The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media: Part One

Since I have been blogging about fan culture books published in the last several years or so, I have taken for granted the fact that the scholarly revolution concerning fandoms as a legitimate object of study did not occur in one cracking of fresh theoretical thunder. This truth was immediately emphasized to me in editor Lisa A Lewis’s introduction to The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media (Routledge 1992). Lewis writes, “Fans…are the most visible and identifiable of audiences. How is it, then, that they have been overlooked or not taken too seriously as research subjects by critics and scholars? And why are they maligned and sensationalized by the popular press, mistrusted by the public?” (1) Although Lewis’s words were written two decades ago, they are still relevant. True, academia, via cultural, media, and gender studies, has allowed for a scholarly reassessment of various fandoms. But when it comes to the popular press, which we can now extend to the Internet and the plethora of cable channels that have sprouted since 1992, fans are still exploited as nerdy outcasts. Just watch how cos-players are portrayed in broadcast and web media clips, or watch shows such as The Nerdist, where the hosts awkwardly provide an uncomfortable mix of celebration and apology towards their beloved niche-culture, science-fiction, fantasy, and horror worlds.

Lewis’s opening salvo against academic prejudices toward fan cultures is reinforced by the first chapter in the book, “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization,” by Joli Jenson. Framing her argument in an oppositional way, Jenson shows how elitist culture in the form of intellectuals who love literature or classical music are just as fanatical as the lowbrow (as they view it) cultures populating music, sports, and tabloid fandoms. The difference, however, is that scholars have the academic high ground, where their affection for their chosen famous individuals is politely subdued whereas fans of celebrities on the lower socially hierarchical end are prone to sincere (and yes, sometimes exuberant) outpouring of emotion toward their idols. In her effective closing call-to-action directed toward her intellectual peers, Jenson implores, “I believe what it means to be a fan should be explored in relation to the larger question of what it means to desire, cherish, seek, long, admire, envy, celebrate, protect, ally with others” (27). What I appreciate about Jenson’s comment here is that it can be applied to practically anyone, regardless of whether or not that individual is a renowned Shakespearian scholar or the self-appointed president of the Angry Birds fan club!

John Fiske’s contribution to Lewis’ collection, “The Cultural Economy of Fandom,” initially drew me into its discussion of fandoms through Fiske’s application of Bourdieu’s modeling of our society, which applies a two-dimensional mapping of our cultural tastes in relationship to their economic status. To be honest, however, whenever brilliant French theorists with complex theories are name-dropped and/or applied in academic discourse (e.g., Sarte, Bouvier, Foucault), my repressed, inner Francophile wants to stick a pipe in my mouth and squint my eyes in a joyous, disdainful regard of foolish humanity. Now, I can gleefully add Bourdieu-as-viewed-by-Fiske to my list of French theoretical demigods. I was also intrigued by Fiske’s comparison of security guards and fences, amongst other barriers to fans touching their rock and sports idols, to that of the academic critic, “who polices the meanings of a text and its relationship to its readers in a way that differs from the disciplinary apparatus on sports grounds only as being intellectual rather than physical” (41).

With Chapter 3’s “Is There a Fan in the House?: The Affective Sensibility of Fandom,” by Lawrence Grossberg, I enjoyed learning about several of his contributions to media terminology: “affective alliances,” “mattering map” and “hyperconsumerist sensibility.” Grossberg also smartly remarks in this chapter, “…everyone is constantly a fan of various sorts of things, for one cannot exist in a world where nothing matters (including the fact that nothing matters)” (63). Once more, then, a scholar in this seminal collection of essays on fan cultures reminds us that academics are essentially sophisticated fans eruditely harping on about their objects of desire and affection!

For the first two selections comprising Part II of The Adoring Audience, titled “Fandom and Gender,” Lewis made some interesting commission choices. In Chapter 4’s “Essays from Bitch: The Women’s Rock Newsletter with Bite,” rock journalist Cheryl Cline writes in a manner best described as quasi-Gonzo-ish (if we can consider that a workable neologism). What’s striking about Cline contributing to this scholarly collection is that she is an outsider to academia, which, the more I think about it, is appropriate if one wants to read an authentic commentary on rock ‘n roll’s more controversial participants: groupies. Underneath Cline’s boisterous and sometimes crude clarifications, however, rests a sincere attempt to accurately redefine groupies as legitimate, devoted fans of rock musicians instead of the media-generated myth that writes them off as sex-crazed, maniacal followers of male rock gods.

A successful reconsideration of female rock music fans’ identities is likewise performed in Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs’s essay, “Beatlemania: Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Growing up, I often saw archival news footage clips of screaming female Beatles fans chasing after the Fab Four whenever their Liverpoolian feet touched American soil, but I viewed it as another historical social phenomenon, just like the hula-hoop and “The Twist,” that took place before I was alive.  Thus it never occurred to me that Beatlemania could be construed as instrumental in the burgeoning feminist movement of the early 1960s. On this subject of teenage girls’ ebullient response to the Beatles’ sex appeal, the authors write, “To assert an active, powerful sexuality by the tens of thousands and to do so in a way calculated to attract maximum attention was more than rebellious. It was, in its own unformulated, dizzy way, revolutionary” (90).  When I weigh in the fact that the Beatles many times functioned as a swaggering, womanizing clique until they began to find wives, I find it ironically fitting that their popularity would serve as a catalyst for women loudly and publically asserting their rights to vocalize their repressed sexual desires!