The Future is Fandom: The importance of being a fan to the future of the entertainment industry

by CarrieLynn Reinhard, MA

It may seem that I am implying with my essay's title that fandom is some new

upstart, where in actuality, fandom has been a fundamental part of human leisure

activities since the first man (and I mean, man) had free time to go down to the Greek

amphitheatre or Roman coliseum and cheer for their favorite competitor or cry through

their favorite play. Fandom, fanship, being a fan -- these are all aspects of human life

that carry across historical periods, social conditions, cultural memberships, and types

of objects of fandom. A fan has been labeled by society from something as negative as

a fanatic to as positive as an aficionado -- depending on the object of affection. If you

are a fan of opera, you are an aficionado. If you are a fan of comic books, you are a

fanatic. But the underlying psychological, sociological and cultural framework of what

constitutes fandom is the same.

Being a fan of something -- whether it is a sporting team, a movie, a comic book,

a religious figure -- means having a confluence of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that

revolve around your object of affection. First, it means having a large amount of interest

in the object, such that time is spent contemplating it beyond what would be expected

by just engaging with the object. If you are a fan of Cowboy Bebop, you think about

Spike and Faye and Jet and Ed outside of when you watch the episodes -- and you may

even think about them outside of the ways in which you see them in the episodes.

Second, it means having feelings about the object that may be more extreme than the

non-fan -- you could react either very favorably or unfavorably to the object, depending

on what the object does, but you rarely react lukewarmly or with much indifference. So

the ending of Cowboy Bebop, if you are a fan of Spike's, may have had a more adverse

affect on you than if you were not a fan. Third, it means you engage with the object in

ways others may not -- which can be as simple as loyally repeatedly returning to the

object of affection (if it's a movie, you watch it over and over) or it could be something

more involving, such as writing that piece of slash fanfic between Spike and Jet or

joining an online RPG and playing as Faye.

A fan can have any combination of these three aspects of reaction: cognitive;

affective; and, behavioral. A fan can also have any level of the three aspects -- one

does not need to be highly involve cognitively, affectively or behaviorally to consider

oneself a fan -- and these levels may vary across the different fandoms the person has

-- one can be highly involved with Star Wars but only superficially involved with Cowboy

Bebop. The important thing is whether or not you have defined yourself as a fan,

because in doing so, you have decided to construct some part of your identity around

this object of affection and have decided to allow this fandom to tell the world something

about how you see your self.

So, if I am saying that fandom is pervasive across time and space and that it

involves a multitude of types and qualities of engagements, then why is my essay

implying in the title that fandom will be important to how the entertainment industry

operates in the future?

Since the 1980s, in the United States especially, the way academics and the

industry understand the potential audience for entertainment media has been changing.

In this country, this decade saw the rise of the cable networks with their ability to

specifically target audiences whereas the Big Three broadcast networks (NBC, CBS,

ABC) were obligated to reach the largest mass audience possible. This is because

cable networks received subscription fees to offset some of their production costs,

whereas the broadcast networks were highly reliant on advertisers who wanted to reach

the large audiences. And the cable system caught on, big time, with more and more

networks being offered that more and more specifically targeted audiences, carving up

the mass audience into niche audiences. If you want cartoons, there's the Cartoon

Network. Like science fiction? Try the SciFi Network. Like motorcycle racing? Speed

is your fix. Even the field of broadcasting became narrower as FOX started in the late

1980s, and then the WB and UPN began in the mid-1990s (only to merge into the CW

this past year). The broadcast networks, while not able to go after specific target

audiences as a whole network, developed shows that would be able to -- gone was The

Cosby Show to reach all demographics, here was The OC to reach the young white,

middle-class adults 18-34. Broadcasting became a mythical entity -- now we talk about

narrowcasting.

Then came the next threat and possibly the biggest one: the internet. Although

around for a couple decades, it has only been in the last decade that the rise of the

internet has truly impacted our society and culture, and thus by extension how we like to

be entertained. At the end of the last millennium, the internet was largely seen as an

interpersonal communication device that facilitated people's communicating with other

people via email, websites, chatrooms and the such. It was also a new field of

commerce, where Amazon let you buy books, eTrade let you buy stocks, and eBay let

you buy just about anything. However, since the bust of the dotcoms after the turn of

the millennium, we've seen a rebooting of the internet into what is now being termed

Web 2.0. There has been the rise of the blog, the friendship nets like Facebook and

MySpace, and the ability to download Hollywood produced content and non-Hollywood

produced content. YouTube's success within a year to become one of the most visited

websites shows the power of Web 2.0 -- for user produced content to be uploaded by

anyone for anyone to download. It's the success story of American Idol online, where

anyone can become an overnight star or celebrity -- we mean you, dancing Star Wars

boy, and you, Mortal Kombat singing Smosh. But in all this talk about user produced

content, we have to remember something perhaps even more important.

We are now entering a period of having anything and everything available to us

at any time. Online demand is rising with the ability to download music, TV shows,

comic books, literary books, movies, video games -- and this ability and what is

available will only continue to rise as broadband capabilities expand. We are no longer

in a period where the audience, the user, the consumer, has to simply take what they

are given. We are no longer at the mercy of having to go see the latest Hollywood

blockbuster at the movie theatre because it's the only thing on the screen, or to listen to

the drivel of the latest popstar, created by some multinational record producer, because

it is the only thing on the only radio station in town. We can now search the web for a

variety of leisure pursuits and entertainment products to fill our pastime. We can

personalize our homepage at MyYahoo! to give us only the news and comic strips we

are interested in. We can go to Comedy Central online and only watch the part of The

Daily Show that we want to watch. And it's not just the internet that gives us this

capability -- technologies like TiVO and DVR allow us to easily tape what we want, to

watch live action as we want to, and to ignore commercials far easier than ever before.

We are moving out of a time of the passive audience, who sits on the couch

watching the primetime line-up. We are moving into a time of the active media user,

who downloads the latest songs from some obscure Australian band into his MP3

player or last night's episode of The Office into her video iPod to be a mobile user, to

not be tied down to any particular location of viewing. We are moving into a period

where we are in control, where we know what we like and we will do whatever it takes to

get it.

Sound familiar? You got it, we are talking about fans, and here is why the future

is fandom.

The entertainment industry is not ignorant of the fact that the multitude of

possible entertainment choices out there has resulted in a fractured audience (as they

see it) that cannot be easily brought together into a large mass for any one

entertainment event (although the Super Bowl remains a large annual ritual). So if you

cannot guarantee that you will be able to somewhat consistently draw in the large

numbers of viewers or listeners, then what do you do? You try to draw in, create and

maintain a certain number of loyal viewers or listeners who will repeatedly return to that

particular media text, be it a movie, a television show, a musician, a comic book, or

anything else that they might be able to produce for you to consume. In other words,

the producers of your entertainment are going to be trying to find and manufacture fans.

We can already see this happening on a number of fronts -- and perhaps it all

goes back to Star Trek, the first major organized and capitalized on fandom in the

United States. True, NBC tried to cancel the series, but it was the vocal outcry from the

fans that somewhat saved the original series but most certainly guaranteed the 40 year

dominance of Paramount in maintaining a profitable entertainment commodity. The

producing company can capitalize on the fandom by creating new entertainment texts to

extend and expand the original text - hence all the subsequent Star Trek franchises and

movies. However, they can also capitalize on the fan's loyalty and need for more by

creating ancillary products, such as merchandise and theme park attractions -- a lesson

truly learned from George Lucas's huge success with the Star Wars line. Producers will

do whatever they think is necessary to continue to whet the appetite of the loyal fan if it

means being able to ensure that there is a loyal fan who will continue to come back to

them for their fix.1 We have seen this become more explicit in recent years at San

Diego's Comic-Con, where Hollywood hands out goodies plastered with some

entertainment text's logo (such as the Avatar: The Last Airbender T-shirts I should have

snagged last year) while also enticing fans with special clips and premieres of long-

awaited for texts (the Samuel L. Jackson appearance for Snakes on a Plane was a big

hit, unlike the subsequent movie).

With this history of manufacturing and maintaining fandom, we now can add to it

the incorporation of the internet. The internet has for some time been a field of

discussion for fans about their objects of affection. I can remember when The X-Files

started back in the early 90's the discussions by the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade

and the spoilers for what would happen throughout season one. Over time, as personal

webpages and networks grew, it also became a space for sharing fanart, fanfic, and

ideas about story or character progression, among other things -- especially the rise of

spoilers. But all of this was essentially fan-produced. The industry, the actual

producers of the texts, was reluctant to get involved, and if they did they were hostile to

what the fans were doing -- famous examples include George Lucas's attacks on fan

produced films.

But as the millennium rolled over and the web became Web 2.0, the attitude of

the producers changed. Perhaps it was the stubbornness of people like Harry Knowles

at AICN.com or the cleverness of the directors of The Blair Witch Project, but producers

no longer shun the internet. In fact, they embrace it, the potential audience it can

create, and the loyal fans it can maintain. Not only does each upcoming movie have its

own website, but trailers that before were only premiered in the theatres now will be first

available for download at quicktime.com or movies.yahoo.com or the movie's own

website. Producers will offer websites exclusive access and content -- either because

1 By fix, I am implying that fandom is an addiction. However, I am by no means suggesting that it is negative. Quite the contrary, I see addiction has being another fundamental aspect of our lives, just like fandom. We are all addicted to something that is good for us, such as a loved one, in the sense that we have a physiological reaction to the presence of the object of our addiction and having it present actually satisfies what could be a painful situation when it is not present. Of course, addiction can also have negative consequences, which are quite often always studied and made an example of -- thus do we consider anything that is an addiction to be bad.

the website was created by the producer or because it reaches the exact audience the

producer wants to reach. We only have to look to see Lost: The Experience as an

attempt to provide the loyal fan with more information and puzzles to hold their interest

during the show's summer hiatus. Or right now, Heroes' 9th Wonder Board and website

that contains exclusive graphic novels. Where we could only download a show from

iTunes for a fee or, gasp, watch the show for free when it originally airs, we can now

catch a repeat online at the show's website for free (again, this appeared to begin this

past season with the episodes of Heroes). Websites for movies, television shows, and

others now even encourage active fan engagement, such as providing space for fans to

upload their fanart or fanfic directly to the website.

While all of these examples that I have discussed so far would most generally fall

into the genre category of science fiction, that is only because this genre has a strong

history of having the type of loyal fan the industry is hoping to cultivate. Just like the

sports fan, scifi fans (under which I include anime, fantasy, horror, videogame, etc.

because of the large overlaps among interests these fans often have) are very loyal to a

particular entertainment text and have shown a tendency to spend much time and

money on maintaining this fandom. As of now, non-science fiction related genres, such

as basic comedy or drama, or even genres like gangster, western and melodrama, do

not have the same robust history for creating further franchises and ancillary products

based on the original text (although there have been examples, such as Bonanza).

However, that does not mean that there are not loyal fandoms that spring up

around those texts. One only has to visit the array of fanfic available at

www.fanficton.net to see that these texts can have very loyal fans. Thus, for these

texts, the franchises and ancillary products, which are in fact external to the actual text

the fan is loyal to, are not as important as manipulating the original text in ways that

ensure loyal fandom. Such in-text manipulations include the use of sexual tension

between stars (Bones, House M.D.), the cliffhangers that occur at the end of each

sweep's month and each season (Prison Break, The Office), and the general

serialization of storylines so that all storylines within a single episode do not conclude

within that episode (Boston Legal, Desperate Housewives). All these in-text

manipulations create gaps that leave the viewer wanting to know more, to know how

things end up -- they are the foreplay to string the viewer along as long as possible,

delaying the climax that could ultimately dissipate the viewer's interest and thus loyalty.

Such in-text manipulations have been on the rise since the mid-1990s and occur

across all genres at this point, and perhaps across all television shows as well. They

occur in comic books, which also does sweeps events such as Marvel's Civil War

series. They occur in video games, only to a lesser extent, in order to get the player to

play again in a different way, or to set up the next game with that title. Movies, of

course, will always end with some suggestion of what can happen next if the movie

studio hopes to make the series a franchise. It is this unresolved element, this gap, this

possibility that the "happy ending" is just over the horizon, that the industry hopes keeps

the viewer coming back -- it's their attempt at creating a loyal fan.

But in the end, it is still up the viewer, the listener, the reader, and the player to

decide whether or not the text is worthy of their loyalty. It is up to the media user to

decide whether or not it is worthy of their time thinking about it beyond the initial

engagement., of feeling strongly against or for it, and of wanting to do more with it, such

as revisit the story and characters as the producer presented it, or to further the story

and characters by their own work. It is up to each person to choose their fan identity, to

construct it around their object of affection. Only now, the industry is working harder

and harder to get your interest, to show you that they take your interest seriously and

that, by extension, they take you seriously. And they do take you seriously -- because

they take your financial investment in them seriously. But that does not mean you are

being hoodwinked by their capitalist interests, because you are in the driving seat. If

you don't like something, you'll let them know by your withdrawing of this investment,

and then hopefully they'll come up with something that is more worth your time, mental

expenditure, love, and, yes, money.

The future of the entertainment industry is all about knowing you, the fan. So let

them know what you think.