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FANDOMIssues to consider.
ISSUES TO CONSIDER.
Use text on moodle - Media Fandom and
Audience Subcultures
Use Associated PowerPoint:
http://www.slideshare.net/Nikchik89/media-fandom-and-audience-subcultures
ISSUES TO CONSIDER
Are they just Crazy people? What are FAN CULTURES? Communities and Subcultures Fan Activism Protecting the text!
ARE THEY JUST CRAZY PEOPLE?
June 2010. Los Angeles Times: ‘When 'Twilight' fandom becomes addiction’
BBC News. 14th August 2013.One Direction fandom an 'obsession'
Psychological studies on fandom sometimes appear to confirm this!
E.g. Personality correlates of football fandom. Miller, Stuart Psychology: A Journal of Human Behavior, Vol. 13(4), Nov 1976, 7-13.
That fans, whether football, music etc… can display extreme forms of desire for trills, senation etc… that can be pathological.
ARE THEY JUST CRAZY PEOPLE?
Fan Stereotypes
“Negative notions of fans, seen through the lens of extremism and psycho-pathology, dominated the popular consciousness when scholars began to examine the phenomenon of fandom.”
John Sullivan. Media Audiences p193
Indeed the word ‘Fan’ is derived from ‘Fanatic’.
IS THIS THE CASE? “…the fan is characterized as (at least potentially) an
obsessed loner, suffering from a disease of isolation, or a frenzied crowd member, suffering from a disease of contagion. In either case, the fan is seen as being irrational, out of control, and prey to a number of external forces.”
Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization JOLI JENSON in The Adoring
Audience FAN CULTURE AND POPULAR MEDIA edited by LISA A. LEWIS. P13
Press full of stories of the loner stalking a celebrity, or the frenzied crowd at a rock gig, the crowd out of control…….. Etc…..
ARE FANS CRAZY????
Jenson continues to say that these characterisations perhaps say more about the press and their view of the world than the fan.
{The} “ …fan type mobilizes related assumptions about modern individuals: the obsessed loner invokes the image of the alienated, atomized ‘mass man’; the frenzied crowd member invokes the image of the vulnerable, irrational victim of mass persuasion. These assumptions – about alienation, atomization, vulnerability and irrationality – are central aspects of twentieth-century beliefs…” p14
PERHAPS THE WORLD IS ISOLATED
Perhaps its the case that the world is an isolating place for people.
Some thinkers have argued that modern world is alienated, that people are powerless in the face of large scale institutions etc... And feel that they have no control.
I don’t usually recommend Wikipedia but this is quite good as an overview
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_alienation
NEED FOR BELONGING AND SOLIDARITY
If world is an alienated place we can seek comfort from others who share our views...
Perhaps this is the underlying cause of fan cultures?
So instead of fans being obsessive's they are to be understood as people seeking a way of compensating for the frustrations and loneliness of modern life.
What they do is just a form of what we all do, seeking friendships and companionship...
FAN CULTURES “The emergence of social groupings around a
particular interest or activity is quite common. What distinguishes fans from other kinds of social groups (like stamp collectors or golf enthusiasts, for instance) are the subjects of their admiring gaze…. Rather, negative perceptions arise because the materials that fans have selected to rally around are typically found on the low end of the cultural hierarchy.”
J Sullivan. op cit. p196
Perhaps this is another reason for why fandom is derided?
A snobbery towards popular culture?
FAN CULTURES But read paragraph in Sullivan on Dick Hebdige’s
book ‘Subculture: The Meaning of Style’P196.
Basically fandom can be seen as a way for people to construct and define their identities through fashions, styles etc... Fandom as an extension of this sub cultural pursuit.
ACTIVISM AND PROTECTING THE TEXT
Read Sullivan pp 196 - 202
