Abstract
Since its emergence in the late 1980s and early 1990s, ‘fan studies’ has been a field with growing significance in academia. Fan studies focus on the valuation of affect, and particularly on fans’ positive feelings. However, the opposite feelings, such as disgust, dislike and hatred, tend to be examined much less frequently. In recent years, negative emotions as projected by fans seem to be gradually developing into a new cultural phenomenon that is increasingly drawing academic attention (see, for example, Claessens and Van den Bulck, 2015; Hill, 2015; Phillips, 2015). The recent collection Anti-fandom: Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age, edited by Melissa A. Click (2019), explores the emotions of dislike, disinterest, disgust and hate that populate the spectrum of anti-fandom, whose targets range across politicians, celebrities and TV characters. An anti-fan is someone who enjoys writing and/or discussing something for the purpose of hatred. It is common for anti-fans to gather in large groups to share their mutual aversion. Anti-fandom is constituted by performances and practices such as snarking, trolling and ‘hate-watching’.
Offering 15 original articles, this volume provides valuable theoretical and methodological frameworks for scholars and students. It covers a range of questions concerning anti-fandom – from the theorisation of an ‘affective turn’, the identity politics of anti-fandom, to the lived experience and public expression of anti-fandom. Acknowledging the smattering of articles on ‘anti-fandom’ that existed before its publication, this collection emphasises the crucial importance of studying anti-fandom as a general phenomenon. It suggests that the study of this area is in need of direction and motivation because anti-fandom has emerged in new forms; it is not simply presented as a kind of railing against or parodying. It can be presented as love with criticism, hatred with interests and so on.
This collection is divided into three parts, each being composed of five chapters. Part 1, ‘Theorising Anti-Fandom’, sets out its intention to broaden the scholarship of anti-fandom and introduces the reader to the complexity and diversity of the topic. It provides the theoretical foundations that underpin the book and facilitates future studies in the field. In his chapter, Jonathan Gray, one of the earliest scholars to start thinking about anti-fandom in the first decade of 21st century, attempts to offer a variety of anti-fan types such as hatewatching and rivalries of similar cultural products to explore various orientations of dislikes and hates that have hitherto been neglected in fandom studies. These ‘types’ are also discussed by other scholars in the following chapters. The fandom of British TV series Doctor Who is utilised by Matt Hills to explain the generational barriers around the contexts led by fans’ lifelong relationship with the mediated texts, which is bound with dislike. His analysis moves the fan cultural authority forward with dislike and criticism in the instance of generational fandom.
Part 2, ‘Anti-Fandom and Identities’, aims to unpack identity politics in relation to electoral politics, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, industry and ‘supraculture’. Cornel Sandvoss explores case studies involving politicians in the United States and Europe to emphasise anti-fans’ influence on political participation and democracy. Roberta Pearson examines anti-fan responses to programming changes at BBC Radio 3. Her analysis of these anti-fan comments provides strong evidence for the argument that supracultural fans (whose knowledge and love for a ‘high culture’ musical form endows them with a cultural capital ‘that distinguishes them from others’ (p. 207)) are not always complicit with institutional power structures.
The chapters in Part 3, ‘Anti-Fandom in Real Life’, explore and present the diverse lived experiences of anti-fandom. Bethan Jones makes use of Fifty Shades of Grey and argues that BDSM community fans’ negative comments about the movie bolster the credibility of these fans among readers and challenge the representation of BDSM. Rebecca Williams discusses the rejection discourses of fans towards the ends of TV programmes, examining the psychological strains and critically defensive postures that come with the cancellation of a TV programme. She ultimately suggests more attention should be paid to different stages of fan attachment to improve understanding of fans’ complex relationships with their objects.
Instead of exploring anti-fandom from a single case or a single context, this collection valuably addresses the questions of ‘what is anti-fandom?’, ‘what impacts anti-fandom?’ and ‘how has anti-fandom performed?’. It widens the theoretical scope of anti-fandom studies with vivid cases from lived experience that encompass political elections, TV watching practices, gender politics (e.g. sexuality) and so on. What I appreciate particularly is the extent to which this collection develops the argument that, in many ways, ‘the anti-fan is the new fan’. Fandom and anti-fandom are not necessarily opposite in nature. Dislike and hate of a text can be a strong and powerful feeling – much like love and obsession – producing activity, creativity and affect. The authors in this volume examine the ‘new fan’ in today’s mediated and digitalised world and enrich the meaning of anti-fans, their practices and emotions, helping us to understand the position of anti-fans within a much larger horizon of experience. Anti-fans can also be loyal fans who show a different emotion (not only dislike) because of a tiny change within the context (such as the iterated adjustment of actors). Studies on dislike, hate and anti-fandom are as important as studies on like, adoration and fandom; they play a crucial role in helping us understand the highly complex and shifting contemporary media and audience environment. The studies in this collection discover anti-fans in flux and provide compelling insights into the dynamic pleasures, performances, punishments and practices of anti-fandom from political, economic and cultural perspectives. However, I would suggest that it would have been further enriched if the collection had investigated the transcultural development of this phenomenon in greater depth. It would be valuable to see future anti-fan scholarship exploring the cross-cultural contexts and politics of anti-fandom. Overall, this collection serves as a good introduction to anti-fandom studies because of the close-to-life examples, as well as critical reading for scholars who are already familiar with the area for its innovative and cutting-edge theoretical analyses.
