Global Fandom Jamboree: Hadas Gur-Ze’ev (Israel)
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An ultra-orthodox couple and an ICon visitor in costume on public transportation (private collection).
It was Jewish new year more than a decade ago when I was first exposed to the concept of fandom in Israel. As every year, for three days the streets of Tel-Aviv were packed with teenagers dressed as Spiderman, Deadpool, or other handmade cosplay outfits, waving with big gestures and wishing each other (and the shocked onlookers) “Happy Icon-day!”. ICon (short for ‘Israeli Convention') is not a national or religious holiday (though depending on whom you ask), but rather the annual Israeli science fiction and fantasy fan convention—some would say, the Israeli equivalent of Comic-Con. Despite its growing popularity in recent years, the event is completely volunteer-based, and still takes place in a high-school backyard.
Unlike other fan conventions worldwide, ICon lacks the impressive number of celebrity guests, panels, photo-ops and signatures. I would not go as far as assuming that this has something to do with the politicization of the state of Israel. The genres of comics and sci-fi/fantasy in Israel are still relatively niche, and fly under-the-radar when it comes to the potential battlegrounds for political conflicts. Another explanation might be related to the fact that Israel is still a small market (with a population of about 9 million citizens), geographically remote from the US and central Europe (although probably less-so culturally). On top of this, the resources at hand of the organizations involved—run by the fans themselves—seem to be much more limited.
My forthcoming journal article (co-authored with Prof. Neta Kligler-Vilenchik), titled “No Geek Girls: Boundary-work and Gendered Identity in the Israeli Geek Community,” focused on the construction and negotiation of identity for comics and sci-fi/fantasy fans in Israel through their main digital platform, the Facebook group ‘The Geekery.’ Asking how gender plays into the negotiations over who can—and cannot—be a geek, this project also suggested the importance of the identification as geeks rather than fans, but still as part of a global subculture.
Don’t say ‘comics fans,’ say ‘geeks’: Linguistic and cultural translations
ICon is one of the best examples of a community where participants express feelings of closeness and intimacy—described through terms like “family” and “home”—values that are traditionally dominant in Israeli culture. But the Israeli fan identity is one that is far less Israeli than it is global. Fan objects and resources are pretty much identical to global popular culture, without any formal local additions to the collective repertoire (dominated by Marvel and DC comics). Most fans prefer to read or watch original versions, without subtitles (dubbing is completely unacceptable)—and so comic books, movies and series are mostly consumed in English. Moreover, the very language of fandom, the vocabulary of names, places, phrases, intertextual references and inside-jokes, remains in English, even while the spoken and written language is Hebrew.
An interesting exception is the word “fan” itself, which illustrates the special position of comics and sci-fi/fantasy fandom among other types of fans in Israel. While there is some literature on Israeli sports fans or music fans, the word “fan” (מעריץ), used to label the participants in this cultural practice, does not apply well to comics fans. In its translation to Hebrew, the word “fan” often retains the derogative meaning that originated from the word ‘fanatic’ before its reappropriation by fans; in the context of sports fans it is translated as “supporter” or “follower”, and in the context of celebrities or popular content as “admirer” or “adorer”. In contrast, comics and sci-fi/fantasy fans separate themselves from these other types of fans and describe themselves as geeks—hence the name of the community’s Facebook group, The Geekery.
Like other parts of fan jargon, the label “geek” has not been translated to Hebrew and is preserved in the original pronunciation, spelled with Hebrew letters (גיק). Similarly, despite their rejection of the word “fan,” the word “fandom” actually retained its place in geeky vocabulary, though used for a very specific meaning. “Fandom” (פאנדום) is only used to describe specific fan communities organized around objects of geeky repertoire, while the word is completely unfamiliar to people outside the comics and sci-fi/fantasy community. This gap may explain the lack of literature on Israeli fandoms—for outsiders, they are not perceived as a community, but rather as individuals or people that “are into superhero stories.”
Globalized fandom and (the absence of) local fan objects
It is no secret that the history of comics in the US is closely integrated with Jewish history. Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, as well as many others, were responsible for today’s most famous superheroes (Superman, Batman, The Avengers and many others). According to recent statistics, 74% of the Israeli population is Jewish (the remainder are 21% Muslim, Christian, or Druze Israeli Arabs, and 5% other minorities). This Jewish sector (mostly the secular or atheist part of it) is the most dominant in the comics or sci-fi/fantasy community in Israel. The cultural proximity to the Jewish roots of comics could theoretically have been an important asset for the Israeli fandom, yet it seems that the universal (or rather, American) traditions are more appealing to the local fandom than the Jewish ones.
ICon festival, the next generation (credit: Dan Ofer)
This tendency towards a globalized fandom can also be seen in the absence of local fan objects. With the exception of a limited number of works and creators that are Israeli in essence (and can’t be comprehensibly translated to other cultures), the vast majority of the content for fan practices is imported. One "superhero" with clear Israeli roots is actress Gal Gadot, portraying Wonder Woman in the DCEU films. The marketing efforts of the films in Israel directly targeted the Israeli national sentiment, and indeed the film gained an impressive popularity among the general population in Israel—but not as much within the comics fandom. Instead of local patriotic sentiment, the local fan community criticized her character and especially her Israeli accent, which did not pass as exotic/authentic enough for a princess of Themyscira. The authenticity of the franchise, as it seems, was put above the national pride.
The global nature of fandom seems unique to the contemporary, digital age. At least until the 1980s and 90s, the local sentiment, traditions and language were a higher priority, with the names of superheroes and other characters receiving Hebrew translations: Batman was translated to “The Bat Man” (איש העטלף) and Spiderman’s aunt May was called in Hebrew Maya (מאיה), a common Hebrew name. Today, these translations are received with utter ridicule. English, and the direct access to original contents, became dominant along with the rise of the internet.
Local traditions and identities
Israel, as a young 72-year-old state thought to be a homeland for the Jewish people, brought in and integrated immigrants from various different cultures. Even within the Jewish population today, these ethnic tensions remain integral to identities discourse, sometimes subconsciously, and could also be meaningful for thinking about identities within Israeli fandom. The main oppositional identity, according to self-defined geeks, is that of the “ars” —a derogatory term referring to men perceived as ignorant, coarse, and aggressive—which is stereotypically connected to Mizrahi Jews (of Sephardic/Arabic origin), as opposed to Ashkenazi Jews (of European origin).
Multiculturalism? Israeli cosplayers, English signs, and religious participants in the background. ICon festival, Tel- Aviv (credit: ICon festival official).
The perceived uniformity of fandom in Israel (as a universal-secular subculture) seems less homogenous when looking at the more complex relations between different sectors of Israeli society. Many religious communities in Israel (Jewish, Muslim, or Druze) remain culturally closed groups, protecting their own traditions from either local or global culture. On the more extreme end, the ultra-orthodox (Haredi) Jews oppose to television and films altogether, and are religiously prohibited from using the internet (or internet-enabled mobile phones). Despite limitations of access, some religious (though not ultra-orthodox) fans manage to bridge the gaps between their commitment to religious rules and fandom practices, making some adjustments or adaptations (like reading “clean” texts without explicit sexual references, or creating “Kosher” cosplays that adhere to the laws of modest dress).
In general, the Israeli comics and sci-fi fandom adheres to global trends in terms of the objects of fandom, the language, and the practices. Still, as any local community, it is also uniquely shaped by local cultural contexts. For example, the large amount of activities for young children at conventions (appropriate for the country with the highest fertility rate of all OECD countries, with an average of 3.1 children), or a decision to ban the use of weapons in cosplay, including plastic or cardboard tools (a request put in during a stressful period of terror attacks). The community’s main platforms for interaction (like The Geekery or ICon) appear to be blurring the local, ethnic, or religious attributes, and celebrating the universality of fandom.
Hadas Gur-Ze'ev is a Ph.D. student in Communication at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (supervised by Prof. Neta Kligler-Vilenchik). Her research interests include popular culture, participatory platforms, and the negotiations of gendered power relations in digital environments. Her current research focuses on feminist trends and misogynistic countertrends in online discussions in fan spaces.
