Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences (2020) 13:615–622
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-019-00256-4
BOOK REVIEW
A Loaded Label: Intricacies of Being a Fan in Henrik
and Sara Linden’s Fans and Fan Cultures
Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017, $75.00 (Paperback), Open Access
Online, ISBN: 978-1-137-50127-1 (pb)
Alexandra Fong1
Received: 10 January 2019 / Accepted: 1 February 2019 / Published online: 9 February 2019
© Fudan University 2019
Abstract
In Fans and Fan Cultures, Henrik and Sara Linden examine what it means to be a
fan in an increasingly globalized, digitized, and capitalized world. In an age when
personal information is easily searchable in the Internet era, people can now become
fans immediately with the click of a “like,” “follow,” or “subscribe” button. The
ideal fan is not an obsessive fanatic who claims ownership of the product, but rather
one who is balanced and has a following of their own, thus making them not only a
fan, but also an influencer and a brand advocate. As worldwide media is largely con-
trolled by an exclusive number of corporations that determine what kind of media
we consume, fandom and fan communities offer a compromise: Though corpora-
tions and brands shape and control the majority of media content, fandom serves as
an opportunity for people with shared interests to come together, forge connections,
and find a sense of value and belonging that exists outside the mundane. My analysis
will concentrate on a selection of Linden and Linden’s topics and explore how fan-
dom has become a manifestation of the need for authentic, meaningful connections
in a time when technological development effectively renders authenticity as a bar-
gaining chip in a much larger marketing ploy.
Keywords Fandom · Fan culture · Fan creation · Consumerism · Social media ·
Cultural production · Connection · Authenticity · Coping mechanisms · Identity
* Alexandra Fong
[email protected]
1
Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University Steinhardt School
of Culture, Education, and Human Development, 239 Greene St, 8th Floor, New York,
NY 10003, USA
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616 A. Fong
1 Introduction
In Fans and Fan Cultures, Henrik and Sara Linden examine what it means to be
a fan in an increasingly globalized, digitized, and capitalized world. Though the
transition from consumer to fan was once a dedicated process that took much
time, effort, and commitment, in an age when personal information is easily
searchable in the Internet era, people can now become fans immediately with the
click of a “like,” “follow,” or “subscribe” button. However, maintaining one’s
identity as a fan, according to Linden and Linden, is a demanding and often
demeaning task—rather than a choice—that is not always as fulfilling as the con-
tent that fans love to consume.
Media content producers and corporate brands have been able to exploit fans
by setting criteria for an ideal fan: one who not only consumes, but also co-pro-
duces and promotes content in support of the product or experience. The ideal
fan is not an obsessive fanatic who claims ownership of the product, but rather
one who is balanced and has a following of their own, thus making them not
only a fan, but also an influencer and a brand advocate. Many of the authors that
Linden and Linden cite view fan-produced content such as songs, poems, novels,
fanzines, videos, and fanfiction as creations that empower fans. While co-crea-
tion presents an opportunity for fans to feel more connected to both the object of
their fervor and its creators, the emphasis placed on co-creation leads to an issue
where fans do work for media producers free of charge, giving fans the illusion of
agency in a relationship characterized by a stark power imbalance.
A common theme in Linden and Linden’s research on fandom in contempo-
rary media is that fandom is used as an effective coping mechanism in the face
of everyday consumerism, hardship, and cultural exclusion. As worldwide media
is largely controlled by an exclusive number of corporations that determine what
kind of media we consume, fandom and fan communities offer a compromise:
Though corporations and brands shape and control the majority of media con-
tent, fandom serves as an opportunity for people with shared interests to come
together, forge connections and find a sense of value and belonging that exists
outside the mundane.
When content sources are not corporations but individuals, such as popular blog-
gers and vloggers, whose growing popularity and fanbase paradoxically makes
it more difficult to create and maintain close, genuine connections with their fans,
establishing and fostering this personal connection is made even more difficult when
lifestyle personalities create sponsored content for products that they may not even
use, further complicating the often transactional relationship between these person-
alities and their followers. Social media platforms that are marketed as media that
enable the forging of meaningful relationships regardless of distance and differ-
ence—such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram—see this warm and fuzzy market-
ing veneer fall away to expose the neoliberalist values they reflect. To these social
media platforms, the best kind of citizen is a consumer whose key motivation in a
life driven by the constant need to share similar experiences with others is the fear of
missing out, shortened to the slang term “FOMO.”
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Linden and Linden cover fandom rather extensively in industries ranging from
movie franchises, television series, and musicians to places (better characterized as
sites of pilgrimage), clothing brands and British football teams in order to show how
the increased mediation in fan and fan cultures further blurs the lines between social
media, consumerism, and market capitalism to the point of questioning the very
existence of these boundaries. My analysis will concentrate on a selection of Lin-
den and Linden’s topics and explore how fandom has become a manifestation of the
need for authentic, meaningful connections in a time when technological develop-
ment effectively renders authenticity as a bargaining chip in a much larger marketing
ploy.
2 Defining the Ideal, Modern‑Day Fan
The ideal fan of a brand is neither a mildly interested follower who keeps the product
to his or herself nor an obsessed fanatic to the point of claiming ownership. Rather,
the ideal fan is a balanced individual who advocates for the product within their own
extensive network. Most fan communities have some semblance of a hierarchy in
which those at the top embody what it means to be a brand’s ideal fan and beyond.
High status is achieved through time spent in the fandom, depth of knowledge of
the product, greater access to the product, or a large collection of relevant symbolic
paraphernalia. Within these fan communities, the expected degree of knowledge a
qualified fan should have is determined by the rest of the fan community members.
Within fan studies, Linden and Linden note that it is oftentimes difficult to dif-
ferentiate fans from consumers, because they, too, consume products, experiences,
and interactions. However, the difference is that it is the voracious consumption of
cultural products, experiences, and interactions related to the respective fandom that
makes a fan out of the consumer. To businesses, brands, and corporations, the fan is
not only a loyal customer, but also one who spreads the word.
While consumption plays a big role in fandom, it only makes up half of fan cul-
ture. The production of cultural “texts,” a collective term Linden and Linden used
for “songs, poems, novels, fanzines, videos,” fanfiction, and more are a hallmark of
fan culture that often empower fans-as-creators and fans alike (2017, pp. 39). In my
own experience, fans-as-creators often make up the top of any fan community hier-
archy because they add to existing content that fans already love and hold the poten-
tial to bring to life, whether through writing fanfiction or creating art, ideas that exist
outside of canon content—that is, that which already exists within what has been
published, aired, or released.
What can oftentimes complicate the labor of love that is fan creation, however, is
that while it creates opportunities for fans across all levels of adoration to connect
with the subject of their fandom and its original (and not fan) creators, it is ulti-
mately the corporate media producers who reap the financial and material benefits
of fan-produced content. What fans-as-creators can gain from their own products is
less material, i.e., pride in the realization of a creative endeavor and higher status
within the fan community hierarchy.
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3 The Search for Authenticity and Connectedness in an Experience
Economy
Consumers often become fans of a product, experience, or interaction because they
feel a connection to the cultural product. Something about the fan subject resonates
with the consumer-turned-fan; in some circumstances, it is the authenticity of the
content or with which the content is produced and experienced. However, according
to B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, “Anything can be regarded as authentic
as long as it seems authentic from the point of view of the consumer (meaning that
authenticity—or rather, perceived authenticity—can be achieved through some stra-
tegic marketing planning)” (2017, pp. 21–22). What fans, especially those of online
personalities like bloggers and vloggers, perceive as authenticity may very well just
be layers of an artificially constructed yet expertly curated personality that does not
at all reflect the person who embodies it on camera or online.
To trace the origins of the search for authenticity in fandom, Linden and Linden
go back to the invention of cinema. While theater was restricted by limited audi-
ence size, films could be copied and distributed all over the world, allowing stars
to reach broader audiences and create mass appeal. Moreover, movie fandom cre-
ated a desire for fans to know the real people behind the characters, and technology
such as close-up shots gave the illusion of intimacy while allowing fans to remain
physically distant. On the other side of the screen, however, that intimacy was also
meticulously crafted. Movie stars were initially referred to as movie personalities
because they would play the same type of character in multiple films, and they were
expected to embody these personalities in real life as well as on screen. Conse-
quently, stars’ achievements would be measured by their ability to differentiate their
personality from others’ rather than by their acting, “leaving popular culture shallow
and deprived of authenticity” and substance (2017, pp. 87–88). Thus, the on-screen
characters and the actors themselves had constructed personalities, lacking in matter
and meaning.
Nonetheless, these empty personalities meant everything to fans—while casual
moviegoers did not need to know if movie stars were as they were on the screen, the
fans needed to verify authenticity. These fans wrote to fan magazines and sent fan
letters to the stars, many voicing their appreciation, others attempting to forge an
intimate, personal relationship by extending dinner invitations or asking for personal
items. Fans were in a constant pursuit of the authentic and real, to the extent that
they wanted tangible moments or objects to validate that authenticity.
The stars’ influence over the everyday lives of fans stretched beyond advertis-
ing into advice columns and self-help books. Stars had transcended their time on
screen and became “educators, giving lessons in style as well as personality, lei-
sure, and grooming” (2017, pp. 90). What is interesting here is that even after it
was revealed that stars’ personalities were constructed to reflect the characters they
played—and this revelation allowed for stars to branch out and play other roles that
deviated from their previously crafted personalities—rather than losing trust in their
idols, fans became even more enthusiastic about finding out what was actually real
about the stars they adored. Moreover, stars became pillars of knowledge to their
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A Loaded Label: Intricacies of Being a Fan in Henrik and Sara… 619
fans, who sought to emulate their lifestyles and beauty habits, greatly facilitated by
fan magazines.
Fan magazines served as the bridge between the world of the stars and real life,
making the magic of the film industry seem accessible by publishing products that
fans could buy to liken their own lifestyles to those of their idols. In this way, “celeb-
rity functions to construct and maintain links between consumer capitalism, democ-
racy, and individualism” (2017, pp. 85–86) In doing so, celebrity culture legitimizes
the capitalist system by demonstrating that “the individual has a commercial as well
as a cultural value” (2017, pp. 85–86). By buying products that the stars supposedly
use and actively pursuing a lifestyle visualized for a movie star in order to feel close-
ness to the star of their favor, fans reinforce the consumerist aspect of fandom.
The modern-day manifestation of this relationship, one of idolatry and emula-
tion, can be found more in lifestyle bloggers and vloggers than in movie stars. Lin-
den and Linden use travel blogger Brooke Saward as an example: Saward’s blog,
World of Wanderlust, grew from a hobby into a multi-contributor business. Linden
and Linden focus on one Instagram post in particular: On April 30, 2016, she sits
on a yellow Jeep upon arrival in Northfolk Island, South Pacific. The post is lit-
tered with compliments on her appearance and her photography, and to most of
these comments, she replies. The two that Saward does not reply to essentially imply
that she has sold out: They call out her shift from representing travel as “normal”
people experience it to representing a luxurious way of traveling that is unafford-
able for most of her readers. In terms of “authenticity,” Saward has left her follow-
ers in wanting, but most of them do not care enough to leave a comment. Many of
Saward’s commenters, as well as commenters on other travel, lifestyle, and beauty
blogs, often joke about being jealous or envious about a blogger’s lifestyle. Linden
and Linden observe that it is this kind of comment that is “the highest accolade a
blogger of this kind can get, and which firmly cements their output as aspirational”
(2017, pp. 118).
The experiences that travel, lifestyle, and beauty bloggers alike share with their
fans whether through Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube, contribute to an increasingly
anxiety-driven experience economy in which the worst one could do is to miss out
on something that everyone else is experiencing or has already experienced. Linden
and Linden redefine tourism consumption as “merely a hunt for photo opportunities,
and although experience consumption has been prevalent for centuries, most aspects
of the tourism experience can be viewed as potential photo opportunities” (2017,
pp. 122). While technological development has been frequently lauded as one of the
key ways to make communication and connection easier—take, for example, Face-
book’s mission statement: “Bring the world closer together”—technology ironically
has a way of making people feel isolated and disconnected. As users document their
lives online, shared experiences become a key means of connecting with others, and
oftentimes it is the fear of missing out—christened “FOMO” in slang terms—that
drives users to watch, experience, or buy things, even when they lack interest in
them. Missing out on something that others are after means another missed opportu-
nity to connect with others, showing how connection takes precedence despite fans’
search for authenticity and connection in an experience economy.
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4 Fandom as a Coping Mechanism
The need to connect is inherent to fandom—hence why fan communities form rather
organically—because fandom itself is “an effective strategy to cope with everyday
life… and can also be a powerful means for individuals and groups to cope with
adversity and exclusion” (2017, pp. 44). Fan communities celebrate not only the
work of corporate media producers but also the works of those within the commu-
nity, many of which explore ideas and images that exist beyond or modify canon
content, often referred to as “alternate universes” or “AUs” (“Alternate Universe,”
Fanlore).
Linden and Linden write that “the continuous pursuit of misery” brings fans
together, producing a sort of “happiness through misery, as the support of the club
[or fandom] provides a certain form of satisfaction” (2017, pp. 49). In a sense, fan-
dom embodies the phrase “misery loves company”: What they find lacking or out-
rageous in the cultural product of their passion, they critique and combat together.
When examining the relationship between fandom, social media, and the film and
television industry, Linden and Linden contend that “social media has become an
important space for fans to communicate with the film and television industry, as
well as with each other. Sometimes fan campaigns take on political dimensions, like
the petition aiming to give the animated character Elsa from the Disney success Fro-
zen a girlfriend in the upcoming sequel, Frozen 2” (2017, pp. 98). Fans most vis-
ibly organize and take on the role of fan activists when it comes to representing
real identities and issues in media. For example, in “Fan activists and the politics of
race in The Last Airbender,” Lori Kido Lopez joins an online fan community of the
popular Nickelodeon cartoon “Avatar: The Last Airbender” in their conversations,
debates, and attempted boycotts of the racebent casting in M. Night Shyamalan’s
film adaptation. When it was announced in 2008 that white actors would be playing
the lead roles of Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Zuko, artists from the show anonymously
created a LiveJournal forum “under the handle ‘Aang Ain’t White’” and spear-
headed a letter-writing campaign to combat the casting (Kido Lopez 2011, pp. 443).
In creating this forum, these anonymous artists also connected like-minded fans in a
more organized network and tapped into a community-wide anger over the dearth of
representing people of color in the mainstream entertainment industry. Two of these
fans made a Web site called Racebending.com and fostered a community of their
own on LiveJournal.
As the casting controversy carried into the next year, Racebending.com had
grown significantly: Six main contributors were based in Los Angeles, British
Columbia, New York, and Washington, D.C.; of the six, only one considered them-
selves an active fan of the show, four general fans but not on a serious level, and
one had never even seen the show yet had joined to protest the casting. In her study,
Kido Lopez examines the transition of a community of fans into one of fan activists.
She notes that a key move on Racebending.com’s part was in creating their online
community on LiveJournal, because they had an established fanbase to educate and
inspire. She writes, “If they could make the argument that their beloved property
was being mistreated, that passion could be redirected against the live-action film”
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A Loaded Label: Intricacies of Being a Fan in Henrik and Sara… 621
(2012). In tapping into an already existing network of fans, Racebending.com had a
community they could use to cull information and bombard other online platforms
and communities.
While activists and fans alike have been able to respond to the compromising
of their fan objects in rather effective ways, Linden and Linden argue that ulti-
mately, fandoms and the transformative works that they produce ultimately serve as
“a means to coping with existing discriminatory systems rather than fully resisting
them” (Linden and Linden 2017). There are certainly many instances of fans lashing
out (in many cases rightfully so) in response to poor casting choices in American
film adaptations of the media content they love. For example, international fans of
Japanese manga and anime series Ghost in the Shell boycotted the live-action adap-
tation which had cast Scarlett Johansson in the lead role of Major Motoko Kusanagi,
shortened the name to Major to reflect the change in race and in screen tests had
tried to use computer-generated imagery (CGI) to give Johansson more “Asian” fea-
tures (Sampson 2016). In response to Ghost’s marketing strategy of creating a meme
generator that would let users input text and photographs in the style of the film’s
promotional materials, Twitter users criticized Ghost by using the generator to high-
light Japanese actresses who should have been cast as Major and to make a broader
statement on the lack of Asian American representation in Hollywood. While the
products of these criticisms were amusing and Ghost suffer a financial blow at the
box office, all the efforts from the activists and fans did little to address the general
issue of Hollywood’s representation problem. What fans did achieve, however, was a
sense of connection and community further strengthened by a collective anger over
mistreatment and misrepresentation in entertainment industry.
5 Conclusion
Linden and Linden offer a well-organized and executed analysis of what it means to
be a fan in a world driven by the dissolution of transnational and transcultural bor-
ders, a neoliberal market in which everything—especially fan labor—can be capital-
ized upon, and an anxiety-fueled experience economy. Today’s ideal fans are bal-
anced, well-connected brand advocates who seek to share the product, experience,
or interaction in which they are engaged. Within a fan community hierarchy, these
fans are commonly found at the top alongside longtime fans who know more about
the product than other fans. However, consumption of the cultural product only
makes up half of fan culture: In order for a fandom to truly flourish, fans must also
produce content, such as music, videos, art, or fanfiction, which is often considered
to be an act of empowerment and an exercise of true fan agency. Fans’ supposed
empowerment and agency comes into question when taking into consideration the
role of the corporate media producer: Though fan creation is a labor of love, the
usually intangible benefits that fans reap from creation—for example, pride in the
realization of a creative endeavor or higher status within the fan community hier-
archy—pale in comparison with the financial and material benefits that corporate
media producers gain.
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622 A. Fong
By becoming fans of cultural products, individuals enter into a unique community
where the need for authenticity and connection to not only the product, but also to
fellow fans, is heightened. When individuals are fans of personalities such as blog-
gers and vloggers as opposed to corporate products, authenticity and close connec-
tion become less and less attainable. As the personality grows in popularity, he or
she becomes a product in the neoliberal market whose authenticity, or what fans per-
ceive to be authenticity, is reduced to a marketing strategy. These personalities often
share experiences that are not achievable by most of their fans and followers, height-
ening a sense of anxiety for fans to undergo the same experiences, have the same
products or go to the same events or places, and the worst one could do is to miss
out on something that everyone else is experiencing or has already experienced.
This need to connect is something inherent to fandom and fan culture; fandom
is considered by many fan scholars to be a coping mechanism to deal with the
mundaneness and adversities of everyday life. Fandom offers individuals a sense
of excitement upon connecting with others because of shared interests, but what
Linden and Linden propose is that fan communities share a profound connection
through misery and political action, like campaigning for proper representation of
the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer (LGBTQ) community,
and people of color. But when such work rarely bears visible and satisfying results,
one wonders if fan communities and fandom are really as fulfilling as they appear to
be. After all, the supposed connections that individuals feel toward their respective
fandoms merely masks a deeper human drive for genuine connection to others in a
world where technology makes it both easier and harder to reach out, and the choice
to produce content for a cultural product is exploited by those few corporate creators
of the cultural products we consume and adore.
Compliance with Ethical Standards
Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
References
Alternate Universe. https://fanlore.org.
Kido Lopez, Lori. 2011. Fan Activists and the Politics of Race in the Last Airbender. International Jour-
nal of Cultural Studies 15(5): 431–445. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877911422862.
Linden, H., and S. Linden. 2017. Fans and Fan Cultures. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sampson, Mike. 2016. Exclusive: ‘Ghost in the Shell’ Producers Reportedly Tested Visual Effects That
Would Make White Actors Appear Asian. Screen Crush.
Alexandra Fong is an undergraduate student at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Edu-
cation, and Human Development studying Media, Culture, and Communication. Her research focuses on
how products of the entertainment industry, particularly those involving Asian American representation,
impact individual and collective identities. She is especially interested in dissecting the systems that sup-
port whitewashed characters and racebent casting.
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