Global Fandom: Aianne Amado (Brazil)

I am not saying that there is a competition for the most enthusiastic fans... but if there were, I am willing to bet Brazil would be at the top of the podium. As a Brazilian fan myself, of course I am not exactly impartial, but you do not have to take my word for that: the main recipient of such passion, the idols, say so themselves — like in this speech from Katy Perry, where she says to her audience in Rio “You guys have fire! You guys have passion; you have something that I have never seen and I've been all over the world and it is totally different here!”; or Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger declaring that “anytime we get to come to a new country for the first time we have no idea what to expect... except this country (...) because everybody tells us it’s gonna be crazy and the fans here are more passionate than just about anywhere in the world”; or even TV’s favorite vampire brothers, Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley, saying during the Vampire Attraction convention that “I've never seen or felt or heard more passion and love... it's unbelievable” and “definitely the most enthusiastic fans of any country we've ever visited. It's crazy!”.

Brazil is also responsible for breaking a few records like the world’s biggest Comic Con, with over 280 thousand fans in the last edition, and the largest concert audience ever, for when Rod Stewart played for 4.2 million people in Copacabana’s New Year’s Eve in 1994. Some of the most famous musicians, such as Paul McCartney, Queen, and The Rolling Stones, also have Brazil as home of their largest concert attendance.

And then there is the “please come to Brazil” meme. Probably any pop culture lover with internet access has read hundreds of comments from fans begging their idols to visit us. According to Feldman, the joke started as a genuine claim for more international tours, but soon evolved into a symbol of Brazil’s online engagement, published on the comment section of any post, regardless of the content or even what celebrities like actors or reality tv personalities would do once they got here. Even Beyoncé’s family members were receiving those messages. Youtuber Kaleb Nation facetiously tweeted that “a celeb’s relevance can be accurately measured by how many ‘come to Brazil!!!!!’ tweets they get a day”.

That doesn’t mean that Brazilians forget about national texts. We have our own superstars, with legions of fans that cause just as much of a frenzy; our media texts, notably the telenovelas, with gigantic ratings from Mondays to Saturdays and even stopping the country during their finale; and we should never forget about the soccer fans. Yet, the interest for social capital provided by the international approval remains, and many fandoms try to validate their idols or texts by promoting them abroad — a more recent and remarkable case

was when Anitta’s fans changed their IP to american ones to call a Miami radio and ask for her songs.

As illustrated by the examples above, we can observe that there are evident aspects of Brazilian fan culture that differ from other countries. Jokes and rivalries aside, I do not believe the way we show affection for pop culture is necessarily better or worse (as it also causes many problems, specially concerning fans and idol’s safeties), but it is certainly veryBrazillian. In order to understand what is the Brazilian way to be a fan and how it came to be, we need to look at the big picture, which means to consider social, economic and historical aspects and singularities.

Yet, a review of Fan Studies in Brazil (Amado, 2019) shows that the field is still far from this panorama. In the early 2000, the subject was highly marginalized in the Communication and Media schools, being better received only by those who studied new technologies. Therefore, not only did the first researchers “import” fan theories already circulating in Anglo-Saxon countries, but they also had as main references international authors used by the Digital Communication Studies. This is a problem since the approaches, concepts, and methods present in those are related to the social conditions of the countries that their authors are part of, which are quite different from the dependent economy and high social inequality seen in Brazil. For example, the first Brazilian papers about fans had to focus on online fandoms, which created a pattern still prevalent, even though a significant part of the population does not have internet access or literacy.

Since 2010, the number of studies with fans and fandoms as scientific objects has grown swiftly in Brazil, creating a broad literature with various approaches and from different areas, like Education, Administration and Linguistics. Nonetheless, we still fail to quote ourselves, with international authors prevailing amongst our citations. In addition, another issue identified is that most studies focus only on fandoms from Rio de Janeiro and/or São Paulo, neglecting many groups from a continental country.

Aiming to remedy those liabilities, I examined and traced a social profile of Brazil’s transcultural fans by thematically analysing all 39 theses and dissertations published in the country with them as objects (Amado, 2020). The results show a clear historical, economic, and political impact on fandom activities. Latin-American countries have what Canclini (1997) calls “hybrid cultures”, marked by our highly exploratory colonization process, constantly mixing autochthonous and enslaved traditions with the ways of life of European

colonizers. Our national identities were then shaped by a development strongly based on external influences. Moreover, in 1808, escaping Napoleon’s attack, Portugal’s Royal Family sailed to Brazil, where they lived until 1820 (just two years before our independence), making us the only colony in the continent where the European crown lived. Historians believe that having the Portuguese court in our land defined how we view and value transnational cultures, especially the ones from countries with superior economies. For example, former Minister of Culture Celso Furtado (1984, p. 39) affirms that “the visit of a European theater company to a Brazilian city could be the defining cultural event in the life of an entire generation”. This, tied with the still current lack of public policies that encourage local cultural production, made our population view international cultures as a symbol of social capital (Hollanda, 2010). After the Second War, that focus changed from Europe to the USA, the nation abroad where most transcultural texts in Brazil come from. The second place belongs to Japan, also associated with our historical process, with strong imigration politics encouraging Japanese to live over here (nowadays, Brazil is the country with the largest population of Japanese origin outside of Japan and Otakus are fairly common amongst our subcultures).

Social capital has a fundamental part in Brazilian fan culture. We pride ourselves for (supposedly) being the best in the world, making comparisons and even virtual wars. But the status is disputed inside the fandoms as well: there is an evident hierarchical structure in our fandoms, which can be defined by longevity in the group, knowledge about the text or fanactivities. People at the “bottom” of that structure seek for prestige to climb and, in some cases, a member can become so popular that it gets its own fans.

That hierarchy helps with what I believe is our main distinction: the high level of organization. The fandoms have strict rules (ex: some prohibit the discussion of politics and nudity posts) and divisions of tasks (moderator, manager, director etc.) to create a healthy environment — which is crucial since many fans use fandoms as a “safe space” to be themselves. This system was originally created because of how long it usually took for the texts to be made available here and how the industries would overlook Brazil when planning tours or press conferences. This led to groups organizing themselves into what is better described as a more simplified fordist system. To this day, that structure is used to produce subtitles, scanlations, podcasts, fansites and fan events. Almost all of those are voluntary, free, steady and nearly flawless.

The intensity of our fandoms are reshaping how the whole population consumes media. Phenomena like Big Brother Brasil’s Juliette and comedian Whinderson Nunes proves that a good social media strategy, associated with popular verbiage and humor, can rapidly lead to fame and social relevance. Such strategies have been mimicked by various sectors, most notably by politicians, adding to the worldwide political polarization when creating an extreme rivalry between current president and extreme-rightist Bolsonaro and former president and leftist Lula — each one with an uncritical base, much more like fans than voters.

To study fandom is now a necessity in the Brazilian Social Science field. And, albeit the subject is finally gaining recognition — with dedicated discussion groups in national events and special issues in scientific journals — we are ready to grow from the researches that focuses on isolated fandoms and start theorizing on their place in the current state of our nation.

CITATIONS

Amado, Aianne. (2019, may). Tendências e Lacunas dos Estudos de Fãs no Brasil e no Mundo: uma Revisão do Campo. Congresso de Ciências da Comunicação na Região Nordeste - Intercom Nordeste. Belém, Pará, Brasil, n. 21.

Amado, Aianne. (2020). Please come to Brazil: uma análise crítica dos fãs brasileiros como apreciadores de objetos culturais internacionais. Dissertation, Federal University of Sergipe, São Cristóvão, Sergipe, Brasil. Available: https://ri.ufs.br/handle/riufs/13403

Canclini, Néstor G. (1997). Culturas Híbridas y estratégias comunicacionales. Estudios sobre las Culturas Contemporáneas, 3 (5), pp. 109 - 128.

Furtado, Celso. (1984). Que somos?. In D’Aguiar, Rosa F. (2012). Ensaios sobre cultura e o Ministério da Cultura (pp. 29-42). Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Contraponto, Centro Internacional.

Holanda, Sérgio B. (2010). Raízes do Brasil. São Paulo, SP: Companhia das Letras.

Aianne Amado is a PhD candidate at University of São Paulo and has a Master’s degree from University of Sergipe, both in Communication Science. She researches Pop Culture and Fan Studies toward the lens of the Latin-American approach of Political Economy of Communication and Culture. Is a member of study groups OBSCOM/CEPOS and CETVN.