“They're Losers, but I Know Better”: Intra-Fandom Stereotyping and the Normalization of the Fan Subject

Abstract

It has become something of a truism in media studies that fans are now free of the old stereotypes to which they were formerly subject and have been mainstreamed as a model for the new ideal active media consumer. However, when speaking to some of these fans, it is evident that they do not feel particularly mainstream. Through interviews with Xena: Warrior Princess fans, I demonstrate that longstanding conceptions of fans as losers who behave badly influence the ways fans understand fandom. However, though they accepted negative portrayals of fans as valid, my interviewees refused to take on that meaning for themselves, instead bracketing themselves out of it and shifting it off onto others. This simultaneous acceptance and refusal of stereotypes suggests that being a fan is a subject position fraught with baggage from historical and contemporary media representations, which troubles triumphalist renderings of a new media order centered on the fan.

Keywords:

• Fandom
• Stigma
• Normalization
• Stereotyping
• Critical Theory

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank CL Cole, Megan Condis, Deborah Eicher-Catt, Pat Jennings, Alicia Kozma, Tom Long, Michelle Rivera, Rob Rushing, Brittany Smith, and Laurel Westbrook for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay.

Notes

1. “Fandom” is a term referring either to the state of being a fan (“His Battlestar Galactica fandom is very important to him”) or the collective body of fans, whether of a particular show (“Xena fandom”) or in terms of everyone who is a fan of everything (“fan fiction is a popular activity within fandom”).

2. This is to specify the domain of inquiry for this article as what Matt Hills (2002) terms cult media fandom, a practice distinguished by: “the use of ‘cult’ discourses,” “its duration, especially in the absence of ‘new’ or official material in the originating medium,” and that it is “an intensely felt fan experience” (pp. ix–x). While there is a great deal of similarity in practice, scholarship, and mainstream representation across cult objects—whether horror, comic books, science fiction, or, like Xena, historical fantasy—this is not necessarily replicated with fans of other objects such as music or sports. For ease of terminology, the terms “fan” and “fandom” will be used throughout the article, but they should be understood to refer to cult media only.

3. For discussions of the deployment of Chapman and Hinckley, see Jenkins, 1992; Jensen, 1992; Sandvoss, 2005; for Bardo, see Allen, 1996; Ravensberg & Miller, 2003; Schlesinger, 2006.

4. On fan hierarchy, see also Hills, 2002.

5. Though “nutball” would seem to be a derogatory term, it is not for Xena fans. Lucy Lawless, who played the show's eponymous main character, coined the phrase Hardcore Nutball to describe intense fans; they adopted it and now use it with pride to describe themselves. When I met with Twink, she was wearing a bracelet (a purple band on the model of the “Livestrong” bracelets) that said “Mama's Nutball,” also a reference to Lawless's 2007 “Come to Mama” concert. Of course, the parallels to other reappropriations of derogatory terms, such as “queer,” point to an initial injury recuperated into pride.

6. Subtext is, to a degree, what it sounds like—an underlying text. Specifically, subtext is a text compiled through queer reading of popular-cultural texts. By closely reading interactions between same-sex pairs of characters, fans with this interpretive bent find clues that they are (or should be) romantically involved. Xena is notorious for providing lots of fodder for this variety of reading, but also for its “embracing” of this variety of fandom as well, particularly by comparison to some other shows with queer followings. Its contemporary Star Trek: Voyager, for example, did not take such a friendly stance toward the queer reading of two of its main characters. The actresses spent substantial time in interviews refuting the view that their characters were (or ever could be) attracted to or involved with each other.

7. Thanks to Rob Rushing for suggesting this second interpretation.

8. For arguments about fans' reverence for the auteur, see Allington, 2007; Hills, 2002; Jenkins, 1992, 2006b; Johnson, 2007.

9. The essentialism that threatens to erupt from this argument is quite problematic, of course, but neither can I deny that only Jack had a problem with this mode of fandom. I therefore allow it to stand, with the caveat that such sex/gender divisions are not natural or inevitable but the (changeable) result of social processes.

10. Some of Kozinets's (2001) participants preemptively stigmatize themselves, but the clearly defensive nature and infrequent occurrence of this strategy still points to the sort of troubled relationship to stereotypes I discuss here.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mel Stanfill

Mel Stanfill is a PhD Candidate in the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Portions of this paper were presented at the Central States Communication Association conference in April 2008 and the Semiotic Society of America conference in October 2008. The article is based in part on research conducted at California State University, East Bay, whose Institutional Review Board approved the human subjects protections employed