J.J. Abram’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Summary & Implications: What is the author’s project and why is it important now? What’s the narrative about the field that’s emerging from the reading? What narratives are silent? Whose voices are silent?
Carl Sandvoss sets out to first recap many of the ways that fandom has been theorized before his writing in the early 2000s before offering his own theory on how fans interact with the texts they’ve chosen to be fans of. Specifically, he refutes Fiske’s assertion that fandom is a place of inherent resistance to the desires and values of the “power bloc” Instead, he conceives of fandom through a four-step process which he uses to develop his idea that fandom is inherently self-reflective and therefore not inherently partisan or emancipatory, as fans are as likely to use their fandoms to close off revolutionary ideas within a text as they are to embrace them or perform revolutionary acts with their texts.
The first step in Sandvoss’s project is to develop a sense of fandom as a place with properties like that of Heimat, a sense of home with attendant notions of security and warmth but which also implies a hierarchy of those allowed within that Heimat and those who are excluded. While fandoms might give fans a sense of community and togetherness based on that shared adoration of a fan text, it also allows them to discriminate against those who deemed unworthy of belonging for whatever reason.
Sandvoss’ next task to to examine the psychoanalytic nature of fandom, which he mostly congeals into a combined act of projection and introjection which allows fans to see themselves in the text and see elements of the text within their own worldview. In this sense, the text doesn’t have much control over what a fan uses it for, and different fans can have wildly different uses for the same fan text. This is another reason why fandoms aren’t inherently emancipatory.
Developing this idea of intro-and-pro-jection further, Sandvoss borrows from several readings of the Narcissus myth, including Winnicott’s and McLuhan’s, to put forth his own thesis that objects of fandoms are more like mirrors than anything else. Fans see in them what they want to see, and the objects therefore reflect back what a fan puts into them. This is different, he says, from literature, which, according to Jauss, uses its gaps to expand readers’ “horizons of expectations.” In fandom, gaps and blanks are either worked around, ignored, or used for further reflection of the fan’s point of view. This is all possible because objects of fandom, Sandvoss claims, are so polysemic (open to possible readings) that they are in effect “neutrosemic” or open to any reading. Fans also tend to encourage this reflection by rejecting anything within a fan text (say, an episode of a tv show or a spinoff novel) that does not conform to their horizon of expectation. Fan texts and fandoms are then likely to conform to the status quo as fans use them only to confirm what they already believe, which is likely to be well within the boundaries set up by the “power bloc.”
Sandvoss does allow for one area where fandoms can be a force for change, however. It is in the discussion of an object of fandom which will necessarily feature fans with different perspectives (because they are based on the fan’s pre-established beliefs) talking to each other. Here Sandvoss imagines a place where fans might challenge each other’s understanding of the fan text and provide at least some expansion of the horizon of expectations.
Like Fiske before him, Sandvoss again creates a kind of totalizing system of fandoms, this time, however, not based in (again, totalized) class distinctions but instead on the (one more time, totalizing) universality of psychoanalysis. This allows Sandvoss to claim that all fandoms work in this one way, and that differences in identity or positioning matter little to his framework he’s developed. I tend to be skeptical of these kinds of projects, even as I am convinced by much of his argument. In other words, I think this works well as a framework but careful study of individual fandoms (and facets of fandoms based on different identificatory affiliations) should feel open to pushing back on some of the broader claims Sandvoss makes here. I think here of bell hooks’ proposition that black women filmgoers often watch with an oppositional gaze developed through years of being underserved by the white male dominated popular culture. What kind of resistance would this oppositional gaze bring to Sandvoss’s concept of fandoms as self-reflective?
Context: Who is this author debating with and why? What is the context of the text’s production and distribution? What historical, cultural, etc. factors affect the way it makes meaning? Does the author seem to be in conversation with other scholars and/or paradigms? Where is this piece of writing centered in the field? What is their intervention in the literature/field? What text is this text in conversation with?
Sandvoss cites a heck of a lot of people here and builds on much of their work within fandom. He writes about the first, second, and third waves of fan studies and positions his work as building upon all of them. His is a theory deeply enmeshed in dozens of other voices. However, it’s also a product of its time. Sandvoss does mention some online fandom gathering places and the kinds of interactions that are performed there, but I could easily see a sequel study done which might expand greatly on what Sandvoss has already done here w/r/t online fandoms. I’ve found, for example, both an impulse towards the kind of self-reflective fandom and the push-back provided by other fans seemingly increase in intensity on the internet. Sandvoss also claims that fans have little to no input on how the objects of fandom are created, but recent examples like Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and the (eventual) release of the Snyder cut of Justice League would call that into question as well, never mind the historical examples of viewer feedback causing big changes in film serials, tv shows, and so on.
The fan group called the 501st Legion was used as extras on Disney’s The Mandalorian
Methodology: What is the methodological framework of this text? What methodological moves or questions does the author engage? What is their object of analysis?
Sandvoss pulls a lot from previous fan studies for his examples, including his own study of sports fans. These are contextualized with theoretical frameworks like psychoanalysis and Marxist critical theory to try to get at what fandoms are, and what they can do. One might most accurately say that this is a study of prior studies, as it is more interested in developing an overarching theory than it is in actually looking at specific fandoms.
Rhetorical Moves: What are the major rhetorical moves of the author’s arguments?
The largest rhetorical move Sandvoss engages in is the introduction of several fan studies that have previously made claims about how fandom works in a specific area which Sandvoss engages with to explain and pick out the high points before discarding the majority of the theory for being not particularly useful. For example, he takes from Fiske the three kinds of fan productivity but disputes the larger claim Fiske makes about the emancipatory nature of fandoms. This lends Sandvoss a sense of both magnanimity as well as a logical superiority as his theory is developed on only the good parts of the many studies that have come before his. He also builds his case nicely, using each chapter after the second (the recap chapter) to develop one important part of his theory that is then used as the core of the next part. It makes for a clean, logical procession of ideas.
Engagement & Application: How do I engage this text? How does this apply to my work? Does it support or provide a counterargument or model for strong intro or lit review? In other words, why is this piece of writing useful to me and/or how is it limited (bad writing style, problematic, didn’t consider x, y, and z)? Does it intersect with other items on the list?
As currently configured in my brain, my dissertation will end on a study of how the Star Wars fandom responded to the three legacyquel films (TFA, TLJ, TRoS), and I could very much see how Sandvoss’s theories would be directly applicable to what I’ve seen so far. It’s going to be central, I think, to that chapter.
Key Terms: What terms are key to the author’s argument, and are they operationalized explicitly or implicitly?
fans, fandom, fan text, object of fandom, Heimat, self-reflective, horizon of expectations, popular culture, literature, fan productivity, polysemic, neutrosemic, mirror, introjection, projection, identity, fan practices, consumption, habitus
Significant Quotations: What key quotations from this work would I want to have quick access to?
For the purpose of empirical investigation and academic analysis, we therefore need to turn to observable aspects as defining marks of fandom. I thus want to suggest a definition of fandom focusing on fan practices. This admittedly devolves the problem to the question of which fan practices are most indicative of fans’ emotional investment and affect. (6)
I define fandom as the regular, emotionally involved consumption of a given popular narrative or text in the form of books, television shows, films or music, as well as popular texts in a broader sense such as sports teams and popular icons and stars ranging from athletes and musicians to actors. (8)
Consequently, fandom can be subversive, especially when based on textual productivity; yet there is no automatism which positions the tactics of reading in necessary opposition to the strategies of (mass) production. (29)
In this sense, I believe, fandom best compares to the emotional significance of the places we have grown to call home, to the form of physical, emotional and ideological space that is best described as Heimat. […] Understanding fandom as a form of Heimat thus accurately combines the significance of symbolical, personal space in fandom with the importance of territorial place within which such fandoms is physically manifested. However, these spaces differ from the territorial place conventionally understood as Heimat. Rather, as our discussion here has illustrated, they can be physical as well as textual, and hence can be accessed by fans in different mediated and unmediated ways, at different times, and from different localities. […] But the notion of fandom as a form of Heimat comes with its own implications with regard to the social and cultural consequences of fandom. The idea of Heimat is based upon notions of security and emotional warmth, but Heimat also always involves an evaluation and categorization of others. (64)
The theoretical challenge here is to account for the dual function of the object of fandom as experienced not in relation to the self, but as part of the self, despite constituting an external object. The basic premise of my argument, then, is that the object of fandom whether it is a sports team, a television programme, a film or pop star, is intrinsically interwoven with our sense of self, with who we are, would like to be, and think we are. (96)
Here, I want to take such arguments to their conclusion and suggest that in the intense interaction between self and object of fandom, acknowledgment of the object of fandom as an external object disappears. Rather than as a transitional realm between the self and an external world, the object of fandom forms part of the self, and hence functions as its extension. (100)
The object of fandom in this sense is not so much a textual possession; nor does it only define the self. It is part of the fan’s (sense of) self. For the object of fandom is as an external object – whether it is Bruce Springsteen or, say, Star Trek – to be experienced as part of the fan’s fabric of self, fans need to build an intense identification with their object of fandom. (101)
[Following McLuhan’s reading of the Narcissus myth,] [w]e may then be aware of parallels between ourselves and our objects of fandom, and even actively seek to foster and construct these, yet self-reflection is always based on a misrecognition of the external object. Our fascination with the object of fandom does not arise out of the fact that, objectively, it is like us, but is instead based on the projection of our own image. The object of fandom, like the river in the Narcissus myth, is the coincidental medium of self-reflection, whose true quality lies in its reflective capacity. (104)
Moreover, as the object of fandom becomes part of our fabric of self through processes of self-reflection, fans actively maintain this stage of self-performance and projection. Fans thus seek to emulate and emphasize parallels between themselves and what they recognize as external qualities of the object of fandom. […] Yet, beyond resemblance and imitation, the actual origin of meaning in either the fan object or the fan becomes unclear. In fans’ self-reflective relationship with their object of fandom, we cannot allocate the origins of personal beliefs and attitudes and either the fan or the fan object. (111)
From such a self-reflective reading it follows that texts allow not only for a multiplicity of meaning, but for any meaning. Only if fan texts function as a mirror, can fans find their reflected image in the object of fandom. Having stated that all texts are polysemic, because they cannot carry a single, definitive meeting, this supposes that at the end of the spectrum polysemic texts allow for so many different readings that they can no longer be meaningfully described as polysemic. The notion of self-reflection and fandom suggests that some texts come to function as a blank screen on which fans’ self-image is reflected. These texts are polysemic to a degree that they become neutrosemic – in other words, carry no inherent meaning. By ‘neutrosemy’, I describe the semiotic condition in which a text allows for so many divergent readings that, intersubjectively, it does not have any meaning at all. (126)
The definition of textual boundaries forms a key strategy that allows fans to construct a self-reflective reading of the object of fandom. It is a simultaneous process of inclusion and exclusion. On the one hand, the discriminative power of fans to serves to maintain the object of fandom as a space of self-reflection. […] The object of fandom thus always consists of a textual hybrid, a meta- or super-text composed of many textual episodes whose boundaries are defined by the fan him- or herself. The reader, then, does not, as Rorty suggests, beat the text into a shape which will serve his or her own purposes (cf. Eco 1994), but cuts his or her own text out of all available signs and information like a figure out of a seemingly endless sheet of paper. (131-2)
The multiplicity of meanings in literary texts thus has a double function. In the first instance, it is reminiscent of the common interpretation of the notion of polysemy in media studies, in that it occurs in the different readings of the same text by different readers. There is, however, a second, qualitatively decisive dimension: the multiplicity of meanings within a given text experienced on the level of the individual reader, thus creating semiotic ambiguities and challenges to the value position of the reader, thereby invites a reflexive dialogue between reader and text. On this level of indeterminacy, literary texts differ fundamentally from fan texts. It is precisely these semiotic ambiguities and challenges that are lacking when the fan of a sports team can so easily project his values and beliefs onto the team, when the Bruce Springsteen fan finds her own philosophy readily represented in Springsteen’s songs, or when the fan of Star Wars finds no difficulty in relating the fan text to his own military career and aspirations. (143)
It is important to note that in all these cases texts are turned into fan texts through a relative judgment following the fan’s horizon of expectations, not any objective generic qualities. What comes to function as a fan text to one reader may still possess literary qualities to another reader. (144)
Secondly, reception aesthetics provides us with a useful tool for analyzing the reading of fan texts. However, while the relationship between fans and their object of fandom is at the heart of fandom, it does not account fully for all aspects of fan performance and social interaction. Beyond fan texts as fan objects are many texts, conversations and forms of communication which form part of fandom, yet lack the neutrosemic quality of the fan text. While in the mediated quasi-interaction between fans and the object of fandom the fan texts cannot intervene in the normalized, self-reflective meanings that fans construct, other fans and texts which we encounter in our fandom can. Secondary texts, including, of course, academic studies of fan texts, may challenge fans’ normalized, self-reflective readings. Moreover, the interaction with other fans through in situ consumption, everyday life conversation, fan meetings and online communication potentially constitutes an array of challenges to fans’ (self-reflective) interpretation of the fan texts, demanding forms of self-reflexivity not dissimilar to those that Iser ascribes to reading of literary texts. The challenge to fans’ horizon of experience and expectation consequently does not lie in the fan object but in the experiences and interactions that surround the relationship between fan and fan text – in other words in fandom as ‘interpretive community’. (147)
Commonly, this discrepancy – given the inherent textual distance of mediated quasi-interaction, as well as fans’ need to maintain their relationship by to the object of fandom based upon familiarity – will be kept at bay by the fan. However, different factors can trigger a decreasing textual, and hence growing aesthetic, distance between fan and object of fandom. First, the fan text is more complex in its boundaries over time and space than single literary texts. As dynamic texts evolving over time, fan texts cannot fully meet the fan’s horizon of expectations, and thus remain truly banal. The departure of a lead character from a given television show, the increasingly international labor market and professional sports, the new artistic direction of a given musician or band, or the death of one’s favorite star in this sense possess literary quality, in that they increase the aesthetic distance between text and fan. In these moments of rapture, the fan assumes a quality similar to that proposed by Iser for literary texts, in that it evades attempts at normalization and thus demands a reflexive reaction. […] In the first case the fan resolves the discord between his or her values and sense of self and the now altered fan text through rejection of the former object offend them. The fan text thus loses its significance, and the respective fandom comes to an end. […] Fans also overcome dissonance and indeterminacy by reinforcing the norms encapsulated in the fan texts, thus refashioning the self in an attempt to conform with its changing reflection and what I have previously described as the fan’s tendency to serve as servo-mechanism to the object of fandom. If textual blanks and aesthetic distance in the reading of fan texts, and subsequent processes of a reflexive readjustment of self, however, are created through the economic and social forces which already structure the conditions of modern industrial living, fandom cannot function as a space for the creation of new social norms; neither, then, can fandom reflexively challenge the macro parameters of the production of fan texts, which in turn are reflective of the economic and social status quo. (150-1)