Social justice, shipping, and ideology: when fandom becomes a crusade, things get ugly

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Title: Social justice, shipping, and ideology: when fandom becomes a crusade, things get ugly
Creator: Aja
Date(s): August 7, 2016
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External Links: Social justice, shipping, and ideology: when fandom becomes a crusade, things get ugly - Vox, Archived version
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Social justice, shipping, and ideology: when fandom becomes a crusade, things get ugly is a 2016 essay by Aja.

It has the subtitle: "Fans merely rooting for their favorite characters to get together has somehow evolved into ideological warfare."

Some Topics Discussed

Sections

  • Fandom shipping isn’t what it used to be
  • Shipping has become an ideology — and like all ideologies, it breeds both crusaders and conspiracists
    • 1) The belief that the ship in question is unquestionably going to become canon
    • 2) The belief that the ship should become canon because it involves an underrepresented identity
    • 3) The belief that the ship is already canon but the creators are unable or unwilling to confirm or admit it
  • When shipping is treated as an ideology, it creates deep tensions between fans and creators
  • The rise in ideological fan beliefs is less about control and more about equal partnerships
  • There’s no easy answer to this dilemma, but awareness is a start

Some Excerpts

Fandom shipping isn’t what it used to be

Fans have historically dubbed the creative teams behind a show or media franchise "the powers that be," as a reminder that the creators are ultimately in control of the story. Fandom etiquette on interacting with the powers that be used to be extremely clear: They were to be left alone and untouched.

In 2000, I ran a tinymailing list for fans of a certain celebrity. One morning, I awoke to find the entire mailing list deleted overnight by one of the moderators who helped me manage the list. The moderator had discovered that the celebrity had secretly been monitoring our mailing list the whole time, and had been deeply alarmed by a shipping joke that one of the mailing list members had made about him and a friend. Not knowing what to do, the mod, who feared the celebrity had seen too much of our fandom, nuked the whole community.

This was an extreme move, but it represented what at the time was the prevailing attitude of fans toward creators: Don’t let them see you. In essence, the first rule of fandom was, "Don’t talk about fandom."

“Fans of movies and TV shows increasingly root for their ships to become canon the way football fans root for their teams to win the Super Bowl”

In recent years, social media and the mainstreaming of fandom has totally obliterated this attitude. That fan-shy celebrity who was startled 16 years ago by the banter of 300 women on a mailing list now has 5 million followers on Twitter. Fans who would have been terrified to let anyone see their fanwork decades ago now proudly send copies to creators. And many creators go out of their way to interact with fans on a regular basis.

But some fans feel that creators no longer hold all power in the fan-creator dynamic; hence, fan-creator interactions can get tense, and are often interlaced with conflict and harassment, sometimes from both sides Within the past few months, multiple critics have described these conflicts as the result of a rise in fan entitlement across all walks of fandom life.

But where, say, regressive, male-dominated movements in fandom are fundamentally about gatekeeping geek culture, shipping-oriented movements are fundamentally motivated by investment in a specific set of characters (or, in the case of real-life ships, the "characters" of real people). Gatekeeping is about keeping real people out of the communities that surround stories we love; shipping-oriented movements are about getting more characters more attention within those stories.

When shipping is treated as an ideology, it creates deep tensions between fans and creators

These days, because so many fans treat shipping as a serious matter of urgency, they tend to approach the fan-creator divide feeling utterly justified in their belief that a ship will be or should be canon. Yet creators and writers generally have no idea what kind of belief system has amassed around a ship until members of that ship approach them to try to discuss it.

When a single fan or a group of fans tweet at creators asking whether a ship will become canon, creators generally aren’t aware of the tremendous amount of background attached to said ship — the thought, speculation, love, emotional investment, and collective justification that has gone into a fandom’s perception of a pairing.

Creators and other cast and crew members who interact with fans tend to get asked basic questions like, "Will this ship be endgame?" But most can't answer, and often don't even know, because of the many factors involved in producing a storyline.

In other words, the creators are seeing only the tip of the iceberg that is a fandom's investment in a ship, and fans are seeing only the tip of the iceberg that is the behind-the-scenes production of the canonical storyline.

Add in the fact that both fans and creators usually believe they can see the whole iceberg, and the result is inherent miscommunication. Fans might come away feeling like creators are being evasive or brushing off their need to have their ship to be canon; creators might come away feeling like fans are placing too much emphasis on a single aspect of the plot at the expense of everything else they’re trying to do within a storyline.

This disconnect can lead to feelings of resentment on both sides. It can also lead to creators accusing fans of wanting to control their narratives.

Reactions and Reviews

References

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