On fandom

We’ve been spending some time talking about internet fan communities in class, and this quote popped up in a reading:

Fans are not fringe extremists with an unhealthy and unrealistic interest in a particular media text, but savvy consumers who are able to use popular culture to fulfill their desires and needs, often explicitly rearticulating that culture in unique and empowering ways. (Source: This book again)

That’s sort of a lot of words to get me to react, “Well, duh.” When it comes down to it, we’re all fans of something to at least some degree (unless, of course, you’re one of those excruciatingly boring people with no outside interests whatsoever). And the plain fact is that fansites are a natural and perfectly acceptable outgrowth of this impulse. Not only do they furnish us with a platform to pull apart and analyze the often surprisingly rich texts we encounter in the media, but they are full-fledged communities for a like-minded group of people.

If this sounds familiar to you, it is because you are a mammal.

Certainly it’s become easier and easier to endorse fan communities ever since they went “mainstream,” which is to say, when people decided it wasn’t weird to really like something they saw on TV. Still, we occasionally encounter the behavoirists shrieking in the pantry, decrying the heavily stereotyped outliers, the stock message boards full of supposedly jobless sci-fi enthusiasts. (Why is it always the sci-fi fans?)

First off, I defy anybody to find a community populated entirely by these alarmist caricatures. It’s all too easy to lose sight of the fact that even the most ardent fan is, in fact, a human being. Which leads me to my second point: let’s be rational about it and reason that there’s no harm done. Every society has a fringe element, and often times it’s way more interesting besides.

This is a little tangential to the main discussion, but then again, I don’t have much more to contribute. Fandom is a natural social impulse, media texts are a perfectly legitimate focus for enthusiasm and analysis, and time spent carping the tired old “fandom is unhealthy” rigamarole is time that can be spent more constructively. Like starting that crusade to get a second season of Firefly on the air.

Man, that was a good show.

~ by pbonaduce on February 11, 2008.