OTW Guest Post: Jessica Leski
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | OTW Guest Post: Jessica Leski |
| Interviewer: | Claudia Rebaza |
| Interviewee: | Jessica Leski |
| Date(s): | May 10, 2019 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | |
| External Links: | "OTW Guest Post: Jessica Leski". Archived from the original on 2019-08-14.; archive link |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
OTW Guest Post: Jessica Leski is a 2019 interview done as part of a series. See OTW Guest Post.
Some Topics Discussed
- Leski's film "I Used to be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl Story," which its World Premiere at Hot Docs in 2018
- the biggest differences in being a fan today compared to the 1960s and in the 80s or 90s
- transformative power of fandom, adolescence, identity
- Popslash, boybands
- One Direction, Dawson's Creek
Some Excerpts
How did you first find out about fandom or fanworks?
My first experience of fandom was in 1999 when I became a big Dawson’s Creek fan. I loved watching the show with my friends and dissecting it with them afterwards, but I always felt like it was a much bigger part of my life than it was for them. I wrote university essays about it, I saw lookalikes everywhere I went, and I even had one or two moments when I felt reality blur about whether the characters were people I knew in real life or not. This was pretty early in my relationship with the internet, so I wasn’t aware of message boards or forums and things like that. So I found myself searching for ways to express my fandom in real life.
I was in my first year of film school at the time, and for one of my assignments I re-created the opening sequence of Dawson’s Creek, shot for shot, with lookalikes. When we had a screening of all our films at the end of the year the other students laughed and clapped in recognition at mine, but the teachers were completely baffled; they had no idea what they were watching. Luckily a fellow student stood up and likened it to Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho, and I ended up getting a good grade!
It took another ten years before I became a fan of something to that same level, and this time it was UK boyband One Direction. I was taken completely by surprise because I had never liked a boyband before, and I was 31 years old at the time, not the target age range at all.
I thought I knew what a boyband fan was. I had definitely judged them when I was in high school when Backstreet Boys, NSync, 5ive, Take That etc. were all huge. I thought people who liked them and their music had simple tastes and were just following the pack. It wasn’t until I became a boyband fan myself and discovered all the nuances and joys of being a part of a fandom that I found myself reconsidering everything I thought I knew about teenage girls, boybands and fandoms.
Because I had no one to talk to about One Direction with in my real life, it was online where I could express myself and interact with other fans. I started Tumblr and Twitter accounts for the first time. This was also when I discovered fan art and fan fiction for the first time. My mind was blown. The creativity, intelligence, passion and humour I encountered online was so surprising and delightful. I knew there was a story here that people wouldn’t expect, and so I pitched the concept to my producer Rita Walsh. We began filming in early 2013.
Did you find that fandom experiences vary by the type of music or the makeup of the overall fandom?
From a purely cynical perspective, it’s hard to deny that the typical boyband is almost always a carefully engineered package of cute, young, mostly white, boys in coordinated outfits, singing in harmony about holding hands and broken hearts. As young men they are given more power and status than they may deserve, but their music is some of the most enduring and beloved in history, and their fans’ devotion is legendary. Boyband fans routinely get dismissed as stupid, hysterical or hormonal. This film was an opportunity to show people that they may have been too quick to judge both the fans and the music and the role it can play in people’s lives.
One of the most wonderful things about making this film was the responses we’ve received from people who were boyband haters, or who had previously dismissed the genre as a whole. Horror movie fans, heavy metal fans, Harry Potter fans, all reported to us that they saw themselves reflected in the girls and women in the film. There are differences of course, but what is remarkable is the commonality between fandom experiences, regardless of the object of the particular fandom in question.
While this film may have started out as a love letter to boybands, it’s actually a love letter to the fans who let themselves feel things deeply, who aren’t afraid to sing or dance along to a song that makes them happy, or who endeavour to always stay closely in touch with their inner teenager, with all the optimism, awkwardness and dreams that that entails.