Fansplaining: Age and Fandom

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Podcast Episode
Fansplaining
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Episode Title: Episode 85: Age and Fandom
Length: 58:15
Featured: Flourish Klink, Elizabeth Minkel
Date: October 17, 2018
Focus: Age and Fandom
Fandom: Panfandom
External Links: Episode 85: Age and Fandom on fansplaining.com
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Fansplaining: Age and Fandom is an episode of the podcast Fansplaining by Flourish Klink and Elizabeth Minkel.

The episode discusses Age and Fandom.

Introduction

"In Episode 85, Flourish and Elizabeth talk about the ever-contentious topic of age in fandom. They start with childhood—are there aspects of childhood that are naturally fannish?—and continue on through later stages of life, including the way mainstream society pits fannishness against maturity (unless you’re a sports fan!). Topics covered include ageism, the empathy gap online, Ann M. Martin, and the glory that was the mall in the 1990s."[1]

Links

Topics Discussed

  • Age and Fandom
  • The perception that imaginative play and immersion in fiction is intended for kids, or is something that is "grown out of"
  • Tension between interests or media seen as more 'childish' versus more 'serious' or 'adult'
  • Fandom empathy gaps as they relate to age
  • Sexism in fandom
  • Cultural expectations of what it 'looks like' to be a certain age

Excerpts

ELM: Yes. So by way of starting this conversation, we got an ask a little while back we did which reads: “Hi. I love your podcast. I was listening to one of your old episodes, and one of you said something about ‘creepy olds.’” Did I say that? I don’t think I would say that.

FK: I don’t think that I would either, but I have no idea what context this was in.

ELM: Maybe we were imitating someone else. Anyway, it continues: “This made me curious about whether you’d ever do an episode on age/ageism in fandom particularly with regard to gender biases, IE men in some cases are allowed to be fans longer than women. Thanks!” So, this is not the first time the people have asked us to do this, and we’ve said probably 150,000 times that we would eventually do a whole episode about age and ageism. And that time is now!

ELM: That’s true. Another reason we wanted to talk about age was a friend of mine sent us a message. He’s got two kids both of whom are around age ten, I think maybe nine and eleven or so, talking about children in fandom and how his children are super fannish. I mean to be fair, he’s pretty fannish and he’s an adult man, but it is true that I think children can be very fannish in a way that I think is less surprising to people than when adults are.

FK: Absolutely, so maybe maybe childhood is a good place to start. Yeah. I’ve heard that from a lot from my friends who have kids also, and…I don’t know, looking back on it, it does seem like when I was a kid, I feel like there was a lot of emphasis on imaginative play. People wanted me to do imaginative play and it was like, great, if you were gonna play Power Rangers or play Pokémon or play whatever.

FK: Well, I think there’s also sort of different kinds of fandoms that people identify as childish, or more grown-up, or whatever, right? So I’m remembering—as you might not be surprised to learn that I was a nerd, I remember being in sixth grade and having a male friend who was like, “Star Wars is so for kids. I like Star Trek.”

ELM: Aww.

FK: Right? I know, that’s so silly. It’s also a little true ,but it’s really silly, but at the time I felt like really called out!

ELM: You’re giving Star Trek possibly more credit than it deserves.

FK: For sure. We’re like, maybe ten-year-olds at this point. And he was really…but there was genuinely, like, I believed him! And I also was mad at that idea. You know what I mean? Like, there’s even within fannishness—I feel like when you’re a kid, especially, there’s these hierarchies of what's more serious or real or adult.

ELM: Hmm. Yeah was that fannishness as much as, like, specific subgenres of the culture? So you’re talking about mass market sci-fi, and I’m also thinking of the kind of fantasy novels a fantasy fan might have read as a seven-year-old. And then when do you read The Hobbit and when are you old enough to read Lord of the Rings, that kind of thing...

FK: But is that a little bit like “culture is for young people” in a certain way? I mean, when you are when I was younger certainly it would have blown my mind to realize that adults would be into, I don’t know, whatever, Peaches or something. You know what I mean? ... Point being, it would have blown my mind. Of course, she was an adult! Mostly adults were into this! This is a thing for adults! And yet somehow it would have blown my mind if I had been like “Whoa, you mean someone will still like this when they’re 35? What?” [all laughing]

ELM: Right. So, so if we’re thinking that instinct is really natural, and that you always center yourself, and as you grow older…and I don’t think everyone’s good at this, but I do think that the opportunity arises for you to remember what it was like to be, you know, 30 and 20 and 15 and whatever. Certainly that option is open to you. I think some people don’t do a good job remembering what it was like to be various other ages, and still continue to center themselves.

There’s also, I was just listening to someone talking about this, I think it was like a psychiatrist was talking about this, or a psychologist, saying that we have a really hard time envisioning what our lives will look like in 10 years. They’ve done studies and people think, “Oh, I can’t imagine it’ll be that different.” Even if intellectually, you know, like, “I’m 20 now, when I’m 30 it would be quite different!” And you know right now, us in our early 30s, in my mind I’m like, “Oh sure. I’ll just be doing this.” That’s completely abstract!

And then of course you look back from 40 to 30, or 30 to 20 and whatever and say, “Oh God I couldn’t even…” because some of it is very very hard to predict. You don’t know the little individual events, subtle, that will kind of shift your path. You know what I mean? So I think it makes sense that if you’re deep in the thick of it in a fandom when you’re 16, I think it's pretty hard to project what your life will be like, and it’s pretty hard to empathize with the future adult that you’ll be or the current adults that you’re around. Obviously not all adults, not all teens, not all anyone…

ELM: OK, so to just kind of move us in the direction that I think this conversation needs to go…because I think we should take a quick break first before we do this. I think this kind of dissociation that we’re talking about, this this inability to really wrap your head around the other people in fandom, I think underscores a lot of the empathy gap that in turn underscores a lot of the conflicts that you see in fandom. If I like one ship and you like another, and I can’t actually really envision who you are beyond someone who likes the wrong ship, then that’s that, and then you you're not a person anymore. You’re literally just…and if I do have that extra ammunition to say “I believe fandom is for X age and you are not in that group.” And I think this goes in all directions! I think there are some adults who behave quite badly on the age question.

ELM: ...Anyway, so I think we discussed this before, but there’s definitely an element of control here. The mainstream culture feeling like they can’t control women's sexuality or women’s sexual interests. So you either have to infantilize them, and say “you’re immature, you’re younger than a mature woman,” or “you’re over the hill and sad and desperate and horny,” or whatever, that kind of characterization. And so I think that 1000% seeps into the conversations from younger female fans to older female fans.

FK: Well, and I think it also goes the other direction too sometimes, in that when you are getting steeped in that “you’re over the hill”…I mean God, I’d be cranky too. You know what I mean? When I see, sometimes, older female fans being rude, “Oh these God damn kids, get out of my backyard!” Obviously sometimes those things are said jokingly and sometimes they’re said seriously. I think in that case, a lot of the rest of society can be awful to younger people. And so it feels worse when it’s compounding that. But then I look at the way that that conversation is happening, and I’m like “Man, if everything in society was telling me that I was over the hill, and everything sucks, and you’re too old, and you’re not allowed to love these things because it’s bad, and then I went to my happy place and here are a bunch of young people being ageist at me too? I would be fucking angry!”

ELM: Well, and also this ties back into our purity culture conversation too. There’s definitely a line of rhetoric on Tumblr in particular right now talking about how older fans, or fans of all ages, who are interested in explicit content, are harming underage fans. And we talked about this at length, the kind of flipping the script from when we were teens and you lied about your age to get into the older spaces, and now the presumption that the default is…which doesn’t even make sense with the age limits.

Further Reading

References

  1. ^ Fansplaining.com. Episode 85: Age and Fandom, Oct 17, 2018.
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