Global Fandom Jamboree: Jenessa Williams (UK)

My name is Jenessa (she/her) and I’m based in Leeds, United Kingdom. The easiest way to introduce myself is to say that I’m a bit of a hybrid worker; part freelance Music Journalist, part PhD Student, and a full-time enthusiast of trying to unravel the messy business of fandom, socio-political identity, race, gender and music, particularly with regards to the way that online discussion spaces help us to make sense of it. In that sense, my work isn’t strictly linked to the UK, but rather the geography of the wider Internet community of music fans, all bringing their own perspectives and cultural contexts.

As an enthusiastic participant in the musical-MySpace-preteen to feminist-Twitter-adult pipeline, I have always been fascinated by the identities that we build for ourselves online and the way that we forge bonds with other fans, amplifying or downplaying certain aspects of ourselves in order to consolidate a sense of belonging, cultural capital and knowledge. As a mixed-race woman, I’m often most compelled to study and write about fans who have had to fight against the stereotypical convention in order to be seen; female music writers in an overtly masculine space (guilty), POC emo and indie-rock fans in an overtly white space (guilty), right-wing or conservative music fans in an overtly leftist space (not guilty myself, but certainly something I’m incredibly intrigued by).

Speaking somewhat facetiously of guilt, the very notion of the ‘guilty pleasure’ is also central to my work. My PhD research is an exploration of what happens when music fandom becomes complicated, or, to use the more popular phrase, ‘problematic’. Against the backdrop of #MeToo and the socio-political climate of #BlackLivesMatter, the pandemic and Trump-era polarisation, there has been no shortage of public figures (fan objects) whose controversial and/or inherently harmful actions, words and behaviours have been called out, often causing disappointment and dilemma within their fanbase. 

Within a similar timespan, we have come to view our interests and consumer behaviours as a more intrinsic expression of our identity politics than ever before, consequently, to consider how what we fan over, amplify and engage with online might play a role in indicating our own moral compass to others. With regards to music, listening to and vocally loving a band is no longer as simple as liking the songs — was it ever? — but rather the question of what using social media to engage with discussion around those artists might signal to the world about our sociopolitical stance. 

Linking to #MeToo specifically, I am interested in questioning how far music fans might go to excuse or re-contextualise the fallible – even deeply repugnant behaviours - of artists that they once resonated with. At the time of writing this, I have recently completed the main data collection phase of my research; video calls with fans from right across the world, discussing their feelings towards a range of artists who have been accused of some form of sexual misconduct. 

Somewhat surprisingly, I feel my work has been aided by the pandemic. With people stuck at home and the rising availability of Zoom, I have been able to connect with fans from a wide variety of cultural and political backgrounds, and have been consistently bowled over with the degree of candour that fans will share when contextualising, reflecting and in some cases, defending the details of both their intimate relationship with music and its role in their identity formation. As somebody who has first-hand experience of this very specific type of fan disappointment, I’m not sure I have necessarily changed my own perception of the ‘separate art from artist’ debate, but I have certainly become more knowledgeable, more understanding, and ultimately more accepting of why other fans might see it differently. 

At the risk of pre-emptively patting myself on the back, I think my participants have gotten something out of it too. Many have expressed gratitude at the opportunity to work through their dilemmas in a 1-on-1 environment, more informed and  ‘less judgemental’ than the polarised debates they’ve been entering on social media. We speak a lot about ‘cancel culture’ in the UK and US, and I have felt from my participants both a sense of fatigue for the term, and the very real desire to avoid such ‘cancellation’ themselves, often going to quite some lengths to obscure biases and hypocrisies in their online expression - those aforementioned ‘guilty pleasures’. 

When I began this project, I knew I was entering a complex conversation, one where I would have to reflect the ever-evolving nature of both digital fandom discussion and allegations while also showing all-important respect and sensitivity to the very real emotions and people involved. In sourcing and talking with my participants, I have been reminded how much more space needs to be held in fandom studies to both recognise and legitimise experiences of casual fandom as well as committed ‘Stan’ activity, and how care needs to be taken to thoughtfully contextualise race, gender, class and accessibility, both when we collect data and when we analyse it. With such an emotionally-loaded topic especially, I am adamant that I represent the fact that fans — like all people —are neither exclusively right or wrong, selfish or selfless, but rather occupying a position somewhere along a complicated spectrum, informed by our own circumstance.  

The case studies I am dealing with have coincidentally centred around US artists, but with the advent of both streaming and online fan community, music fandom is more global than ever, and indeed many of my participants have been incredibly thoughtful in reflections of how the cultural, societal or technological environment of their upbringing might have played a part in their consumer habits, their learned understandings of gender relations, or the degree to which they can societally afford to be knowledgeable and vocal about misogyny and gender-based violence as it relates to their interactions with entertainment. 

I am relatively new to academia as a career, but I suspect that these are the sort of questions and responsibilities that will occupy my mind as I move forward. ‘Parasocial relationships’ and ‘problematic fandom’ have become trending topics within both our field and wider pop-culture, and there is seemingly no industry in which allegations of sexual misconduct have not caused ripples of harm. It would be crude to imply that the suffering of fans and victim-survivors are one and the same, but the decisions that consumers face when dealing with problematic art(ists) can and do cause significant emotional wrangling, with knock-on effects for wider understandings of celebrity, responsibility and the ‘right’ to a platform. As we continue to hold such timely conversations of entertainment reckoning, ‘cancellation’ and ultimately — hopefully —reform, these are no longer matters that exist with the geographical boundaries of any one music ‘scene’ — they are a complex global debate. 

Jenessa Williams (she/her) is a Media & Communications PhD Researcher, a Freelance Music and Lifestyle Journalist, and the Founder-Editor of Pennycress, a magazine that seeks to champion Creatives of Colour in the North of England. Her work has been published by the likes of The Guardian, NME, Gal-Dem, DIY and more. She is based in Leeds, UK and can be found tweeting at @jnessr.

Global Fandom: Naja Later (Australia)

I am writing from Narrm, also known as Melbourne, in so-called Australia. I live on Kulin Nations land, where sovereignty was never ceded. This always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land. I am part of a settler culture writing about my transnational fan experiences: my identity and community are strongly linked to British and American cultures through ongoing processes of imperialism. When I have been welcomed to country as a fan scholar, it has been through a shared love of storytelling, and understanding how stories create joy, a sense of connection, a continued history and maps of the future. In Wurundjeri tradition, songlines https://www.deadlystory.com/page/culture/Life_Lore/Songlines are maps rendered in song: a map is a song, and a song is a story, and a story is shared. Deadly Story explains: ‘Songlines are the singing celebration of Country, a cultural passport when walking on the lands of neighbouring Nations and a way to acknowledge the great Creator Spirits and their footprints in the land.’ Fandom is a celebration of stories, and communities formed around those stories. It’s an honour to live somewhere with such a strong connection between place and storytelling, where stories are part of how we travel between nations.

My fannishness began, and continues to be, primarily online. In some ways, the illusion of placelessness in virtual communities allows me to skirt the uncomfortable history and awkward geography of Australia, connecting me to fans and discovering new fandoms through international communities. In my early days of fandom, national identity was little more than an inconvenience. Being Australian meant a poor internet connection, a six-to-eighteen month wait for new seasons of television—if we got it at all—expensive concert tickets, delayed release of films, and a sparse community with loci in steeply-priced conventions and snobbish specialty shops. Meeting Aussies on forums was an opportunity for commiseration, the solidarity of being stuck on a continent as distant from each other as the British users were from New Yorkers. There were in-jokes about drop bears and ambassadorial exchanges involving Vegemite.

These days, my online fandom friends are mostly North American, British, and European: the media we fan over tends to be American or British: easy journeys from the literal south to the global north. Social media allows us to overlook a sense of place: excepting a reluctant acknowledgment of time zones, we celebrate the myth that our community is unconfined by borders and places. The servers that host our blogs and groupchats; the factories that built the devices we use to access media; even the locations where our favourite films were shot: we don’t have to acknowledge the global networks that make it seem simple. For me, the escapist joy of fandom is in part an escape from nationality: it makes this piece surprisingly hard to write.

I met my spouse through a fan community. I moved to England and lived with them for a year, though we both decided we preferred Australia. We travel as fans, going to concerts, exhibitions, and locations that relate our fannish interests. A clerk at the Alexandre Dumas’ chateau is delighted that The Three Musketeers are popular in Australia. A mother in Maranouchi is as excited by a display of vintage Star Wars toys as we are. I discover while in Tokyo that Tataouine is a real place in Tunisia. I write fanfiction where Tusken Raiders use Australian sign language (Auslan is as different from American Sign Language as English is from French). My friend in Argentina leaves kudos on it. The narrative picks up all these pieces on its journey around the world. I don’t know a lot about songlines, but I understand how a story can carry you somewhere. Some of the people I meet along the way are friends for a minute, and some I’ll keep for a lifetime. It’s like Kelly Sue Deconnick said: “You don't get that tattoo because you are a fan of something in the book. You get that tattoo because that book is a fan of something in you.” So we meet as fans of Bitch Planet, but we end up being fans of each other.

But I suspect the reason I was asked to write this piece was because I’m a founder of the All Star Women’s Comic Book Club. For six years we ran monthly meetings here in Melbourne: our well-earned break happened to time up with the pandemic. When we first started, we promised ourselves that if it were just five of us—five entire women, reading comics, just in our city! It seemed too marvellous to be true—it would be more than enough. As it turned out, our smallest meetings were 20 members. The biggest ran up into the 80s. Every month there would be regulars who’d come along just to see each other, and newcomers who’d never met another comic reader in their city. To have a place, and real people coming together, sharing food and hugging and flicking through the book of the month, is unbelievably special. It was a fan community that didn’t need to be transnational to exist.

In the comic club meetings, I was the committee’s academic: I took point running discussions for the book of the month. The actual ‘book club’ element is a small part of what we do: crafting, baking, and cosplay are other ways we celebrate fandom (and gendered expressions of fandom) in the group. As aca-fans most of us know what it’s like to wear multiple hats. Running a book club is not unlike running a tutorial, though it’s a lot more social. Considered in the context of borders and fandom, the role I’ve shared in the comic club and in university is canon-setting. The comic club’s books were predominantly published in the USA—reflecting our host store All Star Comics’ stock—although the creators hail from around the globe. In the class I teach on comics, I’ve been consciously expanding our reading list, sometimes taking books I’ve discovered through the club. We read Saga, yes, and Maus: but my students read Korean webtoons and My Hero Academia more prolifically than anything American. They stumble across bandes-dessinés and adore Moomins: they discover Qahera and are fondly familiar with Footrot Flats. We’re exploring the difference between a mythical ‘universal’ language of comics and the highly specialised set of formal conventions that feel universal. Some of them will create comics that they’ll be able to sell at zine fairs and All Star Comics. I get to be their first fan as they become part of the Australian comics scene.

In some ways, the pandemic has made even the local communities feel remote, and the remote friends feel closer: in others, my sense of place is stronger than ever. I have been restricted to a 10km circle for eight weeks. I have never been more in this place. My home is already transnational, because it is in the Australian, Wurundjeri, and Boon Wurrung nations. Today, I’m watching the orchid season Guling change into the tadpole season of Poorneet. The friend who taught me the names of local seasons also recommended me a novel. I can’t wait to message them when I’m finished the last chapter. I’m packing up some video games for my neighbour, whom I didn’t know until we were stuck in our building together. I have a fresh parcel of zines from a friend one postcode away. It’s been too easy, in the past, for me to overlook transnational aspects of fandom. I said that was escapist, but when I return to the idea, I think escapism is also a journey home.

Naja Later is an Academic Tutor at Swinburne University of Technology. She studies intersections between pop culture and politics, with a focus on superhero and horror genres. She has published papers in the Quarterly Review of Film and Video and Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, and chapters with Rutgers University Press, University of Mississippi Press and McFarland.

Global Fandom Jamboree Conversations (Round Five): Julián de la Fuente (Spain) and Ellen Kirkpatrick (Ireland) (Part Two)

Riverdance—Flamenco

[JDFP] I think we have both identified two key trends within fandom in our respective countries. In both cases, they are marked by conflicts that have led to a certain cultural sectarianism, but at least in the case of Spain, it has not led to a clear territorial division. The case of flamenco music is a clear example of traditional fandom that despite its Andalusian origin, has been able to achieve fame and followers beyond regional and even national borders. Some of these regional fandoms also allow immigrants within the country or abroad to maintain the heritage of their local traditions. As with Punk in Ireland, these fan communities have structured their identity as a minority and served to disseminate and visualize their culture.

Regarding international media fandom, I think they are globalizing phenomena whose reception can be interpreted as a reaction to the more traditional cultures. But we must not forget that sometimes they also become a vehicle to spread this local culture. I have already mentioned television shows like “Money Heist” that would never have achieved the impact obtained without the presence of international fandom powered by Netflix. Actually, they are still very much minority fan communities that would hardly achieve notice if they were not organized internationally. Returning to the case of Flamenco, the community of fans of this music could be considered a minority in many places in Spain (as in the rest of the world), if it did not have a connection with the local community from which it originated. I think something similar happens with fan tourism. Without an international contribution they could not be considered remarkable fandoms.

So, I wonder to what extent is it the media that really shapes these fan phenomena? Obviously, it is part of local cultures, but what is it that allows the tourist fan to be so important in Ireland and go unnoticed in Spain? Or in the musical case, that traditional Irish and Spanish groups obtain worldwide recognition?

[EK] You raise some interesting points here in terms of the multidirectional flow of not just cultural phenomena but fandoms. Human migration sees publics (as fans) take beloved cultural texts and practices with them as a way of making strange new lands feel a little more like home. In terms of the Irish diaspora (historically coupled to the “famine and the crown”), this is perhaps most evident in traditional Irish folk music and dancing, but also ball games. It’s not an exaggeration to say that traditional Irish music is one of Ireland’s greatest exports. And as you observe regarding flamenco music fandom, traditional cultural phenomena and fandoms can move beyond regional and national borders, particularly with help from national/regional governments and culture industries. (A connection you neatly demonstrate in your discussion of “Money Heist”.) Similarly, fans of traditional Irish cultural phenomena are not just people from within the Irish diaspora but those adjacent to it and oriented towards it. I think these factors go some way towards answering your question as to why Irish and Spanish traditional music, for example, have global reach. 

As is well observed within fan scholarship, cultural fandom offers a way to connect, celebrate, signal, and buttress a sense of national and cultural identity for those parted, for whatever reason, from their homelands. Moreover, it creates the possibility for immigrant communities to if not quite transform their new locales, then to at least impact them culturally. A cultural flow that sometimes comes full circle. North America, South America and Australasia are just a few places with strong Irish folk music traditions. Moreover, this music genre has not only taken root worldwide but developed emergent expressions, often secured via international industry/media support. (A cross-cultural diffusion assisted by evolutions in digital technologies and social media as much as human migration and international travel.) Celtic music fusions include, for example, American roots music (such as, bluegrass, old-time), Celtic hip hop, Celtic Reggae, and Celtic Punk. Bluegrass music is particularly interesting in the context of our discussion because it perfectly illustrates the idea that cultural/media phenomena not only inform but are informed by the events, communities, and worlds around and adjacent to them. Irish and Scottish immigrants, for example, organically created—incorporating African American blues and jazz traditions too—a new soundscape for a new socio-cultural experience. And today, centuries later, this once emergent, highly localized music form is celebrated and enjoyed back, as the original immigrants might have put it, in the Old Country, and beyond. (The large number of bluegrass and country music festivals demonstrate how popular these music genres are in Ireland, such as Ballydehob’s “Heart and Home” festival.) It is also worth noting that technological advances in the early to mid-1900s, such as the gramophone and the radio, carried this music down from the seclusion of the mountains and into the public domain, inside the US and beyond.

We see this transformational promise in men’s ball games too. Irish immigrants, for example, brought Gaelic football and hurling to Argentina, North America, and Australia amongst other countries. Outside Ireland, however, these Celtic ball games still occupy a marginal status. But Australian rules football—aka “Aussie Rules”—illustrates transcultural processes arising from human migration and colonization. Aussie Rules football developed from a mix of Anglo and Celtic ball games—such as Caid (an early form of Gaelic football)—brought to Australia by Irish and British immigrants in the early part of the nineteenth century. Aussie Rules is a hugely popular national game—highest attendance for any sport in Australia—and illustrates the flow of one cultural phenomenon to another territory, a transformative process that sees the source material adapted and ultimately, though not necessarily, becoming something new and distinctive. Sometimes this emergent form migrates to new territories too. Aussie Rules football is played in New Zealand, for example, and attempts have been made—mostly by Australian emigrants—to bring the game to Ireland and the UK. Media coverage (and thus advertising), of course, plays a huge role in the mainstreaming and internationalization of traditional/local sports. 

Irish dancing too whilst popular at home and within the Irish diaspora saw a national and global boost in response to a performance of step dance—a form of Irish dance—during an interval of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, an event hosted that year by Ireland. A seven-minute performance spawning the stage show known as Riverdance. This phenomenally popular show not only changed the nature of Irish dancing but liberated it from its Irish moorings (island and diaspora). “Riverdance”, as Breandán de Gallaí—a lead dancer—commented, “has changed dancing forever. It brought it to the world.”[1] But it also helped change, or better rehabilitate, the idea of “Irishness” both on and beyond the island. (It drew attention away from, for instance, reductive international Irish stereotypes—such as the idea of the “Fighting Irish” (a widespread cliché still, for example, providing the prejudicial name and logo for the University of Notre Dame’s football team, the “Notre Dame Fighting Irish”) or Ireland as a land full of riotously-mournful hard drinkers—and towards the idea of the Irish as “lively, fun loving, innovative people”.[2] Alongside rapid social and economic change (i.e., the “Celtic Tiger” economy of the mid-1990s-late 2000s), Riverdance was critical to national attempts to reposition “Ireland globally and culturally, representing a contemporary Irish identity to both the Irish themselves and to the world.”[3] A clear example here of media/culture industries and a national government working to build and wield cultural and imagological soft power.

Much like K-Pop fandom today, Riverdance’s fandom was, and still is, transnational and transcultural, as is the show itself. Whilst currently diminished, at its peak, the show toured consecutively for 15 years throughout 32 countries; its global TV—and later DVD and later still online—audience was even wider.[4] A recently released animated film, Riverdance: The Animated Adventure (2021), centering an Irish boy and a Spanish girl discovering the power of Irish dance, might reignite the fannish flame, however. Moreover, the film’s characterization evidences (an industrial awareness of) Riverdance’s transnational and transcultural dimensions. For example, featuring over two thousand dancers from around the world, including America, China, Russia, and Spain, Riverdance’s dancers were, and are, specialists in a variety of international dance styles, such as renowned flamenco dancer and choreographer, María Pagés. (Borders between fan/performer can also collapse as when fans become “real” Riverdance performers.[5])

Furthermore, Riverdance fan activities commonly stretch to include embodied practices whereby fans worldwide seek to learn Irish dancing and/or musicianship and costuming style and so forth. Dancing-fans may also incorporate dance styles local to their region into their Irish dancing performances thereby appropriating not only Riverdance but Irish dancing itself, a transformative process allowing them to, as with Bluegrass music and Aussie Rules football, make something quite new. And as another quick example of multidirectional transcultural engagement and flow, Riverdance itself incorporates international dance styles on stage, including Russian folk, American tap, and the aforementioned Spanish flamenco. “Official” recognition of Riverdance’s transnational and transcultural dimensions is significant for several reasons not least because of its suggestion that the “powers that be” do not wish to enforce national and cultural borders but to instead work with a more expansive, global idea of Irish dance and perhaps even “Irishness” itself, a particularly heartening development given Ireland’s increasingly diverse population. 

But we should remember that not all transnational fandom is transcultural, and vice versa. Moreover, and evoking the debate around the value of the idea of “transnational” fandom (e.g., see Chin and Morimoto 2013 and the trio of opening statements and discussion kicking off this “Global Fandom” series) it’s not always useful to distinguish fan practices in relation to geographical border-crossings. For instance, regarding transcultural fandom, non-Irish Irish dancers do not always wish to enfold or combine local/national/regional elements into their Irish dancing/Riverdance performances or vice versa, nor indeed to suggest a sense of “Irishness”. As with much worldwide K-Pop fandom, many of these fan-dancers wish to merely signal an enjoyment, or passion, for the cultural phenomenon in question, be it Riverdance or Irish dancing (or both). 

Similarly, although speaking with reference to fannish nationalistic displays, when American fans of Niall Horan, an unabashed Irish folk-pop singer, united at a concert in Cleveland, Ohio to create a shimmering Irish tricolor (Ireland’s national flag) with their mobile phones they were not displaying the flag to signal Irish identity—though some may claim Irish heritage—nor to, momentarily, transform their national identity but to welcome, celebrate, and connect with Horan. As one fan said, “He loves his country so He will definitely appreciate it.” Yet when music fans within the Irish diaspora display Irish tricolor flags at “rebel” music events they do so to actively signal and reconfirm their Irishness, to themselves, to each other, and to the world at large. So, when The Wolfe Tones—a hugely popular “rebel” group—play venues around the world and fans bring out their Irish tricolours (and wear their Celtic football jerseys) they are doing a little more than welcoming and connecting with the band; their displays (are meant to) indicate, to celebrate, an Irish identity and a direct connection to Ireland. Further complicating our understanding of fannish nationalistic and cultural displays—flags, jerseys, and so forth—are the intergenerational fannish practices performed by Irish Nationalists in the North of Ireland. For example, at a recent Wolfe Tones concert in West Belfast fans donned Celtic football jerseys and flourished Irish tricolours, much like diasporic Wolfe Tone fans around the world. And yet these nationalistic displays were performed by Irish people on the island of Ireland, albeit a highly contested territory, one still under British colonial rule. And herein lies an example of the curiosity and complexity of thinking about fandoms viz. transnational (and transcultural) qualities in conflicted, divided territories with disputed borders, that is in places, such as Ireland, where borders often lie only in the eyes of the beholders. As we see here, Horan fans and Wolfe Tone fans use flag displays and so forth to publicly connect with their fan objects, but—by also signaling a national/cultural identity—those within the Irish diaspora and in the North of Ireland—are doing a little bit more.

As we see, studying fandom in (and orientated towards) territories marked by historical political conflict and contested national or regional borders, as in Spain and Ireland, proves a particularly rich pursuit, and like all good discussion, ours has raised more questions than it answered. 

[JDFP} I think the debate has been very fruitful and has allowed us to present a large number of representative examples from both countries, as well as many common fan phenomena. Both Spain and Ireland are two peripheral countries with significant cultural heritage that perhaps does not correspond to their media presence. Undoubtedly the migrant fan communities have helped to make these traditions visible throughout the world. However, as Ellen points out, “not all transnational fandom is transcultural, and vice versa”. That is why I think we have to pay attention to media phenomena that are capable of enhancing popular culture beyond its identity or nationalist expression. Probably the transnationality of a fan phenomenon requires the germ of one or several local communities that, without a doubt, will adapt this fandom to their own practices. While a transcultural fan phenomenon must also be based on local values that will have to be accepted and shared wherever they go. When we speak of local or global fandoms we are referring simply to the focus on the origin or current expansion of the phenomenon. The media industries cannot make a fandom global without local scale, nor can a local fandom be understood today without its global ramifications.

[EK] I have very much enjoyed the opportunity to find out more about fandom in Spain, and it is heartening to think that our discussion could have taken many other paths that would have proven just as rewarding and enjoyable. Though I do think—and especially when discussing cultural phenomena and fandom in (and adjacent to) contested territories—that issues of cultural identity are always present and felt in our discussions, even when they are (consciously or unconsciously) overlooked. Every act, as conceptual artist Daniel Burren, reminds us, “is political and, whether one is conscious of it or not, the presentation of one's work is no exception”. Moreover, I remain unconvinced of the value and merit of aspiring to the goal of transcending issues around cultural identity in our work, especially given the current state of fandom and Fan Studies. For, as Rukmini Pande previously observed, “No media text or fandom is free from issues and hierarchies of power around representations of identity, relationships, and desire.” And neither is scholarship. As with many others, I hold that fan scholars should be actively prioritizing such matters within their discussions, especially perhaps those exploring notions of “border-crossing” fandom and phenomena. Finally, I would like to express my sincerest thanks to Julian for the discussion and to Henry for the opportunity to be part of this global jamboree. 

References 

Chin, B., & Morimoto, L. H. (2013). ‘Towards a theory of transcultural fandom’. Participations, 10(1), 92-108. [Available here.]

González-Gordon Luque, M. M. (2019). Economìa y deporte. El efecto económico de los fans en el fútbol. El caso de la Liga española. Universidad Pontificia de Comillas.

Hills, M. (2002). ‘Transcultural otaku: Japanese representations of fandom and representations of Japan in anime/manga fan cultures’, Proceedings of MiT2, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. May 10‐12. [Available here.]

Mestre Pérez, R. (2020). España plató de cine: claroscuros de las rutas de cine y televisión. Estudios Turísticos, nº 220 (2º S 2020), pp 9-29

[1] “Riverdance – 10 Years Documentary.” Riverdance. DVD Tyrone Productions, 2008.

[2] McAvinchey, Shane, former Riverdance troupe member. Interview. 8 Mar 2010.

[3] Brennan, Helen. (1999) The Story of Irish Dance. Kerry, Ireland: Mount Eagle Publications Ltd. (p. 152). 

[4] It is estimated that today more than twenty-five million people have seen the show, in one form or another. 

[5] The company holds open call auditions allowing worldwide fans to not only imagine/dream of becoming part of the show, but to see a route to making it happen.

Global Fandom Jamboree Conversations (Round Five): Julián de la Fuente (Spain) and Ellen Kirkpatrick (Ireland) (Part One)

Julián de la Fuente: The study of fandom finds a lot of common ground between Ireland and Spain. The identity of many fan phenomena is divided into regions, especially those that have to do with traditional culture in Catalonia, Andalusia, or the Basque Country. However, Spaniards are united in terms of international fan phenomena and media fandom. There is also a predominance of male white fandom, although there is a high visibility of fans belonging to the LGTBIQ collective, across music, cinema, or literature. However, racial diversity in fan phenomena is still very much in the minority and has even been a source of conflict in areas such as sports; where in the past Olympics, several Spanish medalists of African origin were discriminated against on social media by certain followers of the national team.

Against this background, the presence of the fan phenomenon is undeniable in mainstream sports such as soccer, basketball, or motorcycling, but also in other more minority sports such as tennis or cycling. The case of football brings together a significant number of followers, although not all of them are organized as fan communities (Luque, 2019). In some cases, these communities have a special regional component, around teams such as the Atlethic Club de Bilbao or Real Betis Balompié. In other cases, fans organize around class values, such as Atlético de Madrid. But in most cases, it is sporting achievements and famous athletes that bring fans together around the best-known teams such as Real Madrid or Futbol Club Barcelona. The last two examples represent important fandoms with international impact thanks to a broad marketing policy and the influence of the sports press. The economic influence of this sports industry means that the organization of grassroots fans with a participatory nature is very much the minority in the case of these large soccer teams.

Regarding media fan tourism, Spain shares the attractions of Ireland but not the accommodation of the fans. The influence of the screen tourist or jet-setter (Mestre, 2020) is much more diluted among the flood of international tourists that Spain receives in search of sun and sand. Even though visits to many film locations are promoted locally in tourist offices, there are still no major tourist routes to guide fans on these tours. In fact, mostly it is fans themselves who organize their own routes through the scenarios present in movies, television series, or even commercial spots. Cities like Madrid or Barcelona are very far from organizing fan tourism, despite the fact that many of the visits they receive are based on media presence. Even so, the fan tourist has been present since the 1960s in the desert of Almería and its famous western towns, which still today recall the important production focus of the Spaghetti Western. It is striking how these fan practices have been revitalized in recent years, with the reconstruction by an association of fans of the cemetery that appears in the film “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (Sergio Leone, Italy: 1966) in the same location where the filming took place fifty years earlier. 

In summary, Ireland and Spain share sports and tourism fan phenomena, but their use is very uneven. While the sports industry has mediated fan phenomena, especially among soccer teams, the case of the screen tourist is underestimated compared to the non-specialized tourism industry. In both cases we observe a clear tension between grassroots fandom and media industries, the resolution of which may depend on the internationalization of these phenomena.

Ellen Kirkpatrick: Julián, thanks for your expansive opening statements. You make some important observations, especially regarding fandom, people, and place. It’s clear that Ireland and Spain have many commonalities when it comes to contemporary fandom, particularly around media and sports fandom. And whilst there are certainly a lot of topics we could talk about with respect to these popular fandoms, it might be useful—given the nature of this discussion series— to perhaps focus on themes circulating the multidirectional flow of global fan objects and fandoms and identity and blurry notions of border-crossing fandoms and cultural phenomena. And whilst I don’t want to focus here on the impact of historical/political legacies on fandom in our countries, I do think it’s useful to start by gesturing towards how these forces might be shaping our mediascapes and fanscapes today, particularly considering the ameliorating capacity of digital evolutions and social media to bypass borders, geographic and cultural. Can historical cultural insularity, for example, provide a lens to help fan scholars interpret the undiminishing and intergenerational popularity and resilience of traditional Irish—and Spanish— culture and its fandoms, music, sports, food, literature, and so forth? 

The Clash — Belfast 1972

A quick example: Growing up even during the tail end of the “Troubles”, I understood that few of my favorite British and International bands would play Belfast—they might come to Dublin—but those that did brave the North (usually punk, hardcore, and indie bands rather than “big name” mainstream performers) were most-beloved amongst fans. If my friends and I wanted to see live performances, we knew we’d have to travel distances, adding expense, adding barriers. (To this day, I am still surprised if I see Belfast on a tour list, and I’m sure I am not alone.) Perhaps that’s why, then as now, music fans in the North cultivate passions for both local and/or traditional and international music milieus, ensuring a vibrant local and traditional music scene. But not just music fans, fans of all sorts have had to adapt to local conditions. As we see today, the North remains marginalized with media fans having to travel to participate in events, though evolutions in digital technologies and social media may now be closing those gaps and distances.  

Expanding briefly upon these ideas, alongside political fandom, fandoms circulating traditional Irish culture offer space to express Irish cultural identity, at home and abroad. As touched upon in my opening statement, in terms of the North of the island, this provides pleasure on several fronts, pleasure from the text and pleasure in performing—usually with others—an outlawed cultural identity, a delight rooted in demonstrating intra-communal solidarity and, sometimes brazenly, resisting colonial authority. Thus, I was fascinated by your observation of regional dimensions within fandom in Spain, and I wonder how this dimensionality finds expression, and does it, as in the North of Ireland, center traditional culture and sports and cultural identity and/or politics? I was similarly drawn to your idea that global media franchises and texts unify Spaniards across regions and would love to hear more about this. In the North of Ireland, this kind of cultural border-crossing happens too, as evidenced during Belfast’s cross-community, cross-border punk scene during the 1970s and 1980s. But what about today? Moreover, how useful is a transnational lens in understanding these kinds of “border-crossing” fandoms? The concept of “transcultural homology” (Hills 2002) proves invaluable here, whereby fans prioritize fan identity over other identity vectors, such as race, gender, and, as in the case of Belfast’s troubled punks, national and cultural identity (Catholic/Nationalist and Protestant/Unionist but also Irish/British). Indeed, as I touch upon later (with reference to the Irish diaspora and fannish nationalistic displays) in contested geographical territories a transcultural frame becomes infinitely more valuable in understanding “border-crossing” fandoms in lands where geographic borders do not exist for everyone.

Global Fandom Jamboree: Ellen Kirkpatrick (Ireland)

Fandoms and Fan Studies in Ireland, North and South 

This opening statement presents a digest of prevalent fandoms and fan studies scholarship on the island of Ireland, North and South. Thus, it spotlights music, media, and sports fandoms, but food fandom and political fandom have distinct local flavors too. Analogously, fan tourism is a defining fan practice on the island and so also features in my discussion. Though referring to traditions specific to the North, I do not wish to suggest nor impose an artificial North/South binary. Rather my discussion—like the island itself—ranges across an open border, for despite a stubborn line on a map, both territories have much in common.

Racial/ethnic homogeneity provides one such site of commonality. Despite an increasingly diverse population, the island of Ireland remains a majority-white space.[1] Racial/ethnic homogeneity deleteriously frames and informs fandoms and fan studies undertaken on the isle. Thus, we find less scholarship interrogating racial dynamics—including whiteness (as the norm)—and regarding media fandom, for example, we see less racebending practices. Such work and play are not wholly absent but undoubtedly require more attention. 

British imperialism and colonialism—and their aftermaths—likewise scar the island but in different ways. Consequently, I present a brief historical-geopolitical exposition of the shared island for whilst legacies of partition do not deeply mark fandoms and their study in the Republic of Ireland, it is impossible to discuss fandom and fan scholarship in Northern Ireland without recourse to the “Troubles” and its “post-conflict” carryovers. 

Though not yet always foregrounded, these two circumstances must be born in mind when discerning the shape of fandom and fan studies on the island of Ireland.  

Historical-Geopolitical Context: An Island Divided

In 1921, the British parliament passed an Act partitioning Ireland. This Act divided the island into two separate and self-governing polities: Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland. Both territories were to remain part of the United Kingdom (UK). Southern Ireland resisted and gained its independence through the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) becoming the Republic of Ireland (or just Ireland). In contrast, despite continuous civil unrest and inter-communal conflict, Northern Ireland remains—one century on—part of the UK. 

During the 1960s-1990s, a struggle for civil rights in the North enfolded a nationalistic desire for a (re)united Ireland; a struggle waged by Irish nationalists and republicans from within the disenfranchised Catholic community and violently suppressed by the British government and its local Unionist/Protestant government, state authorities, and security and paramilitary forces. A conflict colloquially known as the “Troubles”. The signing of the Good Friday Agreement (1998) marked the official end of the “Troubles” and Northern Ireland’s entry into a “post-conflict” era. Or so people hoped. Today, Northern Ireland experiences relative peace but the legacy of the “Troubles” and divisive events such as Brexit—the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union—continually stress and jeopardize Northern Ireland’s status as a “post-conflict” society.  

The Good Friday Agreement: A Dividing Line  

The Good Friday Agreement (1998) is a dividing line in Northern Irish fandom, particularly media fandom. For example: Being a media fan during the “Troubles” was difficult on several fronts; the Conflict dissuaded artists and shows from traveling to the North and the very real threat of bombs similarly dissuaded fans and audiences from attending the few events that did take place. People were still fans of international (mainly US) media but from afar; attention also turned to local entertainment and media. 

“Post-conflict” Northern Ireland saw an explosion in screen production (due to the “peace dividend”, for example). Creative industries flourished and continue to do so, especially television and film industries; Belfast is now often described as the “Hollywood of Europe”. Without the ceasefire, acclaimed TV shows and films—notably The Fall(2013-2016), High-Rise (2015), Derry Girls (2018-present), and Game of Thrones (2011-2019)—would simply not have been filmed in Northern Ireland. And no filming means no filming locations and no filming locations means no fan and screen tourism industry. International fans of the Titanic story, historical event and Hollywood film, would find it much harder to visit the birthplace of the ill-fated steamship. Without the Agreement, fan practices and fan studies centering the North of Ireland would look very different today. No more kitschy—yet safe—fan tourism industry and relatedly no “Troubles tourism” or “dark tourism”, another bourgeoning post-Agreement activity. 

[1] See Republic of Ireland Census 2016 and Northern Ireland Census 2011. 

The rise of media fan tourism in the “post-conflict” North mimics an established tradition in the South of the island, with both territories welcoming local and international fans to important sites. (An industry greatly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.) The quiet Mayo village of Cong has been ministering to fans of The Quiet Man (1952) since the mid-1950s. More recently, Skellig Michael—a rocky outcrop off the coast of County Kerry—hosts boatloads of intrepid Star Wars fans. Literary fans are also well-served in the South and increasingly in the North, and music fans too. Walking tours (DIY and guided) allow fans to visit key sites around Dublin—James Joyce’s Ulysses and Dubliners, for example—and Belfast—C.S. Lewis Square and Trail or the Van Morrison Trail. 

More generally, media fandom on the island is vibrant and thriving (online and real world). Media fans in the North today, however, appear underserviced viz. international fan conventions. Belfast and Derry—the North’s top two cities—remain provincial, absented from or on the periphery of the global convention circuit. Whilst there is local activity, home fans must still travel to Dublin or London to attend (large) events, and they do. Demand far outweighs availability: Following a four-year hiatus, Comic Con NI is set to return in 2022 and fans in the North are excited; organizers to date have sold half of all available tickets six months before launch. Recognizing this, one of Comic Con NI’s organizers observed, “Many of these big shows can be London-centric and many fans can miss out, so we are glad to be able to bring it to other regions.”

As around the Global North, the popularity of internationally-focused conventions is rooted in—and demonstrates—the dominance of US media in local media fandoms. So too music fandoms, yet home artists garner large, localized fandoms too, as with Daniel O’Donnell, Christy Moore, and more recently Denise Chaila. As elsewhere, K-pop is sweeping through the island (online and real world), coalescing around the hugely popular K-pop band, BTS and their global “ARMY” fandom. This all-island fandom is set to expand especially, perhaps, as K-pop fan and Irish representative—Sodem Solana from Dublin—took home the Grand Prize at the 2019 World K-Pop Festival. Global success conjuring another of Ireland’s lively popular music fandoms, the Eurovision Song Contest; Ireland has a record tally of seven wins and a fanbase to match.

Local music fandom can acquire a political timbre; music fans in the North often use music to express and perform “Irishness”. Irish “rebel” bands such as The Wolfe Tones, The Dubliners, or the aforementioned Christy Moore are famed for performing songs about Irish rebellions and against British domination and rule over Ireland. Thus, they are extremely popular within Nationalist/Catholic communities; Irish folk music fans from Unionist/Protestant communities can, however, find it difficult to enjoy or to support these kinds of bands, publicly.

Ties between fandoms and cultural identity (notably nationality, religion, and class) present also within sports fandoms and especially within—predominantly male—ball games fandoms, such as men’s football (soccer), men’s Gaelic games, and men’s rugby, North and South. Rugby, for instance, is felt the purview of middle- and upper-class sports fans; the national Irish rugby team has also, quite uniquely, two anthems—Amhrán na bhFiannhe (“Soldier’s Song”) and “Ireland’s Call”—in a bid to foster unity within an all-island team and its border-crossing fandom. In the North, fanbases notoriously coalesce around national/cultural identity, fostering intra-community bonds and local sectarianism. We should remember here too that fandoms do not standalone but overlap. Participating in “rebel” music fandom and Gaelic sports fandom, for example, not only helps fans in the North perform “Irishness” but buttresses their sense of being Irish (in a contested, liminal territory). Given that public demonstrations are a critical facet of identity politics, fan tourism — international and provincial — is a key element of ball games fandom.

But ball games are not alone in sporting, if you will, massive fandoms. Motorsport, especially traditional (motorcycle) road racing and car rallying, attract huge, and frequently cross-border and cross-community, fandoms too. As before, these fandoms are predominantly male. Fans heroize individual local drivers and riders, such as, from the North, the much-loved—and internationally renowned—late Joey Dunlop. Associated fan practices include traveling to national and local racing events but also buying road-legal versions of their heroes’ racing bikes (as well as race suits and helmets) and, well, illegally racing them. (Car and motorcycle fandoms are also widespread throughout the island with fans forming “owner clubs” around car makers, such as Mini or Land Rover.) 

It is unclear if these (seemingly) dominant fandoms are more popular than other fandoms or simply appear so because they are more accepted and thus more visible. (Local reporting of media fandom, for instance, remains infrequent and patronizing and tends to focus on economic benefits.) Research has been undertaken—mostly within politics or sports studies departments—exploring the intersection of ball games, cultural identity, and politics; in fact, the subject quite dominates fan scholarship on the island. Yet, whilst focusing routinely on class, religion, and nationality, ball games fan research routinely overlooks gender and race/ethnicity. But the androcentrism of ball games fandom on the island—if not sports fandom more generally—cannot be overlooked; women may and do participate, but they are often tokenized and marginalized. Racial minorities, disabled people, and queer people are similarly relegated within predominantly white, male, cishet, non-disabled ball games fandom, often establishing their own fan communities (and sports clubs).

Returning now briefly to the subject of fan scholarship on the island, as elsewhere, fan studies — pedagogy and research—is a disparate field of study. Scholars are often independent or teach and work within associated disciplines, such as Arts and Literature programs, media and cultural studies, sociology, sports studies, and—particularly those located in the North—politics. There is no all-island scholarly network as yet, but scholars may connect through global fan organizations, such as the “Fan Studies Network” or the SCMS “Fan and Audience Studies Scholarly Group”. Not unusually, there are no opportunities to teach or study programs focused solely on fandom and participatory culture. (There are, however, increasing opportunities to teach and study self-contained fan-centered modules, notably on media or sports fandom.) 

To conclude, fandom on the island, particularly in the North, is strongly shaped not only by cultural and political traditions but economic demands. Fan tourism is now big business and arguably helps secure the North’s relative and tentative peace. As can be seen, whilst fandom on the island is indubitably shaped by global forces it also retains strong local traditions and practices, again particularly in the North. Excusing the titanic pun, this outline is just the tip of the iceberg regarding fandoms and fan studies on the island of Ireland; I am looking forward to continuing and expanding this conversation, particularly with relation to tensions around transnational and transcultural fandoms/phenomena.  

Based in the North of Ireland, Ellen Kirkpatrick is an activist-writer with a PhD in Cultural Studies. In her work, Ellen writes mostly about activism, pop culture, fan cultures, and the transformative power of storytelling. She has published work in a range of academic journals and media outlets. Her forthcoming book on the radical imagination and superhero culture is slated for publication in 2022 (punctum books). Ellen can be found writing at The Break and on Twitter @elk_dash. 

[1] See Republic of Ireland Census 2016 and Northern Ireland Census 2011.

Global Fandom Jamboree: Julián de la Fuente (Spain)

My name is Julián de la Fuente and I am assistant professor at the University of Alcalá (Spain). My research is focused on the media practices of adolescents and how they organize communities for purposes such as leisure, learning or civic engagement. Thanks to my mentor, Pilar Lacasa (Lacasa, 2020 16), during a longitudinal ethnographic study we discovered the importance of fandom for many adolescents. Since then, we have carried out various researchers:

First of all, we analyzed the relationship that fans maintain with their musical idols (Lacasa et al., 2016 17) and what we found was that girls used the Internet is a meaningful space where they looked for personal contact with their favourite celebrity. We looked at the ways in which adolescents in the fan community transformed the status of the object they loved from celebrity to hero, someone in whom they developed affective attachments of admiration and love. This encouraged us to investigate the identity processes that arise from fandom (Lacasa Díaz et al., 2017 18) We looked at the role of memories in the construction of the self, from the perspective of a subjective identity in which both personal and collective dimensions are present. For fans, the celebrity was more than a musician because the music becomes a vehicle for intimacy around which the adolescent identity is organised as a way of living in and understanding the world. 

At this point, our interest turned to the civic activism of these groups through social media (Lacasa Díaz et al., 2019 19) We believe that social networks have transformed fan communities, and also teenagers' skills when it comes to managing these digital environments. The teenagers’ practices in relation to their presence in fan communities are dependent on the use of multimodal discourse, especially photography and remixes, which are associated with forms of creative expression. The study invites the reader to think about the new forms of citizenship in which young people are involved, far removed from what these concepts traditionally mean in social sciences, where they tend to be associated with adulthood.

More recently, we focus on the personal relationships of friendship that are established between members of a community (de la Fuente & Lacasa, 2020 20). We have find that contacts are sought by exploring the information provided by the participants in online and offline settings. It is this information that allows them to select who they want to interact with or which containment mechanisms they can use to avoid certain participants. However, these contacts can be established on a double level, which the researchers have called macro and micro. The macro level focusses on the broader fan community and the micro level deals with the interpersonal relationships, with interaction taking place between the two levels.

Finally, to these multiple perspectives adds the content industry, whose strategies for integrating media practices of fans are currently studying by our research group.

 Regarding fandom studies in my country, their origin are relatively recent. We could point to its takeoff during the last decade, especially associated with media studies (Prego-Nieto, 2020 15) However, fan communities could be documented since the mid-70s of the 20th century, after a military dictatorship that during 40 years limited the right of assembly of people, as well as censored access to foreign cultural content. Until well into the 21st century, most of the most popular fan phenomena were associated with content from traditional culture, such as bullfighting, religious brotherhoods, sports such as boxing or soccer, and Spanish light music.

Even today, the word fan in Spain refers to the fanatical followers of some soccer teams or to the “frikis” (sic.) geeks of certain minority content such as role-playing games, science fiction or manga (Martínez, 2020 7). I can't say that being a fan in Spain is frowned upon, but it is true that in many cases there is no strong identity for this social phenomenon. For instance, as a result of the generalized political protests throughout the country as of May 15, 2011, the “indignados” movement emerged, which has hardly been analyzed since the conception of the political fandom (Hernández-Santaolalla & Rubio-Hernández, 2017 8 ) So there is still a long way to go for these fan communities to be recognized according to their social influence. However, among the youth these conceptions are changing. Thanks to social networks, many international fan phenomena have landed in Spain (Cassany, 2018 6) participating in much wider networks and establishing links with other Spanish-speaking countries, especially in America. In this sense, the impact of globalization on Spanish fandom is undeniable, with communities especially active around phenomena such as video games, audiovisual fiction, and musical groups. Among many other international phenomena, young Spanish people participate in the K-pop fandom (Rodriguez Castillo, 2021 9), especially significant in Latin America. 

Likewise, you can highlight other phenomena international fandoms whose origins are Spanish influencers; As is the case with the Twitch Streamers, some of which are among the most viewed worldwide such as @AuronPlay or the Booktubers, which also have a large community of fans (de la Torre-Espinosa, 2019 12). In this sense, the globalization of fandom in Spain during the last decade has allowed both the introduction and export of these cultural phenomena to the whole world, especially among Spanish-speaking people.

However, the best-studied fan phenomenon in Spain, probably due to its international repercussion, is that of television series (López-Villafranca & Ruiz-Muñoz, 2017 3) The visibility of this phenomenon through social networks, together with the accessibility of these contents by TV platforms have created the conditions for a massive phenomenon whose target is also much broader than other content such as music or video games. Nevertheless, in many of these studies the social audience for these shows is confused with the development of a true community of fans.

Actually, in Spain one of the first examples of fandom on television would be the Eurovision Song Contest (EBU, 1956-current) but we would have to wait until the arrival of Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011-2019) to talk about a community of fans visible through social networks. In fact, the appearance of this fan community was encouraged during season 4 of the TV series in 2014, thanks to the creation of a transmedia strategy that under the title "Si lo vives es verdad" (If you live it, it is true) allowed fans to participate in live events, games through social networks and even star in the promotional spot of the channel that broadcast it in Spain: Canal + (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAehXcOstGo).

This precedent in the interaction between fans and the content industry has become increasingly common, especially among national productions such as "El Ministerio del Tiempo" (RTVE, 2015-2020) whose fan community has stood out above the audience reached by this series (Torregrosa-Carmona & Rodríguez-Gómez, 2017 21) Among other unprecedent milestones in the Spanish fandom, was organizing to demand the production of a new season or the agreement reached with the producer to market the fanarts uploaded to social networks.

These same transmedia strategies have been applied to personalize the remake of other series such as SKAM Spain (Movistar +, 2018-2020) whose international fandom has had an important epicenter in Spain thanks to a community of fan girls with a civic commitment regarding sexist violence or LGTBI + rights (Gutiérrez et al., 2019 1) In this case it is noteworthy how the production company has adapted the series to the consumption of these fans, programming content at any time of day and week and even allowing fans broadcast the live experience live during a sequence specially recreated for them.

As a result of all these experiences, television series in Spain are not understood today without the creation and participation of their fandom. In fact, platforms such as Netflix have especially intensified their communication strategy in this regard (Barrientos-Báez, 2021 11) which may partly explain the success of some Spanish shows around the world such as Money Heist (2017-2021), or Elite (2018-current). These fan phenomena of Spanish origin reflect the impact that globalization has had on the appearance of the fandom in Spain. Dalí masks and the song "Bella Ciao" now serve as vindication of human rights in many parts of the world, the same as those rights are vindicated in Spain just 40 years ago. 

In conclusion, the media fandom in Spain is a relatively recent phenomenon with a clear influence from the globalization of cultural industries. However, that same globalization is what is allowing some Spanish content to generate fans beyond its borders, especially connected to Spanish-speaking followers. These participation and appropriation processes have been achieved thanks to the connivance of televisions and digital platforms that have found fans an ideal audience model for productions that, due to their limited budgets, could hardly reach prominent audiences due to lack of publicity. In the same way, fans use these cultural products symbolically to generate claims related to civic commitment and human rights, wherever their voice is not heard.

Barrientos-Báez, A. (2021). Fandom televisivo. Estudio de su impacto en la estrategia de comunicación en redes sociales de netflix television fandom. Study of its impact on the netflixs social media communication strategy. Revista de Comunicación(54), 57-79. 

Cassany, D. (2018). El fandom en la juventud española. FAD. 

de la Fuente, J., & Lacasa, P. (2020). Teens’ Fandom Communities: Making Friends and Countering Unwanted Contacts. In L. Green, Holloway, D., Stevenson, K., Leaver, T., & Haddon, L. (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Digital Media and Children (pp. 161-173). Routledge.

de la Torre-Espinosa, M. (2019). El fenómeno Booktube, entre el fandom y la crítica literaria. Álabe(21). 

Gutiérrez, J. S., de la Fuente Prieto, J., & Borda, R. M. (2019). El ecosistema mediático juvenil en España: Un estudio de caso sobre el fandom de la serie “SKAM”. In Comunicación y pensamiento. Relatos de la nueva comunicación. (pp. 33-52). Egregius. 

Hernández-Santaolalla, V., & Rubio-Hernández, M. d. M. (2017). Fandom político en Twitter: La Cueva y los partidarios de Alberto Garzón en las elecciones generales españolas de 2015 y 2016. El profesional de la información, 26 (5), 838-849.

Lacasa Díaz, P., De la Fuente Prieto, J., García-Pernía, M., & Cortés Gómez, S. (2017). Teenagers, fandom and identity. Persona Studies, 3(2), 51-65. 

Lacasa Díaz, P., De la Fuente Prieto, J. n., Cortés Gómez, S., & García-Pernía, M. R. (2019). Adolescents as cultural activists: Remixing celebrities in fandom communities. In S. Duvall (Ed.), Celebrity and Youth(pp. 81-101). Peter Lang. 

Lacasa, P. (2020). Adolescent Fans. Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/b14291

Lacasa, P., Zaballos, L. M., & de la Fuente Prieto, J. (2016). Fandom, Music and Personal Relationships through Media: How Teenagers Use Social Networks. IASPM@ Journal, 6(1), 44-67. 

López-Villafranca, P., & Ruiz-Muñoz, M. J. (2017). La ficción televisiva española en el contexto latinoamericano (2011-2016): mercado global, narrativas transmedia y comportamientos del fandom. 

Martínez, C. (2020). Féminas del fandom: outsiders entre los outsiders. 3Acción colectiva, movilización y resistencias en el siglo XXI. Vol. 3: Estudios de caso, 61. 

Prego-Nieto, M. (2020). Tendencias epistemológicas de los fan studies en la investigación en comunicación: una propuesta de clasificación. Anàlisi(63), 101-114. 

Rodriguez Castillo, J. (2021). E K-pop y la Interacción Parasocial en España: el fenómeno fan en Instagram. 

Torregrosa-Carmona, J.-F., & Rodríguez-Gómez, E. (2017). Comunidades de fans y ficción televisiva. Estudio de caso: El ministerio del tiempo (TVE). Profesional de la Información, 26(6), 1139-1148. 

Julián de la Fuente is Assistant Professor of Audiovisual Communication the University of Alcalá, Spain. His research is multidisciplinary, sharing perspectives and approaches from psychology, anthropology, history and sociology. Often collaborating with architects, engineers and artists, he uses qualitative and ethnographic methodologies and the analysis of multimodal discourse. He has authored and co-authored numerous publications examining social media, technology and young people’s digital engagement. He has also conducted several outreach projects for film heritage.

Announcing Transforming Hollywood 9: U.S. Streaming and International Co-Productions

TRANSFORMING HOLLYWOOD 9: U.S. Streaming and International Co-Production

Come join us! Henry Jenkins and Denise Mann, co-directors of Transforming Hollywood, invite you to attend the 2021 TH9 conference on December 3, 9AM-6:30PM PST. RSVP to indicate whether you plan to attend in-person (UCLA Bridges Theater) or via zoom: https://forms.gle/3TqFf7z9no1hT4yG7 

CONFERENCE OVERVIEW: The 9th edition of the Transforming Hollywood conference examines the growing prominence of streaming services—a trend that has been accelerated by the Covid pandemic and is reshaping the world of production including international co-productions and the transnational circulation of content and talent. The popularity of streamers is blurring the distinction between cinema and television and impacting the future of the cinema theater-going experience. The changes are having global repercussions and are affecting international collaborations between creators and producers. This edition features media creators, producers, and executives in critical dialogue with top researchers who will examine the ideological challenges and financial opportunities facing local media industries from Central-Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the Asian Pacific Rim as they forge creative partnerships with Netflix, Amazon, HBO Max, and other U.S. streaming services. The U.S. streamers are competing over high-profile, Game of Thrones-style media franchises that will engage transnational audiences, in many cases by invoking a return of the repressed using familiar Slavic mythologies inhabited by witches, Sylvan, Kikimora monsters, and Dopplers from the Grishaverse and East Asian mythologies populated by ghosts, vampires, and other tortured souls returning from the afterlife. Local media companies are promoting themselves by providing access to high-tech studios, otherworldly locations, and skilled, inexpensive, labor. The latter includes virtual LED studios using game engine technologies to deliver digitally-generated landscapes and VFX workers with the proven ability to render a multitude of magical creatures to attract transnational audiences. Meanwhile, global fans from diverse territories celebrate their knowing recognition of these aesthetic traditions from the past, many of which invoke the reactionary policies of older, authoritarian regimes while invoking progressive critiques of contemporary post-colonial oppression, which they lovingly detail in their blogs, channels, and wikis. This year’s conference engages with these and other thorny issues that require local media industries to navigate a minefield of socio-economic, cultural-industrial, and ideological battle lines in order to take advantage of the infusions of capital associated with the current streaming wars. 

SCHEDULE:

CO-DIRECTORS’ INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: 9AM-9:30AM.

Denise Mann, Professor, Cinema and Media Studies, UCLA and Henry Jenkins, Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts, USC Annenberg School of Communication

PANEL ONE: 9:30AM-11:20AM PST/6:30PM-8:20PM (France). “‘It's (not) so French.’” French productions in the age of global streaming”

MODERATOR:

Violaine Roussel, Professor, University of Paris VIII and Affiliated Scholar, UCLA TFT

PANELISTS:

·      Isabelle Degeorges, President, Gaumont Television France (zoom)

·      Daniela Elstner, Executive Director, UniFrance Film International (in person)

·      Christophe Riandee, Vice CEO of Gaumont (zoom). 

·      Ana Vinuela, Associate Professor, University Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris (in person)

PANEL ONE OVERVIEW: France is known for its distinctive film tradition and festivals such as Cannes, but also for the protective regulations and the state subsidies to its cinema—this being part of a European strategy to preserve the diversity of content and local culture heritage within its borders. How is the rapid expansion of streaming services changing the situation? A show such as Lupin on Netflix illustrates the success of content that reaches beyond just local audiences, while being based on an iconic character of the French popular culture. The panelists will question what makes French content and talent travel internationally today. We will shed light on new forms of transnational collaborations in the production and dissemination of content, discussing the effects of local arrangements and regulations as well as the disruptive force that are the streaming giants.

BREAK: 11:20AM-11:30AM

PANEL TWO: 11:30AM-1:20PM PST/8:30PM-10:20PM (Poland). “Netflix’s The Witcher: Runaway Productions in Central-Eastern European Locales”

MODERATOR: 

Denise Mann, Professor, Cinema and Media Studies, UCLA 

PANELISTS:

·      Anikó Imre, Professor, School of Cinematic Arts at USC, Los Angeles (in person)

·      Sylwia Szostak, Assistant Professor, University of Silesia in Katowice (zoom, Warsaw)

·      Mateusz Tokarz, Senior VFX supervisor at Platige Image (zoom, Warsaw) 

PANEL TWO OVERVIEW: This panel examines the latest wave of runaway production as U.S. streamers are drawn to Eastern European capitals, such as Budapest, Prague and Warsaw, which offer lucrative, tax rebates; skilled, inexpensive labor forces; and reduced workplace and environmental regulations. At the same time, these post-socialist vistas provide backdrops for ancient legends and mythical, VFX-generated creatures far removed from contemporary reality. Budapest has been used for several high-profile streaming originals, including Netflix’s The Witcher, which is based on Polish fantasy writer Andrew Sapkowski’s popular book series and the adapted popular video game, and was shot primarily in Hungary in and around Mafilm Studios near Budapest. Cultural-industrial, socio-economic, and ideological paradoxes abound given that so many of these state-influenced media outlets are controlled by far-right governments that are willing to court the neoliberal, global capitalism favored by their U.S. financial partners in order to access the economic windfall stemming from the U.S. streaming wars. Many of these “history-fantasy cocktails” deliver a postmodernist mélange of possible interpretations for distinct taste cultures that the U.S. streamers are uniquely qualified to bundle given their mastery of automated curation and data management technologies.

LUNCH BREAK: 1:20PM-2:30PM.  See UCLA map for dining options on campus.

PANEL THREE: 2:30-4:20PM PST. Transcultural Fandom in the Age of Streaming Media 

MODERATOR:

Henry Jenkins, Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts, USC Annenberg School of Communication

PANELISTS:

·      Abigail De Kosnik, Associate Professor and Director of the Berkeley Center for New Media, University of California, Berkeley (in person).

·      Susan Kresnicka, Business anthropologist and Founder/President, KR&I (in person)

·      Hye Jin Lee, Clinical Assistant Professor of Communication, USC Annenberg (in person)

·      Aswin Punthabaker, Associate Professor, Department of Media Studies, University of Virginia.  (zoom, Virginia)

PANEL THREE OVERVIEW: Streaming services have impacted the circulation and consumption of media content around the world. Did fan subbing and “piracy” pave the way for these new circuits? How has the mass availability of such content reshaped old fan and audience practices? What audiences are most ready to engage with transnational and transcultural content and why? How does consuming media content change the ways consumers think about the cultures from which it originated? Do these new audiences prefer “odorless” content or are they becoming “pop cosmopolitans”? Is this a new form of cultural imperialism producing a monoculture or does the system depend upon diverse styles and genres from the participating countries? Does this content still rely on well-trod trade routes and diasporic communities or are new contact zones between countries emerging?

BREAK (4:20PM-4:30PM)

PANEL FOUR: 4:30-6:20PM PST/7:30-9:20AM (Singapore). “Logistical Underworlds of HBO Asia’s Streaming Originals” 

MODERATOR:

Jasmine Nadua Trice, Associate Professor, Cinema and Media Studies, UCLA 

PANELISTS:

·      Garon de Silva, Vice President, Original Production, HBO Asia (zoom, Singapore)

·       Ler Jiyuan, showrunner, writer-director, HBO Asia series (Invisible Stories; Grisse), (zoom, Singapore)

·      Olivia Khoo, Associate Professor in Film and Screen Studies at Monash University (zoom, Melbourne). 

·      Michael Wiluan, CEO Infinite Studios, Executive Producer (Grisse, Halfworlds) (zoom, Singapore). 

PANEL FOUR OVERVIEW: This panel examines HBO Asia’s Streaming Originals by exploring the complex negotiation between the physical spaces of film production and the pro-filmic fantasy worlds they enable. For HBO Asia’s Streaming Originals, on-screen narratives present efforts at pan-Southeast-Asian place-making, with casts from across the region switching between English and Asian languages, within stories that negotiate regional mythologies and globalized genre conventions. But their geographic specificity emerges not through diegetic worldmaking, but in the extra-textual, material conditions of production—specifically, through the locations that their narratives seek to transform. The panel focuses on two shows, in particular, the anti-colonial “mee goreng western” Grisse, set in 19th-century Java and shot at Infinite Studios in the Free Trade Zone of Batam, Indonesia; and Halfworlds, an auteur-helmed supernatural action thriller shot at Infinite Studios, as well as Jakarta (Season 1) and Bangkok (Season 2). As HBO Asia’s then director of production Garon De Silva describes, “We discovered that despite different culture and languages in Asia, they shared common beliefs in supernatural creatures…we aim to bring Asian stories together for a global audience.”  On the one hand, such programs are creative opportunities for media practitioners within the region, who may find pockets of creative agency within global media industries; on the other, such shows are tasked with the unwieldy goals of simultaneous cultural authenticity, universal appeal, and regional interchangeability. 

Global Fandom Jamboree Conversations (Round Four): Ivveta Jansová and Hattie Liew (Part Two)

Iveta Jansová:

Thank you for the new series of inspiring inputs. The latent "monoculturality" partly reflecting the socialist times (meaning the Czechoslovakian performance of socialism) is indeed something that is inscribed to the mainstream culture to this day. Exemplar in this context is TV and movie production in which we can see only very little diversity in depicted identities (e.g., race, sexuality, etc.). With the content being also often apolitical, it is not surprising that we identify a cleavage between contemporary fandoms, which are more internationally oriented and more common for younger audiences, and "older fandoms," inextricably marked by the socio-political history of the region. However, it is impossible to make such a clear (and in a way generalizing) division; it is only illustrative here because we know that one person can mix different interests, fandom belongings, and tastes.

 Concerning the contemporary "outward-looking fandoms," I would like to shortly come back to a topic we both touched upon – the recent popularity of K-Pop and Korean production abroad. I am mentioning this in the context of the record-breaking Korean TV series Squid Game, which became a hit in more than 80 countries worldwide. It also currently holds a position in the top ten watched in Czechia. It is the first Korean production to get in the first place of the top ten on the Czech Netflix ever. Moreover, we can already witness Czech children dressing as characters from the series, series of memes, satire, etc. I am interested in how Czech audiences will appreciate, and in cases of fans maybe appropriate, the TV series further on. Moreover, in the context of Netflix not being that widespread among Czech audiences and deeply habitualized downloading of desired content.

My final point deals with your elaboration on microcelebrity in fandom as unremarkable and something almost anybody can engage. Your argument shows the contemporary user practices' performative nature in general. Consequently, it seems to be utilized by fans as some new kind of fan practice, as you indicated. Further inquiry into this topic, which could be significantly influenced by the locality of such a practice, contrary to other examples we discussed, would be fascinating. 

Hattie Liew:

Thanks so much for your response. While I don’t have specific questions in mind this time round, I do find some things that you mentioned throughout our conversation quite interesting. The first is that you mentioned several times that music and music fandom are quite different from TV and movie fans (for e.g. in mobilization of fans) in Czechia. Of course, the nature of the object of fandom itself produces different kinds of fans and fan practices, but this got me thinking “how different?”. One would assume that with TV and movies, there would be more “raw material” to work with, with complex characters and relationships, time for more themes to develop, entire fictional worlds, and a whole cast of celebrities, which seems to be a prerequisite for developing a transformative fandom so to speak. In Singapore, this assumption seems to be true, as the more rich fan practices seem to be from fans of video games, film and TV, perhaps with the exception of K-pop music (again!).

 The second thing I noticed was that in Czechia, there seems to be quite a vibrant culture for fan festivals. Some of those you mentioned throughout our conversation include Festival Fantazie, Co.con and Utubering. You also mentioned that they are Czech-organized. I found this quite novel, as despite certain similarities in the fandoms in Czechia and Singapore, we never quite developed such an appetite for fan festivals. Of course there are fan festivals – Youtube Fanfest Singapore and Singapore ComicCon are some well known examples. However, the former is an “imported” global event organized by Youtube, while the latter is hosted with the support of the Infocomm Media Development Authority and the Singapore Tourism Board. While there is no doubt that fans in Singapore do enjoy these festivals very much, it is very much different in essence from the festivals in Czechia, which I understand to be a more ground-up and localized effort. 

 With such a thriving culture for fan fests, I wonder how fans in Czechia have been coping with the current covid pandemic, since many events in 2020 and 2021 have been cancelled or moved online. For us, Singapore ComicCon was cancelled in 2020 and has been moved online for Dec 2021, and the good thing out of this situation is more inclusivity, as entrance to the virtual festival will be free. However, we’ll have to wait and see how such virtual fan festivals pan out without the in-person elements that fans enjoy the most like cosplaying, networking with other fans and celebrity sightings. 

Iveta Jansová:

As an outline for my closing words, I will use your final questions in the third installment of our conversation. Our discussion revealed some apparent similarities and differences between our contexts. While the Czech environment is still very much influenced by the socio-political past, we do not see such an impact in the Singaporean context. While in the Singaporean case, the TV series, movies, and video games are sources of various rich fan practices, this is not the case in Czechia. We see only negligible manifestations of fan creativity around local entertainment media. Slightly different is the case with music that, as you suggested, warrants a different set of fan practices. Not only is it connected to the various “texture” of the subjects/objects of interest, but it can be once again connected to the past. Music was a source for subculture identities offering a space of resistance (see my mentions about rich fanzine culture history). From a different point of view, certain conservativity of the Czech entertainment industry (and consequently of some audiences) allows for several artists from before 1989 (the fall of communism in the area) to still ride out their success (often a few popular songs) thirty years on, singer Michal David being a prime example here. 

Michal David

 In my last point, I will react to your inquiry into the vibrant culture of fan festivals in Czechia. Despite being such a small country, we have a rich set of regionally organized festivals and conventions. The pandemic halted any live events, and most of the more significant events ceased their existence for a year. Some of them are continuing with the hiatus until further notice. However, if we look at the “usual business,” we see that even though the Czech festivals stem from the efforts of local fans and offer a space for some local fan interests (as I suggested in my opening statement), they still predominantly address international objects/subjects of such an interest. This tension between locality and globality among Czech fans illustrates how challenging this topic is in various contexts and how important it is to bring it up in our international scholarly conversations.

Hattie Liew:

Once again, thank you so much for the lovely conversation and sharing your knowledge and experiences with fan culture in Czechia. As I admittedly do not know much about Czechia’s culture and media industries, it has indeed been inspiring to gain some insights on the media scene and fandoms there. As we close this series, I am heartened to know that despite geographical, historical and cultural differences, Singapore and Czechia share similarities in their small, diverse, outward-oriented groups of fans. As with many places across the globe, the addition of the Korean pop culture fans into the mix has made things rather interesting. You mentioned Squid Game being the first Korean production to reach the top 10 in Czechia. I’m looking forward to hearing more in future about your observations and research on the fandoms that surround Squid Game and other k-pop/k-drama. 

 As someone who is from Asia, I have frequently observed the idea of “cultural proximity” being used to explain the success of Korean cultural exports and the quick rise of fandoms around them in Singapore. While the actual picture is more complex, cultural proximity no doubt contributes to the quick adoption of Korean pop culture, at least for some segments of the population. In a context like Czechia, where this cannot be used as an argument for the formation in kpop/kdrama fandoms such as that of Squid Games, future research from you and your counterparts would certainly be an interesting addition to the discussion on K-fandom! 

Global Fandom Jamboree Conversation (Round Four): Iveta Jansová and Hattie Liew (Part One)

Iveta Jansová:

After reading your opening statement, several exciting things that could be part of our following discussion caught my eye. Firstly, a small geographical comparison between our contexts seems appropriate. Even if I am from a state with over 10 million people, our country is very “monocultural” compared to Singapore. One national language with an overlap to the Slovaks with whom we shared one state from 1918 to 1993. The notion of “monoculturality” influences (not only) the entertainment industry but its audiences too. Similarly, the omnipresence of technology is higher in the Singapore context than it is in Czechia. 

 Certain similarities between our contexts can be found in the global/regional fandoms/fans division. Like in the Singaporean context, contemporary Czech fans create small, diverse groups oriented “out there.” Despite some “Czech” fandoms being based regionally, their interests belong to the international fandoms, as do their related fan practices. While we can see fan practices (inspired by foreign content) being experienced collectively (in larger-scale – cons – and a smaller-scale – group of friends), we can also observe individual experiences and practices that are entirely detached from the regional context and are focused only at the content and community “out there.” The example of K-Pop fandom can serve as an excellent ground for comparison of our contexts.

 Consequently, the indicated symbolical fragmentation of the fandom’s belonging can be challenging for possible scholarly conceptualizations and could be one of the core topics of our following discussion. In this regard, several other topics come to mind; the Czech context is specific by its tension between the contemporary culture and “historical culture,” very much influenced by the communist regime under which it was created and consumed by audiences. Is the historical context of Singapore’s culture and its perception by audiences also specific in any way?

 I would also like to know more about the fan’s microcelebrity praxis which is something that is, to my knowledge, somewhat foreign in the Czech context. Is there a way to describe how these fans who present themselves as microcelebrities perform their fan identity? I am interested in the believability of such a performance in the context of possible exploitation of the “fannish” identities and the fan gift economy system. 

Hattie Liew:

Thanks so much for your opening statement – it was a very interesting read as I admittedly do not know much about the media landscape and fan culture in the Czech Republic. Your sharing about the interviews you and your team conducted with industry representatives caught my eye, even though it wasn’t about fan culture per se. I found it interesting that the interviewees did not feel a pressing need to accommodate fans, in a time where “fan” is a mainstream consumer identity. Thus, I wondered how the Czech media practitioners define fans, how that differs with that of audiences who identify themselves as fans, and if they are indeed in the margins. I am also curious to know if this difference in definition/perception has ever resulted in any fan-producer conflicts.

 Moving on, I see the similarity between fans in the Czech Republic and Singapore, in the multiple belongings and general outward orientation of fan groups. I do agree that having boundaries can be problematic, especially around internationally famous objects of fandom, such as BTS, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, etc., which you have also mentioned. In my own research, this local/global distinction is even problematic with fans whose object of fandom are local. Having a small local population, exportation and the participation in the regional scene (I’m talking mainly about pop music) is a goal for many artistes. With several Singaporeans finding success regionally, such as in Malaysia and Taiwan, local fans actively connect with them over the internet and, in the pre-covid era, at in-person events. However, such patterns do pose a methodological question of how to approach studying fans, to what extent is it useful to describe a fan group as part of “Singaporean fandom”. Perhaps then, it would be productive to contextualize the studies in a fan network or in a multi-sited fandom, rather than in a geographical location. After all, what brings fans together is first and foremost their object of fandom rather than similarities based on their physical location. 

 One other thing I found interesting in your sharing was that domestic content rarely becomes a source of fan activity. I am wondering why it is the case. Is this because of a preference for imported content? The perception of domestic content? The small size of fan groups (i.e. no critical mass)? The nature (e.g. genres, positioning) of the content? Or does it stem from your earlier point where media representatives do not feel the need to engage fans? I would love to know more. I am asking this because in my own context, celebrities like local TV actors who are unknown outside Singapore, can command a relatively large domestic following and fans can be seen mobilizing themselves online and at events. In addition, the idea of “supporting local”, including cultural products, have gained traction in recent years and is a source of pride for some. Some reasons for this difference I can think of are different fan-producer relations, and locally cultural artefacts having similar tropes and genres as those produced elsewhere which may bring about familiarity or perception of trendiness. 

 Lastly, I am at present interested in the platformization of fandom as part of “the interpenetration of the digital infrastructures, economic processes, and governmental frameworks of platforms in different economic sectors and spheres of life” (Poell et al., 2019: 6).[1] You mentioned Czech fans favor globally accessible cultural artifacts and are globally oriented, and I assume digital technology plays a big part for this to be possible. It would be great if you could share a little bit on how Czech fandom is shaped by affordances of the platforms they engage with, how the government’s digital policies unwittingly shape fan practices, or any other related observations. 

Iveta Jansová:

Thank you for an inspiring set of questions following my opening statement. The interest in the proclaimed Czech entertainment media attitude towards fans is something that we share. However, it must be stressed out that we did not ask about fans specifically. What is also important to consider is the observed tendency for secrecy that underlined all the interviews. A year and a half later, we can already see that the need to capture younger and more convergent audiences in general was (and still is) present in the strategies as several new projects (new content and even services) emerged. At the same time, it is still true that the existing programming strategies continuously capture the majority of the audience. Therefore, the feeling of necessity to cater to fans did not have to be so pressing as one would imagine.

 Another thing to consider in this context is the notion of fan identity itself. The term fan and its meaning in fan studies do not necessarily correlate with various fan identity constructions from different sources (e.g., producers). To the point, the term fan is at times used to label all activities connected to media content. For example, giving like to a Facebook page means an automatic designation as a fan. Even if the term is used in the mainstream “media contexts,” it is not considered a mainstream consumer identity, as you labeled it, and consequently a common practice in the Czech media entertainment environment. Accordingly, to my knowledge, a fan-producer conflict stemming from a difference in definition/perception of fans has not occurred visibly. 

 Following your other questions, I must agree that the challenges brought about by multiple fandom belongings of individual fans suggest a more suitable framing could be found if we (at appropriate times) leave out the geographical location. As you indicated, an object or subject of fan interest is, after all, the one true home of a fandom. Same as it is the determinant of the particular set of fan practices connected to it. Even if we cannot see rich fan activity around movies and TV series in Czechia (my main interest), which could be indeed faulted to a mix of different reasons you named, music fans and fandoms represent a slightly different story.

Famous Czech actors mobilizing around election

 This can be further discussed regarding the next topic you opened – mobilization of audiences by local celebrities, which is generally not that common contrary to the Singaporean context. However, local (often music) celebrities are sometimes seen trying to mobilize fans - sway public opinion and use their popularity and possible fanbase for a particular cause (e.g., marches for democracy/against the president/prime minister, etc.). It then depends on the fanbase’s size, the celebrity’s popularity, and of course, the type of cause (e.g., locally quite controversial topic of equal marriages) if such mobilization celebrates a success. 

 An important determinant is also the age of audiences. For example, younger audiences have been seen publicly concentrating around local YouTube celebrities (e.g., during Utubering, the biggest self-labeled festival of generation Z in Czechia). Age and (nature of) content are thus crucial determinants in the Czech context. Various content and its “shape” (e.g., linear/non-linear TV) attracts different types of audiences with various media-related competencies and manifested practices. 

 I am moving on to your final point - the affordances of the platforms. I do not think that this theme poses for much unique information. Czech fans have access to “classical” fan sites (Fanfiction, Archiveofourown, YouTube, TikTok, Deviantart, Tumblr, etc.) without many visible restrictions. An interesting case could maybe represent piracy of movies, TV series, music, and so on. Piracy is one of the most common ways of obtaining media content when the desired content is unavailable. However, I would not connect this to particular fandoms as it seems to be more of individual practice based on specific tastes. 

Hattie Liew:

Thank you for your first response. I do find the “monoculturality” of Czechia quite an interesting context for the rise of fragmented, diverse and outward looking fandoms. One would assume that a relatively homogenous cultural backdrop would produce audiences (at least in the mainstream) with similar preferences and close-knit fan communities bonded by their strong cultural identity in addition to their love for certain texts or individuals. From my understanding, at least in some more “monocultural” parts of Asia, the mainstream pop culture is rather dominated by their domestic productions and celebrities. It was probably until the advent of the Korean-wave (and of course high-speed internet) that this dominance was challenged, bringing about more fragmented audiences and consequently more diverse fandoms in the younger population.       

Going back to your point on the symbolical fragmentation of fandom’s belonging. It is indeed a challenge for conceptualizing fandom. In the Czech context, contemporary fan cultures can be contextualized in its rich cultural and political history. I do think that it is a productive way of thinking about Czech fandom, as such a context is unique and irreplicable elsewhere. However, in Singapore I would say that very little of its history play a part in a fan’s identity, and fandom is experienced in an individualized way. What I mean by this is that fandoms are largely detatched from the local cultural/historical context and the appeal of the “product” or “idea” to the individual and engaging mix-and-match of fan practices seem to be more important. This still reflects some contextual elements to some extent, though the subtlety may make fans appear merely as more committed consumers. Examples of said contextual elements include: Singapore as a young country of 56 years old without the kind of strong shared collective memory that Czechia has, tradition playing a symbolic role (as opposed to actively practiced), and the general outward and future-looking orientation of the country. As such, while it is easy to observe other countries in Asia transpose their own traditional cultural practices to fan practices, such as “fan rice” in South Korea (giving sacks of rice on momentous occasions), such occurrences rarely happen in Singapore. 

Lastly, I would like to briefly touch upon the point on microcelebrity practice in fandom. There does not seem to be an actual term for this, but I do think that it is a reflection of how microcelebrity practice has become something unremarkable and something anybody can (and will?) engage in. At the basic level, such fans take care of how their profiles are presented through their usernames, display pic, hashtags and so on. More importantly, they frequently post as if they were speaking to other fans “out there”, regardless of how many followers they have. For example, I once came across a kpop fan who would post short video clips on twitter of herself “discovering” billboard advertisements, hoardings and other large outdoor advertisements of BTS band members. On Tiktok, one can find a myriad of ways fans replicate the formats and tropes of internet celebrity (and the most prominent practitioners of microcelebrity). Examples include having accounts dedicated to unboxing Blackpink and Lisa’s (one of blackpink’s members) physical records and merchandise.  

I think this intersection between fan practice and microcelebrity practice is an evolution from social media fan accounts or fan archives/websites that are typically thought of as “shrines” or gifts to the fandom. However, unlike these previous iterations, the visiblity of the individual fan rather than the object of fandom takes center stage. After all, it’s difficult to “discover” a billboard when nobody is there to perform the discovery, and impossible to film an unboxing without someone doing the unboxing. 

About your question on the believability of such a performance, I would say that because microcelebrity practice has become a way of life among users of platforms like Instagram and Tiktok and the tropes of such content are familiar, there is nothing “wrong” with doing so (“wrong” emcompassing a myriad of things like being selfserving, the deliberateness of it all, etc). This is something I’m still exploring, though it comes with some challenges (e.g. the networked nature of fans on platforms) that I think if we as a scholarly community can navigate, would produce some interesting insights on emerging fan practices.

[1] Nieborg DB and Poell T (2018) The platformization of cultural production: theorizing the contingent cultural commodity. New Media & Society 20(11): 4275–4292.

Global Fandom: Hattie Liew (Singapore)

Hello! I’m Hattie, and I’m a recent graduate from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where I completed by doctoral dissertation on anti-fandom in microcebrity culture (aka people who hate on internet celebrities). Fan Studies, internet cultures and popular music are my main areas of research. I come from Singapore, a city-state of 5.7 million located in South-East Asia. 

Two points should be considered – the fragmentation of popular media and the ubiquity of digital technology – to make sense of fandom in Singapore (in this post, I refer broadly to pop music fans). Firstly, the popular media market in Singapore has always been fragmented, even before the advent of the internet. Having four official languages (English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil) in a multicultural society meant that the media had to procure and/or produce diverse programming. Singapore is also an important market for regional pop culture exports, like Cantopop (Hong Kong), mandopop (Taiwan), j-pop (Japan), and more recently k-pop (South Korea). Today, this fragmentation is more pronounced, with streaming services highly accessible and affordable to the average Singaporean. This includes platforms familiar to the English-speaking audience such as Apple music and Spotify, as well as platforms like Viu and KKbox which focuses on Asian content. Secondly, even though it is not news that digital technologies, especially the internet, has transformed fan cultures worldwide, it is important to note the average Singaporean’s near ubiquitous use of such technologies. For example, mobile phones have a penetration rate of 149.9%1, with more than 93%2 of internet users also accessing the internet on their phones. Mobile apps for direct messaging and social media such as Whatsapp (98%)3 and Facebook (over 80%1) enjoy a high penetration rate among the general population. This indicates a critical mass of users and general user proficiency among the population, including among fans.

The context of media fragmentation and high reliance on digital technology, coupled with the city-state’s small population gives rise to fandoms that tend to be small and diverse. They often have a global/regional orientation, even for fans whose object of fandom is Singaporean, and the ability to cleverly use digital platforms to engage in fan practices. At least three observations, which revolve around connectedness and sociability, can be made about fans in Singapore. 

Firstly, fandom in Singapore is oriented to a larger fandom “out there”. Of course, when individuals identify themselves as a fan, they are connected with others around shared taste and consumption. However, the Singaporean fans, recognizing their small group size, actively seek to construct fan experiences consistent with those outside Singapore. A common way is to import fan practices to experience fandom as it is experienced by their overseas counterparts. K-pop fans are a perfect example of this. For instance, fans would engage in “cup sleeve events”, which originated in South Korea and are events to celebrate a milestone or an important date, such as a showbiz anniversary or a birthday. It is typically held at a café, where part of the premises is thematically decorated with official and fan made merch, and fans get a cup sleeve with their idol’s picture printed on it. In Singapore, k-pop fans have taken to organizing small scale cup sleeve events at Korean-owned cafes, spending a small amount of money (~USD$75) to organize them. Replicating fan practices from elsewhere is sometimes misunderstood by those outside the fandom as a lack of imagination or a lack of proficiency to organize large-scale events. Instead, these fans should be recognized for their resourcefulness and creativity in their attempts to create commonality in their experiences with others outside their locale. 

Secondly, the images of enthusiastic fans typically seen in mainstream media seems to be absent in Singapore, and the country’s fans (and audience in general) have been labelled as lukewarm or dispassionate. However, it can be said that many fans like privacy rather than visibility. My own research with online fan group chats on Whatsapp showed a preference for small, closed fan groups over large public ones such as those on Facebook or on forums. While fans do participate in physical events and engage in social media activity, such as following official accounts, running fan accounts and posting on their own feeds, it is common to keep fan activity away from the eyes of the public. Understandably, fans enjoy virtual co-presence, exclusivity, close relationships or authenticity that closed chat groups offer. At the same time, these groups are also a way to manage fandom’s place in the individuals’ life in a pragmatic society that often sees fandom as something childish and to be frowned upon. Fans then opt for closed chat groups because their participation in fandom is invisible to those around them, for using messaging apps on the phone is an extremely unremarkable behavior. However, this does not mean that the fan experience is watered down. Despite the groups being small and closed, fans are able to engage in complex cultural and social practices. These include gaining status within the fan ecology and archive building, which are fan practices also found in different contexts.

Thirdly, there exists a blurring of the line between fan practices and the fan’s microcelebrity practice. By microcelebrity, I refer to Marwick’s 4 definition of it being “a practice whereby people present themselves as public personas, create affective ties with audience members, and view followers as fans”, regardless of whether there actually are people watching. A fan’s microcelebrity practice differs from previous forms of fan accounts on social media, which are more akin to fan websites or fan zines that focus on the object of fandom rather than the author of the site/zine. What I am referring to is the fan’s performance of being a fan on social media, often with the intention of gaining more followers. This is rather visible on tiktok as the platform’s affordances and norms are conducive to music fans’ microcelebrity practice. This includes fans doing dance covers, duets, edits, tiktok challenges and regular social media posts (e.g. video selfies) overlaid with music. In this case, the labour of the fan in creating these cultural artefacts can be considered both a gift to the fandom and/or for their selfish needs. While it may be true that the blurred distinction between fan practice and microcelebrity practice is reflective of a general emphasis on self-presentation and individuality across societies, fans in Singapore present the opportunity to observe such practices because of the high adoption rate of social media platforms which support music and short-form video and the general digital proficiency of individuals to create content (e.g. Instagram and tiktok with >65% and >27% of those aged 16-64 using these platforms respectively1).

In closing, I would say that mainstream fan culture in Singapore largely mirrors the general character of the city, for example in its global/regional orientation, and that fan practices are currently shaped greatly by the affordances of digital platforms dominantly used by its general population. 

 Hattie Liew is a recent graduate from the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, SAR), where she completed her PhD dissertation on anti-fandom in microcelebrity culture. She previously graduated from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) where she completed her undergraduate and master’s degrees, and is currently working as a research staff there. Her research interests include fan studies, microcelebrity culture, internet cultures, and popular music. 

1 https://wearesocial.com/sg/digital-2021-singapore

2 https://www.imda.gov.sg/infocomm-media-landscape/research-and-statistics/telecommunications/statistics-on-telecom-services/statistics-on-telecom-services-for-2021-jan

3 https://blackbox.com.sg/everyone/2021/03/15/communications-whatsapp-not-much?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=communications-whatsapp-not-much

4 Marwick, A. (2007). Microcelebrity, Self‐Branding, and the Internet. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 1-3

Global Fandom: Iveta Jansová (Czechia)

Firstly, a few introductory words about me. I obtained my Ph.D. in Media and cultural studies at Palacký University in Olomouc. I am currently an assistant professor at the Department of Media Studies and Journalism, Masaryk University in Brno. My main research areas are audience and fan studies. I am part of a research team that studies Czech audiences; we are interested in the changes in media practices brought about by digitalization and globalization. We are also looking at how the Czech media industry (as a small peripheral market in Central Europe) adapts to such changes (e.g., the emergence of on-demand services, etc.) and how audiences navigate their everyday practices in this context. Regarding the study of fans, I am mainly interested in transformative fandoms connected to femslash fans or "lesbian fandoms" in general. So far, I have been reflecting on the foreign context because the representation of LGBTQ+ characters in speculative media is scarce and problematic in the Czech Republic. Finally, my last research area is dedicated to the representation of gender in the crime genre. 

Studying fans, it needs to be said, is still a significantly underrepresented topic in Czech academia. This cautiousness reflects a more general "suspiciousness" towards the study of popular culture and cultural studies in general. This ultimately led me to a decision to create a basic introductory course into fan studies during my Ph.D. studies and which I took with me after relocating to Masaryk University. To this day, it is the only course explicitly dealing with fans and fan studies in Czechia.[1] Some progress regarding the study of fans in the region has been recently made thanks to several grant projects[2] focused on contemporary audiences. That allowed closer attention to the changing practices of audiences, including fans. Similarly, different graduate and Ph.D. theses  that have emerged over the years[3] play an essential role in broadening the knowledge about (not only Czech) fans and fandoms.

Thanks to one of the previously mentioned grants, our team recently studied both audiences and representatives of Czech entertainment media. This offers me an opportunity to include a brief snippet addressing the potential perception of fans from the perspective of the Czech entertainment media industry. In the interviews with industry representatives,[4] one of our interest areas was convergent practices, niche audiences, and, more implicitly, fans. When asked about these topics, most interviewees believed they are still marginal in the region, so they needn't accommodate such audiences. Even though more substantial changes in the industry have happened in the last five years and are observable mainly in the online sphere,[5] such a stance seems to be shortsighted. It might also result from secrecy during the interviews stemming from a fear of revealing something they considered a company secret and potential advantage over other providers. 

Now I would like to pay attention to the more general observations about the fans and fandoms in my country. One of the historically significant fan identity testaments (due to the life behind the Iron Curtain) was undoubtedly (fan)zines created around various interests such as music, sci-fi, comics, or computer games. Because of the communist regime lasting in the area until 1989, this DIY creativity had an underground and sometimes contra cultural essence. This is extensively researched and narrated in Miloš Hroch’s 2017 book, I Shout, 'That's Me!": Stories of the Czech Fanzine From the 80s Till Now. As he pointed out, such practices are not extinct just because we are past 1989: zines are still created by some fans today.

Consistent with the areas of interest, mainly music, sci-fi, and fantasy, often associated with fanzine culture, fans can be quite visible in Czechia. One of the most established popular culture conventions is Festival Fantazie, held annually in the town Chotěboř. It started in 1996 and slowly grew to its current state, hosting around 12 thousand fans of TV series, movies, and games yearly. A brief overview of the programs of Czech-organized conventions (Festival Fantazie, PragoFest, Co.con, ComicCon Prague, etc.)[6] already highlights the common areas of interest that are in significant part happening around international favorites such as Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, and so on. This means that even if the cons are happening in a specific country and place (e.g., small town Chotěboř with around 9000 residents[7]), they still touch on various sources of fan interest originating from all over the world. The fan practices/interests connected to Czech conventions can thus be more or less locally (e.g., domestic desk/computer games, medieval martial art, comics, etc.) or globally (e.g., cosplay) specific. 

The opportunity for multiple belongings (within the context of local/global fandoms) is exemplarily utilized in the Czechoslovakian (Czechs and Slovaks operate together here) fandom of the K-Pop band BTS. Even though fans from both Czech Republic and Slovakia created domestic platforms (e.g., Facebook group) to share relevant content, they mainly operate in English (some in Korean). They are part of the global BTS fandom. When asked in interviews[8], they did not feel like being part of a "Czech fandom," but simply one – international – fandom of BTS. This raises the question of whether it is possible to set a clear boundary around some local and international fandoms. It seems that the lines are becoming quite blurry in many cases.

This is true especially in our country, where there is an apparent difference in culture under communism and contemporary culture. Due to the cultural artifacts from socialist production being filled with propaganda, the current audiences (and population in general) seem to be demonstratively apolitical. We can find similar manifestation in the study of popular culture, where a large part of "academic attention" is aimed at the past. One example is research into the popularity of "nostalgia viewing" of the content made before 1989 that is being re-run to this day and still attracts a respectable number of viewers.[9] Another example poses a group of researchers around the Center for the Study of Popular Culture .[10] Even if they are ultimately eclectic in their areas of interest, they still often open themes surrounding fandoms and subcultures from the past (through public lectures or topical conferences). 

Contemporary Czech fandoms gather around globally accessible cultural artifacts. At the same time, present domestic content rarely becomes a source of fan activities or cult attention. Even though we see fans reaching out to creators to thank them, ask them questions, or "grill" them about their favorite shows or movies, we are not seeing large followings, rich fan creativity, SOS (or otherwise activist) campaigns, or Twitter exchanges[11] between fans and producers. It is not common to see politically charged activism or enlightening practices connected to popular culture (such as in the case of the Harry Potter Alliance, etc.). 

Being a post-socialist country brings about a burden/legacy of the past influencing production decisions and audience relations within the Czech media industries. This poses a challenge for academic research not only in the areas of popular culture and fan studies. Moreover, when the contemporary culture and audiences are so fragmentized and the cleavage between the past and present increases to the point that, with a possible exception of Czech musicians and bands, it is hard to make out a current "Czech fandom" of anything.

Mgr. Iveta Jansová, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Masaryk University | Faculty of Social Studies
Department of Media Studies and Journalism
Brno, Czech Republic

[1] The course also continues at my previous department and is led by my former student.

[2] These projects are part of ongoing mapping of the Czech entertainment media industry and its audiences by (at times more or less closely) cooperating teams of researchers from Masaryk University, Charles University, and Palacký University. 

[3] The existing works that I was able to encounter are covering a wide range of topics such as music fandoms (e.g., a local K-Pop fandom, a comparison of different national music fandoms, etc.), transmedia narratives and world-building in TV series, quantitative mapping of Czech Harry Potter fandom, slash fiction in Czech Harry Potter fandom, real person slash in figure-skating, femslash in American TV series, queerbaiting and so on.

[4] Our interviews were carried at the turn of the years 2019/2020 and were conducted with producers, analytics, marketing managers, etc., from all the significant content suppliers in Czechia. 

[5] Czech Republic is sort of a latecomer in this regard. For example, Netflix became accessible in 2016 (and went through significant localization only in 2019), HBO GO was accessible to the broader public in 2017.

[6] I am not including those dedicated to a specific title such as WHOCON etc.

[7] A little side note is appropriate here: localized activities can have a substantial financial impact on the region. Taking the example of Chotěboř and other smaller towns - hosting annual cons can mean significant economic benefits for the cities. 

[8] A study conducted by one of my graduate students.

[9] Irena Reifová from Charles University has detailly researched this topic.

[10] This Center is not a place or a building, it is a civic association. It was established in 2009 by several postgraduate students from different departments of the Faculty of Arts by Charles University in Prague. The researchers around the Center try to popularize knowledge about popular culture and related topics. Their activities are described in detail on their website http://en.cspk.eu/.

[11] Twitter has only around 400 thousand users in the Czech Republic. In comparison, Facebook has over 5 million and Instagram 2 million.…

 [

The Joy Kill Club: On Squid Game (2021), a Roundtable-Monologue by a Korean Female Aca-Fan (Part Two)

G: Yes, these are misfortunate. With full respect to these points, I'd like to take us back a few steps and encourage us to now focus on the big picture. The show, although unfortunately with some limitations possibly due to it being created as a popular show with production limits, has successfully shown how the inequalities/inequities you described are part of a layered ecology of capitalism. The patriarchal gender dynamics showed who still benefits more under the capitalistic structure. Then, Ali told a story of discrimination towards non-Korean and/or non-fair-skinned people in Korea. It was also one that helped position the show's criticism in the context of global dynamics beyond "it's just the West that's bad.” What Ali experienced in the society and how he tended to be treated in the game paralleled how the VIP White Men (and a Chinese speaker) were exploiting Korean people's suffering, dissociating themselves from those on the screen. It isn't a simple linear story of victimhood but one that reflects on discriminative acts that each of us may partake in while suffering from the same discriminative structures ourselves. It arguably also does not apply a fixed morality to all characters. In episode 2, Ali escaped the factory by accidentally putting his boss's hand in the machine. Sae-byeok escapes the North Korea broker by throwing a hot drink in his face. Violence, an active means for ignorance and entertainment to the exploitative class, at times may have been a passive or unavoidable choice for the underprivileged. What’s more, the show actually cast people from marginalized groups, as well as provides them with names, lines, and original stories.

The beauty of rich texts is that scenes can be interpreted in various ways. For instance, while the fact that all of the masked game staffs were depicted as able-bodied adult men (voice, body, as well as in off-mask scenes) on one hand is a self-contradictory detail that equates anonymity with a "normal" body of a man, it can also be approached to symbolize "masculine" violence and the deindividuating effect compliance has upon those who subordinate themselves to the ruling classes. In episode 5, a staff member takes off his mask and says "Look, I'm also a person, just like you." Another example: while nostalgia is one of the themes that penetrates the show, the reveal that Il-nam's (the old man) nostalgia was deeply involved in making the games urges us to ask the question “whose nostalgia?” (c.f., Ok boomer, latteneun) Although with the show's global fame it seems that the gendered and/or generational elements have been effectively summed up as Korean.

To add to the earlier global commentary, I think the most fascinating critique comes from how this show became a global hit when the VIPs were depicted as greedy, lustful, exploitative, and depersonalizing observers of the sufferings. That's what we, global audiences, ihave been doing while watching the show. While most of us likely did not bet money nor rest on a "boob pillow", we were betting our immersion, character investment, and values and belief while following the games and cheering for our champions. With our monthly Netflix membership, we sponsored Squid Game. Another connection we can make is that in episode 5, the first Squid Game is shown to have started in 1999. It could possibly be a stretch, but this is slightly after Korea's financial crisis in 1997 for which Korea sought help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The history of Squid Game suggests that Korea’s. Systems of exploitation are not confined to a single nation’s history, but one that stretches over continents and eras.

K: Still I wonder. Should we overlook the details and some shortcomings on behalf of the big picture? I worry that this itself repeats the history of marginalization, one that ranks priorities. Also, I would like to bring attention to how Ali was portrayed as a "good" character. He was a good person. Everything he did was good. Ali was a "deserving" outsider. Similarly, Sae-byeok was a "deserving" outsider. Il-nam (until the final reveal at the hospital) was a "deserving" outsider. Mi-nyeo, despite whatever backstory she may have had outside of the narrative, was an "undeserving" outsider. Duk-su, although with sufficient backstory to prevent moral conflicts, was also "undeserving.” We also learn to distinguish the deservingness between the two childhood friends from Ssangmundong as the story unfolds, despite us not being completely privy to Seoul National University Sang-woo's backstory and motivations.

I am happy that the previously under-represented groups are appearing on screen. But we must not lose ourselves in the celebration, ignoring the yet still unmet milestones. Selective celebration is different from selective ignorance. Lastly, details add up to the big picture. Mi-nyeo (the "whore") could have been a more dynamic character if she were positioned with a different array of protagonists and/or in the social context of a more equitable Korean society, not in a narrative and a societal culture centered around the "well-intentioned but naive middle-aged Korean Male protagonist(s).” I’m not saying that she needed to have good intentions or noble justifications for her actions. I would have not been such a killjoy if the director instead responded to the feminist criticisms by saying "I am loving the comments from diverse lived experiences, and how my effort in including such lives has opened up floors for such conversations. I am inspired. Season 2 will be better.”

Regarding your global commentary, I think the VIP fourth wall reflection is a great way for Koreans to think about the dominance Korean popular culture is gaining, especially in countries where they cannot produce their own shows/film/music as easily as Koreans have increasingly been able to due to infrastructural lack. We need to start applying the same criticisms that we have been applying to Western content. "K-wave" doesn't equate global equity, but a rise of a single cultural power. It's fun to hear that global folks can sing along with Kpop and have been poking at their own dalgona, but we need to ask ourselves what we know about and how much we care about the wellbeing of people in countries that do not have as globally powerful a cultural say.

This perspective also lets us see past the “it’s all White Men” VIP depiction. Is this the only dominant group if we scale up globally? I’m not saying that we needed proportional representation among the VIPs in the show, which would be extremely counter-productive as global capitalism has privileged White Men. Instead, what I am suggesting is for us to revisit the director's response about how the VIP scene had women-animal-furniture because this was a way to highlight exploitative greed. Who are we imagining as capable of exerting greed, or posses the power for it?  On one hand, this representation  provides an easy escape from accountability, and on the other hand. an nihilistic route for reproducing existing patterns. For instance, the reveal of White foreign VIPs as who is at the top of the pyramid can dissipate the accountability that should be directed towards the dominant groups within Korea. The VIPs shared race and regional affinity, but they also shared gender* and class.

*The show never explicitly defines all VIPs' identities. However, from how the only sexual fluidity the show depicted was that of a predatory character (i.e., a VIP who sexually harassed the cop), I am superficially assuming that the VIPs were all men following the show’s visual, aural, and narrative portrayals.

G: At the end of the day, however, I am still happy to see the world uniting over a show that is not based in the West, made by locals with an ample amount of local contexts. Perhaps this is the first step that will ease the world towards more diverse content and contexts, regarding the flow of money as well. I just hope that it won't be exploitative, in a way that the locals are perceived as resources for outsourcing "fresh" cultural materials or knowledge to create spectacles for distanced VIP audiences and creators.

K: The ironic thing is that this outsourcing already exists in the show on a domestic level. The local dialects in the show are all awful, which would not have been noticeable to international viewers or even Korean viewers who were born in Seoul. Gi-hun's mom speaks in a weird Southern dialect, which is surprising considering the actor's fame and status in Korea. Why did she have to speak in a local dialect? This is an existing trope in many Korean shows/films to further emphasize the marginalized position of a character or their non-coolness, or simply to "give character.” If it were necessary that Gi-hun’s mom spoke in a dialect, why didn’t the show hire someone who can do so? As someone from a southern region in Korea, I can't help but lament the reproduction of Seoul-centric gaze in the media.

I’ve seen comments that said that Sae-byeok’s North Korean dialect is off as well. My limited knowledge restricts what I can say about the quality of her representation. Instead, what I’d like to say is that the increase of North Korean refugee YouTubers is adding an important nuance to the traditional Korean media industry’s depiction of North Korean (refugee) lives. There is an intriguing popular criticism on the show that left me even more ambivalent about the limits and potentials of the show’s North Korean refugee representation. Some folks have problematized how Duk-su (thug) compared Sae-byeok's desire to achieve freedom from him with the female activist Yu Gwan-sun’s contribution to Korea’s independence movement during Japanese imperialism: "Are you Yu Gwan-sun? If so, you should wave the Korean flag. Oh, since you are a North Korean you should wave the North Korean flag." These folks suggested that this comment was a careless comparison that diminished Yu Gwan-sun’s historical significance and peaceful activism, perhaps more ignorant as this was before there were two Koreas. Of course, this is in line with Duk-su’s establishment as a vile antagonist. But this brings us back to how other criticisms about the show were met with the comment that they were ways to emphasize the theme of the show.

To what extent were the marginalized groups in the show the message or tools for the message? The show’s rather nihilistic closure leaves many provocations unanswered. Perhaps to leave space for Season 2, which nudges at the now global Squid Game of media production cycles. I hope that in the future seasons of transnational media, this year’s winner Squid Game’s return to the game will be to more actively dismantle inequities. I hope that in this future, marginalized players will truly stand a chance, including on production and investment levels. This is why I believe we should selectively celebrate Squid Game especially at the face of its global success. Selective celebration fully recognizes progress, however not without appropriate degrees of criticism. Discriminatory patterns that marginalized groups face are not what can be muted, bypassed, or postponed in favor of “bigger things.” Let’s not wait. Let’s be happy about Squid Game. But let’s also be happy about the critical discussions it can spark, and the changes such conversations can bring.

G: The more reason why we should discuss the series. We can all be both generous and critical. The generosity I can find and the joys I kill probably are different from what another person can provide. What's certain  is that we should listen to both perspectives and not kill the killjoys.

Do Own (Donna) Kim is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and a Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies fellowship alum. Donna studies digital cultures and mediated social interactions. Her research interests are at the intersections of cultural studies, technology studies, and computer-mediated communication/human-machine communication. She focuses on practices, boundary-crossings, and Others in human-technology assemblages. She enjoys mixed methodological and interdisciplinary collaborations. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as New Media & Society, International Journal of Communication, and Mass Communication and Society. She is currently affiliated with the research groups Civic Paths, MASTS (Media as Sociotechnical Systems), and ThatGameGroup.

Prior to joining Annenberg, Donna received her B.A. degrees in Media & Communication and English Language & Literature from Korea University in 2015. She studied at Nagoya University for a year as an exchange student in 2013-14. Donna has lived in five different countries including South Korea, China, Canada, US, and Japan. Her cross-cultural experiences and her advertisement/PR internship at Cheil Worldwide inspired her to pursue her interest in digital communication.

Website: https://www.doowndonnakim.com/

Twitter: @DoownDonnaKim

The Joy Kill Club: On Squid Game (2021), a Roundtable-Monologue by a Korean Female Aca-Fan (Part One)

This week, we take a break from the Global Fandom Jamboree to catch up on Squid Game, which became the top rated streaming program in more than 60 countries around the planet, and has inspired rich discussions where-ever it has been viewed. Do Own Kim, one of my PhD students, shared her mixed feelings about the series and its success with me, and I asked if I might, in turn, share these Korean reflections on the series with my readers.

The Joy Kill Club: On Squid Game (2021), a Roundtable-Monologue by a Korean Female Aca-fan

By Do Own (Donna) Kim

Netflix’s Squid Game (Hwang, 2021) became a global hit. I am a Korean woman, a media fan, and a communication PhD Candidate at the University of Southern California, USA. As an aca-fan, it is both extremely joyous and painful when a media text enthralls my mind. Like a summer crush, I must swoon, ache, and share before the heat passes. So here is my confession, originally confided to Prof. Henry Jenkins via email. Many spoilers.--------------------

I think Squid Game was a rich text and a generous reader in me can write a long eulogy on it as a critical spectacle on the disparities in, and caused by, the paradoxical promise of equity within capitalism. Then, a killjoy reader in me would respond by pointing out that it indeed was a spectacle, and perhaps one at the expense of those who the show claimed to advocate for, and one that nihilistically pointed at our helplessness towards it. At the same time, the generous reader can pounce back at that criticism by arguing that the show reaches its critical potency when we include the fourth screen: by equating the audience as the VIPs in the show. We too were observers of the violence who bet on and rooted for our champion(s), possibly with our own glass of evening drink. This disruptive reflection implies that it is the viewers who ultimately can uproot this game. After all, in a capitalistic society, isn't it all on the demand and supply graph? To this, the killjoy reader would respond with a piece of "real life" that contradicts this critical potential: how the director simply deflected the feminist "controversy" by claiming that he "had no intention of demeaning, hating women" but just wanted to emphasize what humans would do in dire situations and at the apex of indulgence. In the Korean society, feminist readings are still considered as uncomfortable oddities or indeed “killjoys”. Just like the marginalized Squid Game participants, such a reading becomes disqualified by the game maker: the director.

Here is the full conversation. This is a conversation between my two selves: a generous reader and a killjoy reader. This is a methodological exercise, as well as an honest reflection of the busy excitement that overtook my mind.

 Generous Reader: G

Killjoy Reader: K

 G: It was a fun show. It also seemed to have tried their best to represent as many minorities as they can, such as labor union (the main character's backstory about working at Double Dragon Motors is highly reminiscent of the Ssangyong Motors labor strike), women, youth, the elderly, people with disabilities, international folks, non-East Asian people of color, North Korean refugees, etc. At least in comparison to what’s typical in Korean media. It has its faults but has given some, and mostly positive, narratives to these characters. Unlike much Korean media, Squid Games gives them names and voices. And the series suggest not only how the Korean society's capitalistic system has been affecting these people’s lives but also offering no escape from the reproduction of the same patterns.Squid Game offers  only an empty promise of "equality" (not equity) for the disadvantaged.

K: But how did the show use these marginalized groups towards its narrative? As a Korean critic suggested (Text in Korean. Google Translate seems ok), if we were to pick one group that the show championed, ultimately this show was an ode to Korean middle-aged Men, a redemption arc for the "innocent/naive" [soonjin] patriarchs. What the show fails to delve into is how Gi-hun, the soonjin father, was born into the role of the protagonist, both narratively and socially. It overlooks who have been sacrificed either to make Gi-hun’s journey more arduous as a protagonist’s quest should be or to further legitimize the protagonist's status as the hero. Let's first talk about gender. The presence of Sae-byeok (the North Korean refugee character) and ironically Mi-nyeo (“the whore") would improve the results, but a simple Bechdel test would make the narrative build even more evident. What led to Gi-hun’s downfall, i.e., conglomerate greed and labor in Korea, is an issue that direly needs more attention, but what was coupled with it and ultimately excused? The non-demanding, selfless love and sacrifice of old mothers. The seemingly "heartless" ex-wife and her "better" new husband, the "rich dad" (let's not delve into how he showed up to his ex's house and shouted at her, as well as how he reacted to the new “richer” husband’s plea to leave his family at peace). The daughter that repeatedly gets overlooked and deprioritized from the very beginning of the story to the very end, which includes the daughter's own beginning—her birth. Or simply erased, until when the protagonist's well-meaning nature or inner conflicts need to be reminded. The death of the story's strongest female character, who awakened the hero just in time for his noble, bloody “fight" with the hero’s negative parallel, Sang-woo (the smartie). Of course she does so only after she had delegated her purpose to the hero. At the end of Season 1, Gi-hun chooses to re-join the Squid Game to "break the chain" instead of going to LA to visit his daughter: the hero's ultimate sacrifice. But at the expense of whom? Traditionally in Korea, it was socially acceptable to say that "men should do big things (dream big; do important, non-domestic things).” Gi-hun has always chased big things. He is still the hero.

G: Wouldn't that make the protagonist an imperfect hero instead? One that further emphasizes the cruelty of Squid Games that we are all playing. All are suffering, and the fact that you are finding the protagonist's action paradoxical perhaps itself evinces the critical resources the narrative provides for the audience. Behind what may seem like a glamorization, there are such criticisms towards those who may blindly relate to the protagonist, though not without empathy. The only way to stop playing Squid Game is to not participate or to vote together against it. But we are already in it, so perhaps the most agentic choice that we can make is to play it with the goal of dismantling it. This requires sacrifice in which we should think about the collective over the individual. Although it is unfortunate that the domestic life and women’s struggles was chosen as what could be relegated to the “personal,” Gi-hun’s arc can still empower those who may have felt powerless against capitalist oppressors. The oppressors which constantly discourage and threaten people from coming together, indeed at times holding people's private life, domestic peace, and individual purposes as captives.

An example that shows how Gi-hun "earned" his redemption is the contrast between the way the show depicted Gi-hun and Deok-su's (the thug) gambling. Deok-su’s gambling habits were exploitative and purely out of greed. And this exploitative greed continued in how he played Squid Game (e.g., during the marble game). On the other hand, Gi-hun had no other means but to turn towards gambling after his union lost their fight against the big company—whether it be race horses, the claw machine, the flip challenge, or how he gambled by siding with the marginalized during Squid Game out of good faith, etc. He meant well; yes, there was human weakness but also the genuine desire to treat his mother and daughter better. What options do the disadvantaged have? He never returned to the race tracks after winning the game. Gi-hun in episode 3 says "I'm sorry but I'm not in the position to help anyone" when the cop (Jun-ho) asks for Gi-hun’s help in finding his brother. Later he turns into a person who tries to help everyone despite his position. We should also not forget this cop's heroism, although in his case it was partially personally motivated. While to a degree he had to overlook injustices during his undercover at Squid Game, he risked everything to both learn more about his brother's disappearance and to help the world know about Squid Game.

K:  But did those who had to suffer from Gi-hun's gambling also resort to gambling? His mother, for instance, labored on without a shop while being sick. The moms fed their respective sons, Gi-hun and Sang-woo, with honest work.

 While staying on the topic of gender, how was Squid Game? It, perhaps as a self-mockery, continued to police people based on the facade of equality. The game switched off the lights during the glass bridge stage when the glassmaker, after decades of blue-collar work, was able to use his expertise and experience towards winning. The types of games themselves were gender-biased. In episode 3, characters talk about the nostalgia in the game structure, trying to guess what may come next. This nostalgia is one that is based on the middle-aged Korean Men's (or director’s) childhood where their "moms used to cook dinner,” and the "wives [were] very busy preparing boxed lunches every morning.” Gendered domestic labor is romanticized. In fact, Gi-hun earlier also casually says to Il-nam (the old man or Gganbu) that Il-nam should rather be at home being served warm dinner by his son's wife. Il-nam quips back by asking Gi-hun whether he has done that for his parents, which is a conversation that further adds to Gi-hun's narrative incompetence as a Son and a Father. It is a  gibe at Gi-hun’s position which comes at the expense of the hypothetical wife. Gi-hun also explicitly says that Squid Game is reminiscent of the games that they used to play during childhood. Nostalgia is first mentioned without distinguishing genders, then is followed by a clarification that boys used to play the flip game (Squid Game invitation game) and various tag games (I'd like to note that some of these “male" games were indeed played by girls as well). Then he says that girls tended to play some other games, such as rubber rope game [gomujool]. The show later mentions that female characters may be useful for team strategies because of their gendered knowledge about girls’ games, but none of the games that are designated as for girls appear on Squid Game. Ultimately, the games, including the final game—i.e., squid game, tended to be boys’ games that privileged gendered childhood knowledge and physical strength. That is, for instance even if Sae-byeok survived until the end, would she have been able to win? Would she have known the game as a woman, as a North Korean refugee, a younger person? The squid game was depicted as "the most violent game among children's games.” Even if she knew the game, would she have been able to win against the physical strength that the two men so viscerally flaunt during the last game? She was depicted as resourceful and strong, but with the aid of her pocket knife, a tool.

 Speaking of tools, Mi-nyeo ("the whore") brought her leisurely pleasures of small transactional value (cigarettes) and unexpected use (lighter) by hiding them in her "womanly pocket,” the only character shown to use their “bodily pocket(s).” This scene highlighted her unsavory tendencies and short-sighted greed, rather than simply her resourcefulness and cunning. She uses her sexualized body as a tool from this moment on. She shouts "sexual harassment" to one of the masked game staffs to help Sae-byeok’s ceiling adventure, of course not necessarily for pure goodness like Gi-hun. Sex crime is a serious issue in Korea ([a] [b] [c] c.f., Global Gender Gap Report)  and unfortunately, many men still claim that they are at the risk of false accusation and exploitative "flower snakes" (gold diggers) who intentionally use their sex to exploit men. Mi-nyeo constantly emphasizes that she is not old, casually repeating the word Oppa (the word for older brother for woman. Also colloquially used by women to call men who are older than themselves, although at times with misogynistic connotations that are linked with lower positioning of women, subservience, and appeal to cuteness), always trying to side with the strong (eligible men), only screaming for female solidarity when she got cornered. 

 She hastily exchanges sex for her protection, which the director described as a scene to show what people could do in extreme circumstances. But was it the only option? Was she, a woman, the only person who was in an extreme situation? It's difficult to retort if the show claims that this was to show her unique short-sightedness, but as a woman, I couldn’t stop thinking that her action seemed like an extremely endangering option or not even a realistic option, especially in a place where even the dead bodies of a woman can get group-raped (suggested via masked organ harvesters' conversations). The print on the lighter she uses suggests that she might have been a sex worker (“Pretty women rest stop [mi-nyeo hyugesil]”); this additionally adds to the narrative trope. Mi-nyeo, as someone who sells her body, is a degenerate whore, a scoundrel, a villain. Unlike Gi-hun’s arc, her redemption is based on personal revenge, not goodness in favor of the collective. Is this the only possible route for "the whores"? 

 What is more concerning is its resemblance to a Korean historical figure Non-gae, who during the 1500s war killed a Japanese general by seducing him and then commited suicide by jumping from a cliff with her hands clenched to his body. I think it is an unfair stretch to say that this was what the director drew on, and I don’t believe so. It is not the intention nor the potentially defamatory parallel that disturb me. It's with how incapacitating it feels as a (Korean) woman to see yet another narrative where sex and self-sacrifice are depicted as important tools that a woman can, and potentially only a woman can contribute to one's personal gain and/or the greater good.

 Was Mi-nyeo a dynamic character or a generic one that was used as an object to advance the narrative, (as the director claimed) to emphasize the direness of the situation or human nature? I personally believe there were too many unnecessary inserts that used gendered violence and tropes to emphasize the theme of the show. During the marble game, did we need to hear the “witty” wordplay between Deok-su and his follower thug about who knows better about how to shove something into a hole? We already knew their characters at this point. Did we need to know that the masked organ harvesters raped a "dead" female participant(s)? Violence was already well-established. If this was a way to propel the cop arc, was it the only way to tell us that the "zombie" was not the cop’s brother? Did we need constant inserts of the women-animal-furniture during the VIP scene? A generous way to put this would be to say that it was a visually-interested homage to Clockwork Orange (1971), one which oxymoronically co-existed with Squid Game’s noble protagonist. 

What role did Ji-yeong (the domestic sexual abuse survivor or "the other young woman") serve? The potential in the camaraderie between women or more broadly marginalized people, the potential of non-violent options, the potential of learning about people’s lives, where did these “feminine” alternatives ultimately lead to? Both of the women's deaths. These alternatives weren't enough, and someone had to die. Moreover, her sudden introduction to the narrative and the lack of a fully fleshed-out backstory that focuses only on her added to the impression that she was a supplemental character for Sae-byeok’s story or a character to fulfill a representative space for sexual and domestic victimhood (perhaps as a "saint/Madonna/child" because she, unlike Mi-nyeo, turned out to be a pure victim despite her initial negative mannerisms). And perhaps also, or ultimately, the two faces of religions—more specifically Christianity. I'm not religious myself and there definitely are religion-related societal problems in Korea, but I didn't personally love this one-dimensional portrayal of faith; insufficiently contextualized atheistic ridicule can also be discriminative. Another reason I question Ji-young’s narrative purpose regarding religions is because there is a narrative closure to the criticism on Christianity when Gi-hun wakes up to a caricature of a person shouting "Believe in Jesus! Hell to Non-Believers!" after winning the game. 

While watching Squid Game, I thought of some of the survival or society-building genre media that I have read in the past. Many of them, such as Suicide Island, contain sharp social commentaries but often not without relying on some of these “convenient” narrative conventions, particularly regarding women (c.f., in episode 2, people who start pleading for the game to be stopped are mostly women, with one woman saying “I have a child”). I long for the day that I can be immersed in a survival genre pop fiction world without being attacked by violent as-ifs that hides behind the phrase “human nature.”  

Do Own (Donna) Kim is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and a Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies fellowship alum. Donna studies digital cultures and mediated social interactions. Her research interests are at the intersections of cultural studies, technology studies, and computer-mediated communication/human-machine communication. She focuses on practices, boundary-crossings, and Others in human-technology assemblages. She enjoys mixed methodological and interdisciplinary collaborations. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as New Media & Society, International Journal of Communication, and Mass Communication and Society. She is currently affiliated with the research groups Civic Paths, MASTS (Media as Sociotechnical Systems), and ThatGameGroup.

 Prior to joining Annenberg, Donna received her B.A. degrees in Media & Communication and English Language & Literature from Korea University in 2015. She studied at Nagoya University for a year as an exchange student in 2013-14. Donna has lived in five different countries including South Korea, China, Canada, US, and Japan. Her cross-cultural experiences and her advertisement/PR internship at Cheil Worldwide inspired her to pursue her interest in digital communication.

Website: https://www.doowndonnakim.com/

Twitter: @DoownDonnaKim

Global Fandom Conversations (Round Three, Part Two): Hye Jin Lee and Thi Ngoc Bich (Becky) Pham

BP: Now, back to our conversation. Thank you for your wonderful assessment above on the continuing values that nation-based analyses of cross-border fandoms will bring us even as the world has been and is still being globalized. My above-mentioned case study on Vietnamese revealed how the fans gradually gained more positive recognition from their older critics due to the popularity of K-pop dance covers posted on YouTube. With their own creativity, filmmaking skills, and media competency, their Vietnam-based dance covers subsequently won international K-pop dance contests, which brought in more international attention, socio-cultural capital, economic opportunities, and most importantly, national pride to Vietnam. I would believe that to navigate transcultural tensions and pacify criticism, on top of being tech-savvy and cosmopolitan, non-Korean international K-pop fans these days might also need to be culturally intelligent and quick-witted in self-producing counter-stories against unfavorable narratives about their fannish engagement. Based on your knowledge of non-Korean international K-pop fans so far, to what extent would you agree with this assessment?



YouTube video: The latest K-pop dance cover of aespa’s “Savage” by the dance group B-Wild from Vietnam. The group has won multiple dance cover awards from JYP and LOEN Entertainment 

HJL: I'm not well versed in the Vietnamese K-pop fandom, so I don't think I can offer an accurate assessment. But based on what you're telling me, it seems like the young Vietnamese K-pop fans have gradually changed the older critics' perception of their fandom by demonstrating their fandom's "productive" usage. Fans, especially those who like cultural products that are considered fringe, marginal, or foreign, have a long history of having to defend their fan status to be accepted by the wider society. As part of normalizing their fan status, fans had to prove how their fan activities and practices were "normal" or had acceptable cultural values. Acquiring practical media production skills, enhancing the national image by winning international competitions, and creating financial opportunities are desired social outcomes. So if K-pop fan practices lead to these achievements, then I can see how K-pop fandom can be considered productive and, thus, acceptable (or less problematic). There seems to be a parallel between what you see with the older Vietnamese generation's changed perception about the young Vietnamese K-pop fans and what we witnessed last year with Western media's favorable coverage of the K-pop fans. Only when K-pop fans were "seen" to be using their social media savviness for greater causes (foiling Trump's rally, spamming a police 'snitch' app, or raising $1 million to donate to BLM in a short period) did the mainstream media change their stance on K-pop fans.

Your point about how the Vietnamese K-pop fans were able to gain international fame through their K-pop cover dance contests and how winning these contests led to national pride really struck me. It made me think about what it means for Vietnamese fans to use K-pop and their K-pop fandom to be globally recognized. So I have two questions for you: First, do you think young Vietnamese K-pop fans use K-pop to think about not simply what it means to be Vietnamese but also Asian? I ask this question because of an experience I had this summer. I was invited to give a lecture on K-pop at the Korean Cultural Center in Indonesia and had a chance to talk to Indonesians - whether they are K-pop fans or not, I'm not sure. One of the questions I received during the Q&As was whether Koreans were proud of K-pop's global success. After answering the question, I read the comments on the chat window while waiting for the translator to translate my answers. One person wrote how K-pop's global success should also make Indonesians feel proud since it's an Asian achievement. That comment really stood out to me since K-pop's global success had been discussed mainly as a "national" achievement in Korea or cause for alarm (and basis for anti-Korea/anti-Hallyu) in other Asian countries. 

The second question I have is about the Vietnamese K-pop fandom in the future, especially now with V-pop starting to become popular. Do you expect to see a shift from K-pop fandom to V-pop fandom in the future? Also, is there a desire by the Vietnamese K-pop fans to see a greater Vietnamese members' presence in K-pop groups? Or now that HYBE, SM, CJ ENM, and JYPE are moving in the direction of creating K-pop groups with local members in different countries for the global audience, do you think they would prefer all-Vietnamese groups (maybe it would be similar to V-pop idols but they're trained and managed under the K-pop system)? How have Vietnamese K-pop fans responded to the news about major K-pop companies' new K-pop projects?

BP: Your comment on how K-pop fans were only “seen” after using their social media savviness for greater causes on a large scale is spot on. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, as fans now could leverage readily available digital technologies to make themselves “seen” with “productive” usage. What I am more concerned about is that there might still be media-based participation gap among different fan communities, as different fan groups will appropriate the media differently, and not all fan groups could or wish to strive for the press’s reinforcement of fans using social media on a large scale for political activism as the gold standard. 

Thank you for your two questions on Vietnamese K-pop fans! You are giving me even more ideas to flesh out for my next research goals. With regard to the first question, I am fascinated by your sharing of Indonesian fans feeling proud about K-pop because K-pop has elevated Asian achievements worldwide. I haven’t investigated this particular question among Vietnamese fans, but from what I have been reading online, this theme has not emerged and instead, I have observed that Vietnamese fans of popular music could be very divided between their support for US-UK pop versus K-pop. For example, BTS’s release of the Americanized and English hit “Dynamite” last year was criticized by some Vietnamese (anti-)fans as being “too auto-tuned” (which possibly suggests a copycat move to match the usual US-UK, not Korean, standards) and as being “incomprehensible” due to BTS’s pronunciation of English, which caused online wars between fan communities. 

As for your second question about the interaction between Vietnamese and Korean flavors in music production standards, my country indeed had already tried the recipe of producing a full Vietnamese girl group in South Korea, and then bringing them back to Vietnamese audience with a hope of giving them a competitive edge in the globalized music markets. The girl group was named LIME, created in 2015 and disbanded in 2019, unfortunately, without much domestic success. I remember when I first watched LIME’s debut MV in 2016, it took me half the song to realize they were singing in Vietnamese with some mixture of English because of how Korean their looks, dance, and song melody were. 



YouTube video: The 2016 debut MV of LIME, the Vietnamese girl group who were trained and produced in South Korea 

As for Vietnamese fan’s reaction to major K-pop companies’ new K-pop projects that would have more non-Korean members, they seem to be very excited. In particular, in March this year, Vietnamese fans of the Vietnamese I-LAND contestant, Hanbin Ngô Ngọc Hưng, bought advertisement spaces in 71 digital signages across 7 countries to celebrate his birthday. Hanbin is currently probably considered Vietnamese fans’ biggest national pride in the K-pop industry. 

All of these points bring us back to our comment earlier about how nation-based analyses of fandoms are still relevant as we work towards solving conflicts from cultural and national differences. This also flags to us the ever-changing and multi-dimensional transformation of cultural meanings in relation to K-pop reception across the globe. I am excited to read and learn more about how non-Korean K-pop fandoms will be doing in the future. This conversation with you has also inspired me to look beyond fan practices, and into the K-pop industry and its music production for a more ecological perspective of this fascinating cultural phenomenon. 

HJL: This conversation has been productive, and I am glad I had a chance to learn more about the Vietnamese K-pop fandom. I am sure you witnessed how K-pop and K-pop fandom has evolved over the years from your study on the young Vietnamese K-pop fans from 2010 to 2019. K-pop as an industry and an entertainment form and K-pop fandom today is much different from Psy’s “Gangnam Style” day that led to the first serious discussions about K-pop’s potential to break into the mainstream global (primarily coded as the US) market. There is no longer a debate about whether K-pop has a global appeal or not. So now, my current interest is how the K-pop industry understands the meaning of “global” in K-pop’s global popularity and how that understanding shapes their business decisions and directions with their future projects that will change the meaning of K-pop. With BTS’s and other K-pop groups’ releases of English-only songs and collaboration with Western pop stars, there are already fervent discussions within the US K-pop fandom on what K-pop is and how its meaning has changed from its early days. Your examples of Vietnamese K-pop fans’ discussions about BTS’s release all-English songs, “Dynamite” and “Butter” or the K-pop-inspired Vietnamese girl group, LIME, also seem to be part of that conversation.

 Korean K-pop fans (and the public) are now starting to seriously discuss what K-pop means or should look like as the K-pop industry is expanding its global market reach by creating non-Korean K-pop groups or shifting its focus on catering to the demands of the international K-pop fans that might not necessarily align with the needs of the Korean K-pop fans. For instance, in June 2020, JYP partnered with Sony Music and launched an all-Japanese K-pop group, NiziU, through a Japanese audition show (called the Nizi Project). The group became a sensation in Japan, but the Korean K-pop fans and the public were hostile to JYP's success. The Korean K-pop fans accused the company of selling out K-pop's formula of success to Japan just for the company's private interest. A similar criticism arose with SM Entertainment when they launched an all-Chinese K-pop group, WayV, a subunit of the K-pop boy band, NCT. The public outcry over the ambiguous national identity of WayV was particularly loudest when the group performed their all-Chinese song, "Back to You," on a Korean music show.

WayV, the China-based subunit of the South Korean boy band NCT under South Korea-based SM Entertainment and SM’s Chinese sub-label, Label V

We can see that the creation of non-Korean K-pop groups as part of the K-pop industry's global market expansion strategy is being met with antipathy by the Korean K-pop fans who fear this will erase K-pop's Korean identity. The K-pop industry's globalizing projects of discovering, training, and producing local K-pop artists will meet with more resistance from the Korean K-pop fans and the public who have a nationalistic understanding of K-pop. The nation-based analyses of K-pop fandom, then, have become more necessary as K-pop becomes more global.

References

Chin, B., & Morimoto, L. H. (2013). Towards a theory of transcultural fandom. Participations, 10(1), 92-108.

Pham, B. (2022, accepted pending revisions). Public reception of young K-pop fans in Vietnam (2011-2019): At the intersection of nationalistic discourse and transcultural fandom. Transformative Works and Cultures. 

Hye Jin Lee is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Lee has published and delivered invited lectures on K-pop industry's response to Black Lives Matter and is currently working on projects examining the historical evolution of K-pop and the differences in cultural meaning, status, and reception of Korean entertainment when it crosses the national border. 

Thi Ngoc Bich (Becky) Pham is a Doctoral Student at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, USA. She researches how children, youth, and families appropriate communication technologies, and how their media engagement shapes their worldview and lived experience. Her research has been published in the Journal of Children and Media, New Media & Society, Communication Research Reports, and is forthcoming in Transformative Works and Cultures. Her writing on parenting and popular culture has appeared in Psychology Today. She can be reached at thingocb@usc.edu. For more information, visit https://beckypham.com/.

Global Fandom Conversations (Round Three, Part One): Hye Jin Lee and Thi Ngoc Bich (Becky) Pham

Hye Jin Lee (South Korea) and Becky Pham (Vietnam): 

The Relevance of Studying Global K-pop Fandom in Different National Contexts

The Japanese girl group NiziU formed by the South Korea-based JYP Entertainment and Sony Music Entertainment Japan

Becky Pham (BP): Hi Dr Lee, I am glad to have been paired with you in this Global Fandom Conversation, as both of our works examine the intensification of K-pop across the globe, and how non-Korean K-pop fans deal with cultural tensions arising from their transcultural fandom (although you’re focusing on the Korean K-pop fans in this conversation, and me focusing on Vietnamese K-pop fans). 

First, let’s talk about how K-pop’s popularity is attracting more attention from the press outside of Korea. I am intrigued by this sentence in your Opening Statement, “Western media did not always get the story of K-pop's global success right”, apart from their more accurate coverage of how tech-savvy and multicultural K-pop fandom has transcended language, culture, and nationality online and offline, toward high-profile events of political activism such as tanking Trump's 2020 rally in Oklahoma and $1 million donation for Black Lives Matter groups in 2020. Could you elaborate on what it is that Western media has not quite captured about K-pop being global or globalized? Why should we care about these under-reported stories as we attempt to de-Westernize fandom studies? 

Hye Jin Lee (HJL): Thank you for starting the conversation, Becky, and I’m also glad to be paired with you for this Global Fandom project. Even though K-pop, as an industry, has existed since the 1990s and K-pop's popularity outside of Korea is not new, the Western media have mostly responded to K-pop's global popularity as an overnight success or a fluke. I've seen many Western media's coverage attributing K-pop's global success to the Korean government's coordinated efforts, which undermines the significant role that global K-pop fans and Korean entertainment companies have played. In addition, the Western media have connected K-pop's global success with what they consider a harsh and inhumane idol training system. So much news coverages that have "the dark side of the K-pop industry" (or something along this line) in the headlines attest to this slanted Western media view about K-pop. The K-pop industry has many issues that need to be addressed and criticized, but this general painting of the K-pop industry as "dark” or “cruel" leads to many different problems. 

First, it perpetuates Western Orientalism, which renders Asian countries, cultures, and people abnormal, foreign/exotic, and deviant. It also stigmatizes K-pop fans as "crazed," "out of control," or "weird" (labels that many female media fans, in general, have to contend with even without taking up the position of being K-pop fans). It also pushes this notion that the K-pop industry is a heartless "factory" or "machine" that "manufactures" stars (again, you will see many news headlines with those keywords associated with K-pop in the Western media). It makes it seem like Western entertainment is NOT a manufactured product and thus more authentic, creative, and artistic. It ignores the fact that all cultural products created in the capitalist system are manufactured commodities generated for profits. Also, the K-pop industry is not the only entertainment industry that is full of problems. How did the entertainment industry in the US enable Harvey Weinstein, Scott Rudin, Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, and many more to engage in abusive and criminal behaviors for so long? So this is what I meant by the Western media not always getting K-pop's global success story correctly.

The superstar K-pop boy band BTS, whose fandom ARMY raised over $1 million for the Black Lives Matter movement in just one day in 2020

After the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing BLM movements last year, K-pop received a lot of attention from the Western mainstream media again. If the Western mainstream media coverage of K-pop has relied on harmful tropes about K-pop as dark or manufactured before, this was the first time we saw a lot of positive coverage of K-pop. However, this turnaround was due to K-pop fans' use of fan practices for political activism in relation to Trump’s 2020 Oklahoma rally and donation to BLM as you have pointed out, not necessarily because of K-pop artists' or the industry's doing. 

While it was great to see K-pop fans being positively discussed as a powerful political force, the mainstream media still failed to provide a complete picture of K-pop fans. For instance, most of the coverage made it seem like the K-pop fans' "K-pop fan" status led them to support the BLM movement actively. They failed to see the intersection between the racial identity and the K-pop fan identity of many K-pop fans from communities of color. In other words, it wasn't necessarily the "K-pop fan" status that propelled K-pop fans to mobilize support for BLM but because of the importance of racial justice issues, including racism, to the fans. Also, the mainstream media celebrated K-pop fans' act of taking over racist hashtags (such as #WhiteLivesMatter or #AllLivesMatter) to drown out racist social media posts as positive political actions. But for many Black K-pop, seeing racist hashtags trend or seeing K-pop stars' images for racist hashtags was traumatic and nothing to celebrate. So even when the media covers K-pop or K-pop fans more positively, we see significant gaps in the offered stories.

BP: While I am not surprised at your detailed and interesting mini-analysis above about the Western media’s binary portrayal of Western versus K-pop music stars as being self-made/authentic versus being manufactured by entertainment companies/mass produced, you have helped me reflect upon certain unconscious bias and linguistic choices that have been driven by our daily consumption of Western news. It makes sense to me now why mainstream English news and even K-pop fans’ discussion on YouTube, for example, tend to more often call Western pop singers as “singers” and “stars”, but K-pop singers as “idols”. At least, to my personal relief and exhilaration, either Western or K-pop singers could be lovingly referred to by the fans as “kings” and “queens” that they “stan”. 

Your unpacking of how we need to account for a multifaceted understanding of K-pop fans’ racial identity and commitment to social justice in addition to just their fan identity is a sharp assessment that seems to parallel the spirit set forth by Chin and Morimoto’s call (2013) for prioritizing a common fan identity over a national one. Thus, let’s zero in on our common research thread on how non-Korean K-pop fans deal with cultural tensions arising from their transcultural fandom to dig a little deeper into these issues. 

You wrote in your Opening Statement that there is a need to understand the “messy" and “difficult" aspect of K-pop fandom, especially among non-Korean international fans, who have to deal with tensions arising from their transcultural fandom. You then cited an example of how Black K-pop fans struggle with their K-pop fandom when encountering racism and colorism from K-pop artists and the K-pop fandom community. I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment that this “messy" and “difficult" transculturally contested space needs more examination from researchers, as I have quite come to the same conclusion for my paper on young Vietnamese K-pop fans in Vietnam from 2010 to 2019. 

To repeat what I have written in my Opening Statement, I conducted a case study of mainstream online news representations of young Vietnamese K-pop fans and the fans’ online responses to their older, more conservative public critics (Pham, forthcoming). I showed how as recent as 2011 and even until now, the Vietnamese public has stigmatized K-pop fans (both female and male youth) as stubborn as a Vietnamese water buffalo--a result of which they are colloquially labeled as “water buffalo youth”, as “out of control” (see attached image of a K-pop Vietnamese fanboy that notoriously attracted Vietnamese media’s spotlight in 2012; this is not surprising as fandom studies has long addressed the history of fan pathologization, and similar to what you have also pointed out about how the Western media still portray K-pop fans as “crazed” and “out of control”), and as “mixed-race” (which is interesting because I think the word “race” here has less to do in relation to US-based definitions of “racism”, but more to do with a strong rhetorical choice to convey the older generation’s fear that K-pop as a foreign cultural force is overtaking Vietnam’s old-world communitarian and patriotism ideologies, potentially toward a new form of Asia-based--as opposed to Western-based--cultural imperialism). 

From your example of Black K-pop fans and my example of Vietnamese K-pop fans, and in response to Chin and Morimoto’s (2013) call for a working theory of transcultural fan-centric studies over nation-centered analyses, first, would you assess that both of our examples are still nation-based analyses of cross-border fandoms? Second, would you agree that nation-based analyses of cross-border fandoms--especially from under-researched nations (such as Vietnam) or groups (such as Black K-pop fans)--might still be valuable and/or relevant?   

HJL: Before I answer your questions, I would like to ask you about your research on young Vietnamese K-pop fans in Vietnam. Your observation of stigmatizing young K-pop fans (from the media, the government, the wider public, etc.) for liking K-pop, a foreign cultural product (although from an Asian country rather than from the West), has also been reported in other countries such as China and Indonesia. The pushbacks against K-pop's popularity in these countries have been connected to their nationalistic desires to preserve their cultural identity. In other words, the young K-pop fans' embrace of K-pop (which can clash with local cultural and religious values) was seen as a threat to the cultural identity that these countries want to uphold. Can the public criticism against Vietnamese youth's affection for K-pop be discussed similarly, or is this more of a result of generational conflicts (rather than ideas about nationalism or national identity)? Youth culture (esp. girl culture), in general, tends to be dismissed and denigrated everywhere. How are youth and youth culture understood in Vietnam, and how does K-pop fandom fit into that? Also, what does K-pop offer to young Vietnamese fans that they might not necessarily get from their local culture and what does K-pop mean to them?

To answer your first question, I think it really depends on the focus of the study. Your research seems to explore how young Vietnamese K-pop fans use K-pop to form and express their identity that conflicts with the older generation's idea about what youth should be or how young people should act. Whether there's a nationalistic component to the older generation's expectation of youth is something I would like to learn from you (as stated in my questions above). You're investigating K-pop fandom within the Vietnamese national and cultural context, so yes, I would say your research is doing a nation-based analysis of cross-border fandoms. I'm more careful to use this frame to discuss research on Black K-pop fans because a Black identity is not tied to a specific country or a nation. The Black experience is not monolithic. Black K-pop fans are not a monolith. But when I used Black K-pop fans' struggles with their K-pop fandom as an example to talk about the "messy" aspect of K-pop fandom, I had the Black American K-pop fans mostly in mind. But I can see this being applied to Black K-pop fandoms in other countries as anti-Blackness and racism is not an American issue but a global issue.

To answer your second question, I think it is still valuable and relevant to analyze K-pop fandom from different national contexts. Even though we live in a global society where everything is or seems to be interconnected more than ever, national identity continues to play a significant role in the way people think about themselves (I think this was more so during the pandemic when people's national identity/citizenship played a role in restricting or determining their mobilities). Although cultural commodities can flow more freely across borders (I'm writing this answer as I'm reading news about “Squid Game,” a Korean series on Netflix, becoming the platform's most watched show ever), cultural values and sensibilities that are tied with people's national identity do continue to play a role in shaping how they're received and consumed. If the goal is to foster a transcultural fan community where fans of different countries and cultures can celebrate their fandom based on shared interests and pleasures by transcending their national interests and cultural, historical differences, I think nation-based analyses of cross-border fandoms seem to be much needed to work towards solving conflicts from cultural and national differences together as much as possible.

BP: The questions you have specifically raised for me about understanding Vietnamese K-pop fans in relation to Chinese and Indonesian K-pop fans and in relation to intergenerational differences are all appropriate and nuanced ones: Based on my limited knowledge so far, I think it’s fair to say that Vietnam and China share a similar ambiguous history of K-pop reception, as Vietnamese and Chinese policy makers and older generations perceive K-pop as a potentially foreign threat of cultural imperialism against their nationalistic cultures. I also think it’s fair to say that for Vietnamese K-pop fans, the disparity between the young versus old generations’ thinking and values adoption are both due to the aggressive expansion of K-pop as a foreign threat (that is more fast-changing and unpredictable due to modern technologies) and intergenerational differences (that always happens across generations, but not any less unpredictable also due to modern technologies). Your sharp question on what it is that K-pop offers Vietnamese fans that their local artists and cultures might not will be something I keep at the back of my head as I delve into my research in the near future. 

I have not researched Indonesian K-pop fans (who might be very religiously different from Vietnamese and Chinese fans), so I can’t offer more comments on that at this point. When I was writing up my Vietnamese K-pop fandom, I couldn’t find any existing literature reviews of K-pop fans in Asia for comparative analysis. I understand that this could be challenging because Asia is such a huge continent with diverse cultural, religious, and national values. But this might be something that participants across Asia in this wonderful Global Fandom Conversation could think about to make it happen. I would be happy to kickstart it, but my vision might be more focused on mobile media and/or youth and parenting cultures, which might not align with other participants we are having here. Readers, if you are a researcher of Asian K-pop fandom and interested in this idea, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.

Hye Jin Lee is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Lee has published and delivered invited lectures on K-pop industry's response to Black Lives Matter and is currently working on projects examining the historical evolution of K-pop and the differences in cultural meaning, status, and reception of Korean entertainment when it crosses the national border. 

Thi Ngoc Bich (Becky) Pham is a Doctoral Student at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, USA. She researches how children, youth, and families appropriate communication technologies, and how their media engagement shapes their worldview and lived experience. Her research has been published in the Journal of Children and Media, New Media & Society, Communication Research Reports, and is forthcoming in Transformative Works and Cultures. Her writing on parenting and popular culture has appeared in Psychology Today. She can be reached at thingocb@usc.edu. For more information, visit https://beckypham.com/.

Global Fandom: Thi Ngo Bich (Becky) Pham (Vietnam)

Greetings to fellow participants in Professor Henry Jenkins’s Global Fandom Conversation!

 I am thrilled to have been invited as a representative of Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia often culturally associated with the Vietnam War, or vibrant touristy images of beautiful landscape for contemporary Western audience. What fewer people might be aware of is Vietnam’s significant socio-political changes and strong economic growth over the past 30 years hailed by The World Bank as “remarkable” and “resilient” (The World Bank, 2021). 

 Joining this conversation, I hope to tell you the story about the Vietnamese “water buffalo youth” and “out-of-control” fans, to explain why K-pop (or popular music from South Korea) is such a dynamic and transnational force important to the context of Vietnam, and to engage in further discussion with you about the next steps for global fandom studies. 

 I am a female Vietnamese national who was born and grew up in Southern Vietnam, received my higher education and communication research training in Singapore, and is currently living, studying, and working in California, USA. My scholarship is located at the intersection of media studies and cultural studies. Adopting both qualitative and quantitative social science methods, I research the social and cultural implications of communication technologies on children, youth, and families, especially those in Asian communities. 

Under this umbrella research agenda, I have been studying how young K-pop fans in Vietnam in the past decade navigated the tensions between nationalistic discourse versus transcultural fandom. Through a case study of mainstream online news representations of young Vietnamese K-pop fans and the fans’ online responses to their critics, I showed how as recent as 2011 and even until now, the Vietnamese public has stigmatized K-pop fans as “out-of-control” (see attached image of a K-pop Vietnamese fanboy that notoriously attracted Vietnamese media’s spotlight in 2012), “mixed-race”, and stubborn like a Vietnamese water buffalo (hence, “water buffalo youth”). My case study also revealed how the fans gradually gained more positive recognition due to the popularity of their K-pop dance covers on YouTube and their wins in international K-pop dance contests (Pham, 2022). 

 In my next co-authored fandom project, I hope to unpack how K-pop fans across the globe utilized Twitter as an empowering platform during COVID-19 to spread public health awareness through the hashtag #wearamask, while also examining the effects of disparities (such as political alignment and geographical locations) among the fans on their Twitter-based networks toward fandom-based call for social change.

 I am certainly not the first Vietnamese researcher of fandom studies in Vietnam, but Vietnam-based fandom studies is still in its nascent phase, with little attention from scholars of Vietnamese studies (Hoang, 2017). So why this spotlight on K-pop, a foreign phenomenon originating from South Korea, in relation to the context of Vietnam? 

 As a developing country, Vietnam imports more than exports cultural products. Even as V-pop (or popular music from Vietnam) has started to surged across Asia (Souw, 2021), the popularity of K-pop within Vietnam is undeniable (Vietnamnet, 2020). Collectivistic and conservative Vietnam, highly similar to its neighboring China (see Chen, 2018), has had an ambiguous history of cultural policies and public reception pertaining to importing Korean Wave into the domestic market since the late 1990s (Pham, 2022). Policy makers in Vietnam have always had to balance between the economic opportunities and socio-cultural capital brought about by the spread of K-pop, versus the nation’s communitarian ideologies and expectations of patriotism on the younger generations who did not experience wars and societal upheavals like their parents and grandparents did. 

 The very few existing studies on Vietnamese fandom have unanimously focused on K-pop, its influence, and socio-cultural implications (see Duong, 2016; Ha, 2020; Pham, 2022; Phan, 2014). This speaks volume to the ongoing immense power of K-pop as a cross-cultural force within Vietnam (and maybe also within East and Southeast Asia), while also brings into stark contrast the tensions between nationalistic sentiments and the old-world order, versus transnational fannish identities and globalized consumerism. 

 In this regard, studying K-pop fandom should help reveal and complicate various cultural, political, and ideological subjectivities of contemporary Vietnam. Studying K-pop also poses new opportunities and challenges for cross-border dialogues about global circulation and consumption of East Asian popular culture, ultimately toward our increasing attempts to de-Westernize fandom studies.  

 I look forward to our fruitful conversations! 

References

Chen, L. (2018). Chinese fans of Japanese and Korean pop culture: Nationalistic narratives and international fandom. Routledge. 

Duong, N. H. P. (2016). Korean Wave as Cultural Imperialism: A study of K-pop Reception in Vietnam (Unpublished master’s thesis). Leiden University: Leiden, the Netherlands.

Hoang, H. (2017). Abstract of Mediated Intimacy: Fandom as a Way of Life. Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs. http://bellschool.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/2017-10/abstracts_vu_for_website_0.pdf

Hoang, H. (2020). K-pop Male Androgyny, Mediated Intimacy, and Vietnamese Fandom. In J. V. Cabañes, & C. S. Uy-Tioco (Eds.), Mobile Media and Social Intimacies in Asia, pp. 187-203. Springer. 

Pham, B. (2022, accepted pending revisions). Public reception of young K-pop fans in Vietnam (2011-2019): At the intersection of nationalistic discourse and transcultural fandom. Transformative Works and Cultures.

Phan, T. T. (2014). Asianization, Imagination, Fan Culture and Cultural Capital of Vietnamese Youth: A Case Study of K-pop Cover Dance Groups in Hanoi, Vietnam. In A. U. Guevarra (Ed.), Proceedings of the 1st AIKS Conference on Korean Studies: “Hallyu Mosaic in the Philippines: Framing Perceptions and Praxis”, pp. 150-170. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University.

Souw, R. (2021, March 31). Thai and Vietnamese pop music is surging across Asia – these are the artists to watch. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3127593/thai-and-vietnamese-pop-music-surging-across-asia-these-are

The World Bank. (2021). Vietnam Overview. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/vietnam/overview

Vietnamnet. (2020, August 8). K-pop attracts huge number of Vietnamese fans. https://vietnamnews.vn/life-style/749323/k-pop-attracts-huge-number-of-vietnamese-fans.html

Thi Ngoc Bich (Becky) Pham is a Doctoral Student at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, USA. She researches how children, youth, and families appropriate communication technologies, and how their media engagement shapes their worldview and lived experience. Her research has been published in the Journal of Children and Media, New Media & Society, Communication Research Reports, and is forthcoming in Transformative Works and Cultures. She can be reached at thingocb@usc.edu. For more information, visit https://beckypham.com/. 

Global Fandom: Hye Jin Lee (South Korea)

Park Jin Young (founder and producer of JYP) announces the second partnership with Sony Music Entertainment for a new project of creating a Japanese boy band after the successful launch of a Japanese girl group, NiziU, in 2020.  

K-pop, known initially as popular local music from South Korea, has become a global cultural phenomenon by growing into a $5 billion industry. The global sensation of Psy’s “Gangnam Style” in 2012 took many by surprise (even Psy himself), but it was primarily understood as an achievement that would be difficult for other K-pop artists to repeat. Since then, with the support and coordinated efforts by its massive fandom, ARMY, BTS has grown into a K-pop behemoth by conquering the Billboard charts while breaking all kinds of world records in the process (and reaching the mainstream popularity in the US that many popular K-pop artists still struggle to achieve). Other K-pop acts such as Blackpink, NCT, Monsta X, Stray Kids, and so on which have signed deals with US major labels over the years, have started to break into the US market (even during the pandemic years when K-pop artists were not able to tour in the US). The expansion of K-pop in the world market has led the Western media scrambling to figure out the “magic” behind K-pop’s continuous global success, producing articles with headlines such as “How K-pop conquered the West” or “How K-pop conquered the universe.”

Although the Western media did not always get the story of K-pop's global success right, they were correct to understand the significant role K-pop fandoms worldwide have played in the global popularity of K-pop. K-pop fans have become the most visible force on social media by actively coordinating their efforts to promote the works of K-pop idols and connect with other K-pop fans, keeping K-pop artists and hashtags related to K-pop to trend continuously. K-pop fans' fervent activities and devotion have merited serious attention in fandom studies, leading to the publication of scholarly works that examine how K-pop fans have come to play a decisive role in "globalizing" K-pop through their fan practices and activities transcending differences in language, culture, and nationality. The focus on the power of K-pop fandom reached a new level in 2020 when news about K-pop fans' active involvement in political activism emerged. K-pop fans who have been broad-brushed as young fangirls were suddenly being discussed as a formidable political force. With their political awareness and social media savviness, K-pop fans were in the media limelight for the role they were playing in political mobilization, particularly during the Black Lives Matter movements in the US. This new recognition of K-pop fans as a force for political activism strengthened K-pop's position as a global cultural phenomenon (an irony considering K-pop tries to stay apolitical).

Now that K-pop is no longer understood to be just for Koreans and the K-pop industry has become more aggressive in its pursuit of global markets, the discussions on what K-pop's growing global popularity means for its increasingly diverse fanbase have primarily centered on international K-pop fans. As a scholar studying K-pop at a US institution, I have paid attention to how the US K-pop fans (who do not speak Korean and are not familiar with Korean history and culture) incorporate K-pop into their everyday lives, how their fannish activities and engagements are "globalizing" K-pop, and how the US pop culture landscape is changing as a result. I tried to understand how what were once unique Korean K-pop fan practices (such as fanchants, fancams, coordinated efforts in streaming to pus K-pop acts to top global charts when they make a "comeback," donations and volunteer works for the image management for a favorite K-pop artist, etc.) have been adopted (and occasionally adapted) by the US K-pop fans and how K-pop fandom has been able to grow globally in the process. I saw how the common interest in K-pop has united K-pop fans in building communities or an affinity space demonstrating the characteristics of transcultural fandom that prioritizes a common fan identity over a national one, as argued by Chin and Morimoto (2013). When K-pop's global rise would create moments of conflicts or fissures with K-pop fandom (an inevitable consequence of globalization), the media and scholarly attention would be on how (non-Korean) international K-pop fans negotiate their national, racial, and cultural identity with their K-pop fan identity to make sense of and deal with tensions that arise from their transcultural fandom (for instance, how K-pop fans of East Asian countries make sense of or defend their K-pop fandom when the anti-Korea/Korean entertainment sentiment is at its height due to the complex geopolitical issues in the region or how Black K-pop fans struggle with their K-pop fandom when encountering racism and colorism within K-pop fandom and/or in K-pop artists' behaviors). This 'messy' and 'difficult' aspect of K-pop fandom needs continued examination to understand the implication of K-pop's global flow.

As a Korean scholar studying K-pop, however, I have also been interested in understanding what K-pop's growing global visibility and popularity means for the Korean domestic fans, especially when the characteristics of K-pop that they are familiar with are continuously shifting due to K-pop's global rise. How do the Korean domestic K-pop fans make sense of K-pop's global popularity and deal with unexpected conflicts that arise with the K-pop industry's decisions that aspire to make K-pop more "global" (such as creating K-pop groups without any Korean members or scheduling more international K-pop concerts and fan meetings than domestic ones)? How do the Korean K-pop fans, who overwhelmingly feel a sense of national pride in K-pop's global popularity, struggle with the gradual erasure of "Korean" traces in K-pop that is becoming global (and no longer just for Koreans)? A growing number of Korean K-pop fans are pushing back against the K-pop industry's "globalizing" projects that dilute or even erase the Korean national identity and cultural values in K-pop. They express discontent with the K-pop industry's aggressive business strategies that focus on the global markets based on their belief that K-pop's national identity is "Korean" (therefore, Korean fans should be a priority). It is the conflict between the K-pop industry and the Korean K-pop fans in the process of K-pop's globalization (although tensions between the domestic and international K-pop fandoms do also arise, I am less interested in examining that here) and the national(istic) response of Korean K-pop fans to the K-pop industry's globalizing strategies that I like to further explore. This case allows us to think about how the "national" identity does continue to matter with the global flow of popular culture (sometimes in unexpected ways).

Korean NCTzens (NCT fandom)’ campaign against SM Entertainment after two of the Chinese members, Chenle and Renjun, of NCT Dream, celebrated the 100th anniversary of China’s Communist Party on social media

References

Chin, B., & Morimoto, L. H. (2013). Towards a theory of transcultural fandom. Participations, 10(1), 92-108.

Hye Jin Lee is a clinical assistant professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Lee’s current research focuses on the K-pop industry and global fandom and the transformation of cultural meaning, status, and content of Korean pop culture when it crosses borders. 

Global Fandom Conversations (Round Two, Part Two): Sebnem Baran and Rafay Mahmood

Sebnem Baran:

Rafay, your observations about K-pop’s reception in Pakistan, the exploitation and co-optation of fan practices by the media industries or political groups, and the effect of transnational flows on genres raise many important questions about the global–local relationship for fandoms! As we reach the final part of our conversation, I would like to address each of them.

Building on your question about how “fan behavior changes or evolves with the kind of genres and tropes being offered,” I want to mention that melodramas were the highest-rated earning shows on Turkish broadcast television during Behzat Ç. and Leyla ile Mecnun’s first run.[1] It is still possible to say this genre remains very popular in the domestic market while providing a significant portion of the successful transnational content exports. Although melodramas have been part of public (and political) discussions on different occasions[2], none of them has paved the way for fan activism as intense and long-lasting as the cases of Behzat Ç. and Leyla ile Mecnun.

Nevertheless, Turkish melodramas’ transnational mobility remains matchless. Therefore, it is impossible to compare Behzat Ç. and Leyla ile Mecnun with melodramas such as Muhteşem Yüzyıl (Magnificent Century) or Diriliş in terms of the global reach. The global appeal of TV melodramas in different forms is well-known. Your discussion of the similarities between Diriliş and musalsala badawi in another article[3] points toward other transnational connections that would help understand the genre’s role—both in global flows of television and global fandoms.

Whereas the global influence in Leyla ile Mecnun becomes visible when the story incorporates global pop culture references such as Reservoir Dogs, Behzat Ç. shares some of the darker elements of the Scandi-noir genre. As a rogue cop, he tries to fight against corruption but ends up failing to protect himself and his family from retribution. Since mainstream news did not explore the crimes the show’s plot did, the fiction, in a way, became a surrogate for journalistic storytelling. In addition, Behzat’s failure becomes a token of realism for the viewers, who are already upset about the political situation. I believe his failures bring him closer to the Scandi-noir detectives than the DC and MCU superheroes, while the show’s quality TV associations also distinguish it from the superhero genre.

Then again, the crime genre doesn’t always generate the same fan engagement that Behzat did. Your description of the popular Pakistani shows “catching the corruption and crime” reminded me of the success of a long-lasting police procedural, Arka Sokaklar (Back Streets), which similarly enjoys high ratings while depicting crime as an anomaly rather than a systemic problem. The show is continuing its sixteenth season. This mainstream success instigated an online fan presence converging around fan accounts on social media. However, without a conflict between the fans and the industry or the political establishment in general, the show’s fans never gained the same level of visibility that Behzat Ç. and Leyla ile Mecnun fans did.

I also want to mention that there are some other shows that embrace the global superhero wave openly, such as Netflix’s Hakan Muhafız (The Protector), TRT’s kids shows Tozkoparan and Tozkoparan: İskender, and ATV’s Akıncı. All these shows include historical references within fantastical frameworks. Your question about the influence of the DC and MCU universes made me more curious about these Turkish shows’ fandoms.

On a relevant note, in terms of the influence of the language, it is impossible to ignore the effect of Anglo-American media flows and fan practices on local fans’ choices. For example, Turkish fans frequently combine two characters’ names to indicate their shipping while posting comments and questions on social media platforms like many English-speaking fans had been doing.

Like you explained, production companies can also use social media as a marketing ploy. At times, fans use the network’s or production company’s hashtags, which further contribute to the marketing efforts. In addition to fans’ potential exploitation and co-optation, politically sponsored accounts can join the public debates for or against the fandoms. This becomes more apparent when these debates engage with cultural products or images associated with the country’s political divides, like what happened with Turkey’s women’s volleyball team.

Your discussion of the ISPR (Inter-Services Public Relations) offers a more complex example where a power holder is not only trying to dominate the public discussion but also recruiting fans as extensions of its PR mechanism. These synergistic connections are further blurring the lines between the official PR personnel, state- or corporation-sponsored influencers and trolls, and regular fans. Therefore, your call to explore how the fandoms with state support pursue their own activist causes and/or amplify the political messages passed down to them along with the fandoms challenging the dominant forces is very important. With more comparative analyses, power hierarchies can be understood better.

As we wrap up our conversation, I must say that I found your discussion of the K-pop fandom in Pakistan particularly striking. The anxieties about the queer influence are very similar to the Turkish case. At the same time, the Pakistani fans of Jungkook from BTS demonstrated the global spread of the K-pop fandom and its increasing power by sharing a happy birthday message for Jungkook on a big billboard.

Considering how K-pop fans became a political force during the US presidential election in 2020, I think we will be hearing more about them in political debates worldwide. With its fast growth in Pakistan and Turkey, the K-pop fandom offers a unique opportunity to comparatively study the relationship between local, regional, and global politics and fandoms at the corresponding levels. Looking at the cases of Pakistan and Turkey, it is clear that nationalism, religion, and identity politics are likely to be part of these fan studies discussions.

[1] Both Behzat Ç. and Leyla ile Mecnun were revived by streaming platforms. My discussion focuses on the initial run of the shows.

[2] Medcezir’s homage to Berkin Elvan, Muhteşem Yüzyıl’s on-screen message in defense of the screenwriter Meral Okay, and cancellation of If Only following a row about a gay character are some examples, where melodramas initiated short-lived political debates online.

[3] https://tribune.com.pk/story/2290484/ottoman-obsessions-and-bedouin-fascinations

Rafay Mahmood

 Şebnem, your response about how women's bodies remain an important area of political polarization of not just the TV fandom but Muslim families across the globe was an intriguing framework to understand how the relationship of the TV viewing demographic (the Muslim household) in Pakistan's case has evolved over the years. Your response also raises important questions about how secularism debates in both Turkey and Pakistan hint at specific socio-cultural proximity that result in identity-based fan reactions. It also opens the discussion to Turkey and AKP's mission of reintroducing neo-ottoman values through TV and how in the case of Pakistan, the mission has borne fruit in the South Asian Muslim World.

The relationship between how Pakistani fandom at large views other celebrities and how they view Diriliş' star Esra Bilgiç, as raised in your response is a parallel key to understanding not only how the woman's body is seen in Pakistan but also how the Pakistani fandom, both men and women come to terms with the dichotomy of the local and foreign star, in particular, the non-Indian, Turkish star. And finally your closing question: are there any visible anti-fan reactions against the Turkish content—more particularly against Diriliş: Ertuğrul—in Pakistan? If visible, how do these anti-fans express their criticism of the show? I will address your questions one by one and try to triangulate ideas in a manner that this exchange about how transnational flows happen through imported or acquired content in countries with state or government-controlled cultural production leaves us with even more questions about how unpredictable and yet formulaic fan behaviour can be.

The 8 pm soap on Pakistani television is a genre-specific slot that the country's private media inherited from the state predecessor Pakistan Television (PTV) in the late 90s. One can easily state that the 8 pm soap and the 9 pm news bulletin has been on our television since Pakistan came up with its TV stations a few years after the independence in 1947. Since then the slot has been associated with some sort of women-centric content, usually, a conflict between a daughter in law and a mother in law, catering mostly to housewives, hence Diriliş: Ertuğrul being aired on the same slot on a Sunday surprised a few given the show's focus on crusades and male warriors. But as soon as the audience caught up with the TV show and realized that the show is essentially a family drama minus the swords and horses, the women-dominated soap audience emerged not only as players in the show's fandom but also the ones fueling morally driven expectations from the real life of Esra Bilgiç, who plays the virtuous and pious wife Halime Sultan.

The reason 'fueling' has been used to describe the process of the housewife is that the average Pakistani Muslim housewife, in most cases, does not display a presence on social media but contributes to the values and ethics, the younger and more tech-savvy members of the family will espouse on social media.  Hence the content that is watched at home with the family is inspired by the value system of the patriarch usually channelled through the leading lady of the house and revolves around the familial notion of endorsing stars who both inspire and adhere to a similar value system because that is how you'd expect any of your family members to be like. This is why Bilgiç's revealing clothes are seen as a sign of hypocrisy as 'fueled' the women in the family because the younger lot is already used to a cosmopolitan ecosystem, if not in the physical spaces of the family and country, than in the digital spaces of the internet and social media platforms.

The same familial association with the soap genre or women playing family-friendly roles on TV is reflected in the Pakistani fandom of the showbiz, particularly TV, movie, music stars and fashion models. Since TV consumption is still very much a family experience in Pakistan, despite a wide and growing digital market, the image of the star is usually taken off as someone you'd like to see because they are beautiful and perfect but someone you're not supposed to hang out with because they are only beautiful and perfect. A profession in acting and the image industry is looked down upon by families of different classes because you only end up in such a professional if you are either illiterate or uneducated to find a regular job, such as that of a doctor or an engineer, or always eager to reveal your body – both being strong value judgments about your character. This applies to men too but like all patriarchal societies, men do get away with it by portraying a healthy personal life in front of fans.

So while the Pakistani fandom is used to policing celebs, especially women, Bilgiç's case was particularly jarring for them because first she played a very pious and faithful wife and secondly that wife was the embodiment of all the neo-ottoman ideals something had never been established so overtly and in such an engaging manner on the Pakistani television before. So a stroll down Bilgiç's Instagram posts in revealing clothes was more disappointing for the fans than surprising and that sense of disappointment was being 'fueled' by the family structure that associates woman's body and personality to the entire family's honour.

While Bilgiç's fans eventually turned into her anti-fans, the shows anti-fans mostly belong to the educated, liberal and secular-minded minority of the country that equalizes Diriliş: Ertuğrul's patronage in the country to the mission of bringing the regressive Islamic ideals back in the garb of owning our Ottoman heritage. These fans, including both men and women, are more active on Twitter than on Instagram and are also generally opposed to Prime minister Imran Khan and his party Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf's right-wing and centre-right politics. Having said that, every time these anti-fans, usually with a very wide and popular following have started an organized critique of the show on Twitter, the pro-fans, belonging to different social classes have appeared to defend the show and the religious values it promotes. The pro-fans not only condemn the anti-fans for disliking a brilliant show but they also accuse them of being anti-Islam for opposing a show that spreads the True message.

This conflict between fans and anti-fans of Diriliş: Ertuğru confirms that religion and the sacred continues to drive discourse in the digital world and the democratic promises of the internet have only emboldened the ideological divide that already exists in society as reflected in the respective fandoms. The exchange with you (Shebnem) and your input combined with my analysis also show how the women and the feminine body continues to be an area of contestation deeply linked with notions such as tradition and honour that are still central to the Muslim family anxieties in both Turkey and Pakistan. If not the Turkish TV show that is either supported or negated by the state (Case in point Behzat C) the family anxieties drive the political system and show up in hasty decisions to ban K-pop or limiting globally famous music movement and must genre to just homosexuality. Another very important overlapping idea that came to me as an afterthought is that Imran Khan's answers to many ills such as sexual violence are the Western and Bollywood media influences on our culture and that is why he offers Turkish content as an alternate. The reason why such a notion is resonant is that Turkey has succeeded in applying Western production value to Eastern stories and offered it to the world like a treat. It's not just that we as consumers appreciate Western production values but this very idea of bringing Muslim, Islamic and Islamicate stories to the forefront in a Western set standard can be linked to the notion of 'Muslim Prestige' which many Muslims feel has been lost. A sense of the reclamation of the grandeur of the Muslim past seems to be the big idea behind state-monitored cultural production in both countries.

Global Fandom Conversations (Round Two, Part One): Sebnem Baran and Rafay Mahmood

Figure 1: Promotional poster for Muhteşem Yüzyıl (Magnificent Century)

Sebnem Baran: Diriliş: Ertuğrul (2014–2019) first aired on the public broadcaster TRT in 2014 as Magnificent Century was continuing its last season. The show was quickly associated with the conservative government’s desire to depict the Ottoman Dynasty in a way that was more aligned with the Islamic identity—almost as a reaction against the Magnificent Century’s version. Bir Zamanlar Osmanlı: Kıyam (2012), Filinta (2014–2016), and Çırağan Baskını (2012) are earlier products with the same desire to revisit the Ottoman past from a conservative perspective. All of these shows tried to provide alternative vistas into the Ottoman past in an attempt to rival Magnificent Century and make use of the existing demand for period dramas. Despite varying levels of success, they paved the way for Diriliş, which gained more popularity in both the domestic and global markets.

The AKP government’s neo-Ottoman ideals have been studied in connection with Turkish drama exports in the last two decades.1 As a show exploring the beginnings of the Ottoman Dynasty on the public broadcaster TRT, Diriliş provides an interesting case to discuss within this framework. After all, these neo-Ottoman ideals of increasing Turkey’s diplomatic power in the region overlap with the topic of the show that depicts the life of Ertuğrul Gazi, whose son Osman I founded the Ottoman Dynasty. Thus, the desire to expand is embedded both in the narrative and in the distribution of the show.

 Following the political motivations behind the show’s creation, political partisanship had a clear influence on generating its fandom. The supporters of the AKP government celebrated it as a family-friendly show that could inspire the younger generation of viewers with its emphasis on Islamic, heroic, and patriotic messages. Conservative Pakistani fans’ appreciation of the show coincides with a similar framework of viewership and branding. Nevertheless, unlike the fans in Pakistan, Turkish viewers already knew about Esra Bilgiç’s previous on-screen presence. Therefore, the gap between her and Halime Sultan, the character she portrayed, wasn’t a big surprise for the viewers in Turkey.

 Women’s bodies remain an important symbol of political polarization as the conservative perspective finds more visibility in broadcast media and social media. The debate around the women’s volleyball team from this past summer is just one among many incidents where an ideal citizenship model—informed by religion—was mapped onto women’s bodies.

 Your discussion of the same tension in Diriliş fandom in Pakistan shows how the relationship between politics, religion, and identity can be followed across borders via fandoms around transnational content flows. In this context, I believe it is necessary to say that secularism debates in Pakistan and Turkey create a specific sociocultural proximity, which enables the flow of the show as well as generates identity-based fan reactions to it.

 Bilgiç’s interaction with the Pakistani fans criticizing her also raises important questions about fandoms in the age of social media. Although the criticism targeting her came from the Pakistani fans in this case, many other actors and celebrities in Turkey face similar encounters with their fans and anti-fans.

1 Kraidy, Marwan M., and Omar Al-Ghazzi. “Neo-Ottoman cool: Turkish popular culture in the Arab public sphere.” Popular Communication 11.1 (2013): 17-29.

Posting pictures showing themselves eating during Ramadan or drinking alcohol—another emblem of resistance against the conservative ideals—can turn celebrities into targets of conservative social medial users. Similarly, not sharing celebratory posts during some of the national holidays associated with the Republican Revolution can attract the criticism of anti- government users. These pressures sometimes cause actors, musicians, athletes, and other celebrities to conceal certain aspects of their lives to avoid criticism or to keep their jobs. Some other times, they feel compelled to fulfill the sharing expectations and make their stance known. In both cases, the effect of the political conflict is permeating individual celebrity fandoms by passing through fandoms revolving around media texts or sports teams. In other words, local political specificities heavily influence fandom dynamics on multiple levels.

Your observation about Muslim social media users from different countries defending Bilgiç online raises another important question about this political turn in fandoms: How do the global and the local interact in fandoms? Perhaps surveying the local specificities more closely can be the first step for understanding how this interaction unravels.

Therefore, I’m curious about the Pakistani fans’ interaction with Pakistani texts and celebrities. Are there any examples that involved a tension reminiscent of the one in the Diriliş fandom about Esra Bilgiç? How did the conflict progress in these cases?

In the specific context of fandoms in Pakistan, how do the fan reactions differ for texts that are inherently political and ones that become politicized in circulation? Where do the actors’ and other publicly known people’s own political identities fall in this configuration?

Finally, are there any visible anti-fan reactions against the Turkish content—more particularly against Diriliş: Ertuğrul—in Pakistan? If visible, how do these anti-fans express their criticism of the show? Do they have any politically motivated explanations of their dislike? Does the transnational origin of the show come up in these explanations?

Rafay Mahmood 

Şebnem, your analysis ‘Politics: Where the Global and the Local Meet in Fandoms of Turkey’ was a very thorough read with several talking points anchored at different places regarding  your argument about the politicisisation of TV fandom in Turkey. The choice to pick a crime/ detective show and an absurd comedy offers a fascinating view into not just fan behavior but  also how fan behavior changes or evolves with the kind of genres and tropes being offered on  the telly. 

Looking at the unrest and eagerness of the Turkish TV fandom to respond, as documented in your paper, makes me wonder if the reaction would have been the same had either one of the  shows touched similar themes but in a different style and genre. The protagonist of Behzat Ç is  a detective and works more or less like a superhero fighting corruption and Leyla ile Mecnun  is an absurdist farce that offers a tendency for political commentary and satire. Behzat Ç’s case study reminds me of the TV show presenters in Pakistan who raid random public offices to  ‘catch’ the corruption and crime as-live, and how they continue to be one of the most top-rated  shows on the Fixed Point Chart. People love them but they wouldn’t go out on a protest if the  state decides to censor one of these show presenters perhaps because the audience expects the  news genre to be censored and controlled and is already aware that sooner or later another  similar news presenter will be ‘highlighting’ such practices on a different platform. 

One question that you can think over is whether similar commentary about state  corruption would receive a similar response from the government officials had the release  format been different? 

Presumably, the TV fandom in Turkey wants a fictional character to save them from socio political vices because someone real, like a journalist they know of in real life wouldn’t have led  to a similar movement from the fans because fans don’t trust anyone who is associated with  their real-world or the ‘system’? 

The good old notion of suspension of disbelief is both relevant to my work and yours too but  I do feel the disbelief in the case of Diriliş: Ertuğrul is born out of the fact that actors like  Esra are foreign faces but in the case of Behzat Ç it could be the fans’ eagerness to not accept  or allow anyone real to fix society? Is that a recent tendency or have Turkish fans displayed  similar behaviours before the recent influx of Hollywood superhero films and universes such as DC and MCU? This will also add  to the global, local and then glocal conversation you are having towards the end. I do feel your  analysis is already rich in ideas but it can be more focused and revealing if we are able to draw  a parallel with TV tropes that may or may not have influenced the fandom. 

Delving further into the fan practice you elaborate on how fans in “Turkey speeded up the  entry of global fan practices and vocabulary into the public discourse by causing their favorite  shows to trend on social media, warning ‘regular viewers’ about sharing ‘spoilers’ and publicly  ‘shipping’ characters as well as the actors portraying them.” I was just curious about the role of  language and if there non-English speaking fans who are using Turkish or any other  vernacular or native derivative to talk about the show and in doing so trying to replicate the  same global fan expressions in a different language. This point is of particular interest to me  because in Pakistan the majority doesn’t speak, read or write English which is why language  becomes a very interesting angle to understand whether any movement or a social phenomenon is truly intersectional and driven by ‘public’.

I don’t know how regulated the internet is in Turkey but causing their favorite shows to trend  on social media also looks like a marketing ploy that more than one production houses have  employed to get a hashtag going. I am sure you are aware of this global practice. The real question then becomes do we know what accounts are paid or supported in some way by the  marketing and PR departments of the production houses and how many of them are ‘organic’.  Hypothetically speaking, if the hashtags are being pushed by the production houses (no I am not talking about stars of the show tweeting about the show) under some sort of a subtle arrangement with influencers then they are still being picked up by fans. In this case, the argument opens up to how the fans are standing against the system by, in some ways, supporting the system. The first system here is the hyper-capitalist TV production  and the second being the state, the government that is censoring or opposing the content. K pop and how the armies operate on social media is a very good lens of comparing how  organised these members of the Turkish fandom are and to what extent is their interaction  with the issue at play triggered by tribal instinct and to what extent is that instinct planted. 

The mention of K pop and heavy metal echoes with the situation in Pakistan and the associated Muslim family anxieties. Last month members of the BTS_Army somehow managed to put a Jungook billboard in the middle of Gujranwala, one of the biggest cities in  Pakistan.  

The billboard was meant to mark the K-pop star’s 24th Birthday As soon as the billboard was put up both BTS_army, Jungook and Jungkook billboard started trending on Pakistani  Twitter. Within hours, provincial assembly candidate Furqan Aziz Butt, who is also a member of the Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami, had the advertisement removed after he had received “a lot of complaints” from people. He cited the group’s tendency to promote homosexuality and being a negative influence on the youth as one of the reasons for having it taken down. 

This also opens the forum to explore the state’s role in agenda-setting by elaborating on whether the fandom of state-supported shows also responds to TV in a similar way. Drawing a  parallel between one of the shows that they have tried to censor, such as Behzat Ç and another show that the government has invested in and patronized as the canon of ideal morality and discourse, and how the respective fandoms responded to the two shows will allow us to excavate what precisely unites or divides fans and whether there is any overlapping. In  Pakistan, the biggest and the most prolific production house is that of the ISPR (Inter-Services  Public Relations) which regularly produces TV shows and films that are advertised aggressively and not subjected to the censor codes that any privately produced show is subjected to. While the two fandoms are usually united by overlapping star cast the fandoms of  ISPR-sponsored shows are usually more patriotic and radical in defending their show on social media since their likeness is heavily derived from a sense of nationhood. Having said that, the audience in Pakistan has a softer corner for the army than any government and it got further emboldened after Pakistan took a POW in a recent skirmish with India. The fandoms of the  ISPR-funded shows hence act like social media soldiers edging to defend any counter-narrative like that in the war field. This dichotomy, and in some cases the overlapping of fandoms is an area brimming with possibilities and open to manoeuvring in the case of Pakistan and Turkey where the state plays an active role in controlling cultural and creative production. 

Global Fandom: Rafay Mahmood (Pakistan)

Pakistani fandom, piety and Turkish period dramas 

 Rafay Mahmood

On May 3, 2020, cricketer-turned-politician and now Pakistan’s Prime minister, Imran Khan addressed a public gathering where he spoke about the importance of watching Turkish shows instead of ‘typical Bollywood’. This speech came a year after Pakistan had banned the import or broadcast of Indian content following skirmishes on the border with India. The PM emphasized how the Turkish shows, Dirlis Ertugrul in particular can bring Pakistanis close to their ‘Muslim roots’ and allow us as a nation to get inspired from our lost glory. 

While historians and critics remain divided over the show’s claim to it being an historically ‘accurate’ account, the govt of Pakistan didn’t blink an eye before getting the dialogues translated in Urdu and airing it on the state-run Pakistan Television and its digital assets. With an anti-India sentiment already a part of the public discourse coupled by the absence of Bollywood films in cinemas, the country, that was primarily reliant on Bollywood for a healthy box office was bracing itself for the death of the cinema industry and rise of the new stars and fans, all at the same time.

While Bollywood stars, even with Muslim names such as Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan represented an upper-caste, predominantly Brahmin, North Indian culture, it was the shared language, a similar set of common values, idiom and same physical complexion that made them accessible for the average Pakistani fan. That is obviously apart from the cathartic experience that the Bollywood song & dance formula guarantees. 

 Dirlis Ertugrul on the other hand brought forward an overtly Muslim hero, fighting for the great Islamic cause against anybody and everybody who hinders the message of Allah, displaying the chivalry of a valiant soldier and generosity of a forgiving king; directly inspired from the lives and events of the various venerated figures mentioned in the Islamic holy book of Quran. While the Islamicate tropes being used in an epic period drama were a direct departure from the dominantly ‘Hindu’ popularly registered as ‘Indian’ mise sen scene of Bollywood, the narrative elements remained consistent with that of Bollywood, or any other soap opera in the world. This allowed the fans of the Islamic Republic to enjoy a TV show not only as a binge watch but also as a family entertainer which complied by the Islamic values and Islamicate culture with all the women covering their heads in front of everyone apart from their husbands along with Arabic phrases and idioms commonly used in Muslim countries around the world. 

The treatment of the show successfully enabled the Prime Minister’s propaganda mission to pursue something more than just ‘Indian content’ with the newly launched YouTube channel ‘TRT Ertugrul by PTV’ crossing 8 million subscribers within one month of its launch and amassing 15.9 million in one year. But the state patronage of a TV show, as something a lot more sacred than entertainment, coupled with easy access to the internet and social media created a fan following that wasn’t afraid to express why the stars should be sacred, chaste and pious in their personal lives as well.

In an Instagram post on March 25, 2020, the leading lady of the show Esra Belgic, who plays the role of cool, devoted and loyal wife of the protagonist posted a picture of herself posing on a boat with a revealing upper torso on her verified Instagram account. It started with a few heart emojis to admire her beauty but the comments section soon turned into a slut-shaming space with militant moral policing, mostly by Muslim Pakistani men.



The screenshot of the Turkissh actor being shamed

A user by the name of Hassan Mehmood wrote: well done taaliyan honi chahiye hamaray liye aaj hum ek sacha musalmaan kehlanay ke laik hain ab ek dafa apne dil par hath rkh kr bata do kya tum ne kabhi marna nahi aaj mati ke oopar insaan kal matti ke neechay hoga are saamp khayen ge bichoo khayen ga

“A huge round of applause for we aren’t even close to what a devoted Muslim should be. Take a vow on your heart and tell me that you don’t worry about death, about afterlife, when you will be buried under the sand surrounded by snakes and Scorpios as punishment”

Another user just posted Bilgic’s screen name in Arabic/Urdu along with a question mark. As if bewildered at her shamelessness and disappointed at her not covering her body as she did in the show.

Others followed by a plain and simple ‘Shame on you’ while some questioned if this what Esra learnt from the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him). 

Perhaps Bilgic hadn’t anticipated that her newly found fandom in Pakistan will not only love her but also hold her accountable for her ‘hypocrisy’ on screen by not espousing to the set of values of her character. For a month or so Bilgic didn’t respond to any of the policing on Instagram and continued tweeting and posting thank you notes to Pakistani fans until a couple of months later when she turned off comments under one of her pictures and eventually gave a befitting reply to a Pakistani fan.

“Elder sister Halime, please don’t wear such dresses,” wrote astounding_ali to which Halime responded by saying, “Let me give you a little advice: Don’t follow me. Thank you.” Her response was lauded as a ‘clap back like a queen’ and ‘Sultan of Sass’ in Pakistan’s more liberal English language press.

However, as the show progressed so did the fan conversation about Bilgic and her policing, so much so that Muslim social media users from around the world and in Pakistan started to eventually argue in favour of her choice.

Kim, a Muslim Hijab-wearing woman from Morocco chimed in by saying that she wears a hijab by choice and since Esra is an actress she should be allowed to wear whatever the task demands of her. She even questioned the disbelief of Pakistani fans by asking, do you also think she is married to Erugrul (Her husband in the show) too?

Royal_g_98, that appeared to be the Instagram handle of a Pakistani user appealed to PM Khan to take Instagram away from Pakistanis: “PM of Pakistan please stop Instagram in Pakistan. They live in 8th or 9thcentury,” the account wrote.

The slow and gradual acceptance of Bilgic as their own, even though with reservations, shows how eager is the Pakistani fandom to express itself pertaining to matters of piety and shame and how religion continues to be a launching point of ideas despite the slow death of the conventional missionary and his mission. This persistent confusion around accepting stars, especially when compared to Pakistan’s loyal and more than half a century-long, love-hate relationship with Bollywood also speaks volumes about the politics of heritage and ‘roots’ in the post-nation-state world. 

“The dichotomy however collapsed with Bilgiç who, at once possessed appearance close in proximity to European femininity, but the heritage and ideology of the brown, Muslim woman. She was almost white and Muslim enough. She was not to be feared, yet possessed all the desirability. And thus began the crisis that led to the barrage of comments on her Instagram posts,” reported the daily paper Dawn. 

The dilemma for Pakistani fans of the Turkish show started with them being challenged to suspend their disbelief and accept the characters and actors as different entities. Which further led them to evolve and inquire which stars to own and how to own them and what part of our heritage to own and how to own it since the Turkish or Central Asian aspect was imported and broadcast as a direct replacement, and in some ways, answer to Bollywood. 

Pakistani government’s plan to acquire rights to Turkish epics not only triggered a fandom that was symptomatic of our existing religious partisanship but also reflective of how religion, piety and shame continue to dictate translational flows of identity and shared heritage, almost in a tribal manner, while partaking in a supposedly ‘worldly’ and cosmopolitan ecology of social media. 

However, more than a space of policing, I see the virtual villages of participatory culture as spaces of possibility where fans may engage in fierce and ruthless attacks on their stars but there are chances, if not equal, of them being maimed and humbled by the comebacks of those who adhere to more progressive values and use the same internet features and lexicon such as slangs and hashtags as proficiently as the ones policing the stars. Despite choosing a gendered experience for the paper, one can loosely take the Pakistani fandom of the Turkish star as a place of major ideological contest about both what it means to be a Muslim and Pakistani and what one wants a Muslim and Pakistani to be like on social media, without turning a blind eye to our ‘Hindu’ neighbour with centuries of shared experience. 

As Arvind Rajagopal shares the framework of understanding the fandom of Dur Darshan’s 1987 production of Mahabharata, “Merely focusing on media itself does little more than confirm our fascination with power. The media neither cause, nor reflect events, they participate in them.” To be able to understand whether the Pakistani fandom of Turkish shows actually snowballs into something truly spectacular that the ruling party can later use as an archetype for voters also requires a closer inspection of how politically and financially is it invested in this mission of cultural production

Rafay Mahmood is a researcher and journalist from Pakistan who is associated with Habib University and The Express Tribune. He also makes Video logs on cultural commentary in Urdu.