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Journal of Fandom Studies, The - Current Issue
Volume 12, Issue 2-3, 2024
- Articles
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The joy of gaylor: Sexual identity in the Taylor Swift fandom
More LessTaylor Swift fans constitute one of the largest and most active pop music fan bases. ‘Gaylors’ are Swift fans who read her artistic and celebrity texts through a queer lens. As an extremely active community within the Swift fandom, gaylors produce subversive readings of Swift’s songs, and they seek to compile evidence that Swift herself is secretly queer. How did speculation about Taylor Swift’s sexuality become an organizing force for many in the Taylor Swift fandom? Using interviews with self-described gaylors (N = 19), this study explores how gaylors produce queer readings of her songs and celebrity persona and how those interpretations cultivate joy, shape personal identity and build community. An in-depth analysis of the gaylor phenomenon illuminates how fans construct diverse readings of pop culture texts, and it reveals the potential importance of fandom for historically marginalized communities.
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The Black Fandom Identification Social–Psychological Model: A framework for understanding Black fan formation and benefits
Authors: Aisha Powell and Sarah BreyfogleFandoms have become an unequivocal part of contemporary life and aid in the construction of identity and community building. But as the originator of modern fan studies, Henry Jenkins noted, ‘the original sin of fandom studies was its silence about race.’ Some research has occurred in response to this call to action, but no overarching framework or model has emerged. This article utilizes critical race theory (CRT) to guide its critical re-interpretation of Wann’s Team Identification–Social Psychological Health Model that can be used to examine the experiences of Black fans. The model presented, termed the Black Fandom Identification Social-Psychological Model, conceptualizes how Black fandoms are formed and sustained, as well as how Black fandoms protect their fandom from threats. Through this process, Black fans reach an enhanced state of Blackness, which increases their well-being and mental health. Implications of the model provide a schema for fan studies scholars to use.
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‘Reset the counter, guys!’: A thematic analysis of fan discourse about female players on Dungeons & Dragons actual play web series
More LessSince the mid-2010s, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) actual play podcasts and web series have skyrocketed in popularity. At the same time, the gender gap between male and female players began to close with approximately 40 per cent of players identifying as women, according to the latest data from Wizards of the Coast. However, D&D’s androcentric history and roots have remained, albeit in new, less openly sexist ways. While female characters are no longer mechanically disadvantaged and female players are able to play strong and confident women in this collaborative storytelling game, the lingering strings of misogyny and sexism present in the earliest fan spaces still pervade modern-day gaming spaces as well as fan spaces for D&D actual play series. Using thematic analysis, this article explores how discourse in fan communities on Reddit of two web series, Critical Role and A Crown of Candy, continues to maintain D&D spaces as male preserves through discourse about female players’ knowledge of mechanics, the narrative importance of female characters, and the perceived femininity of player and character actions.
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The kids are alright? Generational distinction vs. ‘we-sense’ in an ageing music fandom
More LessWith the maturation of fan studies as a field, longitudinal approaches to fandom across time have been gaining more attention. Both the ageing of participants within fandoms and the ageing of fandoms as collectives have been topics for study. Popular music fandoms are particularly relevant for such studies, due to the strong connections between music and memory that often endure over years. This article investigates the negotiation of subcultural capital in one ageing music fandom, grounded in enduring and long-term experience of older participants, as it is held in tension with the construction of a cross-generational ‘we-sense’, which includes younger and less experienced participants. The fan forum under study is the subreddit r/falloutboy, which was selected as a stable archive dating back over a decade; as well as the applicability of a band fandom that has enjoyed varying degrees of popularity of over twenty years. I argue that fans in this this ageing fandom, on the one hand, remain invested in a sense of distinction based in age and enduring fandom and on the other hand recognize the need for change and adaptability for any fandom to survive, including an influx of new and young members.
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‘The Kids from Yesterday’: My Chemical Romance’s first When We Were Young festival performance and playing with ageing, outsider identities and nostalgia
More LessMy Chemical Romance’s (MCR) first headline performance at the When We Were Young (WWWY) festival in Las Vegas in October 2022 offered a rich and playful visual presentation of their history as a band. They played with multiple visual representations of youth and ageing that linked both to their visual and thematic history through stage costumes and merch design and with the notion of selling out by playing this commercial exploitation of nostalgia for lost youth. This article offers insights from the author – an older, queer female fan from the United Kingdom who attended this performance as a late-coming MCR fan. The MCR performance is examined in relation to WWWY as a festival of nostalgia, as a location for multiple fan identities, for example, gender, queerness and age and as a commercial enterprise, in the context of the often-fraught notion in punk-related scenes of ‘selling out’. The conclusion is that the nostalgic experience of a festival like WWWY was exploited by MCR as a setting for satire of their return as a band in middle age, for nostalgic festival goers and for fans of the band, where some of the insider/outsider tensions represented by the band remained.
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Two cultures, one fandom: Comparisons of American and South Korean pop (K-pop) music fans
Authors: Heather Gahler and Eunjoo ChoiFrom the social identity theoretical perspective, the current study examines how nationality and fan identity play a role in Korean pop music (K-pop) fans’ attitudes towards one another. Specifically, the present study investigates how Korean pop music fans from two different countries, South Korea and the United States, perceive each other and how their degree of fanship influences their attitudes and perceptions towards each other. With 555 K-pop fans from each country, the present study conducted an online survey cross-culturally. The current study reveals the intergroup attitudes among K-pop fans from the two countries; while South Korean K-pop fans showed stronger negative attitudes towards American K-pop fans as their fanship increased, American K-pop fans showed a decrease in negative attitudes towards South Korean K-pop fans as their fanship increased.
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- Book Reviews
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Who Makes the Franchise? Essays on Fandom and Wilderness Texts in Popular Media, Rhonda Knight and Donald Quist (eds) (2022)
More LessReview of: Who Makes the Franchise? Essays on Fandom and Wilderness Texts in Popular Media, Rhonda Knight and Donald Quist (eds) (2022)
Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 264 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-47668-415-4, p/bk, $65.00
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Fandom and Polarization in Online Political Discussion: From Pop Culture to Politics, Renee Barnes (2022)
More LessReview of: Fandom and Polarization in Online Political Discussion: From Pop Culture to Politics, Renee Barnes (2022)
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 167 pp.,
ISBN 978-3-03114-039-6, e-book, £87.50
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Loving Fanfiction: Exploring the Role of Emotion in Online Fandoms, Brit Kelley (2023)
More LessReview of: Loving Fanfiction: Exploring the Role of Emotion in Online Fandoms, Brit Kelley (2023)
New York: Routledge, 244 pp.,
ISBN 978-0-36776-754-9, p/bk, $52.95
ISBN 978-1-00302-054-7, e-book, $37.91
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Fanvids: Television, Women, and Home Media Re-Use, E. Charlotte Stevens* (2020)
By Lena BarkinReview of: Fanvids: Television, Women, and Home Media Re-Use, E. Charlotte Stevens (2020)
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 277 pp.,
ISBN 978-9-46298-586-5, h/bk, £117.00
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