Fireworks and feelings: the power of (aca)fandom
In this guest post, long-time Eurovision ‘aca-fan’ Jess Carniel, from the University of Southern Queensland, reflects on what it means to research something you’re also a fan of…and to do it in your pyjamas!
Researchers are generally expected to have a critical distance from their object of study. Get too close to it, and you'll be too biased to see 'the truth'. I think we're also supposed to wear lab coats or at least proper trousers, and preferably not have a tipple on the job. In this way, I am perhaps a terrible scientist (in addition to my poor maths skills). My annual fieldwork is conducted in my pyjamas, on the couch, and often with a prosecco clutched firmly in one hand while I try to provide some sort of witty and informative commentary on social media with the other. And I love my research. I roll around it in like a pig in mud.
My name is Jess Carniel, and I am a Eurovision aca-fan.
"Aca-fan" is a portmanteau concept developed by Henry Jenkins, one of the key scholars of fan studies. It is, quite simply, academics studying a fandom to which we belong. Being an aca-fan involves a lot of joy - such as being able to attend a live Eurovision as part of my research - but it also involves a bit of guilt and self-doubt - is what I am doing worthy of academic attention or am I just pursuing a personal interest?
To be an aca-fan researching Eurovision can be even more difficult. Many still see it as kitsch, frivolous, and irrelevant - not worthy of being a fan object, let alone being an object of serious academic consideration.
(And to be an aca-fan researching Eurovision from the perspective of Australia? Well, let's just say I have a very good 25-words-or-less response to the inevitable question of "why is Australian in Eurovision anyway? It's not part of Europe.")
So, with the self-doubt and external scepticism, why study Eurovision and its fans?
First and foremost, it is out of a sense of responsibility to the fans. As Adrienne Evans and Mafalda Stasi (2014) emphasise, research is a form of representation work: the researcher is responsible for how others are represented in that research. Similarly, Jenkins argues that a researcher of fans is accountable to those fans.
Fan cultures in general can be ridiculed and derided - and more so if they are comprised of girls, women, and queer folk. Mainstream press about fan cultures will almost inevitably draw upon the etymology of fan from 'fanatic', and pull from the photo archives images of screaming and crying Beatles fans. This pathologised approach to fans and the notion of critical distance in academic research suggest one thing: feelings are suspect, especially "fannish feelings".
To the contrary, feelings are an amazing resource - for both fans and the researchers who study them(selves). Sophie Hansal and Marianne Gunderson (2020) argue that our fannish feelings are not just what motivate us or provide a basis for analysis, but are actually a starting point for us to critique social and academic norms and values. This is something we also see in fan cultures - not only does fandom motivate us to write blogs, create videos and memes, engage in debates, and write fanfiction, but in doing so we can critique social relations, producer-consumer dynamics, and political power relations.
Feelings also underpin the significant affective power that fans have - and the power that Eurovision has for its fans. As Lawrence Grossberg (1992) observes, "The fan's relation to culture in fact opens up a range of political possibilities and it is often the field of affective relations that political struggles intersect with popular concerns." Eurovision has the meaning that we give it as fans.
Fans constitute an "interpretive community" (Fish, cited in Dittmer & Dodds 2008) that together work to imbue cultural texts with particular meaning. Although the concept of unity has arguably been co-opted a little aggressively by the EBU with its recent announcement of the permanent contest slogan, "United by music", this has nevertheless been a meaning for Eurovision that fans have become invested in a variety of ways. If it is ever a song contest to unite Europe (and not just as a consumer audience), it is only ever so because we agree that it is.
This has somewhat crystalised my mission as an aca-fan: to help highlight and communicate what Eurovision means - to its fans, to its participating artists, nations, and broadcasters, and to the global community as a whole. All while wearing my pyjamas.
Jess isn’t the only one doing Eurovision activities in their pjs…
References
Dittmer J & Dodds K (2008) Popular geopolitics past and future: Fandom, identities and audiences. Geopolitics 13(3): 437–457.
Evans A & Stasi M (2014) Desperately Seeking Methods: New Directions in Fan Studies Research. Participations 11(2): 4-23.
Grossberg, L (1992) The affective sensibility of fandom. In: Lewis LA (ed) The Adoring Audience : Fan Culture and Popular Media. London: Routledge.
Hansal S & Gunderson M (2020) Toward a Fannish Methodology: Affect as an Asset. Transformative Works and Cultures 33. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2020.1747.
Jenkins H (2012) Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Routledge.