SALON: Fans and Cancel Culture: On How Fans Process Disappointment

This salon deals with the relationship between fans and the creative people behind the texts they love in the context of Cancel Culture. The triggering question in that sense would be: how do fans process discovering that someone they admire has committed a reprehensible act?

This issue delves into various topics. First, it talks about a specific feature of being a fan: admiring the people involved in the things you love. These people are real people, not fiction characters, but that doesn’t mean that we do not project our own inner desires onto these persons, as Star Studies teaches us. To talk about fans and cancel culture means to reflect on the ways fans get to know their idols and construct and image of them.

Following this, this issue makes us think about how the public and the private collide in the narrative around these people (actors/actresses, creators, producers…) and, most importantly, how fans process this information. This salon, in that sense, would welcome submissions regarding the positions (ethical or otherwise) fans take when learning about the dark side of the things they love. Whether they support them or “cancel them,” there’s certainly a traumatic and a feeling of betrayal that is worth researching.

Participants: Roberto Huertas Gutiêrrez (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), Laura Lee Bourland (Georgia Gwinett College), Emily Contois (Univeristy of Tulsa), Jenessa Williams (University of Leeds), Dina Farouk Abou Zied (Ain Shams University) (moderator: Lesley Willard)

This event can be accessed by all members of the con:

Create a conline account
Join
Come back here!