Fans, Fandom, and Fan Studies

The word fan has been in constant use since the 19th century, and the term fandom dates from the turn of the 20th century. Fan and fandom initially denoted sports-club fans and soon after, the quickly growing fanbase of science fiction. Organized fan communities existed before these groups, however; readers of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, for example, corresponded with his fictional creation and mourned Sherlock [Page 386]Holmes's death. In all cases, fan implies some or all the following: a fascination, interest, and emotional investment in a particular subject; (often communal) engagement with a particular leisure activity; and an emphasis on amateur endeavors.

Fan studies is situated mainly in two areas: the social sciences and film and media studies. Psychology and sociology study the group behavior of fans as well as the passionate engagement with and possession of objects that appear uninteresting or ridiculous to others. Sports, music, and film fans are likely subjects, and the culture at large tends to accept them more readily—sports fandom, possibly because of its masculine connotations of physical exertion and competition; music and film fandom, mostly as passing teenage behavior. In fact, the more extreme edges of fandom such as football hooligans or punks tend to be seen as exceptions rather than fannish representatives. Film and media studies focuses mostly on the relation between media texts and their audiences, looking toward fans as often exemplary readers-viewers. The following will restrict itself to research and debates within fan studies that focus on television, film, and new media, with its adjacent focus on science fiction, comics, gaming, and related fields.

In media fandom, adult fans—especially of less respected and marginal cultural objects such as science fiction or television shows—often are regarded with suspicion and reproached for wasting their energies. Whereas dressing up may be acceptable for children, cosplay (i.e., costuming in media characters) is not; whereas playacting is fine on the playground and theatre stage, larping (i.e., live action role-playing games) is pathologized; whereas making up stories about one's favorite characters is a beloved tradition shared in many bedtime rituals, fan fiction is regarded less positively. Yet these examples suggest that fan behavior is an extension of behavior considered acceptable in general culture. In fact, much recent fan-studies discourse has begun to look at fannish behavior rather than fannish identity, thus suggesting that everyone may be a fan of sorts.

Especially in media studies, where the media convergence of industry and audiences encourages fannish modes of engagement, the gap is narrowing between fully immersed fans exchanging stories, analyses, and interpretations among themselves and casual viewers hitting up the bulletin board of a favorite show to discuss it after an episode airs. Media fans thus are at the center of a media convergence of text and context, producer and consumer, appropriation and ownership; they showcase ideal investment in a media product and its trans-media branding and the marketing strategies of their communities.

Media convergence also affects industry discourses around viewers and fans. Although the borders between professionals and fans always have been permeable, the past decade has celebrated the rise of the auteur fan boy in such show runners as Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel: The Series), Russell T. Davies (Dr. Who), and Ron Moore (Battlestar Galactica) as well as an increasing interest in fan-generated and fan-created content, such as fan-created advertisements or even episode writing contests. Fans are ever present in the contemporary media landscape, and fandom is growing both more mainstream and more difficult to define as a result. In a climate in which fannish behavior is becoming more normalized and more marketable, fan research has become a subdiscipline that interrogates the very definitions of fan, fandom, and fan studies.

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