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substituteI was staggering around the Internet this evening and I kept tripping over fan subcultures. You know the ones I mean: Harry Potter maniacs, Pern obsessives, people whose entire existence revolves around one rock band, fanfic addicts. It made me wonder about modern popular culture, which is to say U.S. culture.
I've read thousands of books so far in my life, and more than a few of them are in my personal Pantheon of literary quality; I re-read them regularly. I'm a lot less of a movie fan but there are a few I enjoy enough to see once in a while and know whole bits from, etc. And I spent years as a pop music critic and have been obsessively in love with a few musical acts over the years too.
But I've never felt the impulse to reenact my favorite movie, dress as my favorite character, go to conventions about some artist or work of art, write fan fiction, or in any way be a "fan". In fact, I can't stand it. It freaks me out! I remember back in the mid 80s when friends of mine were following some band like R.E.M. or the Meat Puppets all over the country and I was thinking "Great band, yeah! I buy all their records! I am yelling WOOHOO in the front row when then play in town. But FOLLOW them?"
The other thing that's interesting to me is that the fan cultures I see on the Internet are all about pop culture, recent pop culture at that. You don't see people getting together at a hotel to share their love of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain or Beethoven's piano sonatas. Small fan subcultures like the Lord of the Rings folks balloon to huge size when the feature film comes out. And some of these, like the furries, are entirely creations of pop culture. No one dressed up as a cartoon animal and went to conventions about it until cartoon animals had been around for quite a while.
I don't want to get too McLuhan about it, but it seems that fan subcultures are linked very closely with television and movies, as though these groups of people imprinted on a visual image like baby ducks. Does fandom push our parent/child button or something?
I've read thousands of books so far in my life, and more than a few of them are in my personal Pantheon of literary quality; I re-read them regularly. I'm a lot less of a movie fan but there are a few I enjoy enough to see once in a while and know whole bits from, etc. And I spent years as a pop music critic and have been obsessively in love with a few musical acts over the years too.
But I've never felt the impulse to reenact my favorite movie, dress as my favorite character, go to conventions about some artist or work of art, write fan fiction, or in any way be a "fan". In fact, I can't stand it. It freaks me out! I remember back in the mid 80s when friends of mine were following some band like R.E.M. or the Meat Puppets all over the country and I was thinking "Great band, yeah! I buy all their records! I am yelling WOOHOO in the front row when then play in town. But FOLLOW them?"
The other thing that's interesting to me is that the fan cultures I see on the Internet are all about pop culture, recent pop culture at that. You don't see people getting together at a hotel to share their love of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain or Beethoven's piano sonatas. Small fan subcultures like the Lord of the Rings folks balloon to huge size when the feature film comes out. And some of these, like the furries, are entirely creations of pop culture. No one dressed up as a cartoon animal and went to conventions about it until cartoon animals had been around for quite a while.
I don't want to get too McLuhan about it, but it seems that fan subcultures are linked very closely with television and movies, as though these groups of people imprinted on a visual image like baby ducks. Does fandom push our parent/child button or something?
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Date: 2004-06-14 11:06 am (UTC)Building the "world" of the story is usually more important than the story itself. Aside from seeing celebrities, people go to see films for the mise-en-scene. The average filmgoer will cheerfully acknowledge that the story sucked but the special effects rocked, so it's "worth the money". I mean, who talks about literature like that? In paperback, Grisham costs about the same as Austen.
The really weird part is that the world-building mise-en-scene people are the new cultural heroes. Creating a fantasy that gets you as far away from reality as possible is now good. Animators, set designers, stuntpeople, costume designers... all the DVD extras are about these people. How many DVD extras have you seen about different drafts of the script?
It's not surprising that people want to participate in their own way... write fan fiction, create their own costumes.
One of the things that freaks me out about the LoTR people is that they talk about "our" films like they worked on them. To some extent they were mobilized by the filmmakers as extras in the spectacle of the film's release -- lineups and camp-outs and so on.
I read on one of their boards how Miranda Otto (who played Eowyn) walked right past them without saying hi at a premiere, and some guy stood up and said "you can't ignore us! we're gonna see this film fifty times and buy all the merchandise!" We own you, bitch.