The Fandom Rant
Aug. 11th, 2004 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gaudiorNote: So I started this entry about a week ago, and had not managed to finish it until today. I suspect this has much to do with the fact that my computer has no internet access, and I'm unwilling to spend a ton of time on other people's when they might want to use them. This problem should be solved when Weirdquark and I take our computers in tonight, and mine gets a happy wireless card or Airport or whatever Macs get. In the meantime... ah, well. Have an entry.
So we went to Otakon and it was really neat and I was Hakkai from Saiyuki and we saw music videos and the movie Hero is really pretty and there were all these cosplayers (people in costumes from anime series. Oh, Otakon is a huge anime convention in Baltimore to which I went with about thirteen friends because Thrud was a master of organization last year and about fourteen people went in the complete and gorgeous costumes from the series Saiyuki, and now it's a tradition) and they were cool and then I was Shuuichi from Gravitation and Thrud was Mr. K and marched me around at gunpoint and we saw a little bit of anime and everybody got completely exhausted and there was a very-very-wrong-not-in-the-good-way panel on hentai which was upsetting but other than that I think fun was had by all and I got to see people I had not seen in forever and bought cool posterish things and it was FUN!
Right. So, one of the things we saw at the con was a film called Otaku no Video. Otaku is a Japanese word, literally the most formal form of "you," but it's also used to mean a person who is obsessed, much like the English word "fan." The movie has been described as a 'feel-normal' movie, sort of the Japanese equivalent of Trekkies. What I found fascinating, though, were the apparant differences between what I could gather of the Japanese view of fandom, and what I've seen of the American one. Japan, after all, is (from everything I've heard of it) a culture which encourages conformity to social norms a great deal more than American culture (which has, after all, the whole "Let's all be individuals (just like James Dean and Eminem and everyone else we all follow slavishly)" attitude), and it looked from the movie like there was a major divide in Japan between a counterculture person and a mainstream one. The movie featured interviews with former otaku. In one of them, the interviewer went to a man's office and asked him about his cosplaying experiences, and he acted like he'd been accused of starring in a porn film. The implication seemed to be that either you could be a functioning member of society, or you could be one of these obsessed losers, crouched in darkened rooms without your sole contact with other people being pornographic video games.
Which begs the question-- is that actually what fandom means, or just what it's perceived to mean? I can't answer the question in Japan, as my only knowledge about Japanese otaku comes from this movie and three episodes of Comic Party (an anime about doujinshi, or fan-written comics). In America, though, I've noticed this definite divide between perceptions of fandom and the actual fans I see. The popular image of a slobby 30-something virgin living in his parents' basement certainly has some basis in reality, I have seen such people. But I'd hardly say that that image fits, say, me. The more common accusation is that fans are people who desperately need to get a life, who can't handle reality or social interactions, who use their fandom as a way to hide.
The question this raises for me is, what does it mean to "have a life"? Does it mean having a worthwhile career-- and if so, does that mean no college student has ever had one? Does it mean having a lover-- and if so, does this mean that your priest really needs to get out more? Does it mean going out nights-- and if so, does that mean that this really is death, not just Ohio?
I'd argue that "to have a life" means "to do things that change you and make you grow as a person." That can be just about anything that exposes you to new experiences, that makes you feel something real and intense on your own behalf, that puts you at risk of something, that lets you change the world. I'd agree that it's perfectly possible to use fandom to avoid these things. Really absorbing stories can be so intense that you get completely obsessed with them, that you care more about them than anything else in your life. But then, that can be said about a lot of things, anything from sports to office politics to politics. And I'd say that any of those can be just as unhealthy, if one uses them as substitutes for things that really let one act and change.
But on the other hand, I think that fandom is a rich enough culture that one can perfectly well have a life in which it's a major component. I'm constantly struck at how much creativity goes into fandom. I spent very little time last weekend actually watching anime. Instead, I bounced around with my friends in the costumes we'd made, looked at the costumes other people had made, watched music videos, watched skits in the Masquerade, looked at art people had drawn/painted/sculpted, etc, and spent a lot of time hanging out with people I hadn't seen in months. At other conventions, I sing the songs other fans composed, and read the fiction and analysis other fans write. Outside of fandom, there don't seem to be many outlets for people to express creativity and be acknowledged for it unless they have the talent and determination to make a living at it-- and a lot of people who do that still have to have day jobs. Most of American culture is much more about intake-- watching TV and movies, surfing the Web, maybe reading newspapers or magazines or books. This strikes me as kind of passive-- much _less_ a way of having a life than fandom's creativity.
The other stereotype of fandom is that fans-- that geeks in general-- have "no social skills." I'll agree that, of most of the geeks I know, many have _different_ social skills than the American mainstream-- but I'm not sure that the differences are greater than they would be from those between American Mainstream and, say, Guarani tribal people. I suspect that the Guarani also do not dress like the models in Vogue, or even the actors on Friends. They probably don't even wear deodorant, or brush their hair every day. They certainly talk about gods, and their collections (of tubers), and other things that are completely irrelevant if you're outside of their frame of reference, and they don't, frankly, give a damn about whether Mary-Kate Olsen is on drugs. Social skills are derived from cultures, and the geek cultures are, I think, legitimate sub-cultures. A geek may not be able to communicate well with his/her family, or classmates, but if s/he can talk well _with other geeks_, there's no reason s/he can't have a rich and full social life, including love and sex and marriage and life-long friendships.
It's also worth pointing out that while there are fans with poor social skills even among other geeks, there are also many people with poor social skills who have no interest in anything fannish whatsoever. I talked to a lot of them on the hotline. Some of them had various mental disorders, but some of them simply weren't good, for whatever reason, at talking to other people. The reason that they were calling the hotline was, often, that they had _nothing_ to live for. Fans, at least, have that as a distraction and something to think about and do. For some such people, if they have the interest, fandom becomes a coping mechanism, and even a path to other people, first by the internet, then in person.
And I'm not sure if this is just a feature of the people I hang out with, but I find that, on average, my fannish, geekish friends are more likely to wrestle with the Big Questions in life than my more mainstream ones. My friends watch anime, and then use talking about it to address issues like: how does one heal from sexual abuse? Where are the boundaries in a relationship between living for myself and living for my partner? Do I have to live in a nuclear family, or can my friends be my family? If there is a God, how do you justify the really shitty parts of the universe? What do I want to do with my life that will matter? What does it mean to matter? What does it mean to be happy? Why is there war? What is friendship? Why are we here? I know more geeks who have real goals in life-- a real sense of who they are, what they want, and how they want to change the world-- than non-geeks. It's true that I know people in both categories who do or don't have such goals, but the numbers are significantly different. I'm not saying that one has to be a geek to think about life deeply, but American mainstream culture, from what I've seen, tends not to encourage caring about abstracts (at least, abstracts which have nothing to do with work and money) deeply. Fanaticism isn't cool, and passion is easily mistaken for it. But I don't know of too many people who have changed the world in major ways who _weren't_ obsessed with something.
And then there's the fact that fandom is, at heart, play. It's commonly agreed by biologists that the more intelligent an animal is, the longer its development and the more it plays. It's also commonly agreed in American culture, as far as I can tell, that when one grows up, one stops playing, and takes things seriously. Fans, if they think it through, look at that and say, hah. I will play, and I will take my play exactly as seriously as I did when I was a child. That is, the more you put into the game, the more you get out of it. If you're willing to put effort and thought and emotion into whatever game you're playing, you will find it much more satisfying than if you play it in a sort of laid-back way. Mainstream American adults do seem to get that with sports (take golf, for example), or cross-word puzzles, but they either insist that these things don't matter to them particularly, or they apologize for it, or they insist that it is important for their health, or their job, or for some other reason besides the joy of the game itself. Fans, when they do it well, are willing to admit that they play, that it is a game, and that it's worth doing just for itself, just humans are happiest when they play.
So, yeah. I think that people can use fandom as an excuse to hide from the riskier parts of life, just as they can use a thousand other things. But what I personally get out of it is an amazing way to think, to interact with people, and to play. And I'm all for that.
--R
Reading: The Egg and I, Betty MacDonald; Dibs: A Search for Self, Virginia Axline. (My school gives me Happy Yay Summer Reading List! Yay! Yay!)
So we went to Otakon and it was really neat and I was Hakkai from Saiyuki and we saw music videos and the movie Hero is really pretty and there were all these cosplayers (people in costumes from anime series. Oh, Otakon is a huge anime convention in Baltimore to which I went with about thirteen friends because Thrud was a master of organization last year and about fourteen people went in the complete and gorgeous costumes from the series Saiyuki, and now it's a tradition) and they were cool and then I was Shuuichi from Gravitation and Thrud was Mr. K and marched me around at gunpoint and we saw a little bit of anime and everybody got completely exhausted and there was a very-very-wrong-not-in-the-good-way panel on hentai which was upsetting but other than that I think fun was had by all and I got to see people I had not seen in forever and bought cool posterish things and it was FUN!
Right. So, one of the things we saw at the con was a film called Otaku no Video. Otaku is a Japanese word, literally the most formal form of "you," but it's also used to mean a person who is obsessed, much like the English word "fan." The movie has been described as a 'feel-normal' movie, sort of the Japanese equivalent of Trekkies. What I found fascinating, though, were the apparant differences between what I could gather of the Japanese view of fandom, and what I've seen of the American one. Japan, after all, is (from everything I've heard of it) a culture which encourages conformity to social norms a great deal more than American culture (which has, after all, the whole "Let's all be individuals (just like James Dean and Eminem and everyone else we all follow slavishly)" attitude), and it looked from the movie like there was a major divide in Japan between a counterculture person and a mainstream one. The movie featured interviews with former otaku. In one of them, the interviewer went to a man's office and asked him about his cosplaying experiences, and he acted like he'd been accused of starring in a porn film. The implication seemed to be that either you could be a functioning member of society, or you could be one of these obsessed losers, crouched in darkened rooms without your sole contact with other people being pornographic video games.
Which begs the question-- is that actually what fandom means, or just what it's perceived to mean? I can't answer the question in Japan, as my only knowledge about Japanese otaku comes from this movie and three episodes of Comic Party (an anime about doujinshi, or fan-written comics). In America, though, I've noticed this definite divide between perceptions of fandom and the actual fans I see. The popular image of a slobby 30-something virgin living in his parents' basement certainly has some basis in reality, I have seen such people. But I'd hardly say that that image fits, say, me. The more common accusation is that fans are people who desperately need to get a life, who can't handle reality or social interactions, who use their fandom as a way to hide.
The question this raises for me is, what does it mean to "have a life"? Does it mean having a worthwhile career-- and if so, does that mean no college student has ever had one? Does it mean having a lover-- and if so, does this mean that your priest really needs to get out more? Does it mean going out nights-- and if so, does that mean that this really is death, not just Ohio?
I'd argue that "to have a life" means "to do things that change you and make you grow as a person." That can be just about anything that exposes you to new experiences, that makes you feel something real and intense on your own behalf, that puts you at risk of something, that lets you change the world. I'd agree that it's perfectly possible to use fandom to avoid these things. Really absorbing stories can be so intense that you get completely obsessed with them, that you care more about them than anything else in your life. But then, that can be said about a lot of things, anything from sports to office politics to politics. And I'd say that any of those can be just as unhealthy, if one uses them as substitutes for things that really let one act and change.
But on the other hand, I think that fandom is a rich enough culture that one can perfectly well have a life in which it's a major component. I'm constantly struck at how much creativity goes into fandom. I spent very little time last weekend actually watching anime. Instead, I bounced around with my friends in the costumes we'd made, looked at the costumes other people had made, watched music videos, watched skits in the Masquerade, looked at art people had drawn/painted/sculpted, etc, and spent a lot of time hanging out with people I hadn't seen in months. At other conventions, I sing the songs other fans composed, and read the fiction and analysis other fans write. Outside of fandom, there don't seem to be many outlets for people to express creativity and be acknowledged for it unless they have the talent and determination to make a living at it-- and a lot of people who do that still have to have day jobs. Most of American culture is much more about intake-- watching TV and movies, surfing the Web, maybe reading newspapers or magazines or books. This strikes me as kind of passive-- much _less_ a way of having a life than fandom's creativity.
The other stereotype of fandom is that fans-- that geeks in general-- have "no social skills." I'll agree that, of most of the geeks I know, many have _different_ social skills than the American mainstream-- but I'm not sure that the differences are greater than they would be from those between American Mainstream and, say, Guarani tribal people. I suspect that the Guarani also do not dress like the models in Vogue, or even the actors on Friends. They probably don't even wear deodorant, or brush their hair every day. They certainly talk about gods, and their collections (of tubers), and other things that are completely irrelevant if you're outside of their frame of reference, and they don't, frankly, give a damn about whether Mary-Kate Olsen is on drugs. Social skills are derived from cultures, and the geek cultures are, I think, legitimate sub-cultures. A geek may not be able to communicate well with his/her family, or classmates, but if s/he can talk well _with other geeks_, there's no reason s/he can't have a rich and full social life, including love and sex and marriage and life-long friendships.
It's also worth pointing out that while there are fans with poor social skills even among other geeks, there are also many people with poor social skills who have no interest in anything fannish whatsoever. I talked to a lot of them on the hotline. Some of them had various mental disorders, but some of them simply weren't good, for whatever reason, at talking to other people. The reason that they were calling the hotline was, often, that they had _nothing_ to live for. Fans, at least, have that as a distraction and something to think about and do. For some such people, if they have the interest, fandom becomes a coping mechanism, and even a path to other people, first by the internet, then in person.
And I'm not sure if this is just a feature of the people I hang out with, but I find that, on average, my fannish, geekish friends are more likely to wrestle with the Big Questions in life than my more mainstream ones. My friends watch anime, and then use talking about it to address issues like: how does one heal from sexual abuse? Where are the boundaries in a relationship between living for myself and living for my partner? Do I have to live in a nuclear family, or can my friends be my family? If there is a God, how do you justify the really shitty parts of the universe? What do I want to do with my life that will matter? What does it mean to matter? What does it mean to be happy? Why is there war? What is friendship? Why are we here? I know more geeks who have real goals in life-- a real sense of who they are, what they want, and how they want to change the world-- than non-geeks. It's true that I know people in both categories who do or don't have such goals, but the numbers are significantly different. I'm not saying that one has to be a geek to think about life deeply, but American mainstream culture, from what I've seen, tends not to encourage caring about abstracts (at least, abstracts which have nothing to do with work and money) deeply. Fanaticism isn't cool, and passion is easily mistaken for it. But I don't know of too many people who have changed the world in major ways who _weren't_ obsessed with something.
And then there's the fact that fandom is, at heart, play. It's commonly agreed by biologists that the more intelligent an animal is, the longer its development and the more it plays. It's also commonly agreed in American culture, as far as I can tell, that when one grows up, one stops playing, and takes things seriously. Fans, if they think it through, look at that and say, hah. I will play, and I will take my play exactly as seriously as I did when I was a child. That is, the more you put into the game, the more you get out of it. If you're willing to put effort and thought and emotion into whatever game you're playing, you will find it much more satisfying than if you play it in a sort of laid-back way. Mainstream American adults do seem to get that with sports (take golf, for example), or cross-word puzzles, but they either insist that these things don't matter to them particularly, or they apologize for it, or they insist that it is important for their health, or their job, or for some other reason besides the joy of the game itself. Fans, when they do it well, are willing to admit that they play, that it is a game, and that it's worth doing just for itself, just humans are happiest when they play.
So, yeah. I think that people can use fandom as an excuse to hide from the riskier parts of life, just as they can use a thousand other things. But what I personally get out of it is an amazing way to think, to interact with people, and to play. And I'm all for that.
--R
Reading: The Egg and I, Betty MacDonald; Dibs: A Search for Self, Virginia Axline. (My school gives me Happy Yay Summer Reading List! Yay! Yay!)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-11 06:20 am (UTC)That last also, I think, might serve as a working definition of "having a life." Although I am sure most people of my casual acquaintance would tell you firmly that I haven't got one. Which is fine with me, really, because I wouldn't want theirs. . .
I honestly don't know if I'm part of "fandom" or not. I do know that I have my interests - dare I say, obsessions? - some of which relate to books and television shows, but many of which do not. I don't go to Cons, unless you count the two that I helped staff, which I don't. When I get into something, I read a lot. The internet makes that easier - especially when it comes to fanfic.
Was it pathological of me when I was in high school and tried to model my leadership of our tech crew on Captian Picard in Star Trek? I didn't pretend I was Picard nor that my younger crewmates were Data and Worf, nor that we were on the Starship Enterprise. I also used the Midevel guild system as a mode. Can Guilds be a fandom? Is it OK to be obsessed with, say, John Dickinson but not Harry Potter? I sure hope not.
Personally, I think everyone should have something about which they are passioniate. Those are the more interesting people. My former boss said that she liked hearing me talk about Scottish Dance, even though she didn't dance or care much for the music, becuase I was passionate and knowledgeable and it clearly meant a lot to me. She was the same way about things which meant a great deal to her, such as Reining. She complains now that a lot of the people she has to deal with aren't interested in anything. So do I. And I agree with you, that that is a much bigger problem.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 11:53 am (UTC)Yeah, I'd go with that. Fandom is, I think, a less socially-acceptable means of doing this than, say, being a partner in a law firm, but I'd say they're all problematic.
I don't think there's anything wrong with modelling on Captain Picard, because, as you said, you made a clear distinction between the fictional characters and the people you were working with. As I've said before, I think fiction does two things: it reminds you of things you knew already, and teaches you about things you didn't. It's not always reliable-- it comes through the author's interpretation, and s/he wasn't omniscient-- but if it shows you a model that works for you, why not use it?
Also, what's "Reining"? Like, horseback riding?
--R
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 11:58 am (UTC)Reining is a type of horeback riding. It's a little like Dressage, only it's Western, not English. You take the horse into the thing, and you do a particular pattern where you have to lope from point A to B, and then spin at B fast, and then walk to point C and turn around and jog to D and spin there slow. . . And then you are judged on how well you did the pattern. Sort of like figure skating.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 11:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-11 08:20 am (UTC)I think one reason fans at cons or other more informal gatherings tend to be a bit deeper than "normal" people may be that they have found a common bond already, and are quicker to open up to relative strangers about personal or controversial things. Also, being thought of as weird and undesirable tends to cause one to examine life in general more closely, just to justify existing.
I definitely agree that being obsessed with something to an unhealthy degree is preferable to not being interested in anything. I don't think I can really consider myself obsessed with anything specific, though Discworld comes close. But geeky culture in general is something that I'm very deeply involved with. Likewise, I don't know yet quite what I want to do with my life, but I'm increasingly getting ideas of more specific paths, and I definitely want to do something. So many people seem to just sort of not care anymore. And doing something doesn't necessarilly have to be curing cancer or something like that - being devoted to family and friends and having a job (or at least wanting one) that's fulfilling in some way is quite sufficient.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-11 03:53 pm (UTC)I can't tell you how funny that is.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-12 06:43 am (UTC)So, with that as my working def., I've never seen the need to "get a life" because that would involve doing things I dislike, such as dressing preppy, going out to movies, boozing, and trying to be in with the cool crowd. Since that seems teenaged to me, I've never wanted to "get a life". I have one, thanks, and struggling to make it something I'm proud of is my life's goal. But maybe I am just weird.
-Ghost
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-23 03:24 pm (UTC)