Global Fandom: Bertha Chin (Malaysia)

Today begins the first week of my Global Fandom Jamboree which will feature early career scholars in fandom studies from more than 40 countries and run through April. This week, I am featuring three distinguished and established scholars — Bertha Chin, Lori Hitchcock Morimoto, and Rukmini Pande. Each has helped to reshape our understanding of transcultural fandom.

Disney+ was launched in Malaysia in May 2021, after much speculation and fanfare. However, instead of the Disney+ premium brand (with same day access to new films released straight to streaming as a result of the pandemic) that many Malaysians have come to expect, the streaming platform was branded as Disney+ Hotstar about 3 months before its Malaysian launch. The inclusion of Hotstar to the branding aligns it with Disney’s other South and Southeast Asian markets of Indonesia, Thailand and India, instead of the premium version launched in neighbouring Singapore (which was more aligned with the rest of the Western world). Disney+ Hotstar would offer more local content and the option of watching top titles from Marvel, Star Warsand Pixar dubbed in the “local language” (in this case, Malay, Malaysia’s official language). However, Malaysia’s 32 million population is multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multi-lingual. Its urban population is also highly mobile, and prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Malaysians frequently move between Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and the UK for study, work and because of family ties. As such, Disney’s claims of a singular ‘local language’ can be politically controversial, when the concept of ‘local language’ can change from Malay to English, Cantonese, or Tamil depending on the community, the age and class of the audience, and geographical location within the country itself.  

A pop-up store and exhibition for Batman v Superman in a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur

While Malaysia did not have a strong film and TV production industry, it was – and remains – a country with a wealth of access to regional and international media content. Netflix, launched in 2016, remains a popular streaming platform, combining regional and top international titles like Never Have I Ever, Dark, The Untamed, Sex Education, Crash Landing on You, and the like. Malaysia's satellite broadcaster, Astro, offers access to HBO Go (a combination of HBO and HBO Max) and simulcasts top content from South Korea, Hong Kong and China – all in their original language. This is a familiar state of being a media consumer, and by extension, a media fan, in Southeast Asia. Growing up in Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo in the 1980s meant access to media content from Hollywood, Hong Kong, Bollywood, Japan and other production powerhouses. With the exception of Japanese anime and Mexican telenovelas, which were usually dubbed into Malay or Cantonese, films and TV shows were available in their original language with subtitles in three languages (Malay, English, and Mandarin). 

Much like a lot of other people in the 1980s, I grew up, not only surrounded by DC and Marvel comic books, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Disney animated cartoons, but also Hong Kong TV adaptations of classic Chinese folk tales and wuxia literature; essentially building the foundations of a hybrid cultural identity. My work with Lori Morimoto on transcultural fandom was a reflection of growing up under these transnational media consumption patterns. Fandom was an affinity to a character, a fictional universe, a text rather than an affinity to a specific national identity or claims of cultural proximity. 

I start with Disney in this piece because of what Disney represents: a global media conglomerate that now owns mega franchises that is familiar the world over, and where franchises like Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe attract huge fan interest in Malaysia. However, there is often a ‘cultural baggage’ of conflict and reluctance – and sometimes, shame – in identifying as a fan in Malaysia. Fandom is acceptable when its practice is structured around material fandom (exhibitions of props and replicas in shopping malls, usually leading up to release dates) and consumption (of the media text, merchandise like a Funko Pop figurine or official T-shirts), and there is a sense that this is a childhood past-time that one grows out of. And if one isn’t a child, then it has to be a practice sanctioned by the media industry (e.g. exhibitions and consumption of merchandise). 

A Funko Pop section in the local departmental store in the children's department in my hometown of Kuching, Sarawak (this is a permanent section)

What this creates is layers of hierarchies of taste. Much like the way Disney have created a hierarchy of content that is available on Disney+ based on their conception of the Asian market, there is a hierarchy of what is acceptable and unacceptable fannish texts. Commercially successful texts like the MCU, Star Wars, Game of Thrones and BTS are acceptable because they are globally renowned, supported by global media conglomerates, while identifying as a fan of anime and cult media are less acceptable. Fannishness over less commercially successful texts are considered as a waste of time, as they are often seen to be more involved in the practice of transformative fandom and thus, more ‘foreign’ and crazier than merely purchasing a Funko Pop figurine or official T-shirt. Consumption, then, is ‘good fandom’, sanctioned by the media industry. Transformative fandom presents a more emotional engagement with the texts, and is considered improper and unbecoming within a Malaysian – and Asian – cultural context. 

A pop-up store and exhibition on Star Wars in a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur

Perhaps this suggests that transformative fandom space is a white space, but this may be too simplistic a reasoning without taking into account internal biases and criticism fans receive from a cultural context. And perhaps Disney+ Hotstar’s promotion of local content and making dubbed versions of its popular titles can be read as a politically correct move towards diversity and inclusion of varied international markets, but I would like to propose a cautionary approach to what I would call Hollywood’s “diversity project”. While the recent inclusion of more diverse characters (especially with regards to Asian representation) in major films and TV shows is a much-needed positive step forward, it may also create assumptions about a particular culture that is foreign. 

Disney+ assumes and imposes a singular culture unto Malaysia upon its launch; that the Malay language unites Malaysia when it has been the subject of fierce debate and division in a region with a complex postcolonial history. Likewise, the global domination of BTS, the Asian representation we currently see on our screens in the MCU’s Shang Chi, Netflix’s Never Have I Ever and The Chair, and the CW’s Kung Fu, among others represent a particular cultural moment in American popular culture which may not necessarily translate internationally. 

Dr Bertha Chin is senior lecturer of Social Media and Communication at Swinburne University of Technology (Sarawak). She has published extensively on transcultural fandom, fan labour, subcultural celebrity, anti-fandom and fan-producer relationships. She is a board member of the UK-based Fan Studies Network, and co-editor of Crowdfunding the Future: Media Industries, Ethics and Digital Society (2015, Peter Lang) and Eating Fandom (2020, Routledge), on the intersections of food culture and fan studies.