shiny ivory towers

[swatkat]

I find fandom's anti-academic bias absurd. Furthermore, I find the anti-aca/fen debates that make the rounds in fandom every now and then worrisome, and very opposed to that aspect of fannish culture I've come to cherish over the years: tolerance of other people's weird obsessions.

There, I've said it.

I know my biases. I do, after all, harbour notions of getting myself a Ph.D in English; even teaching, perhaps - even though my thoughts on that topic mostly centre around, 'STOP ASKING ME GROWNUP QUESTIONS OK?' I work in a publishing house that thrives on pretentious academic publications. Where I stand today, I need to validate academia. Ooh, look, isn't the ivory shiny?

I also have difficulty comprehending how analysis is not fun, because it's something that comes very naturally to me. Splitting hairs is fun. Studying everything is fun. Fun me for me, anyway - they might not be for you. Which is not the point of this post here. The point here is very simply, why is my version of fun such an issue for you?

Here, for instance: The older I get and the more I have to do with academicians, the more I agree that academia is the enemy. Not, mind you, through any willful doing of evil, but through an insistence that everything must be studied. I lay the blame for the large number of college-educated people who never read for pleasure at the feet of English lit courses, where one is taught to examine the work at the expense of simply enjoying the story.

This posits 'simply enjoying the story' as opposed to 'analysing and ruining the fun in the story', which, as far as I'm concerned, is a false binary, because no, it doesn't work like that. For one, 'simply enjoying' is a vague and deceptive term. What does 'simply enjoying' mean? One assumes it is the pleasure of reading the story and knowing what happens next - except that this mode of 'simple enjoyment' is not inimical to analysis, and, in case of some stories, impossible, because nothing actually happens in them. Or perhaps it is the pleasure of words - soaking up the beauty of a well-written piece; enjoying the beauty of a metaphor; reveling in the mystery of words; etc. And again, this mode of 'simple enjoyment' is not opposed to an academic's brand of reading a text, either, because a lot of academic analysis follows naturally from this 'simple' pleasure (ref. the five hundred million works on language in Shakespeare, where the authors are thisclose to dying of wordgasm).

But more importantly, take away the theory and big words, and leave just the academic and her and her endless analysis and debates, replace the 'Derrida' and 'Foucault' with 'Joss' and 'SGA', replace the big words with, say, 'slashy' and 'canon', and what do you have? Someone very close to - dare I say? - what we call a Fan.

Fandom takes its Cult of Squee very seriously. It's very serious about not being serious. And in this serious not-seriousness there is a reverse snobbery, which posits that if you're not here just for the LULZ and can't see the simple pleasures of life, you must be a boring idiot or a pseudo-intellectual; which proposes that it isn't possible to be genuinely entertained by anything other than the simple way of reading, whatever that might mean. And in this inverse snobbery, fandom becomes precisely what it claims not to be: intolerant. Like Them.

I cannot be having with this.

Comments

[favouriteyear.livejournal.com]

which, as far as I'm concerned, is a false binary, because no, it doesn't work like that.

I agree. I gave that up a long time ago. It's been a while since I could simply "ejoy" a story without analyzing the characters, the writing and even the writer itself.

[swatkat24.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure *why* it's necessary to switch off your brain to enjoy something. Exercising your brain is fun!

[shutterbug-12.livejournal.com]

Oh, man. I must say, I love academia, and I also want to get a Ph.D in English one day. And I've had so many debates with friends and relatives of mine who don't understand what I enjoy. I analyze nearly everything what most people would call "entertainment"--novels, plays, movies, TV shows, etc. I love doing it. This extends to (since I only participate in one fandom) how I view House. I'm simultaneously entertained and engaged in a more academic sense, and I love it. I disagree strongly that you can't experience both at once, and that because you analyze (as you would in a literature class, for instance) you don't enjoy.

My father and I argue about this all the time. Every time we watch a movie together, I can never resist talking about it--about themes, characters, symbolism, etc. My father usually comes out with, "Why can't you just watch it and enjoy it? Do you always have to think about it? You should just have fun with it." And he never seems to understand that it is fun for me to think about all those things, and get past the surface of it all. It's--I can't even imagine when I have more fun sometimes. It's like how I can sit in a library for hours and hours and just research and learn about a topic that interests me. It's the reason why I think being a life-long student, attending class after class, writing paper after paper, would be the best life in the world. A reason why I love working in the theatre so much, working on a production and seeing it fifty times (more, usually) is so I could really dig deeply and analyze, learn something new every day. Think about the play as I'm working on it. By the same token, if I watched House just for entertainment, I'd be content with watching an episode once and moving on to the next. But I watch them dozens and dozens of times, looking and picking for new things, things I may have missed that could contribute to my understanding of characters, and themes.

I can't even say how much I enjoy and love absorbing any kind of art form that way. It's almost a way of life. Granted, when it comes to fandom, I do my fair share of squeeing and flailing, but I love discussing these characters and their world, analyzing it, and--Yes, it's just so amazing. When I find other people who love to do that, too, I want to marry them. And this post. I'd love to marry this post, too.

[swatkat24.livejournal.com]

I disagree strongly that you can't experience both at once, and that because you analyze (as you would in a literature class, for instance) you don't enjoy.

Yes, exactly. For me, it's very difficult to separate sensual experience from reflection, and anyway, I don't *want* to. It's fun.

Granted, when it comes to fandom, I do my fair share of squeeing and flailing

And here's the thing, isn't all our fannish squee (largely) based on reflection too? Because you're actually typing up a post that says 'YAY I LOVE MY SHOW', and that requires some distancing too. *Expression* of pleasure is not the same as experiencing pleasure, and there some pleasure to be had in that act of expression as well.

And anyway, the thing is - I can accept a lot of things from Mundanes IRL. But I do hold fandom to a higher standard, and when fans let me down, it's sad.

[earlwyn.livejournal.com]

shutterbug_12 linked me to this just so I could say "Yes. THIS." Because yes. THIS.

The recent appearance of anti-acafen posts on metafandom got me all flaily because, as you astutely pointed out, there is a large overlap between being an academic and how one can approach being a fan. That's definitely true for me.

I enjoy meta. I cherish exploration of theme, of character, of narration. I know inherently whether I like [a certain book, movie, or show] or not; the way I expand that base enjoyment is by figuring why I like it. Why does it work the way it works, -- or, alternatively, if something leaves me a little cold, what its creator(s) could have done differently to warm me up.

The thing I think anti-aca supports do not realize is that, for some, interacting with a story, discovering those hidden layers of depth and meaning and then later discussing them with others, is the way one "simply enjoys". That is, I think, the only way I know how to thouroughly enjoy a story. I wish an anti-aca support would share his/her way; I'm curious to learn new ways.

More than that, I think it's actually danger to continually porport the ideology that enjoyment of entertainment and critical analysis of a work of art are mutually exclusive. That one cannot apply one to the other, or that being entertained therefore makes something not worthy of (or somehow rude to do) analysis. I see that in real life and in fandom, and it makes me cringe everytime.

[evilstorm.livejournal.com]

...what? I mean what? My corners of fandom are ALL about the overanalysis and the glee in dissecting shiny and the self-acknowledged silliness of doing so. And that is what drew me to fandom in the first place. Pft.

IOW BULLFUCKINGSHIT, M'DEAR

[plazmah.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I like to analyze and take media apart. Sometimes I just don't care and squee happily. I can do both... why is that so hard for some people to understand?!

The Cult of Squee does take itself quite seriously. Capslockers too. Frivolity IS fun, but it's also easy. Sometimes you just want to exercise your brain.

[nestra.livejournal.com]

What you said. Different people like different things. It's a crazy world!

[swatkat24.livejournal.com]

It is! People are weird, and they should be allowed to be so in fandom.

[delle.livejournal.com]

well, I actually agree with both sides. (I'm a Libra, can you tell? LOL)

Analysis, in the definition of thinking over and talking about the foreshadowing and the themes and stuff... yes, that's fun. It's what I do, as naturally as breathing.

But I've also had the occasional sneer that I'm not analyzing the text from the "right perspective" - that as a mere B.A. in a non-literature field, I can't possibly understand the Deeper Meaning that the aca-fen see and enjoy. So I also understand the anti- backlash. I don't know Campbell's interpretation of The Hero - I just know when a story works for me, when I'm engaged and interested and happily trotting along with the writer whereever she may take me on this particular journey. That doesn't make me stupid and it doesn't make me a lesser fan, just that I'm approaching the text from a less-analytical standpoint.

Guh. Does that even make sense?

[mmebahorel.livejournal.com]

But I've also had the occasional sneer that I'm not analyzing the text from the "right perspective"

Are you friends with Anne Rice? (sorry - I just can't let that wank die.)

[topaz-eyes.livejournal.com]

It's entirely possible to approach fandom emotionally *and* academically. Hell, I do it all the time, though an academic I am not. I just like it. I can't understand either, why it has to be one or the other and not both.

[swatkat24.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. Why can't I have both?

[jaybee65.livejournal.com]

I *really* wish I had more time right now to jump into this properly, because it's been on my mind ever since I saw the metafandom links yesterday. But since I don't, I'll just say this:

(1) I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would *care* that I like to analyze fandom and fic. Am I, or any like-minded fan, forcing them to do the same? No. So...WTF is the big deal? Why must analysis be denounced so often? It's as if the mere prospect that some acafan out there *might* analyze something somehow CONTAMINATES ALL OF FANDOM OMG!

(2) As much as some fen may complain, analysis isn't going away.

[swatkat24.livejournal.com]

I *really* wish I had more time right now to jump into this properly, because it's been on my mind ever since I saw the metafandom links yesterday.

Oh, but you have to! Because I have questions for you - is it just me or do a lot of American fans have a knee-jerk anti-academic (anti-higher education, even) reaction? Why? I have noticed this for a while now, and I have to ask if I'm imagining this.

[raptor47.livejournal.com]

I wandered in here via friends of friends and wanted to say I couldn't agree with you more.

I'm moderately new to fandom in general. One thing that immediately attracted me was its inherent inclusiveness. There's room for all types of fannish expression whether it be deep analysis or superficial squee or an amalgam of both. As many have already said, they're not mutually exclusive, but merely different manifestations of what I suspect brought most of us here in the first place -- deep fannish love.

Don't harsh the squee -- whatever form it might take.

[jaybee65.livejournal.com]

Hey, there! *Waves*

As many have already said, they're not mutually exclusive, but merely different manifestations of what I suspect brought most of us here in the first place -- deep fannish love.

Exactly.

here via <lj user="metafandom">

[lonely-lycanth.livejournal.com]

... and I can't agree with you more. It should be stated that I'm not really IN fandom, exactly, as I tend to linger on the outskirts of it more, and occasionally post something. But I started "fandom" when I was in seventh grade, and it LED me to academia. This is probably because I was predisposed to the creative arts and writing in general, but while I entered at least half for the fandom itself, I stuck around because I simply loved writing, and loved reading. Now I study writing as an undergrad. (eek, senior year!)

Also, I'll never understand how anyone can say that English majors don't read for pleasure. What? Why on earth would they become Lit majors, if not because they have a passion for reading that goes beyond that of most other people? Just because some people like to find a deeper, more resonating meaning in their literature than Edward Cullen's sparkly vampire skin offers doesn't mean they dislike books or reading.

In other words, I agree with every word a thousand percent.

[mawaridi.livejournal.com]

I started "fandom" when I was in seventh grade, and it LED me to academia.

This, exactly. My first degree (which I never finished) was in Fashion Design, of all things. When I found myself not loving it and wanting to try something different, it was all the academics I had met through Fandom that inspired me to start a Bachelor of Arts (in Sociology, not Literature, but still). I am puzzled by the suggestion that if you like books (and TV, and comics and so on) so much that you want to study them, you instantly lose all pleasure in them. What? How??

[maerhys.livejournal.com]

I just adore this post.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Here from the most recent metafandom post (I'm there too), and am applauding--I say, often, that was the obnoxious kid who used big words and read when I was three, fandom and academia are the only places I've found where my weird shit was accepted and maybe even deemed valuable on occasion, and I'm not happy with the recurring "academics are ruining fandom>'

You know, despite what I know are individual academic assholes in fandom, I really don't see roving gangs of vigilante academics thundering down on small fandom villages and insiting they "examine the work at the expense of simply enjoying the story."

Now, if somebody pays money and shows up in my class, yeah, we're going to analyze stuff. That is one thing college is for.

But I don't insist on people doing it in fandom, nor, despite all the ongoing claims of academics over analyzing fanfic, do I do it in my own journal (and any work I do in scholarship on fanfic is with full and informed permission of the writers who get copies of it).

So, um, well, WORD! And I'm friending you!

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

"I really don't see roving gangs of vigilante academics thundering down on small fandom villages"

I was about to say it was because my horse was in the shop, when I noticed it was you.

Is your horse in the shop, too?

[nextian.livejournal.com]

YES. YES THIS. Thank you for making this post so I didn't have to. :)

[seraphcelene]

Amen and Hallelujah!

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom. Hi!

I agree with you. I keep thinking that I must be missing some context in this "debate" or whatnot. I don't understand how my analytical nitpicking can possibly bother someone else to the point where they can't enjoy a show in their own fashion.

I'm analytical by nature. I love to pick apart my TV show of choice. But I know that not everybody's into that. So? They don't have to read my meta or reviews or whatnot. Each to their own.

Also, I'm not an academic. I dropped out of college (Though I'm going back just to get an undergrad degree). But I don't get this, almost, resentment of academia that goes around.

Like I said, I must be missing something.

[blackjackrocket.livejournal.com]

It's odd, I've never encountered this hatred in fandom...but I've encountered it other places. I just had a HUGE fight with people who kept insisting that any "outsider" who asks questions is inherently trying to demean the smaller group (in this case it was a genderqueer comm) they're asking the questions of. This baffles me. Questions are how people LEARN. You can't learn if you don't ASK, and who better to ask than the people who would know best?

And then they got into massive "they think they're entitled to know" issues, but really, why would anybody NOT be entitled to know something? Do there exist in this world secrets that not just anybody can hear? These aren't state secrets or anything, they're life experiences, and most people asking aren't haters, they ask out of genuine curiosity. Even if the asker views the askee as strange, strange isn't necessarily bad, and besides, by finding out more they'll discover that this person isn't so irregular.

Besides, you can always say no. No one's forcing you to answer.


It occurs to me that this had very little to do with fandom ultimately, but anyway yeah. There's the view in areas of "us" vs "them", so I'd imagine that'd also play into it with fandom.
However, there *is* still a lot of ignorance about fandom. On a board I go to, someone posted part of a Max Payne review that mentions that no one has ever cried playing a video game. Which caused everyone on the board to go "wait, WHAT?" and it's not even a video game board.
I for one would rather answer questions all day long than have bald-faced ignorance like that go around.

Or moreover, the recent news story about Obama ads in video games...and every last one of the anchors made a comment about "if the gamers will get off their couches long enough to vote". And seriously, that's just hateful.

So yes, the more academia or WHOEVER can brush away that stuff, the better.

[the_rck]

To be honest, I find the academic/anti-academic debate to be a lot like many other fandom debates about who's a proper fan and what proper fan activities are. It's partly a variant of the geek hierarchy, an attempt to gain status/credit by ranking one's preferred approach higher than someone else's. It's also partly an attempt to gain reassurance that one's preferred approach isn't weirdly unique, that one has peers and a social group.

To me, it looks a lot like the gen/het/slash wars, pairing wars, RPF versus FPF wars, canon purists versus those who adore AUs and so on. There are a lot of sensible people on all sides and a few loud people who want their preferences to be uniquely right and better than anybody else's. The absolutists (in either direction) often don't start a flare up, but they definitely pick it up and run with it.

[allegraconbrio.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is exactly how I feel. I am not a well educated person in the areas that the acafans are. I am just a fan and I love reading the academics that quote people that I have never read. I then go out and read them. But I am still a fan who just loves what I read and watch and likes the shows and books and I do love all of the discussion.

There is no war that I can see and although I have been annoyed at the attitudes from all sides, I do like reading and I want to read everything. I don't know what started this, but I was happy to read your response.

also - edited to fix a typo

via Metafandom

[teagrl83.livejournal.com]

I totally agree. I got plenty of backlash in my first fandom and pretty much left it because I didn't feel welcome as an acafan, every time I tried to write about an interesting thinky aspect someone would slam it as overthinking. That kinda sucks. I think enjoyment isn't circumscribed to pure squee or acafan squee or creative production. There's a lot of ways to enjoy fandom.

[zibbycomix.livejournal.com]

I think that you made a good point about how people need to be tolerant. I've been surprised by how hateful some of the comments to the posts about analysis have been. You know, no matter what people think about analysis, it's important to respect people's opinions. I know that people are passionate about this, but that doesn't mean that they have a right to treat others poorly.
So, thanks for your post. I think you made some good points.

[mskatej.livejournal.com]

Great post. I completely agree.

Here from metafandom

[were-duck.livejournal.com]

Yes! Thank you. I was amazed to see yesterday's metafandom posts both exhibiting anti-academic bias, and I was shocked! I thought fandom was big enough that if you don't want to be critical, you don't have to... live and let live!

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

Here from metafandom, and I can sort of see both sides of the issue: I love analyzing shit and I read eight-hundred-page novels for fun, but I spent a couple years at a school that gave me an absolute loathing for academic jargon and, almost, for academia itself. It was the sort of place where everyone was too postmodern to care about anything and exhibiting actual enthusiasm for anything was the absolute height of uncool, and as someone with fannishly obsessive tendencies I was really miserable there. So, as far as I'm able from my own limited perspective, I'll try to explain where the backlash comes from.

Mostly, I think, it's the impression of academia as this big giant wall of Other--worse, an Other that thinks you're dumb because you're not part of it. Say "we're gonna discuss X" and my ears prick up; say "academia" and it becomes a Srs Bsns affair to be conducted in jargon I never learned, probably about something I'm not interested in. I know in my head that academic analysis is just a more formal flavor of the stuff I like to do, but the gut reaction persists.

A lot of the tension, I think, comes from the implication that acafan activity is somehow smarter than regular fandom activity; the acafen themselves aren't necessarily to blame for this, because there's a wider social assumption that analysis = academic and academic = intelligent. And fandom, I think, values intelligence a lot more than society at large. So when the acafen start going "Stop persecuting me, I'd have to turn off my brain to keep from analyzing stuff, hell I made a whole career out of writing that kind of analysis formally," then the people who don't get their kicks from meta, or who never made the leap from informal fandom analysis to term papers, have this urge to growl "Well bully for you, smartypants," instead of taking a step back and accommodating other people's weird obsessions. Those of us whose brains, somehow or another, Don't Work That Way, and who've gotten burned for it in the past, don't always see it as making space for just another flavor of fannish expression; all we can see, sometimes, is the expectation that because we'd like to think we're smart, we should be writing honors theses on everything we read.

The other thing that makes people leery is criticism of their canon. Academia's full of excellent discussions of the problems and faults in particular works, and while it's certainly appropriate there, it makes fans start getting nervous when academia bleeds into fandom. It's like bringing your new girlfriend to an extended-family gathering and wondering if Uncle Bill the Beauty-Pageant Judge is going to tell you her ankles are fat and she has bad posture--yeah, it's true, and you don't need Uncle Bill to tell you that, but it's so utterly beside the point. So when meta-y discussions start veering into the canon's weak points, some people get twitchy and reach for the back button, some try to defend their fandom, and some slap Uncle Bill across the face because they feel like something they love is being judged unfavorably by an outsider. (Especially when familiar fandom jargon starts giving way to scholarly jargon.) In that way it's not so much anti-seriousness as anti-criticism.

There's also, to some extent, memories of bad experiences in school, but I don't think that plays as big a part. Certainly I resented having to write essays about what the teacher thought I should be interested in instead of what I really liked about a book, and I found it pretty agonizing to read and force myself to pay attention to what we were supposed to be looking for instead of what caught my interest. But fandom is much more freeform than that, so it doesn't really bother me.

(continued because I ran over the comment limit, oh dear)

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

But IMO it's disingenuous to claim that if other people aren't interested in acafan activity, they should just avoid it and then it won't affect them. Fandom's a close-knit place; most of us are attuned to the prevailing climate of our particular hangouts, and we get uncomfortable if we think we're being edged out by a type of fannishness that doesn't float our boat. It can be a total lack of het, or a spate of silly humorfic, or a shipping war, or whatever; it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with slash, or humor, or A/B, just that its omnipresence is making non-participants uncomfortable. Some of them will lash out, especially if they feel marginalized or looked down on for not seeing the Joy and the Beauty of Whatever--hence the touchiness and defensiveness around the matter of intelligence.

...as for how analysis can be Not Fun, some people just don't like it. It's like listening to someone practice your favorite song on the piano, picking it apart, playing each line separately, playing the same two measures over and over again to get the phrasing just right, then playing just the bass line of those two measures until it doesn't even sound recognizable anymore. Some people love it and relish the opportunity to analyze each note; some people just want to sit back and listen to the song. So, to extend the comparison to the point of silliness, the close-knit nature of fandom means we can hear each other through the walls and the anti-aca folks are banging on the door going "Oy, just play the damn thing!" (So I guess that means fanficrants is the domain of "what did that poor violin ever do to you?!" and "Ha ha, those dipshit sopranos were a quarter-tone flat in measure sixty-three.")

Okay, I will stop now. Gee golly whiz, here I am claiming to give the POV of the non-acafans and I've just written you an essay.

Metafandom yay!

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

I agree. I agree because I like reading the analyses of other fans, and also I am an active member of a plotbunny group in my current fandom and really, you can't think up thoughtful plotbunnies without wanting to analyse the original material.

[anactoria.livejournal.com]

I totally agree. I've just read the original post linked from metafandom, and it made me so angry I feel physically sick. You don't like others telling what or how you should read, study or enjoy yourself? Good for you. But don't you fucking dare try to do the same to the rest of us.

(Apologies for the rant -- I was just shocked and horrified by the arrogance and disregard for other people's enjoyment displayed in that post.)