On coalitiongirl, there is kind of an amusing (to me) “debate” about fandom vs. popular culture
And it reminded me of something that happened last semester.
I wore my Fluffy the Vampire Slayer t-shirt to class one day and most people in the class commented, had seen Buffy, etc. We talked a bit about BTVS but it was causal fan type discussions.
A few weeks later I wrote a paper on the commodification of gay bodies and in particular, the commodification of gay bodies and ascribing heteronormative gender roles to those bodies in slash fiction.
Nobody in my class knew what slash fiction was. Or at the very least, nobody fessed up to it. The whole idea of fandom was completely new to a few of my classmates and they seemed completely bewildered by it.
I think often we just assume that because we’re in fandom, everyone who ever watched a show/movie or read a book, knows about fandom and how it operates. What happens in fandom isn’t necessarily what happens in popular culture and vice versa.
I remember the first time I tried to describe fandom to my husband, to my mom, to my friend. I got the same kind of bewilderment from them that I got from my class. I think critics are learning as time passes about fandom but I still think that causal fan and their perceptions will always win out. Why? It’s a numbers game, like so much in life. There are millions more causal fans than hardcore fandom people.
