Matt Hills (2002) in his paper on “Fan cultures between knowledge and justification” discusses the use of ethnographies to study the idea of “the fan” and research the area of fandom. He debates the validity of the “justifications” made by fans, and questions why so many ethnographers take these justifications as fact. Hills claims that often ethnographers empty the notion of fandom of all of the dimensions within it that make it what it is – be this affect, attachment and even passion.
He highlights the flaws in the “significantly affective nature of the fan’s attachment” to their particular field, and suggests that it cannot be assumed that fandom actually creates a “self-presence and transparent self-understanding”; which academic study so desperately needs to produce effective results.
Hills then goes on to discuss how over-whelming a fan’s feelings can be about their chosen field, quoting Harrington and Bielby (1995) as saying:
“...the pleasure can be so intense that it almost cannot be articulated by those experiencing it.”
He states that the question “Why are you a fan of...?” itself actually causes the fan to try and express their feelings of their chosen field in some form of justification, which can only lead to an untrue interpretation by the ethnographer. This “auto-legitimation” of a fan’s response to such a question is what Hills believes allows the ethnographer to pass off their interpretation of what the fan has said as being an over-ruling “knowledge” that only a true fan could possess.
He believes that fandom is often reduced to nothing more than a mental activity, “occurring without passion, without feeling, [and] without an experience of... self-transformation.” Hills insists that he is not claiming that fans cannot discuss their feelings in a meaningful manner, but says that he is instead trying to emphasise that “fan-talk cannot be accepted merely as evidence of fan knowledge.”
Hills gives the example of the Doctor Who fandom, which was studied by Michael Hasslet (1994). Hasslet describes the Who fandom as being a community which constantly presents particular justifications of its love of the programme, to serve the basic purpose of defending the fans’ attachment to the show against external criticism. Hills says the most common use of justification by a fan is toward off public (or “outsider”) belief that the fan’s feelings are irrational. It is a protection method at best.
He feels that it is therefore impossible to use the fan’s own so-called “knowledge” and “justifications” to provide a source of meaning for their own media consumption. Hills describes this belief by ethnographers that fan’s can fully account for their fandom as a “fallacy of internality”. He deeply criticises this fallacy, stating that:
“This “fallacy of internality” neglects the extent to which internal fan community understandings are collectively negotiated precisely in order to ward off the taint of irrationality, and in order to present a public and rationalised face to the world outside of fan culture. The fallacy of internality assumes that the “in-group” is a source of pristine knowledge. It neglects the social dynamics whereby the culturally devalued “in-group” of media fandom is compelled to account for its passions.”
Hills talks about the work of Camille Bacon-Smith, who engaged in a long process of participant observation with sections of the Star Trek fan culture, and is thought to be a prime example of how “real” fan ethnography should be conducted (Henry Jenkins, 1996). Bacon-Smith deeply immerses herself in the fandom of Star Trek, and although she presented herself in her findings as the outsider, so acknowledges that the fan’s within this particular fandom eventually began to see her more as one of their own by the end of her study. She’s quoted as saying:
“When the investigator gets too close, the community sidetracks with something of value, something that conserves the risk the ethnographer knows is present but that does not expose too much.” (Bacon-Smith, 1992)
What is particularly interesting about the way Bacon-Smith conducts her ethnography is that she positions herself as a kind of detective, who is there to seek out knowledge and present it to other outsiders of the fandom. Her version of events about her time researching the Star Trek fandom fits entirely into Pierre Bayard’s analysis of the detective novel. If we apply his theory to that of the experience had by bacon-Smith we find that “...the principle of truth hidden by its obviousness. It is not that the truth is made unrecognisable, but that the false ... is dressed up to draw attention to itself” (Bayard 2000).
Hills goes on to discuss the way that many ethnographers are “unable to construct more complex characteristics of fan culture beyond a sense of “communal conspiracy” to be battled by the detective-ethnographer, or a sense of “communal creativity” to be recognised and valued by the scholar-fan.” He quotes Van Maanen as saying:
“...literary tales may be so tied to the representational techniques of realistic fiction that they distort the very reality they seek to capture” (Maanen 1998)
This loosely translates into the fandom debate as saying that ethnographers often become too engrossed in the fiction behind the field of fandom they are studying, that they actually lose sight of the reality they are attempting to uncover.
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