Notes
fans, in John Fiske’s words, are “associated with the cultural tastes of subordinated formations of the people, particularly those disempowered by any combination of gender, age, class and race” (1992: 30).
canonical Textual Poachers, fandom was automatically more than the mere act of being a fan of something: it was a collective strategy, a communal effort to form interpretive communities that in their subcultural cohesion evaded the preferred and intended meanings of the “power bloc” (Fiske 1989) represented by popular media.
first, the Post article reveals how it is all too common for fans to be dismissed as Others. As the wealth of literature on Othering makes clear, the Other is always a reflection and a projection of ourselves
frequently our gaze at the Other is imbued with significant desire and longing.
redeem them as creative, thoughtful, and productive.
As we have moved from an era of broadcasting to one of narrowcasting, a process fueled by the deregulation of media markets and reflected in the rise of new media technologies, the fan as a specialized yet dedicated consumer has become a centerpiece of media industries’ marketing strategies
Rather than ridiculed, fan audiences are now wooed and championed by cultural industries, at least as long as their activities do not divert from principles of capitalist exchange and recognize industries’ legal ownership of the object of fandom.
obvious difference between sports fandom and fan audiences in other areas of popular culture, which Fiske highlighted more than a decade ago (1992) and which until recently led to the widespread disregard of sport fans in audience studies, not least because sport fans—in light of the violence and racism that marked much of their representation in particular in the 1980s—were a much less likely and indeed likable subject of study, who evaded the paradigm of a bipolar power struggle between hegemonic culture industries and fans.
such as celebrities and politicians seeking to connect with consumers and voters by publicly emphasizing their fan credentials, from Ben Affleck’s highly visible visits to Fenway Park
Scholars are still concerned with questions of power, inequality, and discrimination, but rather than seeing fandom as a tool of empowerment they suggest that the interpretive communities of fandom (as well as individual acts of fan consumption) are embedded in the existing economic, social, and cultural status quo.
fans are seen not as a counterforce to existing social hierarchies and structures but, in sharp contrast, as agents of maintaining social and cultural systems of classification and thus existing hierarchies.
magazine stands buckle under the weight of pages dedicated to celebrities, sports, cinephilia, music, and multiple other fan objects; the 7:00–8:00 P.M. slot on American television has virtually been colonized by entertainment news programs catering to fan interests; many cable, radio, and satellite channels address a specific genre’s fans; and entire neighborhoods can become awash with the colors of local or national sports teams
on certain holy days of competition.
the Internet has been joined by a host of other technologies that extend both fandom and the prospects for engaging in fan activities into multiple pockets of everyday life. Blackberries, iPods, PSPs, laptops, PDAs, and cell phones all bring fan objects out with their users to the subway, the street, and even the classroom. In turn, these changing communication technologies and media texts contribute to and reflect the increasing entrenchment of fan consumption in the structure of our everyday life.
fans’ readings, tastes, and practices are tied to wider social structures, yet extends the conceptual focus beyond questions of hegemony and class to the overarching social, cultural, and economic transformations of our time, including the dialectic between the global and the local
the particular and conspicuous patterns of fan consumption and the specific forms of social interaction that take place between fans have become an ever more integral part of everyday life in modern societies; and as fandom has grown into a truly global phenomenon drawing on popular texts ranging from the global media spectacles of American exports like Hollywood blockbuster films or the Super Bowl
fandom has emerged as an ever more integral aspect of lifeworlds in global capitalism, and an important interface between the dominant micro and macro
forces of our time.
through the investigation of fandom as part of the fabric of our everyday lives, third wave work aims to capture fundamental insights into modern life. In answer to our initial questions, then, it is precisely because fan consumption has grown into a taken-for-granted aspect of modern communication and consumption that it warrants critical analysis and investigation more than ever.
“the trouble with the contemporary condition of our modern civilization is that it stopped questioning itself[….]
studies of fan
audiences help us to understand and meet challenges far beyond the realm of popular culture because they tell us something about the way in which we relate to those around us, as well as the way we read the mediated texts that constitute an ever larger part of our horizon of experience.
Hence, studying fan audiences allows us to explore some of the key mechanisms through which we interact with the mediated world at the heart
of our social, political, and cultural realities and identities. Perhaps the most important contribution of contemporary research into fan audiences thus lies in furthering our understanding of how we form emotional bonds with ourselves and others in a modern, mediated world.
“antipalon deos,” or awe of the enemy.
Anti-fans are people with clear dislikes.1 They are people who, for a variety of reasons, hate or intensely dislike and have strong negative views or feelings about a certain text, genre, or personality (Gray 2003).
These are cases where two fan objects are clear-cut or traditional rivals, thus inviting fans to become anti-fans of the “rival” object of admiration. It suggests that under such circumstances, a fan becomes an anti-fan of the object that “threatens” his/her own, and of that object’s fans. Thus, when A and B are the opposing fandom objects, fans of A are anti-fans of B and of B’s fans, and vice versa.
anti-fans emerge whenever binary oppositions are established between two fan objects. It proposes that this kind of anti-fandom is fostered particularly in the realm of spectator sports and is embedded in the nature of such sports that promote incessant competition and ranking.
It suggests that the emotional investment in anti-fandom is significant to the construction of fan identity. It concludes that bipolar oppositions act as the definitive mechanism of distinction to the outsider and enable identification with the team.
In this sense, and by emphasizing the importance of identification against the rival, the chapter suggests that anti-fandom may also work as a form of language, structured, like language, through binary oppositions.
“anti-fans must find cause for their dislike in something.
anti-fandom caused and triggered by fandom. This type of anti-fandom encloses cases where the dislike of object A results from liking object B; where the hatred for something is dictated by the love for something else and the need to protect the “loved one.”
hates the fan object of another fan for the simple reason that this object is in direct, straightforward, or historical competition with her/his own object of admiration.
The two competing objects have to be in an outright rivalry with each other. Often, this means that the competence and skills of the two objects, which are in direct competition, are near equivalent (or perceived to be near equivalent), and it is this equivalence that makes the opposing fan object a threat to the fan’s object and makes her/him an anti-fan.
Sport genres are the perfect place for anti-fans to be “produced,” because one of the central meanings of sports is competition.
All participating sports fans expressed their hatred for the opponent of their object of affection that they considered the biggest threat. Whatever bipolar oppositions were constructed (Manchester United vs. Arsenal, Manchester United vs. Liverpool, Olympiakos vs. Panathinaikos), the underlying principal was a feeling of awe for the “rival”
“Antipalon deos” is the notion behind the conceptual framework of this anti-fan definition.4
reciprocity of apprehension
mutual fear between opponents, enemies, or adversaries that ensures unity and cohesion in the interior of the rival camps, and a state of balance between them
The fact that something is good enough to be a counterforce to a fan object is what creates a balance of fear and makes an anti-fan.
football fandom cannot be examined in isolation from their historical context, or the socio-historical and economic framing of football itself.
However, some of the distinctions between what could in older times have been considered “preconditions” of fandom for the two teams, such as residential proximity, or social and economic stratification, have, by all means, weakened.
You do not have to be a resident of Athens or middle class to support Panathinaikos; you do not need to be working class or living in Piraeus to be a fan of Olympiakos. Both teams currently enjoy a pan-Hellenic fan base and aficionados from any walk of life.
However, even though bonds of socioeconomic background and locality are not as relevant as they used to be, current fans of both teams essentially reproduce and preserve stereotypes and distinctive marks rooted in the original social class difference of the earliest fan base of Panathinaikos and Olympiakos.
the fan identity is socially and culturally constructed in the sense that a fan and her/his fan identity is defined in relation to her/his anti-fan and all the socio-historical baggage the counterforce carries.
identities are formed “in relation to other identities, to the ‘outsider’ or in terms of the other: that is, in relation to what they are not. The most common form in which this construction appears is in binary oppositions.
And clearly, within the binary opposition between Olympiakos and Panathinaikos, fan identities are constructed “through a hostile opposition of ‘us’ and ‘them’”(Woodward 1997: 30). Through this bipolar structure, fans conceptualize their fan identity and make sense of their fandom.