TITLE: Fans and Fandom: A Journey into the Passion and Power of Fan Culture
AUTHOR: Holly Swinyard (they/them)
PUBLISHER: White Owl
RELEASE DATE: Kindle – June 30, 2024 (USA / CA / UK)
Hardcover – April 23, 2024 (UK), June 14, 2024 (CA), June 30, 2024 (USA)
PRICE: Kindle – US $12.99 / CA $17.99 / UK £9.99
Hardcover – US $25.50 / CA $57.05 / UK £23.00

From Shakespeare to Superman, this history of fan culture aims to cover the rise of fandom from ancient times into the modern era. With a casual writing style, Swinyard directly addresses the reader, striking a conversation / blog-like tone that let’s their background in pop culture writing shine through. From writer to editor, Swinyard is a veteran both in the publishing world and as a cosplayer, which suggests they have an eye for detail and the nuances of character design.

Reaction-based streaming and the rise of reality television both played their parts in showing the power of the people, and as linguistic and historical nuances work their way from the niche to the norm, understanding how fan culture percolates provides a keen insight for any aspiring creators.

Patrons used to shape the artwork of the day, and even Shakespeare was no stranger to the need to please the crowd. Fan campaigns ensured Star Trek: The Original Series remained on the air, renewing a national interest in space exploration and breaking down racial barriers. Fan culture influences the pulse of history in ways we’re only beginning to understand.

Audience

But who is this for?

The majority of the content lives well within the minds of modern super fans, and while Swinyard extends slightly beyond the Tumblr-scholar sphere, they do not go into great detail. Covering a wide range of fandoms, Swinyard spreads themselves thin, brushing along the pages of a much larger history without going into significant depth about any single one. In doing so, their material quickly becomes less relevant to anyone looking for an academic approach or super fans hungry for new information.

However, the material fumbles when reaching for those new or relatively casual fans. Overflowing with references, entire pages feel like Swinyard is flashing their fan cards, showing off their knowledge base without imparting much. While readers who have never gone into great depth to research the media they enjoy will likely learn a good amount, Swinyard’s tone may well drive them away within the first few chapters.

If this is a love letter to fan culture, the audience narrows to those who will come in with a bingo board mentality, and if you’re interested in stamping every reference off that you’d imagine would end up in a history of fandoms, bingo is undoubtedly safer than a drinking game in this case.

Facts or Fanfiction?

Swinyard quotes and paraphrases countless memes, hitting every corner of nerd-dom, but when making key points about the relevance of fan culture beyond the stereotypical boarders, I itched to see them reach a bit further. Academics have argued the origins of a variety of classics. If you want to have a trip down the rabbit hole, just search for The Divine Comedy alongside the word “fanfiction.” Likely aiming for less controversial grounds, Swinyard address Fifty Shades and its well-document fanfiction origins instead.

The story of Myrtle R. Douglas, aka MoRoJo, could’ve been explored in more detail in my opinion. Douglas, pictured above, is credited as the woman who invented cosplay. A well-known fanfiction writer and fanzine publisher, Douglas shines in the short section on cosplay. Swinyard’s clear passion for the subject, on which they wrote two other books, further underlined what was missing in the rest of the work: passion and depth.

The superficial coverage of most topics left me wondering if a series of articles would’ve worked better. There were moments of brilliance, but even the best sections said nothing new, so I can’t fault Swinyard for using them to create her book’s foundation. However, the whole work barely skimmed the surface. Perhaps the sheer size of fandom makes anything more historically or academically sound impossible, but the scattered and disorganized flow did any interesting tidbits a disservice.

What’s the Goal?

One of the most exciting events which crossed fandoms was the metafiction of Goncharov. A post of knockoff boots and a joke response inspired a phenomenon. All fans had was a name and Martin Scorsese, but they quickly combined their joint knowledge of Scorsese’s filmmaking sensibilities with assumptions spiraling out from the supposed title. Setting the film in 1973 to explain its supposed burial in comparison to Scorsese’s 1973 breakthrough Mean Streets, fans grew the idea until it breached containment, ending up in The New York Times and The Washington Post.

When Swinyard reached Goncharov, I had high expectations. They could’ve framed the entire premise around how the history of fandom led us to the achievement that was Goncharov. Fans worked collectively and quickly to create a stable canon. They created a Google Doc to coordinate and form the accepted canon for this non-existent movie. Artwork, such as the poster above, rose as well with the fictional movie moving beyond the Tumblr-sphere to have posts and even news articles written about it. From a pair of sneakers, Goncharov hit the movie-critic niche of social media, yes-anding its way to the mainstream with enough detail to create a franchise. Even Scorsese himself got in on the work, texting his daughter in reply to the poster: “Yes. I made that film years ago.”

The achievement of this global fan triumph receives barely a page, getting thrown aside for Our Flag Means Death. Though I love that show, the work of fans to ensure the survival of a work which is controversial to the mainstream is not new. Fans saved Star Trek. If Swinyard intended to demonstrate how fandom changed the zeitgeist of the modern era, then they’d merely need to reframe the narrative, but doing so does not require the minimalization of the creative aspect present through all ages of fandom and the globalization of modern fan mobilization.

Final Score (2 out of 5 Stars)

For describing and supposedly celebrating communities of which Swinyard purports to be a part, Fans and Fandom remains widely superficial, veering into language certain fandoms would be familiar with but which may throw off the wider audience that the surface-level view seems to aim for. In their final sections, Swinyard seemed to scramble. The book’s ending ultimately felt hammered in as if Swinyard originally had a different ending in mind. If they did, we’ll likely never know.

The odds of someone completely unaware of fan culture reading this book is close to non-existent, and if Swinyard aimed this text for a more academic audience, they undermined themselves with their chaotic, flow of consciousness narration style, which is an absolute shame. Swinyard is a pop culture journalist and cosplayer. They have the background to do an entire series of TedTalks about cosplay and fan culture, so the issue isn’t a lack of knowledge.

Swinyard’s overlooking of Goncharov sticks with me as does their passion for the rise of cosplay. They fail to address a core issue of what it means to be a fan and what fandoms are. Is the ultimate goal a solely celebration of something? Or is it an act of almost Dionysian passion where the fan becomes the creator? From cosplay to fanfiction to Goncharov, creating exists at the core of fandom, and while there is no one right way to be a fan, the care with which Swinyard presents one over the others suggests a bias that ultimately unravels any attempt Swinyard has at a core message in the chaos of their manuscript.

Without clear intent, without a tone set to any particular audience, without a narrative that can readily be followed, Fans and Fandom ultimately fails to say much about either.

Do you agree? Or is there something we missed? Let us know what you think in the comments below or go over to our Discord channel to join the conversation.

Featured Image: White Owl

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