Week 9: Fan communities & activism
To start of this week’s blog, we will talk about what is a fan and what makes a fan, a fan. Now to summarize it off, a fan is someone who likes a certain thing, may it be a series, a book, a music bands, movies and the list goes on and on. There is a some misconception that fans are seen in a negative light, some quote unquote experts say that fans are just mindless zombies that just follow mindlessly to what they follow and that they just spend their money on a whim, in my opinion that is not a fan but someone who is just obsessive, now what can be up for debate but what I think a fan is and the general consensus of it is that in truth, fans can be some of the strongest critiques, a true fan knows what’s wrong and what’s right, they are the people who have followed their interest the most, they know that if the direction of the for example series is going the wrong direction, they won’t be afraid to voice it out and this is true on many cases. Tldr, fans aren’t dumb.
Fandom
Now that we have established what is a fan, let’s get down to business, just what is a fandom? A fandom according to Henry Jenkins, is whereby a group of people with the same interest on a certain topic, come together and create a social community where they share their thoughts, knowledge on the topic, fan art, and even fan fictions (Benett & Lucy 2014).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmuuOJms62s
A youtube clip that describes just what is fandom and how it works.
Fan Activism
Now an example of fan activism is during the great controversy of the #WheresRey, to bring some context into this tag After the release of the long awaited Star Wars film The Force Awakens, Hasbro the toy company were the ones to release the new star wars toys but to everyone’s disarray, a certain important individual did not make it into the toys, yes it was lead heroine Rey, for some reason, they were no toys of her and fans were furious and took it onto social media and started the trending #WheresRey and it spread like wild fire.
A picture of the toy set with the entire cast except the missing Rey
A comment on not including Rey into the toy line
This of course caught the attention of the manufacturing company behind the toys Hasbro and that they even issued an apology on their twitter saying that the fans love for the series is real and promised to include her into the toy line as soon as possible starting with their new Monopoly star wars game.
From Hasbro’s official tweeter
Fan art
There are still some arguments about how fandoms are like fan arts are actually the act of stealing of intellectual property as they do not get any money from any fan art being sold or commissioned as this is a bit of a grey area as of now but, many companies are in truth very thankful for these fanarts and other things created by the community, even if they do not get a cut of the money from these fanarts, there are in theory getting free advertisements from the artist’s followers.
Conclusion
Fans are something that every industry needs because without them, most series will die off and in truth a lot of corporates and individuals owe it to the fans for sticking with them for so long, from all the support, may it be from fan mail or buying their merchandises, spreading their love in anyway possible, fans make communities great.
References
Benett & Lucy 2014, Tracing Textual Poachers: Reflections on the development of fan studies and digital fandom, Ingenta, viewed 10 November 2018, <https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/intellect/jfs/2014/00000002/00000001/art00002;jsessionid=12pm0n9le0p49.x-ic-live-02#>