound than simply being a hobby, or something for a fan to do in his or her spare time. Even when not actively engaged in fan-related activities -- such as watching an episode of a favored show or a concert of their favored band or one of “their team’s” games, discussing texts with fellow fans, or making fan creations such as fan fiction -- a fandom continues to play a distinct role in a person’s psychology and the formation of his or her identity. The impact of a fandom is especially surprising when considering that most fan texts have a basis in fiction; but the emotional connections a fan has with a text causes those worlds described in those media fictions to seem real, at least in the mind of the fan. The impact on the fan is so great that it can be considered something akin to religious experience, albeit without some of the underlying neurological complexities inherent in true religious experiences. The social implications of fandoms, particularly the notion researchers are just developing about the parasocial relationships a fan can have with a fandom, are particularly intriguing to uncover, and it would be interesting to further explore exactly how experience with fandom relates to experiences with real interpersonal interaction. A fandom can fundamentally change who a person is, though this experience is never as negative as the media would have people believe, and the experience with fandom has a deep-seated effect on the fan’s consciousness.