Fandom and the Public Sphere

In 2009, I talked with literary scholar Barbara Ryan about her ongoing project on Ben-Hur fans. She has been researching the political efficacy of Ben-Hur fandom and the complexities of the "citizen-audience," a term that has gained traction in media studies through the work of scholars like Richard Butsch, Joke Hermes, Toby Miller, etc. At the time, I wasn't fully aware of the specific ways that audience studies and citizenship studies had been intersecting, but now I'm starting to encounter this approach more broadly across both academic and professional fields.

The latest was a post by Peter Gutierrez last month on his Connect the Pop blog. Citing the ways that students' participation in online fandom might offer opportunities for learning not only "netiquette" and basic online safety but also civic engagement more broadly, Gutierrez offers K-12 students a "Digital Fandom Checklist" to help students think about the social contexts and commitments the shape their fandom. Given the strong, long-term, communal nature of fandom, Gutierrez notes, "Fans must take into account not just the short-term value of making a point or having the last word, but their long-term relationships with their fellow fans, both individually and generally, the latter insofar as they’re developing a reputation or history within fandom." He goes on to suggest that the particularly social framework of fandom can help students to begin to work out what it means to engage publicly with others in a democracy, especially around issues that are fraught with strong feelings, even tension.

Obviously, there is much much more to think about in terms of how media, audiencing, education, and civics have influenced one another, especially in different historical contexts of social transformation. But I like that Gutierrez has provided teachers, librarians, and students with a means to start analyzing and applying ideas emerging from the growing scholarship on citizenship and audience.

Becoming a Fan of Mahler

Michael Tilson Thomas at Mahler's house in Maiernnig, Austria.

In Tramps Like Us, I wrote about the "becoming-a-fan" stories shared among Bruce Springsteen fans. They were essentially conversion narratives, articulating an intense realization of Springsteen's music. Fans reported that their discovery of Springsteen felt like a lasting dividing line in their lives, creating a transformative "before-and-after" that didn't exist previous to their conversion experiences.

I was reminded of such becoming-a-fan stories last night while watching Michael Tilson Thomas on public television hosting a documentary on composer Gustav Mahler. Mahler is an interesting figure in his own right, but what was most engaging about the program (part of the San Francisco Symphony's "Keeping Score" series) was Thomas's palpable enthusiasm for the man and his music. He just seemed so delighted to be talking about Mahler with you, the viewer, it was almost impossible not to get swept up in the whole thing. And unlike many documentaries on composers, which over-emphasize the otherworldly talent of an individual, this one actually opened with a string of becoming-a-fan stories from listeners: Thomas, Susan Graham, Frank Gehry, Patrick Stewart, and Yo-Yo Ma. (Thomas also did an interview last year in which he told his Mahler becoming-a-fan story, noting at the :50 mark that "I divide my life between before I heard that recording...and after).

Springsteen fans share their stories of becoming-a-fan to both confirm their membership in a wider community and to help others, just discovering Springsteen, to frame their experiences in understandable ways. It seemed to me that Thomas was doing something similar, except for a television audience. Thomas used his passion for Mahler as a basis for organizing the program's content; it helped to make Mahler's greatness not simply an abstraction but real, relatable, felt. By earnestly offering his life-changing discovery of Mahler, he made himself a little vulnerable--not the distant scholar or elitist expert but someone who was unexpectedly blown away by a recording when he was thirteen years old. Personally, I've never really connected with Mahler's music, but encountering Thomas's obvious love for it made me want to go back and listen again.

PBS's typical soft-spoken erudition isn't going to bring new audiences to Mahler, but Thomas's fandom just might.

Teaching, Learning, and Enthusiasm

Albert Sands Southworth, Classroom in the Emerson School for Girls,  1850.

I have been on a brief “blog break” in order to better manage the start of the new spring semester. With the various demands of teaching and learning on my mind, I have been wondering about the ways in which education might be a field for fan-like behaviors. Obviously, this is move that stretches common definitions of “fandom," but perhaps it’s useful to ponder for that very reason.

What does teaching and learning have to do with the history of audiences and fandom? Well, one of things most teachers know is that, at some level, leading a classroom is always a performance. I don’t mean that it is simply entertaining--it can be, but teaching is more often ritualistic, which is another side to performance (see Richard Schechner for more on that kind of distinction). Instead, I mean that teaching involves “display enactment for the benefit of an audience.” In other words, teachers stage learning for students, who must attend to what’s happening.

In particular, I’ve been reading an early journal on teaching, The Massachusetts Teacher: A Journal of School and Home Education, from June 1851 (vol IV, no. 6). I actually found issues of this journal from the 1860s under the hay in my barn (a teacher used to live in my house, perhaps…); copies may more readily be found on Google Books. The June 1851 issue fascinatingly addresses pedagogy and student attention with the emotional language of enthusiasm that was simultaneously being used with reference to the world of arts performance. It is this kind of thing that makes me wonder whether “fandom” need be resolutely tied to 20th century media at all and whether fandom might be more accurately described in terms of a broader framework of enthusiastic audiencing. (Working that out is the whole point of this blog, of course!).

Here are two excerpts to consider from The Massachusetts Teacher:

MUTUAL EXERCISES.
It is a remark of an experienced teacher in another State, that no day should be allowed to pass without seeking to make the pulse of the whole school beat in unison. This remark seems founded in reason. No teacher can put it in practice without perceiving the force and propriety of it. Such exercises tend to create a general interest in the affairs of the school-room. They create a love for the school, for the fellow pupil, for the teacher. They appeal to the strong feeling of sympathy in our nature. It is natural for us to enter with interest into what we do in concert with the many. Be it a religious service, it is a common remark that a full meeting is a good one; be it a parade day, the sight of a great throng will animate most men, and kindle the flame of glowing interest in what would soon tire, if viewed only by a few; be it a mob even, the dictates of reason, and the voice of conscience, and the sense of right, frequently will all be hushed by the voice of the many, and the most timid will unresistingly follow “a multitude to do evil.” 

The teacher will wisely avail himself of this principle, and as often as he can, make the voice of the whole school rise in concert in the strains of music, in the mutual reading of the sacred word, or of some secular lesson, or in some exercise prepared expressly for this purpose. As already remarked, no day should be allowed to pass without some exercise of this kind. Some teachers are fond of a mutual exercise as one method of reaching reading; but this seems to be as much recommended by the show and sound as by its utility…No person, however, can doubt the propriety of this exercise occasionally, as a method of making the great arteries fo feeling in the school-room throb in unison…”  (139) 

THE TEACHER AN ENTHUSIAST.
The teacher can interest his classes only by becoming himself interested even to enthusiasm. A successful man in any calling must be an enthusiast. Nothing can supply the place of this in the school-room. The best methods and the most stimulating expedients will fail in the hands of an indifferent teacher. If the “Goddess of Dulness” presides over his brain, her drowsy influence will soon extend over his little kingdom—the school-room. 

Enthusiasm is quite as contagious as gaping. You see it flashing from the eye of the orator to the soul of his audience. You see it spread like electricity from the heart of a Bonaparte, and kindling every heart in his vast army. You may sometimes see its enkindling influences in the school-room. An enthusiastic man guided by truth will always interest. It is impossible to resist the charm of earnest enthusiasm. 

…We ever become heated by earnest pursuit. With what absorbing interest does the chemist pursue his processes of composition and decomposition, while the mere spectator or mechanical operator regards them with entire indifference. How completely engrossed does the mathematician become among his diagrams, formulas and abstractions. There are few subjects from which the mere looker-on would turn away with more indifference. It is a law of the whole creation, that action produces warmth. The head and the heart of the schoolmaster are not exceptions.  

The teacher should work in the daily preparation of his lessons. He cannot begin every recitation promptly and say and do just what he ought to say and do, without forethought. With it he will save time and do more finished work. But he will derive a greater advantage than this. His inventive powers will be aroused. Clearer explanations, new processes, and better illustrations will be discovered for every class. Let the teacher once begin to invent, and he is sure to be interested. Inventors are always enthusiasts. (174)