I, Fanboy
'People in England make jokes about the Irish. People in Ireland
make jokes about the inhabitants of Kerry. People in Kerry make jokes about a
particular street. People on that street make jokes about the people at number
17. The people at number 17 make jokes about Uncle Pat. He's the person who's
really doing all the ridiculous things which happen in 'Irish' jokes.'
Paul
Merton, or words to that effect
I have achieved a remarkable feat.
I have been accused of being a dreadful fanboy on a forum dedicated to the discussion of
role-playing games.
This as damning an indictment as it is possible to
imagine. I feel much as William Hope Hodgeson [1]
must have done when he was criticized for his turgid prose style[2]
by H.P Lovecraft [3].
People in the outside world lump all consumers of science
fiction and fantasy together in one homogenous, nutty lump. They imagine that
we spend all our time wearing strange costumes and conversing in Klingon[4],
whereas in fact we do so only at weekends. Science fiction fans, on the other
hand, regard themselves as perfectly normal and well-balanced; but look down on
nutty people who like Star Trek[5]
or play Dungeons & Dragons[6].
And it appears that Dungeons & Dragons players regard themselves as
normal and sane, but look down on a sub-group called 'fan-boys'.
Ursula le Guin[7]
says that the horror mainstream writers and critics have for 'fantasy' writing
amounts to a kind of repression; a fear of making contact with the unconscious.
C.S Lewis[8]
similarly points out that the hatred which some people have of non-realistic
fiction amounts to a phobia; paralleled by the near-obsession which it
engenders in others. In fact, I think that the prejudice against fantasy is
based, not on a dislike of the genre itself, but on a contempt for or snobbery
towards the kinds of people who are perceived to read it. I read in the Guardian[9]
the other week that 'manga[10]'
videos were liked by 'the kinds of people who used to spend their adolescent
years playing Dungeons & Dragons. A few weeks previously, it had
suggested that forthcoming sequels to The Matrix[11]
would give a certain group of people 'something to do instead of talking to
girls'. The implication that SF readers are virgins (and that this is
contemptible) seems to carry with it a baggage of adolescent sexual bullying.
The stereotype of the homosexualist Doctor Who[12]
fan is sufficiently well-established that it is a commonplace in the gay
community, if Queer as Folk[13]
is anything to go by, at any rate. This arouses the suspicion that 'sexless
fanboy' is in fact a socially acceptable euphemism for 'poof'; society won't
let you abuse homosexualists, so you abuse Doctor Who fans, instead. The
odious Peter Bradshaw, as has been noted, criticized Jackson's Lord of
the Rings not for any specific flaws, but for being 'nerdish'.
'Nerd' is historically a bully-term for a conformist, academic child[14];
the use of 'boy' in 'fanboy' also seems related to the accusation of
sexlessness [15].
It is unlikely that the contributors to a role-playing
forum perceive all science fiction fans as eunuchs. When they say that someone
is a 'fanboy', they are presumably referring to a sub-set of characteristics
which they see in some fantasy consumers, but not in themselves.
Ex-games-publisher James Wallis[16]
has cited the fact that he is 'fucking sick of fucking fanboys with no fucking
sense of fucking proportion' as one of his reasons for leaving the games
industry.
Trust me, I have seen the worst that the world outside the games
hobby can produce, and I can tell you the only psychotic fuckwits more
psychotic and more fuckwitted than gamers are Marvel[17]
and DC[18]
fans, hardcore mediafans (with special reference to devotees of Dr Who and
original Star Trek), and furries[19].
This strikes me as overstating the case, somewhat.
What characterizes a fanboy, as opposed to a mere
consumer? Paramount sinks a lot of money into producing new episodes of Star
Trek, so one assumes that it must have a mainstream audience far beyond the
realms of obsessive hobbyists. Either that, or there must be an awful lot of
fanboys in the world. Is there a difference between 'Thinking that Star Trek
is an enjoyable television programme' and 'Being a Star Trek fanboy?'
Can we come up with a definition of Doctor Who fanboy other than 'One
who has watched 'Creature from the Pit' [20]more
than once, and watched 'The Gunfighters' at all'? [21]
'Is a fanboy simply someone who knows a lot about the
subject? A lot of people might classify me as a Tolkien[22] fanboy because I
feel confident enough to explain why it was that Felagund[23] left Nargothrand[24]
to help Beren[25]
without looking it up in the book. (Beren's father, Barahir, had saved Felegund
at the battle of Unnumbered Tears, and Felegund had promised to aid any of
Barahir's descendents at any time, and given him a ring as a mark of his
promise[26].
This ring survived into the Third Age[27], and was in the
possession of Aragorn.[28])
Well, maybe. But if its useless knowledge we're talking
about, I can also tell you the grounds for Hotspur's rebellion in Henry IV
part 1[29].
(When Richard II left for Ireland, he named Mortimer his heir, but…oh, never
mind.) Why do we call someone who knows a great deal about Shakespeare 'an
expert' but someone who knows a great deal about Star Trek 'a fanboy'?
Perhaps a Star Trek expert is a fanboy because Star
Trek is not worth the time and effort required to become an expert in it,
whereas Shakespeare is. This would be a value-judgment about literature: I do
happen to think that Henry IV is more valuable then Star Trek,
(except possibly 'Sins of the Fathers'[30].)
But I wouldn't like to have to go about proving it in court, or even in an
essay. But it would surely be very surprising if this argument— 'a fanboy is
someone who takes seriously something not really worth taking seriously' was
being put forward by people who are themselves fantasy or sci-fi consumers It
would imply a level of contempt for the material almost amount to
self-loathing. It would be like saying 'I know that I spend all my spare time
watching Star Trek , but I don't think that its worth the time and
effort I spend on it.'
Such a position could be a mask, I suppose, for common or
garden anti-intellectualism: fan-boy might be a term of abuse meaning 'he knows
more about it than I do' If you hang around on the Tolkien websites, which I
wouldn't recommend, it's surprising how often you'll hear expressions like 'literati'
and 'academic' and 'expert' used pejoratively. (There's a 'damned if you do,
damned if you don't' element to this: if the literati suggest that Tolkien's books contain too much weather and
scenery, then that's sour grapes because he's more popular than they are; if
they start to bring Tolkien into the field of literary studies, then they are
spoiling what is, after all, 'just a story.' Use the word 'allegory' and see
how long it is until you get cast into the crack of doom.) Even Gene Woolf[31]
who one might have thought would have known better, is inclined to rubbish
academic literary criticism as a self-serving institution that doesn't have
much to do with the understanding of actual books.
Fantasy is an intrinsically romantic medium, and TV
'fandom' is routed in nostalgia; so perhaps it is understandable that people
think that that talking about—even thinking about—your beloved is going to
deflower it. Someone suggested that my review of Jackson's[32]
Two Towers would 'drain the joy out of it.' I don't think that it
had much joy in it to begin with, but that's beside the point.
I think that fanboys are differentiated from scholars and
mere enthusiasts by the way in which they approach their chosen subject.
Fanboys have a large amount of factual information at their fingertips; but
their attitude to that information is acquisitive and un-critical. Someone
studying for a post-graduate degree in cultural studies with reference to comic
books (and there must be a few) could tell you how the changing attitudes to
superheroes[33]
between, say, the 1950s version of Batman[34]
and Dark Knight Returns[35]'
reflects changing attitudes to law enforcement during that period; or even how
Wil Eisner's[36] art
influenced Frank Miller's[37]. He
would probably get stuck if you asked him 'In which issue of X-Men[38]
did Marvel Girl[39]
first wear the green costume?' The fan-boy would know the latter but not have
anything to say (or understand, or care about) the former.
This is a qualitative difference, and gives us a good
reason to despise fanboys. They learn facts about their material, but they do
not think about it or seek to understand it. They know, as the fellow said[40],
the credits of everything but the value of nothing.[41]
(Which of course, means that I'm a scholar but not a fanboy; whereas as the
Comic Book Guy[42]
in The Simpsons[43]
is just a fanboy. So there!)
Except…is the latter kind of fact-based knowledge really
so despicable? Gentleman amateurs often make worthwhile contributions to their
fields. The amateur astronomer who stares at the same patch of sky through his
optical telescope night after night is surely a fan-boy, as compared with the
academic astronomer who never looks at an actual star. But the amateurs discover
comets that the professionals miss. It has been argued that Darwin's
discoveries were as much attributable to his fanboy-ish obsession with
collecting and cataloguing samples, and talking to other geeks who did the
same, as to any innate or inspirational genius.
This is not to say that the fanboy state of mind is always
constructive. There are Jesus[44]
fanboys who memorize short quotes from the Bible[45],
including chapter and verse references, without seeming to have any
understanding of what's actually in the book. They often knock at my door early
on Sunday mornings. And indeed, since the abolition of education in 1997, most
school children spend most of their time being grilled about sound-bite facts
that can be memorized, tested, and examined and placed on league tables. This,
along with the growing importance of computers and computer programmers,
guarantees that, pretty soon, everyone in the whole world will be a fanboy.
But when it is applied to a small sub-section of
literature, it is a relatively minor vice. So what if I can remember that the
bridge which connected Middle-earth with the Undying Lands is made of 'ilmen'? [46]
It's not like I'm standing in the cold writing down the numbers on the front of
railway locomotives, is it?
Mundanes despise fans; and fans despise fanboys; and
fanboys despise people who watch Babylon 5 .[47] But there is nothing in the whole world
lower than a trainspotter
[1] A writer of
horror stories, best known for Carnaki, Ghost Hunter
[2] In fact,
Hodgson had been dead for 9 years when H.P Lovecraft wrote his 'Supernatural Horror in Literature '
[3] A writer of
horror stories, bests known for 'The Call of Cthulhu' and other stories about
alien gods with an unfeasibly low consonant to vowel ratio. His prose is widely
thought of as quite turgid.
[4] A fictitious
language invented for the TV show Star Trek (qv). Based on a small
vocabulary which can be endlessly re-combined, it is relatively easy to learn,
and is said to have more speakers than Esperanto.
[5] A 1960s TV
show about the evils of communism and Christianity, later revived a Star
Trek: The Next Generation
a soap opera about the importance of counseling and father-son bonding.
[6] A war game created
by Dave Arnson in the 1970s, which evolved by word-of-mouth into a kind of
improvised storytelling system,.
[7] A fantasy
writer, best known for that book about the planet where everyone is a
hermaphrodite, which I'm going to get around to reading one of these days.
[8] An Oxford
academic, best known for Studies in Words and The Allegory
of Love
[9] A UK
left-wing newspaper, formerly 'The Manchester Guardian'. 'Guardian-reader'
is universally a descriptive (and sometimes abusive) term for 'left-wing intellectual.'
[10] The normal
Japanese word for 'comic book', literally 'frivolous publication': for reasons
of cultural patronization, it is now synonymous with 'anime', ('cartoon') and
generally reserved for culturally specific cartoons—those about giant robots,
samurai, martial artists etc. ('Robot'—Literally 'slave', and
first used in a sci-fi novel about a caste of human slaves; now generally used
to mean 'artificial person made of metal. 'Samurai'—A medieval Japanese
knight.)
[11] A movie
about Cartesian dualism
[12] A long
running television programme about a time traveller
[13] A
television programme about homosexuals. It was written by a well-known Doctor
Who enthusiast, but I don't see why I should let facts get in the way of
clever debating points.
[14] i.e the
kind which the education system struggles very hard to produce
[15] As well as
the fact that sci-fi fandom is exclusively male, of course.
[16] Ex-owner of
Hogshead games, designer of many games including The Adventures of Baron
Munchausen, co-designer with my good-self of Once Upon a Time.
[17] A publisher
of comic books, best known for Spiderman, X-Men, and the Incredible
Hulk. Their characters all nominally inhabit a shared world, called 'The
Marvel Universe.'
[18] A publisher
of comic books, best known for Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.
Their characters all nominally inhabited a shared world known as the DC
universe. ('DC' originally referred to one of their most popular titles,
Detective Comics, but it's now just a trade mark.)
[19] I believe
that this refers to a genre of animation involving relatively serious adventure
stories featuring anthropomorphic animals.
[20] A Doctor
Who story, from the period when Tom Baker played the lead role. It is not
regarded as a classic.
[21] A Doctor
Who story, filmed in black-and -white from the period when William Hartnell
was playing the lead role. It is widely, though incorrectly in my view,
regarded as the single worst story ever produced for the series.
[22] An Oxford
academic who created an imaginary language and fantasy land for it in his spare
time. Regarded as being the best writer of the second millennium, although not
by anyone sensible.
[23] A character
in The Silmarillion', Tolkien's mythological precursor to Lord
of the Rings.
[24] Dittto
[25] Ditto
[26] All
characters and places in The Silmarillion'
[27] The
mythological period when Lord of the
Rings is set.
[28] A character
in Lord of the Rings
[29] A play by
William Shakespeare, a well known English playwright. Actually the greatest writer
of the second millennium, whatever Anne Robinson's ludicrous new phone in poll
series may be about to decide.
[30] An episode
of Star Trek; The Next Generation concerned with honour, politics, and
father/son bonding.
[31] Science
fiction writer, best known for the Shadow of the Torturer series, some
of which I almost understood.
[32] Peter
Jackson, director of The Two Towers, a movie thought by some to be
related to the Tolkien novel of the same name.
[33] A genre of
comic-book character starting with Superman in the 1940s, characterized
by their colorful costumes.
[34] A crime
fighting superhero (qv) who dresses up as a giant bat, for good and adequate
reasons.
[35] A comic
book by Frank Miller, imagining Batman (qv) 's final adventure, and depicting him
in a dark and realistic style (as dark and realistic as a story about a man
dressed up as a giant bat can be.)
[36] Comic book
writer artist, best known for creating The Spirit and credited by
some with coining the term 'graphic novel'
[37] Comic book
writer and artists, best known for Dark Knight Returns and his work on Daredevil.
Probably the most influential comic book artist working today.
[38] A popular
comic book about a group of soliloquies who talk in superheroes. It was
popularized by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, but based on characters created
by Len Wien and Dave Cockrum, based in turn by characters created (as with
nearly everything else in comic books) by Jack Kirby.
[39] A character
in the X-Men.
[40] A phrase
often used to introduce (mis)quotations by Bertie Wooster in the stories of P.G
Wodehouse.
[41]'A film
buff—One who knows the credits of everything but the value of nothing'; based on Oscar Wiilde's 'A cynic—One who
knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.'
[42] A character
in the Simpsons (q.v) who runs a shop which sells comic books.
[43] A cartoon
about an American family. It is so obscure and difficult to understood that it
does not merit a prime time slot in the UK.
[44] Central
figure of Christianity
[45] Holy book
of Christianity
[46] Reference
to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Silmarilion.
And in fact, I can't; I had to look up the word Ilmen. But I knew where to look
it up. Wasn't is Mark Twain who said 'there are two kinds of knowledge, you know something yourself, or you know
where you can look it up.'
[47] Si-fi soap
opera like Star Trek: Next Generation only not as good, which is
frankly, pretty low. Concerned with father-son bonding and very bad dialogue.