Has God fled the Church of Fandom?

fans can be awful

Listen to David, Stephen, and

Țara Isabella Burton

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Interintellect

salon on the cult of celebrity [Spotify, Apple, YouTube]

During the last century, fan culture was considered unseemly, if not downright abject, the grimy stuff of Trekkie conventions and message boards. That was before the gutting of media institutions, the forced-cannibalization of nostalgic properties, and the surrender of cultural curation to nobodies. Now, the public have been given a voice and the incentive to brand themselves. If you are a Swiftie, you are not just attending a Taylor concert. You’re giving a performance, too. 

We no longer see ourselves as a cheering mass, the lucky worshippers of a visiting goddess. We have had a taste of fame—their fame—from posting at their shows. We want a stake in the story; we believe we’re entitled to it. Every stan wants to shine, which inevitably displaces the star from the center of her own constellation. The fandom has taken on a will of its own, often beyond or in spite of its central deity. This presents the possibility for democratization—or mass delusion. 

It should be said: fans can be awful—gaudy, unimaginative, demanding. We want to be rescued and to possess our rescuer. Years ago, at a comic convention, I witnessed two middle-aged women break into sobbing shrieks, the sort of ululation reserved for a funeral pyre, just from hearing David Tenant’s name. He wasn’t even in attendance. I’m no better: I’ve spent hundreds of dollars to have my photograph taken with former stars of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; you can see them squirming in the presence of an overeager fanatic. But at what point does this level of devotion become dangerous?

This August, Chappell Roan, midway through her alt-girl Americana ascension, released a statement on Instagram demanding in no vague terms for fans to respect her privacy: to not touch her, call her by her legal name, or get near her family. Thirty years after the death of Kurt Cobain, and nearly just as many since Princess Diana’s, we are shocked to see the celebrity set the terms of her engagement. If her worshippers must fall to Dionysian frenzy, must she be consumed in the rapture?  

As fans become more vocal, they threaten to overpower the object of their affection. I recently had an acquaintance, in his forties, try to sell me on Todrick Hall. I winced, arguing that he’s for a certain kind of gay man, at a certain kind of house on Fire Island. Then I realized: I barely know Hall’s music. Indeed, I was reacting to his audience. The same with the white women who rather infamously swarm Lizzo’s concerts. Are they her paycheck, or her curse? Does Lizzo care? Should she? Should we? 

And then there’s Brat. A friend of mine recently expressed her annoyance with Brat Summer; she found Charli XCX’s garish insouciance to be flat. You find the reaction tedious, I contended, not the artist. Of course Brat was meant to be a satire, a tragicamp saga of delusion and desperation. But thanks to Charli’s mastery of songwriting and production, one can read her music as catchy and shallow or layered and complex. It doesn’t matter. That’s the point. That’s what Pop is. 

And if the mania threatens to overpower the creation, what’s the solution? Passive engagement? My stepdad was a meat-eating, Harley-driving Louisianian. And yet, in his sportscar, one could find Shakira CDs. And not Laundry Service, but ’90s-era Shakira, when she was still something of a witchy woman; before the chaps, blonde hair and English lyrics. Would my stepdad have identified as a fan, or, dare I say it, a stan? Is the microcultural discourse so tired that I find his form of bland, Best Buy consumerism refreshing? 

Of course, a vocal audience has its service. There are gay men, like me, who will love Charli until the end of our lives, just as we have Maria Callas and Madonna. We are their livelihoods and the ones who honor their life’s work, the keepers of the scrolls. It’s not just fan service, when our divas say that they’re indebted to their audience. It’s true love. 

Consider the #freebritney movement. Britney’s acolytes organized with the force of ACT UP in the ’80s, exposing profound abuses and hammering outside the courthouse until their Supreme was vindicated. They may have saved her life. But based on Spears’ insistence that she genuinely wants to be left alone, what are these people to do? They’ve made personalities and lifestyles out of their love for her, and now she wants out. What happens to a church abandoned by its god? 

Apparently, we uphold the faith, and continue to polish the stained glass. The cancellation of Joss Whedon—creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel—risked the gutting of the feminist fictional universe he originated. But that would also force an unnecessary disbanding of the community built by the series’ actors and fans, who by this point assemble at conventions as if gathering for family dinner. No matter what becomes of Whedon, Sunnydale is by now a shared corner in the collective imagination, like Gotham City or Hogwarts, all of which inevitably outlive their creators. The fans become the custodians; they decide what becomes of the legacy.

But without the originator, delivering original art, it’s all still derivative, echoes of old prayers in a hollow chapel. To keep the faith alive, with or without signs from the demiurge, the fans must be in dialogue with the art, reinventing and reinterpreting it. The advent of accessible music-mixing software and tools of dissemination has brought us great remix artists, like the Charlie-obsessive Jevan, masters of sonic collage. Drag artists, or at least the great ones, elevate old tracks through personal inflection. Like the gene-distorting wave in Annihilation, it’s making something new. 

Standom is an acting out of narcissism; man fashioning himself in his god’s image. It’s piety with no connection to source, devotion without discovery. The messiah has departed. If the temple is still to abound with life, its congregants must drive their faith towards an ecstasy which only comes from humility, away from identification and back to the purity of inspiration.