Fan Culture

Abstract

Fan culture is a global phenomenon, and fans often feel as if they know celebrities personally because they invest time and money in watching their films, television shows, or games, buying their music, or reading their books. Lines between celebrities and fans has become blurred with new technologies such as social media, e-mail, and the Internet, opening up channels of direct communication. While sports fan culture and casually following a celebrity are seen as normal behavior within popular culture, more active participation in fan culture may lead to derogatory labels such as “nerd,” “fanatic, “cultist,” “nutter,” and “anorak.”

Overview

It is believed that the term “fan” was first used in England in the seventeenth century as a shortened form of the word “fanatic.” In the eighteenth century, American journalists began describing baseball spectators as fans. Over time, other journalists adopted the term to describe those who closely followed film and recording stars. The term “celebrity” was first used to refer to popular figures in the mid-nineteenth century. Fan culture developed in the early decades of the twentieth century with the popularity of films, radio, and comic books. One of the first celebrities to draw a large fan following was opera singer Enrico Caruso. The Hollywood star system that flourished in the early decades of the twentieth century encouraged large fan followings. Beginning in 1919 with the publication of Motion Picture Story, fan magazines served as avenues for promoting celebrities. When popular movie idol Rudolph Valentino died in 1926, 750,000 fans caused destruction at the funeral home through the enormity of their presence.

The first science-fiction and comic book convention was held in the 1930s. Fan culture intensified in the 1950s and 1960s as television became common. One of the first shows to develop a devoted fanbase was Star Trek, which premiered in 1966 with William Shatner as Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Spock. When NBC announced in 1968 that it was cancelling the show because of low ratings, fans launched a major letter-writing campaign that kept the show going for another year. In syndication, the show became enormously and enduringly popular. Kristin M. Barton and Jonathan Malcolm Lampley (2013) argue that the phenomenal success of George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy was instrumental in fan culture becoming accepted as a valid element of popular culture. That success is evidenced by the successful merchandising industry generated by the franchise and by the fact that subsequent Star Wars movies created a new generation of fans. Even President Obama paid homage to the franchise by brandishing a light sabre during a photo shoot. Within academia, fan culture is studied by scholars from sociology, anthropology, psychology, other social sciences, literature, and popular culture. The first studies appeared in the 1990s, focusing on the increasing prevalence of fan culture and attitudes and actions of fans.

Of all genres, television is considered the medium that most promotes a feeling of familiarity with fans because its stars enter people’s homes on a daily or weekly basis. The soap operas that dominated the airwaves during the latter half of the twentieth century had some of the most loyal fans of all time because fans were able to follow the intimate details of the lives of the various characters five days a week. Fans have successfully launched campaigns to save shows that have been slated for cancellation. Baby boomers have had a unique relationship with television because they remember when television offerings were limited to ABC, CBS, and NBC and a small menu of scheduled shows; these offerings were viewed not only by entire families watching television together but also by most television viewers in the country, creating popular cultural touchstones shared nationwide.

Popular music is another field that encourages intense fan loyalty because music is interwoven into life experiences for most people. As stated in the song made popular by country artist Trisha Yearwood, “The Song Remembers When.” Because of that intense loyalty, fans may be devastated when bands break up and members pursue solo careers.

Millions of fans attend annual conventions devoted to their favorite films, books, and television shows. Conventions may be devoted to a genre, such as high fantasy, science fiction, or animeand manga. Enthusiasm for the Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Star Trek franchises, along with beloved shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural offer convention attendees opportunities for cosplay or merely dressing up and vendors a unique and massive environment for merchandise sales. In the United States, it is estimated that 32 million fans attend music concerts each year. An estimated 154,810 fans attend professional football, baseball, soccer, basketball, and hockey events, and millions more watch sports on television on both broadcast television and channels devoted entirely to sports.

Public opinion polls consistently demonstrate the extent of fan culture in contemporary society. Three-fourths of adults say that have been sexually attracted to a celebrity at some point in their lives. More than half of adults polled admit that their views have been influenced by celebrities. Within 48 hours of singer Taylor Swift endorsing Tennessee Democrats and issuing a clarion call for her 112 million followers to register to vote, registration at Vote.org increased by 169,000. Even though some of that increase was due to approaching voter registration deadlines before the upcoming mid-term elections and outrage over the Kavanaugh confirmation, Swift’s influence was undeniable.

Roger C. Aden, in Popular Stories and Promised Lands (1999), argues that fan culture is composed of individuals who seek their own “Promised Lands,” like the character of everyman George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart in the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey, repeated disappointed in pursuit of his dreams, spends much of his life feeling mired in the banality of Bedford Falls. Aden contends that fan culture has helped to alleviate fears raised by pessimistic outlooks of the future such as that raised by Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock in 1970. Arden maintains that the most powerful “Promised Land” symbols for Americans are the sacred garden and the secular paradise offered by modern technology. The “Promised Land” may be an actual place like William Shakespeare’s home in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, which is visited by 400,000 people each year, or Elvis Presley’s Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, where from 2,000 to 4,000 people a day, depending on the time of year, come to pay homage. The “Promised Land” might also be a retreat into a book, a song, a film, a television show, or a game that takes the reader/listener/viewer/gamer out of the real world into an alternate or remembered world. Fans may also experience their “Promised Lands” by visiting fantasy-themed amusement parks such as Disneyland and Disney World and Harry Potter World.

Two examples cited by Roger Aden to illustrate his thesis are Scott Adams’s comic strip Dilbert and the television show X-files, both of which became cultural phenomena. Dilbert, depicting the daily inanities of office life with biting satire, was carried by about 150 newspapers in 1993, had expanded to 1,600 newspapers in thirty-nine countries by 1997, with a fanbase of 60 million. Scott Adams’s website averaged 1.5 million hits a day, and 200,000 fans subscribed to Adams’ daily newsletter. X-Files, which premiered in 1993, featuring two FBI agents pursuing cases involving “unexplained phenomena,” with David Duchovny as Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully. The show received the highest ratings ever garnered by Fox Network, averaging 20 million viewers. It was broadcast in sixty countries, including Japan, where it was the only American show on prime-time television. A film released between seasons five and six grossed $189 million at the global box office. While Dilbert might be seen as a relatable fellow traveler, embodying the malaise and absurdity of ordinary existence, Mulder and Scully lived in a high-risk, high-adventure version of the world in which conspiracy theories are true and anything can happen.

Applications

Sports fan culture is generally accepted as normal behavior throughout the world. Sports teams and individual athletes encourage fan loyalty, which enhances ticket sales, broadcast opportunities, and increased profits from merchandise, as well as sponsorship deals for athletes. In May 2008 when a malfunction caused the airing of the UEFA final to be abruptly pulled, fans in Manchester, England, rioted in Piccadilly Square, and 1,500 police officers were dispatched to the scene (Slade, Narro & Givens-Carrol, 2015). While large numbers of females are sports fans, the world of sports fan culture is predominately a male sphere, and sports-participation and viewing have their own sets of rituals to encourage male bonding. Watching sports on Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day is considered a male prerogative. The film Field of Dreams (1989), which starred Kevin Costner as Ray Kinsella, a farmer who builds a baseball field in his cornfield, is considered the epitome of sports fan culture. The film is based on the book Shoeless Joe (1982) by Canadian writer William P. Kinsella. After a disembodied voice tells Ray, “If you build it, they will come,” he builds a field, a “sacred place,” that attracts Shoeless Joe Jackson and other members of the disgraced 1919 Chicago White Sox team that threw the World Series. By 2018, more than one million visitors had played baseball at the farm in Dyersville, Indiana, that was depicted in the movie.

Elvis Presley, the “king of rock ‘n’ roll,” has a loyal base of fans that has outlived him by decades. In a poll taken in 2008, more than half stated that they were still Presley fans. Based in the United Kingdom, Elvis Presley’s fan club of 20,000 members is still one of the largest fan clubs in existence. Much has been written about the fan culture surrounding Presley, and some scholars suggest that that culture has become equivalent to a secular religion. That view is based in part on a large body of artwork that has depicted the star as Jesus and the persistent belief by many that Presley, who died on August 16, 1977, is not really dead.

Early adolescent and pre-teen girls are loyal fans of various pop idols. When these idols fall from their pedestals, fans often find excuses or blame others for their mistakes. Monica Qiu (2012) examined the Miley Cyrus phenomenon to study the fan culture that has surrounded the singer since she debuted on Disney’s Hannah Montana in March 2006 at the age of thirteen. Cyrus’s debut was watched by 5.5 million viewers. She soon seemed determined to destroy her image as a squeaky-clean, family-oriented pop singer. In April 2008 following a nearly nude photo shoot for Vanity Fair, 1,721 fans posted comments on Cyrus’s website: A majority of fans (76%) blamed Disney, Vanity Fair, or her assistants for allowing Cyrus to be photographed in such a way; 56 percent said it was the fault of her parents, who were not present during that part of the photo shoot. Only as Cyrus’s exploits continued, did fans begin assigning blame to Cyrus.

Fans are defined almost as much by their fidelity as by their admiration. They are often willing to overlook outrageous behavior, sometimes excusing even outright crimes. Public personas of celebrities may obscure bad behavior and make accusations against them difficult for fans to believe or too easy to justify. High-profile examples of celebrities exploiting their “good guy” images to cover unsavory real-life actions include football legend O. J. Simpson, comedian Bill Cosby, and NBC newscaster Matt Lauer. Nowhere is the willingness of fans to excuse celebrity misbehavior more notorious than in the 2016 election of The Apprentice host Donald Trump to president of the United States.

Discourse

In 1997, Comedy Central enjoyed a boom in fandom with both the adult cartoon South Park and the highly successful political satire The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Steven Colbert’s The Colbert Report, which parodied right-wing pundits like Bill O’Reilly, debuted in 2005 as a spin-off from The Daily Show. Colbert replaced David Letterman as host of The Late Show in 2015, a change in venue that coincided with the onslaught of campaigning 2016 presidential candidates. Colbert uses satire to present the news while skewering political and media elites. His unique approach brings audience participation to a new level, and he uses both mediated culture jamming and ironic political spectacle to present his message (Schill, 2014). Dan Schill surveyed Colbert’s fanbase to determine who his fans are and why they are so loyal to him, learning that, as a group, they tend to be extremely cynical, sophisticated, and distrustful of elites. Colbert fans are generally under the age of thirty (78%), predominately white (four out of five), liberal (61%), and Democratic (33.5%) rather than Independent (7.5%) or Republican (2%). Three out of four Colbert viewer are registered voters. Colbert’s fans are also highly politically involved.

Colbert frequently encourages his “heroes” to take part in his pet causes. They supported him for president twice; they launched a campaign in which they sold black armbands for charity to express their opinion of disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong; and they promoted a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in which Colbert was featured. Colbert’s fans have a strong online presence, and they support him in endeavors such as having a bridge in Hungary named after him (more than 17 million votes) and naming the mascot for the Spirit hockey team (2 million votes). When Colbert and John Stewart held an anti-Glenn Beck rally, “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” in 2010, a quarter of a million fans showed up. When Colbert formed a political action committee during the 2012 presidential campaign, his fans contributed more than a million dollars. Colbert’s influence is so significant that when he targets an individual for attention, they experience what has been identified as “the Colbert bump.” Academicians have begun studying the influence of soft-news programs like Colbert’s. Some have concluded that such shows are harmful because of the emphasis on cynicism, but others applaud them for contributing to democracy.

Since the 1990s, Korean pop music, also known as K-pop or Hallyu, has been a global sensation, as evidenced by the YouTube sensation, “Gangnam Style,” which had more than a billion views between August and December of 2012. K-pop is particularly popular in Asia, where it has been credited with helping to create a more cohesive Asian culture. In Singapore, where K-pop fans, known as sasaeng, have become notorious for obsessive and sometimes problematic behavior (Williams & Ho, 2016). In 2017, Singapore had an estimated per capita income of $93,900. By comparison, Japan had a per capita income of $42,800 and South Korea had a per capita income of $39,400. Most of Singapore’s popular culture is imported, and pop music from the West and East Asia, American films, and East Asian television shows have strong followings. Singapore youths are able to watch their K-pop idols on television, listen to their records, follow them online, buy merchandise displaying their images, and attend local concerts featuring various idols. Between July 2010 and February 2013, Singapore hosted more than one hundred K-pop events, including concerts, showcases, autograph sessions, meet and greets, fan meetings, festivals, lunches, fashion shows, and award shows. Behaviors exhibited by Singapore’s sasaeng include spending excessive time and money, attending all events at which idols appear, showing up at idols’ homes, stalking and even hiring “stalking vans” to follow idols around, forcing contact, and demanding personal items.

Books also generate loyal fan followings; polls have shown that only approximately 10 percent of the population buys most of the books sold in a single year. The Harry Potter phenomenon began in the United States with the publication of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in 1997. The book had been published the previous year in Britain as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, but the British initially received it with less enthusiasm than Americans. Between 1997 and the 2007, when the seventh book in the series was published, the books sold more than 325 million copies and were published in sixty-four languages. They also spawned eight movies, an amusement park, rock bands, video games, fan conventions, and a plethora of merchandise that included everything from calendars to Lego kits. In a 2009 study of Harry Potter fans, Jeffrey Michael Rudski, Carli Segal, and Eli Kallen found that one-half of respondents had read the books more than four times, and 25 percent had read them eight or more times. One in five admitted to visiting Harry Potter websites multiple times in a single day, and almost one in five read fan fiction that featured the book’s characters.

Terms & Concepts

Anorak: A derogatory term for avid fans that is based on British train spotters, who devoted large blocks of time to detailing train journeys throughout the country while wearing hooded waterproof jackets.

K-pop: Popular music that originates in South Korea and which has become popular globally. As is common in Asian culture, individual artists are referred to as idols, and these idols develop loyal fanbases that range from those who buy their music and attend concerts to those who stalk them and attempt to force themselves into the idols’ personal lives.

Mediated Culture Jamming: A form of political and social activism that is intended to focus attention on the misdeeds of large corporations, government, and media. Tactics may include fake advertisements, planting “false news” stories, computer hacking, and producing imitations of corporate logos and labels.

Political Action Committee (PAC): Political groups formed for the purpose of increasing influence of and within the two main political parties. Since the Supreme Court struck down limits on corporate and union campaign contributions in 2010 and on individual contributions in 2012, contributions to “Super PACs” have skyrocketed, reaching $618 million in the 2016 presidential election.

Political Spectacle: An event used by politicians to enhance their public image. The spectacle may arise out of an actual event, as when presidents visit disaster scenes, or they may be created to focus attention on a particular issue or draw attention away from a damaging news story.

“Promised Lands”: Term used by popular culture expert Roger Arden to explain the rise of fan culture. It refers to the desire of fans to be transported from the real world into a utopia that offers them “ultimate fulfillment.”

Bibliography

Barton, K. M., & Lampley, J. M. (Eds.). (2014). Fan CULTure: Essays on participatory fandom in the twenty-first century. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Capili, P. M. L. (2015). Painting the scenario of Filipino k-pop fan culture. Ateneo Korean Studies Conference Proceedings, 1, 35–47. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=124572463&site=ehost-live

Duffett, M. (2003). False faith or false comparison? A critique of the religious interpretation of elvis fan culture. Popular Music and Society, 26(4), 513–522.

Duffett, M. (2013). Understanding fandom: An introduction to the study of media fan culture. New York: Bloomsbury.

Guest, A. M., & Luijten, A. (2018). Fan culture and motivation in the context of successful women’s professional team sports: A mixed-methods case study of Portland Thorns fandom. Sport in Society, 21(7), 1013–1030. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=129370497&site=ehost-live

Qiu, M. (2012). “It’s not her fault!”: Miley Cyrus, fan culture and the neutralization of deviance. Yale Journal of Sociology, 9, 53–96. Retrieved September 23, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=84858236&site=ehost-live

Rudski, J. M., Segal, C., & Kallen, E. (2009). Harry Potter and the end of the road: Parallels with addiction. Addiction Research and Theory, 17(3), 260–277.

Schill, D. (2014). Understanding the “Heroes” and “It Getters”: Fandom and the Colbert Nation. Mass Communication and Society, 17(5), 754–775. Retrieved September 24, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=97806218&site=ehost-live

Slade, A., Narro, J., & Givens-Carrol, D. (2015). Television, social media, and fan culture. Lanham, MD: Lexington.

Williams, J. P. & Ho, S. X. X. (2016). “Sasaengpaen” or K-pop fan? Singapore youths, authentic identities, and Asian media fandom. Deviant Behavior, 37(1), 81–94. Retrieved September 23, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=111589659&site=ehost-live

Williams, R. (2018). Everybody hurts: Transitions, endings, and resurrections in fan cultures. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Suggested Reading

Ewoldt, A. (2017). Popular media cultures: Fans, audiences, and paratexts. Journal of Popular Culture, 50(2), 420–422. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=122825516&site=ehost-live

Larsen, K., & Zubernis, L. (2012). Fan culture: Theory/practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Miller, S. (2018). Rebooting ponies and men: Discordant masculinity and the brony fandom. Journal of Men’s Studies, 26(3), 327–345. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=131377877&site=ehost-live

Slade, A., Narro, J., & Givens-Carrol, D. (2015). Television, social media, and fan culture. Lanham, MD: Lexington.

Williams, J. P. (2016). Negotiating fan identities in k-pop music culture. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 47, 81–96. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=118366334&site=ehost-live