TY - JOUR
T1 - Fan Conflicts and State Power in China
T2 - Internalised Heteronormativity, Censorship Sensibilities, and Fandom Police
AU - Wang, Erika Ningxin
AU - Ge, Liang
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022/8/29
Y1 - 2022/8/29
N2 - Fans as consumers of cultural products have received a great deal of attention from sociologists and cultural studies academics in recent years, and research on the relationship between fans and state power is gradually gaining traction. Through a 12-month digital ethnography of a large-scale fan conflict surrounding The Untamed, a popular ‘Boys’ Love’-adapted drama in China, we uncover a complex picture of two-way exploitation between fans and state power. By doing so, the article challenges previous assumptions by Chinese and Western scholars that fan culture is resistant to or negotiates with mainstream culture. We show that by perpetuating heteronormativity and censorship, fans internalise ‘reporting’ as a norm of legitimacy in consumer culture. Some fans portray themselves as ‘fandom police’ and use censorship to report ‘illegal’ comments by their rivals in order to prevail in fan conflicts. However, the power gained by these fandom police is illusory. Their practices are exploited by the state as a tool for censoring media users’ speech and cultural production, with the ultimate consequence of perpetuating censorship and heteronormativity.
AB - Fans as consumers of cultural products have received a great deal of attention from sociologists and cultural studies academics in recent years, and research on the relationship between fans and state power is gradually gaining traction. Through a 12-month digital ethnography of a large-scale fan conflict surrounding The Untamed, a popular ‘Boys’ Love’-adapted drama in China, we uncover a complex picture of two-way exploitation between fans and state power. By doing so, the article challenges previous assumptions by Chinese and Western scholars that fan culture is resistant to or negotiates with mainstream culture. We show that by perpetuating heteronormativity and censorship, fans internalise ‘reporting’ as a norm of legitimacy in consumer culture. Some fans portray themselves as ‘fandom police’ and use censorship to report ‘illegal’ comments by their rivals in order to prevail in fan conflicts. However, the power gained by these fandom police is illusory. Their practices are exploited by the state as a tool for censoring media users’ speech and cultural production, with the ultimate consequence of perpetuating censorship and heteronormativity.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85136844207&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/10357823.2022.2112655
DO - 10.1080/10357823.2022.2112655
M3 - Article
SN - 1035-7823
VL - 47
SP - 355
EP - 373
JO - Asian Studies Review
JF - Asian Studies Review
IS - 2
ER -