African American acafandom and other strangers: New genealogies of fan studies

Abstract

Because scholars have paid insufficient attention to race in fan studies, a new genealogy of fan studies is needed, one that includes different kinds of primary and secondary texts that have explored responses of black fans. There is a rich history of black fan criticism and acafandom that has never been seen as such but that both complements and complicates current definitions and paradigms in fan studies. Discussions of fan otherness, antifandom, and fan ambivalence explore the difference that the inclusion of African American cultural criticism would make to both canonical scholarship and more recently published work in the field.

Introduction: The Reactionary in the Fan and the Fan in the Reactionary

“…Researchers also show how fans of color contest default whiteness in fan spaces, with Jessica Seymour (2018, 334) noting that “fans of media that fail to reflect their world beyond the harmful stereotypes traditionally perpetuated in mainstream media have begun combatting this lack of diversity by producing their own works” that center people of color and Rukmini Pande (2016, 214) arguing that social media like Tumblr and Twitter “offer greater visibility, both in terms of a willingness of individual fans to ‘claim’ a non-white identity within a fannish space and, in doing so, find others who share or understand their experiences.” There is also an important and growing body of literature on the particular experiences of fans of color. Rebecca Wanzo (2015, sec. 2.1) argues that some of the foundational assumptions of fan studies, such as that fans are outsiders, are particular to white fandom, whereas “African American fans make hypervisible the ways in which fandom is expected or demanded of some socially disadvantaged groups as a show of economic force and ideological combat.” Kristen Warner (2015) argues real person shipping of the lead actors in Scandal is rooted in Black women’s desire for the possibility, in the face of persistent devaluation, that women like them are desirable to powerful men in real life as they are in the show.…”

“…We set out in the spirit of Pande’s (2016, 211) question: “What happens when fan repurposing is subversive in one context (interrupting heteronormative canons) but coercive in another (reinforcing racial power structures)?” and expand to other juxtapositions of the subversive and coercive. We are sensitive to Wanzo’s (2015, sec. 1.4) point that “if we see attachments to whiteness and xenophobic or racist affect as frequently central to fan practices, then sports fandom ceases to be an outlier.” Ultimately, as Jenkins (2018, 24) notes, alongside enthusiasm about new media enabling democratization, “we are also seeing these same mechanisms allowing more reactionary fans to organize backlashes against those whom they see as threatening traditional forms of privilege.” These aspects of fandom deserve sustained attention.…”

Beyond Branding: The Value of Intersectionality on Streaming TV Channels

“…Fan affective labor produces value for these brands, but this process also produces “anxiety” because mass-cultural representation rarely, if ever, achieves the reality it promises to represent. 6 The networked environment has challenged Hollywood’s symbolic power over cinematic reality, as fans themselves now routinely produce and self-distribute their own interpretations of media (Brock 2012; Jenkins et al 2013; Moore 2013; Wanzo 2015). The distribution of small-scale stories thus challenges the limits placed on intersectionality as reception shifts from mass audiences to smaller fan communities and as those fans can produce on their own shows (Christian 2011).…”

Playing with Lynching: Fandom Violence and the Black Athletic Body

“…The second is that there has been a systemic failure within fan studies scholarship with regard to the study of race and racism (Warner 2015, 33). As Rebecca Wanzo (2015) points out, these two issues intertwine due to fan studies’ ignorance of an entire genealogy of black aca-fan scholarship. This is to say, these failures are far from benign.…”

“…And while that has not quite happened, there is a growing number of fan scholars, particularly those of color, who have begun to challenge fan studies’ erasure of race and racism and the notion that fans only engage with their object in pleasurable ways. For instance, Kristen Warner (2015), Wanzo (2015), and Rukmini Pande (2018) have each addressed the ways in which fans and fan scholars can engage with texts in ways that reify white supremacist attitudes. On the contrary, the Adam Brown (1998) edited Fanatics: Power, Identity & Fandom in Football includes a section on racism and football (soccer), a rarity for the time it was written, and Kido Lopez and Kido Lopez (2017) argue that sports fans are inherently oppositional in that they are always in conflict with other sports fandoms.…”