Mediatized Fan Play

Moods, Modes and Dark Play in Networked Communities

Line Nybro Petersen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781138545847
• eBook ISBN: 9781351001823
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Addressing fans' digital practices, this book places fans' play at the centre of a networked mainstream culture that seems to increasingly cater to, amalgamate with and adapt to fans' mediatized play.

Through case studies of the fan communities of the Hamilton musical, and Norwegian streaming hit SKAM, along with examples from many other online fan communities, the book dives into how fans navigate and create play rules as part of their community-building in a networked digital landscape and how they use the digital affordances of social media to engage in language play. It analyses the role of mediatized fan play in the context of political culture and identifies processes of fanization as fans' play moods and modes are integrated into politics. Finally, the book discusses the role of fan play in the context of the global conspiracy theory, QAnon, as those instigating the conspiracy and those who are fans of the movement engage in dark play and deep play, respectively. The book suggests that we might understand fan communities as pioneer communities in the sense that there is increased value placed on fans' mood work and fan play is integrated into other societal domains.

This is an engaging book for scholars and students studying media studies and cultural studies, particularly courses on fan studies, film studies, television studies and mediatization.

Part 1Play moods

doi: 10.4324/9781351001847-2

1Fandom as mediatized play

DOI: 10.4324/9781351001847-3

Fandom as playing communities

In 1967, Stephenson (1988 [1967]) introduced his play theory of mass communication, in which he brought forward the notion of play as pertinent to mass communication through its purpose to entertain: “Mass communication in its play aspects may be the way a society develops its culture – the way it dreams, has its myths, and develops its loyalties …” (Stephenson 1988 [1967], p. 48). Since Stephenson’s contribution in 1967, and his updated version in 1988, developments in digital media and the availability of the internet have significantly changed the landscape of media consumption and media use. In this new landscape, the notion of play is even more imperative as digital participation has an increasingly dominant role in contemporary media culture. If play is “essential to the development of culture” (Stephenson 1988 [1967], p. 46), an understanding of the conditions for play in digital media and the play practices that structure participatory culture is key. In readdressing Stephenson’s notion of play and the media in the context of contemporary digital media culture, the following chapters consider play and its correlation with fandom. Both play and fandom are autotelic. Both engage with make-believe, and both are self-organised, community-building and concerned with questions of power. Three key theoretical perspectives run through the following chapters: play theory; mediatization theory; and fan studies theory. This chapter introduces these three theoretical fields and suggests how play aspects of digital-based fan communities may be pertinent to the understanding of tendencies in digital media culture. This book brings the concept of play to the forefront of understanding fandom, because fans’ play practices are gaining a primary position in a digital culture that is shaped by mediatization. Investigating fan play will not only help us understand the motivations and practices of digital fan communities but also give us insights into how fans’ play practices are amalgamating with other social domains. This perspective builds on existing theories of fans’ playful practices on digital media. Paul Booth suggests that audiences “create a philosophy of playfulness” (2017, p. 20) in relation to digital fandom as an element of intratextuality: “Fan fiction is itself a way of ‘playing’ at professional writing, or playfully subverting the copyright of a commercial product for noncommercial fun” (Booth 2017, p. 71). Booth goes on to emphasise the subversive potential of fans’ playful practices, but also makes clear the global nature of media play:

We play with our media; it is malleable in our hands. The field of media studies needs to take into account this philosophy of playfulness in order to represent the media texts created by fans not just as individual fan fiction, fan videos, fan songs, or fan research, but rather as pieces of what fans use as a larger multivocal media game.

(Booth 2017, p. 8)

While playing in fandom is certainly playing with texts, the playful practices become more complex as they become integrated into the digital affordances on different platforms and media technologies. Massanari (2015) looks at Reddit as a platform where play becomes manifest, and she importantly suggests that play is linked to participatory culture. Matt Hills criticises previous fan studies’ rationalisation of fans’ enjoyment, focus on escapism and resisting of dominant ideologies “rather than being explored as an event in and of itself” (Hills 2002, p. 105). A play perspective on fandom helps us consider being a fan participating on social media as the fan herself experiences it. This critique is incidentally also a common critique of play studies. Play is often seen as a means to academic progress or as part of a child’s psychological, cognitive development (Henricks 2015), but these approaches fail to illuminate the value of play in its own right. Rather, this book discusses the experience of fans, and it is through insights into these experiences that we can grasp the role of fans in contemporary culture. Fans do not engage in fan communities in order to participate in a certain level of productivity (Fiske 1992) or as part of deliberate performance (Abercrombie & Longhurst 1998), although both textual productivity and performance are often the result of participation, as Fiske and Abercrombie and Longhurst argue. Instead, I argue, fans participate in fandom because it allows them to engage in play moods through a variety of play modes and it is the pleasure of these moods that are the primary motivation for staying in fandom and contributing to a fan community. Hills suggests that we understand fandom as affective play but emphasises affect over play in his approach to understanding fans. He argues that affective play “creates culture” (Hills 2002, p. 111). If we instead put emphasis on play we open up our understanding of fans’ experience to include the play moods and play modes that fans create and enjoy in a way that allows for fan practices to amalgamate with and shape other societal domains. Sandvoss says in reference to Hills’ focus on transitional objects as affective play: “While it is an important element of fandom, the focus on play inevitably privileges fan performances and activities over their social and cultural conditioning” (Sandvoss 2005, p. 93). But a perspective on play, as a practice, allows us to consider the social and cultural conditioning taking place in a networked space of digital convergence (Jenkins 2006) and understand not only fans’ experiences but also the role of fandom in a sociocultural context.

For the fan, the initial path to participatory fandom may be brought on by an enthusiasm for a media text, a material object or a celebrity (i.e., the fan object); but once he or she is participating in a fan community, other things seem to be at stake for the fan. Why do fans stay fans? Studies that have a life course perspective on fandom suggest that fans often move from one fan object to another, or stay fans throughout their life course (Harrington & Bielby 2014; Petersen 2017, 2018). Fandom in itself is a seemingly pointless activity. It promises no purpose of productivity, it offers no livelihood or social status, although there are certainly examples of fans who have acquired both livelihood and social status as part of their fan commitment. E. L. James is a prominent example following the publication of Fifty Shades of Grey (2012), which was initially fan fiction written as part of the Twilight fandom. Fandom has no progress, no end goal. Instead, it offers a way to “waste” endless hours in the company of like-minded people. People may become fans out of an enthusiasm for a fan object; but they stay participating fans, this book suggests, because of the play space that fandom and digital media offer them.

Aside from the autotelic nature of fandom, fandom and play are similar in their ability to facilitate deep absorption for those participating. Huizinga says the following about play:

This intensity of, and absorption in, play finds no explanation in biological analysis. Yet in this intensity, this absorption, this power of maddening, lies the very essence, the primordial quality of play.

(Huizinga 2016 [1949], p. 2)

Fandom promotes an affective intensity, which we might otherwise see in a group of kids playing cops and robbers. Fandom, like play, invites its participants to get swept away by the thrill of it all. In this way, fans’ playful practices are also driven by the enthusiasm that made them engage in a fan community in the first place. Thomas Henricks reminds us that: “Creatures play when they are high-spirited or have energy to burn” (2015, p. 29). Perhaps fans engage in play precisely because the chosen fan object has left them in high spirits and with energy to burn. Popular media portrayals of fans tend to conflate their enthusiasm with pure idolisation, and while idolisation certainly plays a central role, it far from captures the majority of practices that fans engage in online. Thus, it is pertinent to consider fans’ enthusiasm in a broader sense. Henricks offers this insight about play: “In play, we intentionally exhume the negative primary emotions of fear, anger, disgust, and sadness as well as the more usual modalities of surprise and happiness” (Henricks 2015, p. 196). Studying fan communities reveals a wide range of emotional expressions that are far from the simple idolisation of a fan object captured by the popular media. For instance, fans produce and maintain digital character accounts and parody accounts. These accounts draw on fan fiction and costume playing (cosplay) practices in fan communities. They are not just idolising their fan object, they are playing with it, stretching its boundaries to test its elasticity, sometimes even mocking their fan object. Fans of Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi (2017) can follow @SassyGeneralHux, @EmoKylo and @VeryLonelyLuke on Twitter. These parody accounts role-play certain traits of the established Star Wars characters, but with a comedic aim. Their celebration of the fan object becomes secondary to the play practice, while still playing with and through their favourite text. In another example from the Star Wars fan community, the Twitter account @Porg_rates echoes another popular Twitter account, @dog_rates, an account devoted to posting pictures and short videos of adorable dogs and rating them on a scale of 1–10. Mostly, @dog_rates gives the dog 12/10 or 13/10, because the dogs’ sheer adorableness cannot be contained within the scale. The @Porg_rates account follows a similar principle; it features and rates pictures of porgs in the wake of the release of Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi (2017) for fans to enjoy. Digital media offers a magnificent playground and fans have eagerly occupied this domain with their playful undertakings and their insistence on not allowing the playing to end.

Play

The following takes an aesthetic philosophical approach to play. This approach allows us to look beyond the function of play and instead understand the purpose of play in its own right (Huizinga 2016 [1949]). For the person playing, the purpose of play is play. In this sense, Johan Huizinga emphasises that play is autotelic. Considering play in the context of fandom is appropriate because it brings theoretical attention to the everyday experience of being a fan. As with being in play, being in fandom is characterised by an autotelic nature and this book is concerned with the primary significance for fans themselves. In short, the following puts forward the idea that the purpose of fandom, for the fan, is being in fandom. But what is play? To be in play is to engage in a particular play mode and to be in play mood (Skovbjerg 2016). By considering the play aspects of fandom, we gain deeper insights into fans’ experiences, their practices and their moods when they engage in fan communities. To Johan Huizinga (2016 [1949]), Roger Caillois (2001 [1961]) and Brian Sutton-Smith (1997), play is at once autotelic, voluntary and self-organised. Play is frivolous and separate from ordinary life. Play is governed by its own rules and concerned with make-believe and power. Play is closely related to culture in that “in its earliest phases culture has the play-character” (Huizinga 2016 [1949], p. 46). According to Huizinga, play does not create culture but is primary in its twin union with culture. As a culture progresses, the play-element may recede into the background, “(b)ut at any moment, even in a highly developed civilization, the play ‘instinct’ may reassert itself in full force, drowning the individual and the mass in the intoxication of an immense game” (Huizinga 2016 [1949], p. 47). Contemporary culture is currently experiencing a resurgence, or primacy, of play in culture as a consequence of digital media’s increased societal authority and omnipresence in our everyday lives. Sicart states this point: “play is a dominant way of expression in our First World societies” (Sicart 2014, p. 2). If play is a dominant way of expression, it is an expression with which fans are particularly well-suited to engage.

Huizinga’s classical understanding of play, as defined in the introduction, is both too broad and too narrow according to Caillois (2001 [1961]). In an attempt to compensate for the issues with Huzinga’s definition of play, Caillois instead offers a classification of games that operates on a spectrum between free-form improvisational play (paidia) and rule-driven play (ludus). Caillois distinguishes between four classification of games: agon (competition); alea (chance); mimicry (make-believe); and ilinx (vertigo). As with Huizinga’s definition, Caillois’ classification does not straightforwardly capture the essence of play. Agon’s relationship to ludus seems clear, but agon’s relationship with paidia is less clear. Caillois suggests that non-regulated wrestling or racing is competition driven by paidia, but one could argue that even these informal competitions have a set of rules established to determine a winner. Likewise, alea’s relationship with paidia is unclear. Caillois suggests counting-out rhymes or playing heads or tails as games of chance (alea) driven by paidia, but counting-out rhymes are often based on well-known, rehearsed verses and a fixed choreography and as such have inherent rules and a structure for playing.

While the fan play studied in this book tends to have a spontaneous, improvisational character, fans also actively engage in ludus-driven play. Ludic elements are becoming increasingly integrated into seemingly non-playful practices such as language learning in Duolingo, where users are rewarded for their progress, and on ResearchGate, where users are given incentives to give information and interact with others, thus increasing their profile’s “score”. When we consider fans’ play practices it is important to keep in mind that their playing takes place in a digital environment that is already heavily gamified and playful. Defining play has, in this way, been a challenging task for play researchers, and Sutton-Smith (1997, p. 1) echoes Michel Spariosu’s (1989) thoughts on play’s amphibolous nature. Sutton-Smith argues that, rather than trying to rid the play concept of its ambiguities, play is best understood through these ambiguities. Instead of settling for a dissatisfying definition, Sutton-Smith offers seven rhetorics that play theorists assume about play as part of existing value systems (such as politics, religion, education and society). Through these rhetorics, we might move closer to understanding the nature of play. Play, for Henricks:

Simultaneously, (…) equilibrates and disequilibrates. And these acts of constructing, testing, modifying, and destroying are not confined to any one field of behaviour or sector of society. Indeed, anything that humans do, or so it seems, can suddenly be dissimulated and reconstituted by play.

(2015, p. 19)

In the following, we consider some of the ways in which play is embedded in digital fandom by considering play’s characteristics and practices. First, we return to Huizinga’s insistence on taking play in its primary significance. Play is autotelic. Playing has meaning in its own right. Sicart argues that play is a way of being in the world, a particular directedness towards objects and other people (Sicart 2014, p. 18). Being a member of a fan community and participating in online fan practices makes little sense on a surface level. Participation in fandom is not about being productive or learning or contributing to society, it is the experience of participating that has value for the fan in its own right. Another central quality for Huizinga (2016 [1949]) is that play is voluntary. The moment play is ordered it becomes imitation of play. Therefore, Huizinga goes on to say, play is freedom. Fandom, in a similar way, is voluntary. Viewers and social media users alike could just as well choose not to engage. Fandom cannot be forced; it emerges because enough people have decided to engage. In the context of digital media, producers have little say in whether fans decide to play with their content. Producers and creators can create encouragements and stimulations through means of narrative, distribution and marketing, but industry attempts will only ever be imitations of play unless fans decide to p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Endorsements Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Fans just wanna have fun
• Part 1 Play moods
• Part 2 Play modes
• Part 3 Fanization, dark and deep play
• Bibliography
• Index