Tutorial 2

Fandom and Identity

● How do we define identity? Is it simply who we are how we choose to self
identify?
● It is not fixed but rather variable and context dependent
○ Having discussed these identity categories separately, its necessary to mention
that they are not actually independent; each of these identities constantly overlap
with the others
■ Often this is referred to as “intersectionality” a term coined by Kimberle
Crenshaw (1989) to describe how a person cannot be reduced to just
their gender or race or any other identity, but rather genfer and race have
impacts

What are fans

- Fan is short for fanatic
- Fandom a portmanteau of fan and kingdom
- When people love things (artists, musicians, movies/characters, comic books) people
really love them
- Sometimes being a fan is passive - the “yeah i like this” type
- Other times it gets a bit obsessive
- Its almost always gendered, something we’ll revisit shortly…

● One of the most prominent early examples of pop culture fandom was The beatles
○ Where does this desire come from?
○ What happens when things get weird?

What is a stan?
● Reference to an eminem track
● Also now codified into the english language
● Stalker was mashup of stalker and fan
● Does the song accurately reflect the superfan culture that it ended up naming?

A fan is a person who admires his/her idol but never being obsessive of his/her idol, while
a stan is an obsessive fan.

Loyalty, Fandom, and mob mentality

● Territoriality, emotional connections and cyberbullying- how do they relate to each other
● Mob mentality leads to violence
The Gendered Element
● Hannah Ewens argues that there is a major gendered component of the experience
● Fangirls are ridiculed for the screaming, crying and romanticizing
● Why are male sports fans given a free pass to get drunk, swear and fight?

Lecture 3

● The Curious Case of Taylor Swift (and her back catalogue)

○ Public feuds
○ Mobilized fan networks
○ Lack of discourse
○ Lack of face-to-face interaction
○ All happening on social media

Taylor’s Fans
● Her fans are amongst the most devoted in the world
● She at one point made an app for her fans to interact (Swift Life- its dead now because
nazis hacked it)
● There are now fans with youtube channels about her that have become their careers

Justin Bieber and Pathways to stardom

● 12 year old Biever uploads video of his cover of a Ne-yo song
● Breaks internet
● Beliebers are born

Youtube, Social Media, and Music

- Does youtube define fame now?
- The culture of being a fan shifted through online platforms along with the artists these
platforms seemed to birth

Scooter Braun
● This guy is cagey
● Part of his management deal with Bieber was to continue producing youtube videos in
order to retain control over his online following
Goffman
● The dramaturgical model and presentation of self
○ Expressions given
○ Expressions given off
○ Whats the difference?
■ “When an individual appears before others (his or her) action will
influence the definition of the situation which they will come to have.
Sometimes the individual will act in a thoroughly calculating manner,
expressing himself or (herself) in a given way solely in order to give the
kind of impression to others that is likely to invoke from them a specific
response
● Where does Bieber fit?
○ Youtube fame seems to subvert Goffman’s theory
○ Showing ordinary daily life subverts the expectation of only presenting the
ordinary
○ Where do para-social relationships fit?

Online Fandom and “Imagined Reciprocity”

● Imagined reciprocity
○ A kind of reciprocal relationship that implies a two-way mutually beneficial bond.
Celebrities often utilize social media to construct an experience that imitates the
reciprocity of an offline relationship, instead of a WHOLLY parasocial approach
■ Is this the best way to define being a fan in the digital age?
■ Is it an accurate way?

Canadian Crybabies: Radical softness, Feminized fan publics, and the politics of Carly Rae
Jepsen
● Why do we think there is a cultural dismissal of feminized fandoms and the feminist and
queer politics of performing “Softness”?
● Why does softness fit in with both fan cultures, feminism, and Canadian identity?
○ “In effect, the male glance means nuances in female artists’ work are dismissed,
while society remains “endlessly receptive to the slightest sign of male genius”

What it means to be a fan

● “Fandom is not just about consumption… fans do not just read texts, they continually
reread them”
● Questions of artistic merit and legitimacy (high vs low culture etc) have plagued CRJ’s
career
● How do fans interpret the fact that she performed with the TSO?
○ What about non-fans?
○ We’re back to the “legitimacy discourse” again… just like with Vag Halen, but
different, why are fan girls always dismissed?
● SOFTNESS AS POLITICAL
○ Softness= Vulnerability and Emotionality- What is the political legacy of these
terms