Fansplaining: No Escape
| Podcast Episode | |
|---|---|
| Fansplaining | |
| Prev Episode · Episode #35 · Next Episode | |
| Episode Title: | Fansplaining: No Escape |
| Length: | 51:26 |
| Featured: | |
| Date: | November 16, 2016 |
| External Links: | Episode on Fansplaining.com |
Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Fansplaining: No Escape is a podcast by Flourish Klink and Elizabeth Minkel.
For others in the series, see Fansplaining
Related episodes include Fansplaining: Nerds For Her which dealt with the lead up to the 2016 American Election.
Introduction
In this episode, Elizabeth and Flourish discuss how different people use fandom to deal with trauma, grief and overwhelming feelings. …Oh, who are we kidding? In this episode, Elizabeth and Flourish talk about the US Presidential election, how mad they are, how sad they are, how much they’re not participating in fandom right now, and what they can do to change things. We’ll get back to fandom soon. Maybe.
Links
- Episode, show notes, and transcript: 35: No Escape, Archived version
- Tumblr Promotional Post, Archived version
Topics Discussed
- Trauma, grief, and mental health
- Fears and anxieties about the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election when Trump won the presidency
- Harassment related to the election
- The role fiction and fandom plays in processing real-world events
- Misogyny in the election cycle and the role of sexism in Hillary's loss
Excerpts
Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Minkel: [super depressed] Hi, Flourish.
FK: Ohhh! And welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for and about the dystopian hellscape we now live in, and also fandom.
ELM: Mostly the former.
FK: This episode is Episode 35, and we’re calling it “No Escape,” [ELM laughs] because that’s where we’re at in our lives right now.
ELM: Well OK OK, we initially decided to call it that because we were, like, gonna talk about how some people use fandom as an escape in times of strife, and I remember, I even feel like after the election we’d even suggested this idea.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: As the days have dragged on, I don’t even know if I can discuss that. We can talk about it as a concept. But…
[Discussing the Boston Marathon bombing]
ELM: Right. I guess those are both moments of trauma, but they also do feel a little apples and oranges in the sense that the overwhelmingness of the entire…I’m not saying that it’s the most, that it’s not extraordinarily terrifying, but it was a single protracted incident where you could literally not control anything and you knew it was going to end one way or another—
FK: Right.
ELM: —probably within like a day, right?
FK: [laughs] It’s so true. You knew that something was going to happen and it was localized in a certain sense. I knew that the only people I had to worry about, pretty much, were the people who were right there in Boston, and I knew that it was…yeah. And it felt like there was togetherness happening, weirdly, and…but not now.
ELM: Well, I feel some togetherness with people I agree with…does that count?
FK: I…yeah…I think it counts. I don’t know. I think that one thing that you really put your finger on was the sense of uncertainty, right? Because right now we don’t know what is in store. There’s signs of different things, but we could be looking at anything from a standard issue kleptocracy combined with a Republican congress that is not going to bow to Trump’s worst impulses, or we could be looking at something all the way to “Welcome to the Weimar Republic.”
ELM: Right. And we’re recording this Tuesday morning, and I just sent you the picture of every chair in the Republican Congressional conference room with a Make America Great hat, and Paul Ryan’s tweet about how it was a new dawn of the unified Republican party. So I’m kinda leaning on the latter end of that spectrum! That’s fine. Don’t worry. Fine.
[On whether fannishness is something that can be participated in]
FK: Yeah, I've been trying to think about that. I've got two projects that are, one of which is the one, that One Direction fic I keep not editing, and it’s funny because last night I was staying awake worrying and I kinda had a breakthrough about what I needed to do to fix it, and I was like, “Am I gonna spend time on this?” And I'm not sure whether I will or I won’t. I don’t know. That’s a perspective that I admire and appreciate, but I don’t know, it’s hard to fathom.
ELM: It also sort of feels like… I think that people say, “Oh, we need stories more than ever, we need escape,” I… it’s hard, it’s very hard to feel like it’s not a waste of time. Because, well, what does it matter? We’re gonna sit here writing stories about, you know, sure, very political stories, great analogies, I have been simultaneously very defensive about people shitting all over people using Harry Potter metaphors but also a little side-eye-y… I saw one Tweet that was, like, cause you know Newt Gingrich said he wanted to reconvene the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and someone was like, “That sounds like Harry Potter language!” And it’s like. Guys. [FK laughs] Guys.
ELM: Prepare for the, Brian Beutler wrote in the New Republic, we need to treat this like a Category 5 hurricane. And if it gets downgraded, then great, all you did was just board up your windows. But if you do it in reverse, your house is gonna get fucking destroyed and you’re gonna die. So let’s just, I think that’s a better plan. But, before that, I was gonna say that I think that one thing, I think that’s a very good point, I think that the stories that we use where people fight against fascism or dystopias or the bad guy, however we wanna describe it, I think the problem with a lot of them and the problem with Harry Potter or Captain America or any of them, is just look at—all right, take Harry Potter. We can talk all about “Oh, there’s Dumbledore’s Army,” resistance, blah blah. Look at what happens for most of that book! Look at what happens from the second that we get the Ministry involved. They totally fuckin’ normalize it. You know? The Death Eaters take over the Ministry and look how many people are complicit.
FK: Right.
ELM: And so we wanna pat ourselves on the back and say “Oh, I woulda been Harry Potter, I would have fought him,” but that’s not the way it works. That’s, never has that been the way it works.
FK: Yeah, I mean, it’s funny because I had a bunch of people say to me that I was, immediately after the election… I think everybody should do for self-care what they need to do to get them through the day, what they need to get them through life, but I think they also have to, there’s a point at which self-care can become self indulgent. And maybe that’s rude and awful to say. But there is. There genuinely is. And I guess at one point a bunch of people said “You're catastrophizing! Why are you worried about government surveillance. Why are you saying, put together an emergency kit, why are you saying all this, do you really think that Trump supporters are gonna storm your house?” No, I do not think Trump supporters are gonna storm my house, but the fact is that we don’t know what's going to happen. There’s more uncertainty than ever before and we need to take that seriously and like adults and that means taking responsibility for everything we can control about ourselves. And sometimes we’re in situations that we can’t control things, and that’s OK, but this is not one of those situations. There’s a lot of stuff we can do.