The Hidden Social and Political Power of Fandom

Fan culture is comprised of creation and oriented around enjoyment — what happens when it enters the realm of politics? Retrieved from www.nytimes.com.

Modern fan culture is first thought to have emerged in the 1960s, with the help of Star Trek fans. Of course, people still called themselves ‘fans’ of particular aspects of pop culture before and during this time — but “Trekkers” (often also known as “Trekkies”) warranted special focus because of the unique ways they interacted with both the source material and with each other. Being part of a ‘fandom’, or fan community, was quite stigmatized at this time. Fans, and particularly adult fans, were often stereotyped as being socially inept or freakishly obsessed. What cultural critics (and even academics) ignored about fandoms was the power these communities could wield — and what’s more, the threat they ultimately could pose to dominant consumer culture.

Fandom reflects the academic idea of a participatory culture. A participatory culture is one in which fans are not simply passive consumers of their interest, but active producers who feel that their contributions matter to others. In fan cultures, the things that are being produced are generally known as fan works. They may include art, cosplay (an abbreviation of costume-play, referring to character or story-inspired dress), zines, or written works such as fan-fiction. Another central idea to the idea of fandom is that these are communities in which fans share their works and engage with others. While fan communities may have well-known figures within them, they are generally somewhat leaderless, instead organized around their own collective knowledge and passion for their subject.

Cosplay is a practice requiring a lot of both effort and creativity. Fans create cosplay as a labor of love, and often will wear it in public or to large conventions as a means of sharing that work with others. Retrieved from reddit.com.

The community-driven nature of fandom puts it in direct opposition to mass media culture, which since modernity has pervaded and dominated cultural narratives. Mass culture comes from the installation of institutions and hierarchy, leading to professionalization and gatekeeping of creative roles, and the concentration of power in the hands of a small number of cultural elites. Mass culture expects us (the masses) to fall in line as passive consumers. It also prescribes and enforces the social norms and roles which we internalize and later perpetuate. One unique power of fandom is that it offers fans opportunities to add meaning and value to the source material, even potentially changing its message. The appropriation of a source material for an individual’s use is referred to as textual or cultural poaching, and has its academic roots in uses and gratifications theory. This idea can help to explain why fandoms are often places of solace for members of marginalized groups, especially as young adults or teens. Members of fan communities can use the power of creativity to imagine themselves within a fictional universe, and to imagine these universes as places that are more representative and welcoming than the physical world around them. At the same time, these acts of textual poaching can often serve to challenge the norms perpetuated by mainstream mass media — for example, by swapping the genders of characters, or imagining a literary character as having a different race than they are thought to have, thus challenging stereotypes and expectations about how people in these groups are expected to behave. For many, participating in fandom is viewed as a ‘safe’ way to play with one’s identity and to connect with others through such commonalities.

As one example of fans challenging social norms by altering source material, there has been a recent movement within the Harry Potter fandom to create works portraying the character Hermione as being Black to push back against ‘white bias’, or the assumption that she is white even though this is not specified in the book. Retrieved from aminoapps.com.

So how can fan communities, which have long been marginalized anyway, compete with the prowess of mass culture? The unique power of fandom can be largely attributed to changes in the dominant media. The paradigm shift from centralized media forms such as TV or radio to decentralized forms like the internet has created a sort of digital empowerment, as fans now have the means to connect globally, collaborate, and share their works on a massive scale. We can see this in practice on social sites such as Tumblr, where fans will have entire blogs dedicated to engaging on particular topics of interest. This invokes memories of the folk cultures of pre-modern societies, characterized by a strong sense of community belonging and collective authorship. Folk culture has also long stood in opposition to mass consumer culture, even competing with it for mainstream dominance before eventually being forced underground. In this way, fandoms and their increased social significance can be viewed as a resurgence of folk cultures and a collectivist, DIY ethos.

In the past decade, we’ve seen not only a huge rise in the presence of fandoms due to the internet and social media, but also a small glimpse of the power they can wield in the physical world. Many particularly resonant examples can be found in the world of United States politics, where figures on the political right and left have found themselves to be subjects of mass idolization. This can translate to impactful actions in the physical world such as grassroots campaigning, which was evident in Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. Internet users were not only charmed by Sanders’ policy positions, but by Sanders himself — from his seemingly humble background, to his spoken-word folk album, and largely to the idea that he was just a wholesome guy wanting to take a different and new approach to politics. On the other side of the aisle, political superfans rallied around the eventual president-elect Donald Trump, who was able to capture the interest of internet trolls and working-class Americans alike through his crude demeanor and stature as a celebrity. In both of these cases, participatory culture was at play, allowing supporters-turned-fans to collectively organize, share their own experiences, and share information (or in some cases even misinformation or conspiracy theories).

Fan art of the politician Bernie Sanders, showing appreciation not just for him, but for his collectivist message. Retrieved from chicagomaroon.com.

The evaluation of our nation’s future leaders based on ‘dating criteria’ or likability rather than policy positions alone is not a new phenomenon (remember when Richard Nixon’s shaky and sweaty demeanor cost him an entire debate in 1960?), but it has arguably only intensified in pace with the increasing presence of media communication in our lives. Additionally, the changes that have occurred in media forms have made it easier to connect, communicate, and collaborate on a much larger scale than ever before. This can be a very positive thing as a means of providing visibility and platform to marginalized voices, but fandom gone-too-far or entering into inappropriate spheres such as politics can be a dangerous misplacement of this power. However, it is probably best to learn to contend with the phenomenon of political fandom — by sticking to trusted informational sources, fact-checking, and judging policies before the person proposing them — than to hope for it to go away.