SALON: Good Fan, Bad Fan? On Politics, Appropriateness, and Toxicity in Global Pop Culture Fandoms

Between K-pop fans interfering with U.S. politics, calls for Disney’s Mulan to be boycotted because of the lead’s support for the Hong Kong police, and Taylor Swift’s political revelations, this year has been an eventful one for fandoms worldwide. And although such developments are not new, fans and anti-fans alike seem more vocal about what they consider ‘good’ or ‘bad’ fan engagement.

This salon explores the various practices, forms of engagement, and processes of the ‘politics’ of fandom in a global context. We are seeking contributions which ask what is acceptable, or appropriate fan engagement? And when (and who) do we consider these affective investments as good or positive, or harmful, ‘bad’, or even toxic? Beyond simply ‘cancel culture’, an overwhelmingly white, Anglo-centric form of boycott, we aim to address these types of engagement in a global context, to explore a worldwide emergence of, and offer a firm context to, this phenomenon. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary perspectives, allowing scrutiny of these developments with fan studies at their core but also inviting perspectives from other disciplines and a global and/or transcultural context to better understand them.

Participants: Simone Driessen (Erasmus University), Bethan Jones (Cardiff University), Bertha Chin (Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak), Renee Ann Drouin (Bowling Green State University), Qian Huang (Erasmus University), Sarah Sinwell (University of Utah), Mark Stewart (Coventry University), Christina Wurst (Tuebingen University) (moderator: Louisa Stein)

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