Global Fandom Jamboree Conversations: Lisa Duggan (Norway) and Akiko Sugawa-Shimada (Part Two)

AK: Thank you for your answers.  It's just a pleasurable interplay between fans and "characters" (staff)! Here in Japan, too, fans understand that anime characters never post their comments (I mean they know staff post and reply to fans), but they enjoy virtual correspondence and posted pictures.

 nterestingly, the (voice) actors who play the role of the anime character often treat the anime character as their "friend".  So, birthday celebration for the anime character posted by the actors is quite popular. Fans react to it by saying "Happy birthday! we can cerebrate together!"

 As for the issues on sexualities, I think it depends on voice actors and theater actors.  For instance, if a voice actor get married or maybe confesses his/her identity, it would not very much impact the anime character he/she plays. However, if a theater actor reveals his sexual identity, for instance, he/she is LGBTQ+, some heterosexual fans can be disappointed.  Some fans often say, "we don't care about your sexuality. Just don't make it open. Just make us keep dreaming."

 Like you mentioned that it's more accepted in Norway than in the US, here it's almost same culturally. But in reality, legislation has still a long way to go. Japan doesn't accept same-sex marriage,  a system of optional separate surnames for married couples, etc.  I'm sorry I'm not familiar with legislation in Norway, but I guess Northern European countries have established the systems to protect rights for married and non-married couples; I mean the government supports non-married couples and their children.  (please correct if I'm wrong.)

 JD: I must admit, I am quite curious about the similarities and differences between European, American, and Asian fan studies. You mention, for example, that celebrities’ open heterosexuality is more accepted than open homosexuality amongst fans in Japan, but I am curious to know how you feel that "boys' love" fandoms have affected or may affect such attitudes.

 I would also love to know more about the intersection of girlhood studies/women's studies and fandom, as you have mentioned in your starting statement this is a growing area of interest in Japanese fan studies. Most of what I have read about Japanese fandom has focused on women, but this is likely because women have been the focus of American and European fan studies for so long, so what filters through appears to align with the focus of study in the US and Europe rather than with the focus of study in Japan. Is that correct? Could you tell me a little bit more about the gendered dynamic of fan studies in Japan (including more on "otaku")?

AK: Thank you for your questions.

 I am curious to know how you feel that "boys' love" fandoms have affected or may affect such attitudes.

Actually, there are lots of "boys' love" (BL) anime and even TV dramas which depict love between men. It is tricky, though, that protagonists (at least one of the protagonists) are not necessarily homosexual. It means that they are basically heterosexual, but once they meet, they stop liking each other.  Such discourses are more accepted than a story about born homosexuals.

 For instance, a mega hit anime (comedy/romance) "Junjo Romantica" depicts heterosexual guys who accept love from their male tutor, friend, and nephew etc.  A TV drama (comedy) "Ossan's love" (Love of a middle-aged man)  was so popular that many audiences enjoyed it partly because very popular actors played the main leads. Although these "BL" anime and dramas illustrate idealized or fantasized male homosexual romance, young (female) audiences actually got interested in LGBTQ+ problems because of these popular culture.

 Could you tell me a little bit more about the gendered dynamic of fan studies in Japan (including more on "otaku")?

Since I focus on female fandom from gender perspectives, I just explained female fandoms here.  But actually in Japanese scholarship on anime/manga/game fandom, most of the works have focused on (male) otaku by male scholars (Otsuka Eiji, Azuma Hiroki, Saito Tamaki, Uno Tsunehiro etc.) since the 1980s.  (Anime, manga, and games were not taken as academic agendas until in the 1990s when America and European countries "discovered" Japanese anime as "cool".) However, quite recently, probably because many universities began to offer gender and popular culture classes, more female scholars have had papers and books published in academia, and BL anime/drama aired in nationwide TV networks are getting popular, female fan studies have been accepted as gender studies, women's studies, and girls' studies. (By the way, Japanese BL manga/anime impacted South East Asian countries. For instance, Thai BL TV dramas used a Japanese BL framework and gained much popularity in Asia and even Japan.  It can be analyzed in area studies, post-colonialism, media studies etc.)

 An interesting point, though, is a gap between fans and scholars.  Although most BL scholars are fans (aca-fans), when a book (anthology) "Textbook on BL" was out last year, quite a few BL fans criticized the authors, saying "Don't make our "hidden pleasure" open!" or "Leave us alone!"   It is very intriguing that finally an introductory academic textbook on BL was published, aiming at students and fans, but BL fans refused to be examined.

 In Japan, academic journals or associations about fan studies exclusively are few unlike in English speaking countries. This is one of the issues to be solved too. How about in Norway? Maybe because of SKAM, many students have got interested in studying gender, immigrants, religious, social issues at schools and colleges?

JD: SKAM definitely made certain studies more popular, and it quickly made its way onto syllabi in gender, religious, and media studies (e.g., Sivertsen & Mordt, 2017). It also made Norwegian a popular language to learn outside of Norway (e.g., Framtida, 2018; Uksnøy, 2016).

 As regards gender, it is important to note that the series also led to many important discussions outside of formal learning spaces. The SKAM blog provided space for the audiences’ “unfiltered, knee-jerk reactions” and “all possible feelings, including politically incorrect ones,” with the aim that “the audience [could] work through these feelings by itself” (Krüger & Rustad, 2019, p. 89). Audiences publicly debated topics brought up by the show, such as the illegality of taking and spreading naked images of minors, the politics of abuse and harassment, and whether “party rapes are really just girls regretting they haad sex afterwards”—a comment vehemently opposed by numerous other fans (Krüger & Rustad, 2019, p. 89). Indeed, Krüger and Rustad (2018) argue that the show, thorugh both its transmedia engulfment of its audience and its content (which, per the show’s title, often focuses on feelings of shame), purposefully “hands over the task of negotiating social reality and its moral groundings to media users” (p. 90).

 However, the fervor surrounding the series has now died off. As in Japan, there are few official academic journals or associations exclusively focused on fan studies—although it must be said that the overwhelming majority of Norwegian scholarship is now published in English (Bye, 2021). This is in part because fan studies is less established here and in part because our research milieu is small—and as a result, fan scholars here tend to focus on international research networks, research groups, and channels for publication. I don’t necessarily see the lack of local groups and publication channels as limiting, although I must admit that it would be nice to have access to a local fan studies–focused research group. I do sometimes feel that fan studies is dominated by very specific perspectives and that these do not always match up with local experiences or discourses, but I suspect that this is nearly always the case outside of North America.

 References:

Bye, K. (2021, June 29). Mer engelsk og mindre norsk når forkerne publiserer.—Ikke overrasket, sier rektor. Khrono. https://khrono.no/mer-engelsk-og-mindre-norsk-nar-forskerne-publiserer--ikke-overrasket-sier-rektor/590422.

Framtida. (2018, March 14). Skam-fans lærer norsk. Framtida.no. https://framtida.no/2018/03/14/skam-fans-laerar-norsk. 

Sivertsen, E. V., & Mordt, H. (2017, March 16). Skam på pesnum. NRK. https://www.nrk.no/kultur/skam-pa-pensum-1.13430052.

Uksnøy, E. U. (2016, October 21). «Skam» har gjørt norsk kult på Island. NRK. https://www.nrk.no/kultur/_skam_-har-gjort-norsk-kult-pa-island-1.13189750.