Cultural Imperialism in Fandom
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| See also: | Racism in Fandom, Britpick, Amer-pick, Social Justice |
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Cultural imperialism is a term for undue focus on the West, Western culture, a Western point of view, etc.
Some fans may specifically use the term to refer to United States-based imperialism, where in many fandoms, fans from the US outnumber other fans or are more vocal. This can be seen as particularly annoying if the fandom is for something that originated outside of the US.
The term tends to come up in debates about Britpicking and whether to use US spelling in anime and manga fandoms. fail_fandomanon has had frequent flamewars over the topic, and fanficrants can always bring the comment count when the topic is US vs. UK spelling or usage.
Influence of Canon
Similar to the issue of racism in fandom, the issue of imperialism in fandom often originates in canons.
On a broad scale, many popular canons originate from colonial powers such as the US and UK in part because of the financial power and cultural influence of those nations. People from non-English-speaking countries are more likely to know English than vice-versa, privileging media that has been created in English over media that has not been. Media that has been translated into English may suffer for featuring names or terms that English-speakers find challenging.
Sometimes, specific fandoms also have cultural imperialism baked into their premises. Early American Westerns such as Gunsmoke and Rawhide often depicted both Native Americans and immigrants to the US as "other," in various ways, usually either in need of teaching about American ways or mistakenly attached to unhelpful cultural beliefs.[1] [2] Works that feature characters traveling internationally often exalt certain regions while looking down on or completely forgetting others, and use techniques like tinted lenses to add to the foreignness of certain locations.[3] In both comedic works like Taxi (TV) and dramatic works such as The Phantom of the Opera, stereotypes about nations other than those of the writers are used as a source of humor. Creators may also invent fictional counterpart countries and ethnic groups to avoid the challenges of depicting real ones, like The Princess Diaries' Genovia.
The attitudes associated with cultural imperialism also work their way into depictions of nonhuman beings and fantastic settings. Often, these issues are the result of attempts at creating fictional versions of real people-groups. For example, the Klingons in Star Trek were heavily influenced by both actual Japanese culture and stereotypes about the Japanese,[4] while the Dothraki of Game of Thrones were influenced by a combination of groups that live on the plains and steppes with common misconceptions about said groups. [5][6] Fictional settings may also replicate more general problematic elements associated with cultural imperialism, such as the point-of-view culture being the only group with a religion based in truth, as in The Chronicles of Narnia.
Impact on Fandom
Some Western fandoms of shows made in Japan or other Eastern countries have gotten into the habit of judging the content and its values based on Western conventions and values. This has garnered criticism from other parts of these fandoms, from people who call it out as racist and ethnocentric. One example of this is the perception of the term fujoshi.
[examples, citations to be added/needed]
Subcategories
Christian Hegemony
- Greater focus on Christian holidays in comparison to the holidays of other religions. Christmas related fanworks, in particular, dominate during the winter months.
- Centered around a Christian sense of morality - This affects everything from the canon source texts and fanworks, to fandom discussions and wank. This includes the ideas of Heaven and Hell, Good vs. Evil, justice, redemption arcs, purity culture etc. Even within texts that incorporate aspects of non-Christian religions or belief systems, Western creators may include Christian moral or ideological ideas based on their own biases and perspectives.
Resources, Meta, and External Links
Specific Fandom-Related Controversies
The SPN Roundtable Workshop
Livejournal-based Supernatural discussion community spnroundtable hosted a workshop post written by benitle and legoline called, Faking It: Pretending You're A US Citizen When You're An Ocean Away. Both authors are non-Anglophone Europeans. The workshop covered a broad range of US cultural details specifically skewed to the needs of non-US, non-Anglophone writers in the fandom who haven't experienced the US culture that is the basis for canon in most major media fandoms. It also offered suggestions for research methods and lists of resources.
Commenters to the post pointed out several areas where US regional differences were not accounted for in the information, and the fact that the show itself, which is not filmed in the US often has noticeable errors in depiction of US life and culture, some intentional. The idea that this canon could ever be a platform for a writer to accurately depict US life was discussed at length.
Other commenters were unhappy that the post seemed to be implying that it was necessary for a writer to not only make Sam and Dean sound correct in dialogue, the narrative itself needed to seem to be written by a US writer in order for a reader to be comfortable with the story, a reading reinforced by some of benitle's comments. [7]
Some commenters felt the post painted non-US writers as more likely to write poor-quality stories.
Like many discussions of this kind the Britpicking culture in Harry Potter fandom was presented as an example of how there is an equality in fandom practice between US-based canons and UK-based canons. The idea of this equality seems to ignore the wider reality of the level of saturation of US culture in the world, and the attendant expectation that US pop culture references or slang will be understood by everyone.
Some fans criticised the post for lumping 'US culture' into one big heap, and then tried to generalise on that heap. Some criticised the fact that the guide was written by fans living in Europe, and the attitude that if you do get a detail wrong, the reader is ultimately distracted and will lose interest in your story.[8]
References
- ^ IMDB: Gunsmoke: "Miguel's Daughter," accessed 10/14/24
- ^ IMDB: Rawhide: "The Immigrants," accessed 10/14/24
- ^ Media Diversity Institute: "Yellow Filter: A Cinematic Technique or Pushing Stereotypes?" by Jeremy Ullmann, posted 6/25/20, accessed 10/14/
- ^ Wikipedia: "Klingon," accessed 10/15/24
- ^ LiveJournal: Not A Blog: Comment on "Yakkity Yaks" by George R. R. Martin, posted 2/5/2012 accessed 10/15/2024
- ^ A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry: "Category: That Dothraki Horde; Collections: That Dothraki Horde, Part IV: Screamers and Howlers," by Bret Deveraux, posted 1/8/2021, accessed 10/15/2024
- ^ Comment thread begun by 22by7, accessed April 8, 2011
- ^ narcissam, (2009). Fandom Wank: Give Me Your Huddled Masses. Accessed April 2, 2011.