Henry Jenkins's Blog, page 11

Turning Red: Ming Lee and Authority

A few years ago, I was interviewed by a high school student, Alice Shu, who impressed me with her intelligence, curiosity, and passion. She has since come to USC and I was thrilled to learn she was going to take my Imaginary Worlds class. Hers was one of the best papers I read on the first assignment and so I wanted to share it with my blog readers.

Turning Red Costumes: Ming Lee and Authority

By Alice Shu

Historically, the stories of Pixar Animation Studios tended to feature white-coded characters, whether they be human or not— consider Woody, Buzz, Mike, and Sully, all voiced by white actors. Slowly, the films began featuring more diversity with side characters like Frozone and Russell, but it has only been recently with 2017’s Coco that uses an essentially complete non-white cast. Like Coco, director Domee Shi’s Turning Red uses cultural traditions as allegories for generalizable themes like family and adjustment. As a toddler, Shi had moved from China to Toronto, and her adolescence was defined by 2000s pop culture and Chinese culture, both of which play major aesthetic roles in the film (Tangcay).

Turning Red’s story is straightforward but laced with symbolism. Chinese-Canadian Meilin “Mei” Lee attempts to maintain a close relationship with her mother Ming, who places high traditional and academic expectations onto her. Together, they run their family temple devoted to honoring their ancestors, of which the women (including Ming and Mei) hold an ability to transform into powerful red pandas. For adolescent Mei, the emotion-triggered power becomes volatile but eventually profitable, and her manipulation of the ability draws disapproval from her family. Mei spends the film managing her family’s pressure and her new social popularity to negotiate a true identity.

Ming largely foils Mei’s impulses and stands as an intimidating force within the narrative. Like Mei, her identity is also re-assessed and these changes are expressed in both characters’ costumes, which remain static for most of the film. Analyzing Ming’s costume in particular demonstrates its role in establishing her as a complex authority shaped by cultural and familial standards. In addition, Turning Red’s costumes provide more insight into the film’s setting, highlighting the role of detail in characterizing imaginary worlds.

First, Ming’s dress and accessories establish her cultural authority within the film by drawing on Chinese traditions. She wears a qipao, a traditional Chinese dress that has become iconic along with kimonos and hanbok in symbolizing East Asia in media. Her qipao displays key identifying features, including the slit, curved collar, and knotted fastenings, proving its authenticity (Lee). Whenever Ming moves, the dress also has reflective properties that mimic a silky material, which is a traditional aspect of Chinese fashion (Lee). The dress is complemented by her home surroundings, which also feature Chinese iconography in the form of paintings, calligraphy, and furniture. Similar to how Mark Wolf associates relatability with audience acceptance of design, our acknowledgement of the inspired motifs allow us to associate Ming with tradition despite her existing in a fictional world (Wolf). By accepting this consistency the world provides a ripe setting for Mei’s conflicting narrative.

In addition, her jewelry also holds heavy cultural significance and association with her family. Her earrings and ring are made of jade, a highly valuable stone that symbolizes balance and wisdom (Shan). The Lee women also wear jewelry that hold and represent their Red Panda transformations, a destructive force that contrasts with the serenity of their green outfits. The transformative gift is passed between the family’s female members, and this maternal connection is evident when Ming rubs her symbolic pendant when nervous about her daughter. The lacquer also appears in their family temple, with the main shrine being surrounded by lacquer furniture. Interestingly, each aunt’s jewelry varies in terms of the object and style, be it earrings, a hair clip, or, like Ming’s, a necklace. All the pieces, however, feature a reference to the red panda— with some even using the same design—demonstrating that the jewelry is personalizable but serves to unify the women in their commitment to tradition.

The pendant and its iterations demonstrate how specific detail can be used to advance narratives. According to Wolf, authors will select and elaborate on world details depending on their opinion on its relevance to the story. Minor details can be left for assumption by the audience, while mysterious elements require clarification. Initially in Turning Red, we see numerous allusions to red pandas in the Lees’ temple, but these are dismissed as purely aesthetic. Even when Ming explains the family’s connection to the animals, she purely states that an ancestor had admired them and that they were “blessed” by red pandas. Without prior context, the audience can interpret this purely as background information that details the temple’s purpose without anticipation for further reference. Additionally, Ming’s red necklace, while clashing with her green clothes, receives no exposition. The only interaction it receives is when Ming uses it as a comfort item, alluding to a relationship to Mei based on the scene’s context. Verbal exposition is only given after Ming confronts Mei’s panda form and explains the family’s mythology, and a close-up reveals the red panda carved into the necklace to confirm its symbolism. Thus, delaying characterization added extra weight to Mei’s sudden transformation and the family’s new stakes, proving that selecting details can advance narratives as well as expand fictional worlds.

Ming’s pendant also acts as a differentiator that separates the film’s fictional world from the known world to help legitimize setting. Turning Red succeeds as an homage due to the setting’s adherence to realism— depictions of Toronto’s population and landmarks like CN Tower confirm its sameness. It also relies on a historic time-frame to further inform aesthetics and audience reactions, as the fashion and music trends of the 2000s are prominently featured.

Further demonstration of commitment to historic accuracy can be found with the film’s climactic SkyDome. The film, set in 2002, correctly uses the stadium’s name before it was renamed to the “Rogers Centre” in 2005, twelve years before the film would begin its development. Evidently, the setting’s realism enhances the fantastical aspects of the story. Much like Ming’s costume, the primary aspects— the blazer and qipao grounded in historic authenticity—contrast with the magical, symbolized by the enigmatic pendant. The pendant then comes to symbolize a transition into the fictional aspect of the world and an indicator of the separation between the known and new.

While Ming’s costume has very real and traditional references, her daughter’s are more symbolic of her modern surroundings. Mei wears a black wire choker that sits around her neck while Ming’s pendant hangs toward her torso. Instead of a longer, fluid dress Mei’s choice of skirt and leggings divide her body, making her seem shorter while Ming’s dress elongates her figure. And, while Ming’s costume is dominated by the green to symbolize her family, Mei consistently wears more red to demonstrate her affinity towards her red panda. The only aspect that Mei retains is her green barrette, which is small and not noticeable.

Through these differences Ming is clearly defined to be grounded in her culture, and her costume serves to express her devotion to tradition in her increasingly modern context. When Mei was younger it was easier to introduce and enforce tradition within their home, as demonstrated by the numerous photos of Mei in a small reddish-pink qipao of her own. However, as proven by her choker, Mei begins to dress herself according to trends and is less expressive of the culture that her parents prioritized. The film explores this conflict as Mei negotiates with her cultural transformative qualities and aligns less with her mother’s traditional

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expectations, a tension that is common within diaspora cultures. In this way, costume becomes a way to express culture and one’s embrace of it.

Furthermore, the externals of Ming’s costume affirm her authority within a diasporic space. While her costume itself does not allude to her role as a parent, it mirrors that of Ming’s own mother and demonstrates themes of maternal influence. Green shades reappear as an association to their Chinese background, and serves as a contrast to Mei’s social aspirations. Mei’s grandmother, the family matriarch, is introduced in a flurry of green, with her first shot dominated by a rich jade bracelet and a deep green jacket cuff. An intimate scene of Mei’s family preparing dumplings for dinner is lit by the green-blue glow of their television, which, of course, is playing an imperial Chinese drama. Mei’s family adopts signature green-blue tones, which tend to be darker and firmer— consider her grandmother’s rich turquoise cardigan— while Mei’s friends don brighter colors (Yamanaka). For example, Miriam, Mei’s friend who serves to foil Ming’s traditional expectations, wears greenish-yellow tones instead. Both characters are dressed almost completely in green, but the tonal differences establish them as important yet opposing forces in Mei’s life. Further emphasizing this tension, red and green act as complimentary colors (in reference to the color wheel theory), implying that Mei will need to compromise to preserve her relationships.

The remaining elements help confirm her authority by adding intimidating aspects. The stripes on her dress serve to elongate her height, thus making her seem taller and authoritative. This trait is enhanced by Ming being taller than all the younger characters, including her daughter, and equal height to the significant adult characters. The blazer with shoulder pads, pantyhose, and pumps contribute to a “working woman” aesthetic that also defines Ming’s livelihood in America— an early photo flashback shows her and her family attending a business convention, for example. In addition Mei and Ming are both involved in the operations of their established family temple, and Mei’s deviation from her duties causes tension between the two, demonstrating the emphasis on business industry that Ming places on herself and her family. Mei also briefly wears the blazer during a presentation to her parents in an attempt to emulate the maturity and expertise her mother is associated with. Interestingly, Ming’s blazer is always present when she conducts business or runs errands, likely to project an image of confidence to her community. However, within her closed household, she usually wears only her dress, possibly to signify being more genuine and comforting with her immediate family.

Thus, it becomes obvious that Ming’s costume helps contextualize her experiences within a diasporic context. With Mei’s family in Toronto and her grandmother and aunts in Florida, it can be inferred that a majority of her family has relocated from China to the Western hemisphere. While Mei is raised within Toronto’s Chinatown, she and her mother spend a significant amount of time outside its confines. In these less familiar contexts Ming utilizes her costume to encourage respect despite being a perpetual foreigner. Eventually, she expects mutual respect consistently from others, as shown when she becomes visibly frustrated with the school’s security guard while attempting to approach Mei during class. Evidently, Ming’s costume acts as a defense mechanism to reassure herself to maintain her authority in any context.

Despite the story mainly featuring Chinese-Canadian characters, it focuses more on the generational mother-daughter relationships. Mei’s affinity toward modern, Western trends does intensify tension with her mother, but this merely represents general conflicts of interest that characterize diminishing maternal relationships. In addition to representing an affirmative position within a foreign context, Ming’s blazer symbolizes her overprotectiveness towards her daughter. The wide shoulder-pads assist in Ming’s body overshadowing Mei during furious acts of maternal protection, demonstrating a perceived control over her. The blazer also clashes with the casual outfits that surround her, further characterizing her overprotectiveness as strange, and according to Mei’s peers, embarrassing or “psycho”. Refreshingly, the source of Mei’s shame is not of her family’s Chineseness; only once does another character disparage their traditions, as nemesis Tyler briefly yells for Mei to “go back...to your creepy temple.” Instead, it’s Ming’s closeness that is perceived as strange by others, instead of her culture, which diasporic films tend to hyperfocus on as sources of conflict.

Certainly, though, Ming’s cultural designs inform her confidence. Production designer Rona Liu and director Domee Shi describe Ming as “controlled and elegant”, and her design aims to emulate the ladies of 1960s Hong Kong (Yamanaka). Historically, this period is said to be the “second golden age” for qipaos amidst the less glamorous Communist China (Lee). Ming also wears the dress well; the stiff collars serve to display a woman’s good posture, and Ming is almost always poised and composed, emulating the traditional values of the outfit.

Interestingly, Ming’s qipao also differs drastically from the costume choices of her relatives. Mei’s aunts are dressed very immigrant and very 2000s— chunky sandals, zebra-print boots, tracksuits, and, of course, a puffer vest for the predictably cold weather. While the relatives dress casually, Ming’s costume emulates elegance and professionalism. Considering that Ming is geographically isolated from her relatives in Florida, her outfit maintenance can help provide an impression of success and assurance, especially as her own mother, who, like Ming, maintains high expectations for her daughter.

Halfway through the film, a shift in Ming’s role becomes apparent. Around her Toronto community, Mei, and her husband, she is able to intimidate and welcomes respect. However, around her mother and relatives (referred to Mei as “aunties”), she becomes defensive and more timid. Despite being the same height as her mother, she looks downward when being addressed, and her voice becomes less firm. During the climax Ming’s internal fragility and frustration with her family act as a deviation of her otherwise consistent character. Her blazer can then be interpreted as a shield from her family to preserve an internal pride that becomes diminished around her family.

Once the family’s generational tensions are resolved, though, their accommodation can be expressed through new additions to their costumes. Prior to the climax Ming wears a pendant that holds her sealed panda spirit, but after it breaks it is replaced with a red tamagotchi, a relic of the trendy concert that Mei attends. The theme of cultural adjustment continues across Mei’s family, as her grandmother’s jade bracelet is replaced by a red 4-Town charm, which represents a band that the family consistently disapproved of. The combination of modern media and the red colors symbolize a coherent acceptance of the family’s adjustment to a new era defined by acceptance.

Ming’s costume successfully characterizes her complexity and authority within Turning Red’s narrative. First, small details and ornamentation establish her as a character prior to the start of the film. The blazer, pendant, and ring allude to previous struggles of adjustment, angst, and determination in relation to her family and diaspora. The dominant green-blue tones demonstrate her alignment with the traditional expectations of family and tradition, creating a symbolic cohesion that defines the film. While the blazer and dress represent aspects of clashing worlds, the color and silhouettes allow for an elegant combination to guide our expectations of her poised character. Turning Red’s creative team undoubtedly succeeded in using her costume to extend her character in an evident demonstration of costume and narrative design.

Works Cited

Lee, Ching Yee. “How the Qipao Became the Quintessence of Chinese Elegance.” The Collector, 21 Feb. 2022, thecollector.com/how-qipao-became-tim...- elegance/.

Shan, Jun. “Importance of Jade in Chinese Culture.” ThoughtCo., 6 Dec. 2018, thoughtco.com/ about-jade-culture-629197.

Tangcay, Jazz. “‘Turning Red’: How Anime and Teen Bedrooms All Feature in Production Design.” Variety, 11 Mar 2022, variety.com/2022/artisans/news/turnin...- teen- bedrooms-and-easter-eggs-all-feature-in-production-design-1235202044/.

Wolf, Mark. “World Design.” The Routeledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds, 1st Edition, Routeledge, 17 September 2017.

Yamanaka, Jeanine. “Creating the Look of Disney and Pixar’s ‘Turning Red’.” SoCal Thrills, 8 Mar. 2022, socalthrills.com/disney-and-pixar-cre....

Alice Shu is a USC undergraduate (class of 2025) studying Communications and East Asian Area Studies. She comes from a Chinese-American and Bay Area background that has informed her interests in intercultural communication. While at USC, she has developed interests in fandom studies and entertainment industries, particularly themed entertainment. Her favorite attraction, predictably, is the Mad Tea Party. She currently works with social media platforms on sales and marketing.

“Dr. Terwilliker’s Doe-Mi-Doe Duds”: How They Contribute to the Film as a Whole, And One Possible Alternate Interpretation

I shared my syllabus for my Imaginary Worlds class here at the start of the term and many of you have expressed interest in how it is progressing. We’ve had some amazing guest speakers and watched some of my all time favorite films. The quality of the student writing has overall been very strong so I thought I would share a few samples over my next few posts. First up, David Ling, an MFA Production student, wrote about costumes in 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, a film which is close to my heart.

“Dr. Terwilliker’s Doe-Mi-Doe Duds”: How They Contribute to the Film as a Whole, And One Possible Alternate Interpretation

by David Ling

In the final sequence of “The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T”, Dr. Terwilliker, a disciplinarian piano instructor in the real world, but a deliriously over-the-top, narcissistic megalomaniac who runs the Terwilliker Institute in Bart’s nightmare world, dons a truly outlandish set of garments in anticipation of what he believes will be his crowning achievement. In his salon, Dr. T instructs his underlings to outfit him in the increasingly bizarre layers of what he calls his “Doe-Mi-Doe duds.” The entire ensemble engages in a song-and-dance number befitting a Busby Berkeley musical. In this surreal spectacle, there’s a lot to unpack, as it offers both a summation of Terwilliker’s identity/persona and a critique of his twisted worldview. Additionally, it’s emblematic of the unique, often whimsical Surrealism associated with Seuss’s imagination. After exploring some of the more obvious ways in which this costume contributes to the film, I’ll also suggest another, perhaps less obvious, reading of what it might signify.

Examining the film as a whole, one can note a sort of narrative trajectory with regard to the clothing Dr. T wears: his garb goes from relatively staid and buttoned-down in his opening scene, to truly outlandish and over-the-top in his very final scene (the Doe-Mi-Doe duds). These changes in costume serve a meaningful narrative purpose, as they map out a sort of“character arc” for Terwilliker. Although he does not “grow” or “evolve,” at least not from a moral standpoint (which isn’t unusual, since he’s the film’s antagonist, not its protagonist), his delusions of grandeur grow more and more profound as we get deeper into the story, and his clothing reflects this.

When first introduced in the real world, as Bart’s piano instructor, Terwilliker wears a relatively “quiet,” muted outfit: dark grayish suit, with black shoes. His unconventional necktie and pocket square lend a somewhat comical flair, but still nothing yet signifies anything too out-of- the-ordinary. Once Bart falls asleep and enters the imaginary world of his dreams, we’re (re)introduced to Dr. T: this time he wears the sort of long-tailed black tuxedo jacket often worn by conductors. This seems appropriate because in Bart’s dream, he does indeed occupy the role of a symphony conductor, who “conducts” Bart at the 500-child piano. But already, the eccentricity factor has been increased. Here, Terwilliker sports a bright red “tie” (with gold pin) and dapper gray vest. His pants are now striped, not solid, and his shoes are black-and-white.

In short, his attire has gotten noticeably more colorful and flamboyant than it was in the real world.

Terwilliker then goes through a couple more wardrobe changes as Bart’s nightmare continues to unfold. First, he dons a purplish frock with black stripes and a large “T” on it; underneath this, he sports a bright pink turtleneck. (This is worn during his “duel” with Zlabadowski.) By now, his fashion sense has entered the realm of the bold and the exotic, with bright hues and wild patterns one wouldn’t expect to see in the “real world.” Then, when he takes Bart down to the dungeon, he sports a dark-blue robe-like garment with white stripes, with a pink musical “clef” symbol stitched onto it. His increasingly outlandish and loud wardrobe choices are a perfect reflection of his unhinged personality and delusional frame of mind, now fully on display. The T (for Terwilliker) sown onto his frock reinforces just how narcissistic he is, and the musical clef denotes how music is the means by which he intends to promote his cult of personality. And yet, all these increasingly strange garments are merely a precursor to his most outrageous wardrobe choice of all, the Doe-Mi-Doe duds. Just as the story’s narrative increases in intensity as it proceeds towards the explosive finale, the visual aesthetic expressed in Dr. T’s clothing also builds in intensity and “loudness,” until it too crescendos in the final act. If Dr. T’s clothes are a reflection of his mental state, then in the natural progression towards greater and greater excess and visual flair in his wardrobe, the Doe-Me-Doe duds represent the absolute pinnacle of his extreme megalomania and narcissism.

Interestingly, right before the “Doe Mi Doe” musical number takes place, Dr. T takes the stage to address the 500 kids before him; here, he’s wearing a gold-and-white silk robe with a pattern that seems like something out of ancient Rome, perhaps the sort of toga that Caligula might have worn to an orgy. Retreating back to his salon, he then launches into the spectacular musical number in which five valets assist him in putting on the various items of the Doe-Mi- Doe duds. These attendants themselves wear light-blue long-tailed tuxedo jackets and green shirts with the letter “T” emblazoned on them. To fully understand this scene’s significance, it’s helpful to first break down how its “action” unfolds and to take stock of what the actual items of clothing that Dr. T puts on are.

First, the silk robe is taken off, leaving him in nothing but pink shirt, lime green boxer shorts, and yellow socks. Then, the attendants put garters and maroon striped pants on him. Next, he receives a blue gownlike garment with black geometric shapes and matching collar. Various ornamental items, most notably several medals, are pinned to his chest, and epaulets (one feathery; one circular) attached to his shoulders. After he’s seated, his attendants entwine him in a long, multi-colored braided yarn, which seems to serve no real functional purpose. A furry white cape, with red interior lining, is then draped over his shoulders. Finally, as he heads towards the window, the veritable piece-de-resistance, a large blue-and-black bearskin hat, replete with colorful plumage on top, is plopped onto his head. The ceremony now complete, Terwilliker triumphantly exits the salon as petals are strewn before his feet. The whole scene has the feel of a coronation, full of spectacle, brimming with pomp and circumstance.

Now, having catalogued the various items that make up the Doe-Mi-Doe duds, we can better appreciate how they both fit into the story as a whole and enhance it by adding various levels of meaning that might not be immediately apparent. First, the Doe-Mi-Doe duds represent the apex of Dr T.’s sartorial ambitions: seen in terms of the progression of his increasingly outlandish wardrobe choices, they reveal Dr. T in his full character. Completing a radical 180- degree transformation from the suit and tie he wears initially, the Doe-Mi-Doe duds chart his evolution (through Bart’s eyes) from being merely a strict, disciplinarian piano teacher in the beginning to a full-blown dictator and ruthless tyrant at the end. And while he first appears in Bart’s dream looking refined and sophisticated like a conductor, at the end, he looks garishly caricaturish, resembling more of a marching-band leader than an orchestra maestro.

Additionally, these Doe-Mi-Doe duds serve to contrast him with two other major figures, namely, young Bart Collins and the plumber Zlabadowski. Whereas Terwilliker’s attire is luxurious and extravagant, both Bart’s and Zlabadowski’s attire is mundane and pedestrian. Bart wears the striped shirt and denim pants typically associated with all-American youngstersin the ‘50s. Zlabadowski’s outfit, though not working-class, certainly bespeaks a sort of bland “everyman” quality. In his tan jacket and simple slacks, he signifies a sort of “ordinary Joe” type. Interestingly, he’s not outfitted in the sort of gray and grimy overalls one often associates with plumbers, but this makes narrative sense, since it’s his paternal qualities, rather than his plumbing skills, that the film emphasizes. He wears the look of an easygoing, if somewhat boring, middle-American dad.

Also, unlike Dr. T’s clothing, each item of which seems unique and one-of-a-kind, the clothes that Bart and Zlabadowski wear look as if they are mass-produced, churned out by factories rather than hand-stitched. This is particularly true of Bart’s “Happy Fingers” beanie, presumably made in a factory in large bulk quantities. When Bart puts it on, it not only looks ludicrous on him, but it also anonymizes him, so that when the busloads of kids arrive in the final scene, Bart becomes only one rather unremarkable kid in a sea of kids, all of whom look generically the same, visually speaking. In contrast, Dr. T’s clothing is meant to set him apart as a unique individual, with an idiosyncratic style that is all his own. His feathery, ornate bearskin hat suggests that he, like it, is one-of-a-kind, singular; on the other hand, Bart’s mass-produced beanie supports the notion that he, like all the other kids, is essentially indistinguishable and replaceable.

The Doe-Mi-Doe duds also heighten the sense of Surrealism. At some level, any breakout into a musical number inherently forces the audience to realize that what’s on screen is a departure from “the real.” But here, the entire visual space, from the set decoration to the servants in their colorful formalwear, is conceived in such a way that the audience instantly knows this is a dreamlike realm of fantasy and imagination. Additionally, the song lyrics that Dr. T sings as he’sbeing dressed are themselves utterly nonsensical, veering occasionally into absurdity. He begins to rattle off names of things that don’t actually exist in the real world and are just made- up juxtapositions, such as “Chesapeake mouse” or “Hudson Bay rat.” In this sense, the lyrics call to mind the process of free association, in which patients in psychoanalysis are encouraged to let words bubble up from their unconscious, even if the connections between those words aren’t immediately apparent. Dr. T’s spouting of gibberish does indeed have this sort of free- associative quality, which becomes particularly apparent towards the song’s end when he references food rather than fashion, e.g., “pretzels” and “bock-beer suds.” And the Doe-Mi- Doe costume itself seems to embody Surrealist principles: it’s a hodgepodge of fancifully bizarre items that seem joined together purely as a result of whimsy and imagination (e.g., a feather epaulet, a white cape, assorted medals).

Taking this line of reasoning further, in psychoanalytic terms, this musical extravaganza can be seen as an expression of Terwilliker’s unbridled “id.” Literally, the lyrics of the song are a relentless recitation of “I want” statements, repeated over and over, and reformulated to encompass more and more outrageous articles of clothing. Like a child, Dr. T unabashedly declares that he desires certain items, and his obedient manservants promptly cater to his every whim. In fact, the song expresses a sort of dialectical relationship between Dr. T’s identity as a terrorizer of children, on the one hand, and his identity as essentially a big child himself, full of wants and needs (again, the notion of the unbridled “id”). It’s probably not mere coincidence that, during the song-and-dance, Terwilliker requests being dressed up in “silk and spinach,” or mentions clothing made of “liverwurst and camembert.” On the one hand, those are plainly absurd propositions (using food as garments), but also, at the basic level of child psychology, those appear to be specific foods that many children find detestable or revolting, or would associate with punishment. Through this song Terwilliker expresses both the unrestrained impulses of an undisciplined, spoiled child, while at the same time referencing the sort of unpleasant culinary experiences (e.g., eating spinach or liverwurst) that children often think of as punitive. Thus, his dictatorial qualities come to the foreground: he is both a child to be indulged, and a tyrant who sparks fear in other children.

Additionally, Henry Jenkins has written about how this film can be viewed as a veiled critique of fascism and dictatorship in the post-WWII era, and the iconography of the Doe-Mi-Doe duds fits neatly into this aspect. Specifically, Jenkins points out that in both early script drafts and the finished product, there is a clear linkage between the Fuhrer-like Dr. Terwilliker and Adolf Hitler. See Henry Jenkins, “No Matter How Small: The Democratic Imagination of Dr. Seuss,” Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture (hereinafter, “Jenkins”), p. 201. For instance, Jenkins notes how the grand procession of Terwilliker’s henchmen towards the end has intentionally been choreographed to resemble the Nazi rallies depicted in Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. (Jenkins, p. 201). In the imagery of the Doe-Mi-Doe duds themselves, the antifascist commentary is equally present. As noted above, Dr. T wears a large number of medals as part of this costume. These have strong military connotations. On each shoulder, he sports the sort of epaulets typically worn by military officers. His imposing bearskin hat subtly likens him to the bombastic bandleader of a jingoistic military marching band. Strutting around in his Doe-Mi-Does and surrounded by goosestepping goons, he more closely resembles a military dictator than a benevolent leader or instructor.

So far, we’ve catalogued how the Doe-Mi-Doe duds operate at two distinct levels of meaning. One is informational, in service of a narrative function (telling the specific story of the conflict between Terwilliker and Bart). The other way in which this costume functions is at a symbolic level, i.e., alluding to the wider struggle against fascism, and specifically against Hitler’s Nazi Germany, that America had just emerged victoriously from. As Jenkins points out, this aligns closely with Seuss’s own authorial intent. Seuss’s interest in exploring themes loosely described as Surrealist, drawing upon theories of the unconscious, or child psychology, is also detected here. Thus the two levels described above (narrative and symbolic) in fact correspond to the first two levels of meaning that Roland Barthes identifies when he proposes that there are three levels of meaning when looking at a film. See Angelos Koutsourakis, “A Modest Proposal for Re-Thinking Cinematic Excess,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video (hereinafter, “Koutsourakis”), pp. 706-707.

The Barthian “third meaning,” however, consists of a layer of meaning that often operates outside the range of the author’s own intentions. Instead, it often manifests as what is described as an almost “fetishistic” interest in surface details. Furthermore, often operating against, or frustrating or impeding, the narrative flow, it can also take the form of an indulgence in what theorists often call “cinematic excess,” a fixation on certain filmic aspects of the medium that ostensibly serve no narrative impulse but rather satisfy an aesthetic impulse beyond linear storytelling. In fact, these qualities have led some theorists to assert that it is closely connected to a sort of queer sensibility and viewership. (Koutsourakis, p. 707). I would argue that this Barthian notion of a third meaning has particular relevance to Dr. T and his Doe- Mi-Doe duds.

One of the most interesting aspects of the song-and-dance routine is that, in singing it, Dr. T recites a litany of items that are in fact not ever put on him, and which never appear on screen. Rather, they are merely alluded to, but do not actually comprise the components of the Doe- Mi-Doe duds he actually wears. Thus, he speaks longingly about items such as a bolero, a gusset, Chamois booties, a dickey and other assorted items, none of which actually materialize for him. In effect, Terwilliker is reading out loud a long list of clothing items that are simply not present. Of course, his valets are indeed dressing him up in assorted fineries, but those fineries are not the actual ones he speaks of in his song.

What is one to make of this? Perhaps one reading is simply that he’s an oaf, that he is stupid and doesn’t quite realize that he’s not getting what he’s asking for. Certainly, one aspect of his persona is indeed that he is a buffoon, so this may indeed be a plausible explanation. But to me this doesn’t seem like the correct reading. Terwilliker certainly seems to know exactly what each of the articles of clothing are; his eyes seem to light up as he mentions each by name. It seems then that the constant mismatch between what he requests and what he gets speaks, in effect, to a gap between desire and reality. There’s a disjuncture between the spoken words he utters and the physical reality he encounters, the material objects he receives. In any event, this echoes the sort of tension that exists between the world of pleasures that a gay man living in a heteronormative world would like to experience and the actual pleasures that he is allowed to experience in that same world. The act of singing about each clothing item takes on the tone of a kind of fetishistic wish fulfillment when the scene is re-interpreted in this light. It also goes hand-in-hand with the notion of “excess” or “surplus” in the most literal way possible, as he’s calling out for many more items of clothing than he could possibly hope to wear at once (i.e., an overabundance). Perhaps the strongest argument that there is indeed a “third meaning” to this scene is a transgressive element that some viewers might have missed: much of the clothing he says he wants are actually items of women’s clothing, e.g., a brocaded bodice, a peekaboo blouse, bright blue bloomers (women’s underwear) or a Mother Hubbard (a gown worn by women in the Victorian era). As a man who seems obsessively fixated on fashion, style and beauty, Terwilliker himself seems to be coded as gay, queer or transgender. When one considers that his coterie of attendants in the scene are all attractive young men, thus subverting the traditional (straight) male gaze that seeks to locate the female body as the site of sexual desire, the looming presence of a queer sensibility seems all the more plausible. Thus, even though Terwilliker ostensibly seeks to marry Bart’s mom, competing with Zlabadowski for her, this musical number suggests a subtext in which he’s coded as a repressed or closeted gay man. At any rate, this reading of the Doe-Mi-Doe scene is not necessarily authoritative or “the truth,” but merely one possible interpretation that emerges when viewing it through the lens of Barthes’ “third meaning.” Since the Barthian third meaning exists outside of authorial intent, it’s quite possible it could still be meaningful even if Seuss himself never intended the film to be interpreted this way.

Bibliography of Works Cited

Henry Jenkins, “No Matter How Small: The Democratic Imagination of Dr. Seuss,” Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture (2003)

Angelos Koutsourakis, “A Modest Proposal for Re-Thinking Cinematic Excess,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video (2021)

David Ling is currently a second-year graduate film student in the Film and Television Production MFA program at USC's School of Cinematic Arts. Before enrolling in the program, he spent time as an entertainment lawyer, filmmaker, and film journalist in New York City. His short film "San Gennaro" premiered at the New York Short Film Festival in 2018, and his film reviews and filmmaker interviews have appeared in papermag.com. He received his bachelor's degree from Harvard College, where he was the recipient of the Thomas T. Hoopes Prize in his senior year.

Global Fandom Returns: Cendera Rizky Anugrah Bangun (Indonesia)

  I dedicated my blog last year to the Global Fandom Jamboree — a series of conversations amongst scholar from many different nations about fandom and fandom studies. I have been gratified by the level of interests this undertaking generated. We are already seeing unexpected collaborations — from conference sessions to co-authored papers — emerge from the match-making that was required to make this series work. But there were still some outstanding (in both senses of the term) conversations still to be completed when the blog shut down for the summer. So I will be sharing a bit more consideration of the topic. Here’s a stand alone statement from Indonesia.

I’m an academic and a fan. How can you not fall in love with the music itself, with the chemistry between actors when watching movies, or when your favorite football club competes with another club during the football season?

Indonesia is known as the most populous Muslim country in the world, but that doesn’t mean that Indonesia only has one religion; the other religions are Buddhism, Christianity, Catholic, Hindu, Confucianism, and thousands of folk or beliefs in Indonesia. There are hundreds of languages spoken in Indonesia, most of them are locally used indigenous languages. In addition, various tribes live in Indonesia side by side every day. For this reason, it is not enough to see how popular culture lives in Indonesia in just 1-2 studies. There are so many traditional cultures in Indonesia, it is quite challenging to find the exact form of popular culture in Indonesia, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Many traditional cultures also influence the popular culture eventually. During the presidential Era, from President Soekarno, President Soeharto, until Presiden Joko Widodo, the popular culture has been shaped also by the socio political influence. For example, one of the pop culture that influence by this condition is Dangdut.

One form of Pop Culture that exists in Indonesia is Dangdut and Melayu (Pop) Music. Dangdut is a genre of Indonesian dance and folk music originated from Java island, Dangdut is partly derived and fused from Hindustani, Arabic music, and to lesser extent local folk music. The music itself become a “melting pot of cultures” as describe by Wreksono because it has the of Melayu, Indian, Arab, Chinese and European music mix in it. According to Frederick (1982), Dangdut is the kind of music defended by contemporary Indonesia's best-known popular entertainer, has been an enormous influence in much of the post-Sukarno period. Aimed directly at youth, it is dominated by a pulsating dance rhythm and a populist message, with both Islamic and secular variants. It plays a large role in creating a market for the mass media in Indonesia; made a mark on other areas of cultural activity, sparked open and often heated debate over the state of Indonesian culture; and given Indonesian Islam a new kind of public identity. It’s because through Soekarno’s Speech on August 17, 1959, during the Old Order, the Rediscovery of Our Revolution, which called for an attitude to protect national culture from foreign influences, gave birth to such a strict anti-Western policy. Radio broadcasts stopped broadcasting western music, all forms of western music were banned from performing and recording, the names of English-speaking bands and musicians were forced to change, and even young men with long hair were targeted for control (Quroatun'uyun, 2020). This condition then brought up regional music (under the influence of traditional music) to come to the surface; Bengawan Solo, Neng Geulis, Ampar-ampar Pisang, Ayam Den Lapeh, Sarinande, Angin Mamiri, and so on. This is the forerunner to the birth of dangdut music. Sukarno's claim to dangdut as Indonesia's native culture strengthened the counter action of western music that entered the homeland and even used the principle of political manifestations to dispel the onslaught of western music (Rhoma and Muhidin, 2008: 413; Andrew, 2006).

In his work, Weintraub (2006) stated that representations of Dangdut as the music of ‘the people’—the majority of society—have been produced with great frequency and in a variety of popular print media. Weintraub (2006) describe the ways in which popular print media ‘speaks for’ people, and the relations of power that define those discourses. Aside from love as a popular topic, dangdut also addresses social issues normally avoided by other genres (Weintraub, 2010). One of the Kings of Dangdut well known in Indonesia is Rhoma Irama. From the late 1970s, he began transforming into a more Islamic-oriented style, commanding the religiously pious popular music culture. He change his music style by not only began to cultivate a heavier, rocklike sound, but, moreover he determined to use his music to spread the word of Islam to the world.

During the height of his stardom in the 1970s, he was dubbed "Raja Dangdut" ("the King of Dangdut") with his Soneta Group. His Begadang album ranked No. 11 on Rolling Stone Indonesia's "150 Greatest Indonesian Albums of All Time" list. His main single "Begadang" reached number 24 on the magazine's "150 Greatest Indonesian Songs of All Time" list. His 1973 hit "Terajana", one of the best-known Dangdut songs, was the first to use the newly coined, term Dangdut, distinguishing the Javanese Orkes Melayu music, heavily influenced by Indian Bollywood records, henceforth Dangdut, from the established Orkes Melayu, associated with North Sumatran Malays. As Indonesia is the largest Muslim populated country, it is inevitable to experience Islam influence on some culture and arts. Rhoma Irama even took on a more explicit Islamic moral tone, adopting Islamic dress and shorter hairstyles, and ejecting band members who consumed alcohol or had extra-marital sex. He also resolved that his music should instruct, and not merely entertain, a form of devotion waged through music. Themes in his music included prohibition of extra-marital sex, government corruption, drugs, and gambling. The song "Haram" for instance, warns against both drugs and gambling, while the song "Keramat" asserts the instructions in Islam to honor mothers.

Weintraub found that the dangdut style changed following the development of people's tastes and media technology. The similarity in dangdut music is only in the aspects of the messages carried. Popular types of dangdut music carry collective messages, not individualist messages. Rhoma Irama's dangdut music brought a new awakening movement for Muslims in Indonesia. By bringing Islamic content in dangdut music, Rhoma became one of the public figures whose presence was felt by the community stronger than existing political figures. From that moment on, dangdut became a music that was able to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. At the same time, Muslim style in dangdut as social criticism, is comparable with individual attention to public morality.

Rhoma and his Soneta Band performance                       

Rhoma Irama fan art behind the truck

 The development, shifting, and changes in Dangdut, from the music of the majority, to modern consumer culture is not only describes the political and cultural conditions of Indonesia but is more about economic, political and sociocultural practices. After the President Soeharto Era, on 2003, another Dangdut’ singer and dancer name Inul Daratista has become the talk of the day.  With her so-called drill dance (goyang ngebor or goyang inul) she contributed to one of the most heated debates. Within a short period, a national debate exploded among politicians, Islamic clerics, celebrities, and local women’s groups on the question whether or not her performance was morally acceptable (Van Wichelen, 2005).

Inul doing a performance of her “Goyang Ngebor” on stage

Inul Daratista illuminates contemporary ‘body politics’, in which human bodies invested with diverse meanings and values have powerful implications for discourses about Islam, pornography, women’s bodies, state/civil relations in Indonesia, and changing forms of media. A woman’s body became the focal point for public debates about religious authority, freedom of expression, women’s rights, and the future of Indonesia’s political leadership. At the center of these debates was Inul Daratista, from East Java, whose dancing was described as ‘pornographic’ and therefore haram, forbidden by Islam. In the highly mediated sphere of popular culture, ‘Inulmania’ contributed to a new dialogic space where conflicting ideological positions could be expressed and debated. Inul’s body became a stage for a variety of cultural actors to try out or ‘rehearse’ an emergent democracy in post-Suharto Indonesia (Weintraub, 2008). Inul's appearance was even more heated when the King of Dangdut, Rhoma Irama did not want to be on the same stage with Inul, even in the same television program. According to Rhoma, Inul's ‘Goyang Ngebor” has violated the limits of fairness and degraded the nation's morale.

In the President Jokowi Era, another well-known Dangdut singer is Didi Kempot, a singer and songwriter in the Dangdut Campursari style. Originally, Campursari is the combination of two musical elements Keroncong and Javanese gamelan. Popular culture is often considered people’s culture (mass culture) that does not show a high culture. Another way to describe popular culture is a culture that is not cultured. Since popular culture is floating in most of society, which is unintentionally created by the community itself, it is excluded from people who have power (Storey, 2009). Dangdut Campursari is part of the pop culture that unintentionally created by the community itself. It was popularized again when Didi Kempot wrote songs mainly in his native Javanese language.

His fans call him “The Godfather of the Broken-Hearted" during his later years because vast majority of his songs are themed around heartbreaks and other sad love stories. In April 2020, he streamed a live charity concert from his house and raised a total Rp7.6 billion (~$500,000) to help Indonesians who are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. He also released a song entitled "Ojo Mudik" ("Don't Go Mudik"), pleading for his fans not to go back home during the Eid al-Fitr holiday season to prevent further spread of the coronavirus. His fans are known as “Sobat Ambyar”. On one of the occasions in his state speech, Jokowi said that Sobat Ambyar could be a means to spread the Pancasila ideology. This is because many young people (Millennials generation) are fans of Didi Kempot, it is only natural that things favored by many groups are used as a tool to share an ideology. This condition is also essential to strengthen the voter base and give meaning to every campaign activity (Rusadi, 2015).

His fans mourned when he passed away. Even the President of Republic Indonesia stated in his Instagram post: “"I watched the charity concert by Didi Kempot to raise money for Covid-19 victims. He's also helped the government by telling his followers to cancel their mudik plans. This morning he passed away. My condolences to his family, his fans, all the 'sobat ambyar' ['broken-hearted friends,' another

Didi Kempot, The Godfather of Broken Heart

Source: Antaranews

Another singer name Nassar Fahad Ahmad Sungkar , or some people call him King Nassar or Oppa Nassar become one of the dangdut singers and because his personality is quite unique, people called him "Oppa Nassar Kiyowo".  When McD presents "BTS Meal" and it's sold out it even creates chaos because even though we're still on Pandemic but the queue is very long, then people create fan art King Nassar as BTS Meal packaging just for fun. This shows how dangdut can also imitate modern cultures when it comes to fan production such as fan art as can be seen in the pictures below.

Nassar and fan art

Nassar and his fan art packaging meals

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nassar and fan art

 

                                                                             Nassar and his fan art packaging meals

 

Another form of pop culture is Sinetron short for Sinema Elektronik (Electronic Cinema/Soap Opera) that you can watch on TV. One of the soap operas currently in demand, Ikatan Cinta has many fans: although the audience is dominated by housewives, many others also enjoy watching Ikatan Cinta. The behavior shown is not far from fans elsewhere: namely fans actively participate by visiting the shooting location, attacking other actors who are considered disturbing in the storyline, or even to disturbing the personal life of the actor concerned. However, television is one mainstream dominant media in creating fandom. Jenkins stated in his book that fans are segment of audience that are very active, who do not only reject or accept what is offer, but also demanding to become a full participant. Other example how Islam integrated in pop culture is when in Sinetron (soap opera), the family must be muslim, not the other religion. There are words that always appear such as, "Astagfirullah" ("I seek forgiveness in God") In popular culture, people can say this if they see something wrong or shameful. "Alhamdulillah" = "praise be to Allah", sometimes translated as "thank Allah".  In shaa Allah = "if God wills", and many more. Sinetron is watched by most of the housewives, but all of them are Islam. but these words seem to be usual for them.

My first work about pop culture and fans was titled “Participatory Culture on BTS Army in Indonesia.” The object of this research was the South Korean boyband, Bang Tan Boys, also known as BTS. BTS is also considered as the future of K-Pop, and the symbol of globalization based on their achievement in Billboard Music Awards, which have so far been dominated by Western artists.  In January 2021, Time Magazine featured BTS on their cover and dubbed BTS the “Entertainer of the Year” and the “Next Generation Leaders.” BTS’ fan base is named ARMY, the acronym for Adorable Representative MC for Youth, categorized as a militant-like group. Just like their name, ARMY has so far become the biggest fan club in South Korea, and other K-Pop loving countries including Indonesia. Fandom according to Jenkins transforms personal reaction into social interaction, spectatorial culture into participatory culture. One becomes a ‘fan’ not by being a regular viewer of particular program but by translating that viewing into some kind of cultural activity, by sharing feelings and thoughts about program content with friends, by joining a ‘community’ of other fans who share common interest” (Jenkins, 2006). ARMY fans in Indonesia use all aspects of participatory culture from affiliation, expression, collaboration, and circulation and they are doing so both personally and collectively. When they want their idol to notice their presence by changing all profile pictures or using the same color t-shirt when one of the idol is having a birthday, they did that collectively. Participatory culture shifts from individual expression to community involvement.

My next research dealt with fan practices on Twitter, how they create Social Media Alternate Universe (AU) about their idols. In addition to creating a sense of “closeness” with their idols, fan fiction can also provide a feeling of satisfaction for fans who want an ending or even a whole new world for their idols.  Alternate Universe (AU) is a popular subgenre of fan fiction. Fan fiction usually has a long format platform such as Watt pad or Asian FanFic site.  Now the trend is changing to social media platforms, especially Twitter. Local-based AU on Twitter are somehow more engaging than a story they read on the major fan fiction platform. Readers can easily share their thoughts, make comments and retweet the chapters they like. Writers also sometimes tried to fulfil the readers’ view on the story by creating a poll, involving the readers to choose the storyline. For the past years, many of Indonesia K-pop fans are enjoying local-based alternate universe content from their favourite group. Often the writers have even changed their idols name to be more Indonesian, for example K-pop idol Hyunjin from Stray Kids is Haris in the @eskalokal Twitter account, or K-pop female idol Yena from IZ*ONE is Yanti, a common Indonesian name in the @Wzonetrenggalek Twitter account. One of the fan fiction writer said that she likes to make the content more local because she finds it more comfortable. One of the reader said that when a writer makes the content local, it feels real. The changing platform of fan fiction is more suitable for the informants. It turns out that many fans who initially liked fan fiction using Watt pad or website switch to the social media alternate universe. Not only because their attention span has decreased, but also because the variations of the content make the new form of fanfic even more enjoyable. As they develop the personal relationship through social media fanfic, they like the local content better, because it is easier to understand. Through using the new names for their idols Indonesian fans feel more proximity with the idols.

 

I also have conducted a research about participatory culture amongst students with autism spectrum disorder. Because the anonymity in the world of internet, no one really knows if you are a person with disability or not. That is why those with autism still need to be supervised and mentored when accessing social media. When I did my research on ASD subjects, they should be accompanied by their therapists or parents, and most of the time the ones that answered my questions/or in FGD are their companions. So, sometimes it's difficult to know if it is really what they feel, or is it just because of their habit and that's why their companion can know about that. Even so, there are some questions that are answered by some of the autistic subjects. When they are obsessed with one thing (like one of the subjects really like trains or cats or idols) they will look it up really thoroughly just like any other fans. But it's quite hard for them to interact with each other when it's online. I hope we can have further discussion about this or other impairments. The technology itself does not provide enough accessibility for those who are disabled. From the point of view of teenagers with autism spectrum disorder, social media provides an opportunity for them to access information, because participation and access depend on each other. For example, collaborative problem-solving in fandom depends on differing degrees of access to information and a community that values differences in viewpoint. Most social media platforms assume mainstream users can use their tools but do not consider the needs of those with disabilities.  These exclusions are particularly troubling given the potential of these spaces to stimulate engaged, active citizens of the world. We need more work to build a culture of inclusion and friendliness for persons with disabilities if we are to create more equal opportunities to everyone.

 

My latest work is “Kim Seon Ho, you are cancelled: the collective understanding of Cancel Culture”. In this research, research tries to explore the cancel culture phenomenon and how people give meaning to cancel culture regarding the celebrities that got cancelled. Cancel a celebrity can be beneficial or harmful form of social media activism.

 

Currently, I’m working on two papers about fan activism. The first one is about the participation of fans in online social networks. Networked fandom facilitates the use of a shared hashtag to coordinate interactions between fans and idols.  Doing so enables people to join the activism even though they have never met and don’t know each other. The second one explores how K-Pop fans mobilize many people through small groups in each fan base to spread concerns amongst other fan bases. The same method is also used to ward off rumors or hoaxes, confronting disinformation and misinformation. In this way, fans are embracing a freedom of expression, criticizing rulers and defending themselves against criticism.

 

REFERENCES

Frederick, W. H. (1982). Rhoma Irama and the dangdut style: Aspects of contemporary Indonesian popular culture. Indonesia, (34), 103-130.

Qorib, F., & Dewi, S. I. The Phenomenon of Fans, Social Media, and Modern Campursari Music in Popular Culture. Pekommas.

Quroatun'uyun, Z. A. F. I. R. A. H. (2020). The Dynamics of Industrialization in Dangdut Music Culture on Television with CDA Concept. Ekspresi Seni: Jurnal Ilmu Pengetahuan Dan Karya Seni, 22(2), 17-31.

 

Rusadi, U. (2015). Penerimaan Makna dari Iklan Televisi da

Nassar and his fan art packaging meals 

 

Fandom Studies in Bulgarian Context

Fandom Studies in Bulgarian Context

Dora Valkanova (Bulgaria)

 

 

I enter the field of media fandom after having completed a dissertation on U.S. Cold War cinema since 1947, in which I applied a Critical and Cultural Studies lens to a cinema canon that had been studied primarily through the methods of film historiography. The necessity of such an approach had been underscored to me both through my own experience as a Bulgarian woman, living in the U.S. since 2003 and as a scholar, broadly trained in the theory and methods of Critical and Cultural Studies. From a scholarly perspective, my training in Critical and Cultural Studies increasingly appeared to suggest that the plight of Eastern Europe and the Balkans was not clearly legible through critical concepts like Global North and Global South, which are central to the field of Media and Cinema Studies and that demanded further analysis. On a personal level, my lived experience in the U.S. has been mediated through U.S. perceptions (and misperceptions) of Soviet and Eastern European communism and post-communism. This was most noticeable specifically during my undergraduate career when jokes about communism were my U.S. colleagues’ usual (and sometimes only) means of engaging with me. On an academic level, I encountered a range of contradictions that seemed to suggest the relevance of the Cold War as an analytical category in studying media. My intention for this opening statement is to briefly outline the concepts and theories that I have found productive in understanding media from and about Eastern Europe and to articulate the framework that will serve as my jumping-off point for studying fandom in Bulgaria. 

 

World maps that depict the geographical boundary between a Global North and a Global South tend to draw the line between the two along the border between Bulgaria and Turkey with the former falling within the domain of the Global North. This is significant, considering that the Global North tends to be associated with whiteness, colonialism, and higher economic development, while the Global South is the geography of non-whiteness, post-colonialism, and lower economic growth (to name a few). What is seldom acknowledged, however, are the Cold War roots of these concepts. The Global North specifically, as mapped onto depictions of the globe, spans the territory of what used to be called the “First World” and the “Second World” in Alfred Sauvy’s Three-World Model. According to that model, “a ‘free’ First World that is modern, scientific, rational, and therefore a ‘natural’ society; a ‘communist’

Second World controlled by ideology and propaganda, with ‘natural’ society subordinated to a totalitarian state; and a Third World that is ‘traditional,’ irrational, overpopulated, religious, and economically ‘backward.’” (Chari & Verdery, 2009, p. 18). However, as Chari & Verdery contend, “[t]his division makes even less sense after 1989, when many socialist countries became, like postcolonial ones, synonymous with underdevelopment” (p. 19).

 Bulgaria and Eastern Europe’s odd fit within the Global North/South framework and its attendant implications of coloniality and post-coloniality became further apparent to me through my engagement with the work of Maria Todorova (2009) and Neda Atanasoski (2013), which explores the specific socio-historical orientation of Eastern Europe and the Balkans to the West. Maria Todorova’s work Imagining the Balkans (2009) articulates “balkanism” as a discourse, which shares similarities with Edward Said’s orientalism, but diverges from it based on critical categories such as the fact that Balkan people are white, Christian (albeit Orthodox Christian), and were not colonized. Thus, according to Todorova, while the Balkans were never viewed as totally Other to the West, they were nevertheless seen as an “incomplete self” that has yet to reach enlightenment. That formulation is in turn reminiscent of Slavoj Zizek’s description of the Balkans as a region “caught in another’s dream.” Similarly, Neda Atanasoski (2013) has surveyed Western discourses and imaginaries of the Balkans, Eastern Europe and (to a lesser extent) Russia—what was collectively known as the “Second World.” Atanasoski details the racialization of the Balkans and Eastern Europe through Western media accounts of the region and points out that “[i]in the Western imaginary, the distant and more recent history of Balkan violence and hatred makes manifest the (im)possibility of transition from East to West, from primitive to enlightened, and from barbaric to benevolent” (p. 141). Along similar lines, Milica Bakic-Hayden (1995) has proposed the concept of “nesting orientalisms:” “a pattern of reproduction of the original dichotomy upon which Orientalism is premised. In this pattern, Asia is more ‘East’ or ‘other’  than eastern Europe; within eastern Europe itself this gradation is reproduced with the Balkans perceived as most ‘eastern’; within the Balkans there are similarly constructed hierarchies.” More recently, Wallace (2008) used the concept in his study of Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Borat, which he describes as a simulacra of Eastern Europe that Cohen associates with the country of Kazakhstan—itself on the Asian continent. Notably, Borat, as one of Cohen’s three Da Ali G Show (2000-2004) alter egos (the other two being Ali G and Brüno Gehard), is an object of fandom within the U.K. and the U.S.

 

I detail these discrepancies between Eastern Europe and some of the dominant concepts structuring scholarly work on transnational media, because my research suggests that they are indispensable for understanding the current state of fandom in Bulgaria. My own survey of the contemporary contours of Bulgarian fandom as well as its history and development in the latter half of the 20th century appears to support Chari & Verdery’s (2009) argument for the relevance of “the (post-) Cold War” as an analytical category. In fact, in Bulgarian fandom the (post-) Cold War as an analytic mediates more established concepts in Western Anglophone culture such as divisions between high-art and low art. Chari & Verdery’s concept itself is closely aligned to Atanasoski’s (2013) deployment of postsocialism, which she describes as a “global condition that produces a social, economic, and cultural ethic that builds on and disavows previous racial and imperial formations” (p. 23). According to Chari & Verdery, “an integrated analytical field ought to explore intertwined histories of capital and empire, as we have suggested, but also the ongoing effects of the Cold War’s Three-Worlds ideology” (p. 19). 

 

My intention in participating in this forum on fandom is to aim towards such an integrated analytical framework in surveying fandom in Bulgaria. The historical development of Bulgarian fandom necessitates such an approach where questions of whiteness and its construction (Stanfill, 2011), gender (Scott, 2019), sexual orientation, class, and ableism interact with questions of media access (Morimoto & Chin, 2017) shaped by Bulgaria’s past as a Soviet satellite state, the fall of communism in 1990, and the policies of economic “shock therapy” in the 90s. The economic crisis of the 90s had a profound effect on all aspects of media and culture and is evident in various aspects of fandom, including fans’ own accounts of the history of fan activity in Bulgaria (Borisova, 2020). Furthermore, such an integrated approach helps us understand how the “battle of ideologies” played out on real bodies of fans who were left to bridge the gaps between two opposing global ideologies that positioned them as a periphery to their respective centers and how fans continue to labor to close these gaps to present day. 

 

 

Bibliography:

 

Atanasoski, N. (2013). Humanitarian violence: the U.S. deployment of diversity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 

 

Bakic-Hayden, M. (1995). Nesting Orientalisms: The case of former Yugoslavia. Slavic Review 54(4), 917-931.

 

Borisova, E. (2020, March 29). Накратко за българския фендъм (Briefly about Bulgarian fandom). Фантастика и Бъдеще (Science Fiction and Future): https://fantastika-bg.eu/накратко-за-...

 

Chari, S. & Verdery, K. (2009). Thinking between the posts: Postcolonialism, postsocialism, and

ethnography after the Cold War. Comparative Studies in Society and History 51(6), 6-34.

 

Morimoto, L. H. & Chin, B. (2017). Reimagining the imagined community: Online media fandoms in the age of global convergence. In Gray, J., Sandvoss, C., & Harrington, C. L. (Eds.) Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, 2nd Edition, pp. 174-188. 

 

Scott, S. (2019). Fake geek girls: Fandom, gender, and the convergence culture industry. New York, NY: New York University Press.

 

Stanfill, M. (2011). Doing fandom, (mis)doing whiteness: Heteronormativity, racialization, and the discursive construction of fandom. In Reid A. R. & Gatson, S. (Eds.) Transformative Works and Cultures 8.

https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0256

 

Todorova, M. (2009). Imagining the Balkans. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 

 

Wallace, D. (2008). Hyperrealizing "Borat" with the map of the European "Other." Slavic Review 67(1), 35-49.

Responses to Scarcity and Bifurcated Fandom in South Africa

Stelios to Nyasha:

 

(a) Could you provide a short paragraph on how the "decimalization" argument applies to football fandom?

(b) Could you define "forensic apartheid studies"?  More specifically, as I read (https://apartheidstudies.wordpress.com/2019/09/05/towards-apartheid-studies/ ), I am interested to know more about whether "forensic" is a metaphor from criminal justice to emphasize that apartheid studies is a form of criminal investigation into history (the crime being apartheid and the task being to prove that harm has been done and that there is a guilty offender) or does "forensic" apply in the common sense, i.e., investigating cases where specific apartheid-motivated crimes have been committed (or both).

Nyasha pasting some text from some early email responses for additional context [we have already seen this - am just creating a thread for the record. Dora had asked about “good neighbourliness”: “I wanted to make sure I understand the concept of "good neighborliness." Is a central/defining component of that concept that the one-tenth and the nine-tenths need each other? The term itself--"good neighborliness"--seems to suggest a spatial organization of that inequality. Would you say that it is intended to describe, for example, how wealth and poverty exist side by side in cities in (South) Africa (so, for example, extremely wealthy neighborhoods existing and maintaining good relations with extremely poor neighbors right outside their borders)?”]: 

“Good neighbourliness” is the definition of apartheid advanced by the so-called father or architect of apartheid, HF Verwoerd. In 1961, Verwoerd, in a broadcast, defined apartheid as "a policy of good neighbourliness" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPCln...). He was, of course, trying to euphemise and airbrush apartheid. In my work, I turn this definition against itself, because I see that apartheid is indeed a policy of good neighbourliness, but just not in the sense Verwoerd meant to euphemise it. Rather I show in the emerging framework of apartheid studies (AS) that apartheid has two forms, a primitive one and an advanced one (just like a butterfly). Primitive apartheid is what we typically know and recognise as apartheid (1948-1994 in South Africa). It is easy to mobilise against, as proven at Sharpeville (1960) and Soweto (1976), and so on. It is primitive because it is merely the first draft of apartheid, a rehearsal or caterpillar stage of the butterfly. But the more data apartheid gathers, the better it gets at what does it. It becomes more "normal" and "beautiful". In other words, we notice it less and less, and it becomes a part of the furniture. We begin to live our everyday lives according to the very structures that we used to recognise as alien impositions, but have now become less urgent as targets of our disquiet. We now have other more urgent things to focus on, such as paying bills and catering for household expenditure. When we no longer notice apartheid, even if it is still there, we become "good neighbours". This is the butterfly stage of apartheid that apartheid has always been aiming for - the highest stage o apartheid. We struggle to see the caterpillar in the butterfly - or even if we do, we do not have the energy for it anymore. Thus life goes on as best as it can, or as best as it knows how. 

So good neighbourliness explains why, despite oppression having such a pedigree (hundreds of years of persistence) within global modernity, there has yet to be a truly successful revolution against it (i.e., one that abolishes oppression and injustice). The reason seems to be that the oppressed, with time, find ways to live in harm's way (the way we are expected to eventually learn to "live with" Covid, for instance). So "living with" is a central concept of good neighbourliness. I use the notion of decimalisation as one of the means to illustrate how good neighbourliness takes place. So if you put a decimal point between 00, which is one number, you immediately transform the number to 0.0, with the two zeroes no longer equal. It is still one number, but now with a central transformation. The zeroes are still located next to each other in the string (like "good neighbours", or the same citizens, or the same Europeans, or the same human beings etc.), but now with vastly different and unequal outcomes. To the right of the decimal point is where slums and poverty occur. To the left is where wealth, leafy suburbs and affluence are found. There is no passage between the two. So, in fact, I invert the normative political "left"/"right" distinction.

In my view, butterfly apartheid is truly global. You find it in every society in the world where the oppressed live in harm's way (and are unable to get out) and "live with harm". You find it in Brazil, Bulgaria, Germany, the US (see New York, for instance), Kenya, Zimbabwe, India, Cyprus, South Africa etc.

Consider, for instance, the deaths of Cristina and Violetta Djeordsevic (or Ebrehmovich), the two Italian Roma sisters aged 13 and 11, who drowned in the sea at the public beach at Torregaveta, in Naples, Italy (https://observers.france24.com/en/200...). That is good neighbourliness. Look at how life goes on. There is no apocalypse.

[Then Dora asked about race: “...to what extent the "nine-tenthification" follows racial lines. I wasn't sure if this bifurcation of economic inequality between one-tenth and nine-tenth also follows racial lines with the one-tenth being white and the nine-tenth being BIPOC. I am assuming that some version of that is the case, but I would love to know more about it. ”]

(T)he way I see it, apartheid uses race optimally only in its primitive phase. But the more apartheid learns from its mistakes and gathers newer data about how the oppressed behave, the less it depends on race as the organising principle. Instead, it seeks to hide in plain sight. So we can speak of phases of ninetenthification, one phase occurring within primitive apartheid, and so clearly race-bound, and the other phase occurring in the present and since 1994, and able to easily transcend race. 

In any case, once a decimal point is placed amongst the ranks of the oppressed, it separates the one-tenth from the nine-tenth, and the one-tenth starts to belong to the left side of the decimal point where whites historically were located as citizens and full humans.

In the emerging apartheid studies framework, race is important only secondarily. Apartheid, being a domain of an interface, uses anything that it finds handy, race included. Apartheid can use any interface,  beyond just race. It also relies less and less on race.

Stelios Stylianou's Reply to Nyasha Mboti's Opening Statement

In the course of this forum, we have presented opening statements to set a ground for exchanging ideas.  I have been thinking about these opening statements as points of departure rather than mature texts to be evaluated for completeness or correctness.  With this in mind, I have read your opening statement, dear Nyasha, as a brief introduction to apartheid studies, which includes some connections to fandom.  In replying, my intention is to present an opportunity for elaboration on some issues in an open and creative way.

(1) Your text presents the grand concept of apartheid, introduces a whole new field of study, apartheid studies, and is, at the same time, an academic manifesto.  It is broadly about inequality, one of the central axes of sociological thinking.  Your conceptualization falls within the conflict paradigm, whereby society is a field of conflicting interests, political, economic, and symbolic, with the conflicting parties mobilizing every means available to sustain and promote their power.  You place the theoretical subject in the broader area of the study of social change as well, by distinguishing between the "caterpillar" and the "butterfly" versions of apartheid.  This corresponds to structural dimensions such as those defined around gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship, and so on, where theoretical analyses and normative debates have existed for many decades.  I see, in your conceptualization, a clear way to understand (and explain to my students—thank you!) the difference between overt (or old-fashioned) and institutionalized discrimination.  These are narrower concepts to be fair, but they are of the same analytic nature.  Indeed, your "life goes on" concept is an excellent way to represent the consolidation of oppression, where inequality has been legitimized and normalized. Could you please comment on these thoughts. 

(2) In this respect, although not necessarily related to fandom—but you may make the connection—I am particularly interested to see a more elaborate definition of forensic apartheid studies.  As a criminologist by training, I am interested to know more about how forensic science is used in comparative-historical sociological analysis and in cultural studies, particularly in the context of apartheid studies.  Can we say that apartheid studies is a form of criminal investigation into history; the crime being apartheid and the task being to prove that harm has been done and that there is a guilty offender? 

(3) Turing to fandom, I think that you are making some connections which are worthwhile and I would like to see some elaboration.  I would be interested to read your thoughts about how fandom is defined in a society with stark inequalities and discrete social classes, a dual peripheral economy, if I may use the concept form World Systems Theory.  Whether we analytically stay within one African society or take Africa as the society of reference, we seem to be talking about two separate worlds, the elite and the rest; hence, your decimalization thesis.  There seems to be no middle class, in any case not a visible, let alone powerful enough, middle class, and this makes the fandom landscape uniquely interesting to start with.  Could you please tell us a little bit more about the fandom aspect of decimalization; and, if space permits, a little bit about football fandom in particular? Can we juxtapose this fandom landscape with, say contemporary Western European Societies, where a large and mature middle class exists? 

(4) Finally, my observations on the masculinist discourse in my own studies, seem to echo your comment on continuity and change ("the more things change the more they remain the same") in 21st century Africa.  The shift from hegemonic toward more inclusive masculinities and from rigid to more relaxed patriarchal structures that has been happening in the Global North at surface level does not seem to have effectively reached deeper cultural tiers.  So, could you please briefly comment on the role of gender and masculinity with respect to fandom in decimalized societies?

Scarcity and Bifurcated Fandom in Africa: An Apartheid Studies Perspective

Scarcity and Bifurcated Fandom in Africa: An Apartheid Studies Perspective

 

By Nyasha Mboti

University of the Free State

 

In 2000, Africa’s share of global manufacturing stood at 1%. In 2021, as I write this, Africa’s share of global manufacturing still stands at 1%. It was 3% in 1970. Basically, Africa is where it was in 2000, or in 1970, in terms of its share of global economic market power. This economic marginality indicates that Africa’s exit from colonialism and apartheid by the turn of the century merely facilitated re- entry into the same vacated structures. In 1894, one the architects of British colonialism and apartheid in Southern Africa, Cecil John Rhodes, inscribed a concrete colonial principle where he said “in future nine-tenths of (Africans) will have to spend their lives in manual labour, and the sooner that is brought home to them the better”. Rhodes said these words as part of the passage of the infamous Glen Grey Act, also known as the “Native Bill of Africa”, which legalised a reality where nine-tenths of Africans were to remain strangers in their own land. The other one-tenth were to be incorporated into the colonial state as “civilised” Africans who not only assisted in managing the nine-tenth, but were by and large exempt from daily deprivations and violence that the nine-tenth experience. Mamdani in Citizen and Subject suggests that institutional colonialism remains intact today and apartheid and colonialism constitute a continuum of “decentralised despotism” that contemporary Africa has failed to abolish. This decentralised despotism reproduces citizens and subjects, whereby “Civil society…was presumed to be civilized society, from whose ranks the uncivilized were excluded” (Mamdani, 1996: 16) Also, “Citizenship would be a privilege of the civilized; the uncivilized would be subject to an all-round tutelage.” Mamdani suggests that Africa has largely failed to democratise – a process which, had it been successful, would have abolished the algorithm that produces citizens and subjects in the nation state. I propose that the problem is more complex than failed democratisation. Instead, the problem is one of a persistent apartheid, which requires a form of forensic apartheid studies to understand.

 

The apartheid studies perspective is an emerging framework from the global south which considers apartheid to be a paradigm and theoretical framework that explains our modern times in terms of co-extensive separations or “good neighbourliness” (Mboti, 2021). For instance, inequality is a form of “good neighbourliness” because it has not led to visible apocalypse in social and economic relations. Instead, life generally goes on. Poverty and wealth exist side- by-side not only without visible conflict but also in a “good neighbourly” relation whereby they seem to constantly need each other. Hence the nine-tenths of Rhodes, or the citizens and subjects delineated by Mamdani, or Africa’s 1% share of global manufacturing, all speak to the fact that there is now permanent apartheid (or good neighbourliness) in our social and economic relations whereby none of these stark separations – however shocking – cause the global order to overturn. Instead, life goes on. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west as it has always done.

 

In as far as fandom is an invention of unended apartheid, it has to be regarded as a marginal and marginalising construct in Africa. Only the one-tenth can be fans. The nine-tenth cannot be fans directly or intentionally. That is, I am going to argue that any discussion of fandom in Africa has to reckon with the fundamental “nine-tenthness” of Africans in general. Nine-tenthness is a construct that I wish to use to express not only the fragmented nature of fandom but also the manner in which fandom expresses the continuing economic and market marginality of 90% of the continent’s population. Essentially, fandom in Africa is un-separate from the economic and market marginality of Africans, at the same time that it is an expression of that marginality. This means that fandom in Africa is bifurcated by the permanent apartheid that is a constant of feature of African life: there is, as intimated, fandom incorporating nine-tenths of the population and fandom for the one-tenth. There is no passage between the two. This border between fandoms is regulated and policed by economic scarcity. Hence, for instance, there are always problems of distribution in Africa (cf. Mboti 2014; Mboti and Tomaselli 2015). The route to market is always policed by middle men, monopolies and cartels that force popular entertainment industries into the shadows and informality (Lobato, 2012; Ureke 2018, 2019; Mboti and Brown

2014). When you have more people than available resources, (probabilistic) distribution is out of the question. The only solution is what we can call decimalisation: the parting of wholes. When you have more children than school textbooks – say, five children per textbook – the scarcity is solved by fractions (hence, the “ninetenthification” of African publics). In situations of scarcity, whatever you do, the available resources will never be properly distributable.

Using examples from film, music and sport (football, rugby, tennis, netball and cricket), I seek to demonstrate that fandom in Africa is decimalised. Fandom in Africa is both a construct and a practice incorporated into economic power structures, but also policed and refracted by them. I must make clear that this argument assumes that Africa is still operating under economic structures derived from colonial and apartheid “pasts” – pasts which are still present. At the same time, we can see fandom as a process that does not passively accept apartheid. Instead, there is constantly refracted resistance.

 

 

References

 

Lobato, R. (2012). Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution. London: Palgrave

 

Mamdani, M. (1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press.

 

Mboti, N. (2021). Apartheid Studies: A Manifesto, Vol. 1. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

 

Mboti, N. (2014). The Zimbabwean Film Industry. African Communication Research 7(2), 145-172.

 

Mboti, N. and Brown M (2014). Nollywood’s Unknowns: An Introduction. Journal of African Cinemas. 6(1), 3-9.

 

Mboti, N. and Tomaselli, K.G. (2015). New Political Economies of Film Distribution for South Africa’s Townships?Examining the ReaGile concept. Critical Arts 29(5), 621-643.

 

Rhodes, C.J. (1894). “The Glen Grey Speech” [Cecil John Rhodes’ Speech on the Second Rereading of the Glen Grey Act to the Cape House Parliament on July 30 1894],http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/glen_grey_speech.pdf Accessed 30/6/2011.

 

Ureke, O. (2018). Introducing the 'drasofi': A genre of convenience and context in Zimbabwean film production.Journal of African Cinemas, 10(1-2), 147-164.

 

Ureke, O. (2019): Locating Sembène’s mégotage in Zimbabwe’s kiyakiya video-film production, Journal of African Cultural Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2019.1599829

Global Fandom: Stelios Stylanou Responds

Reply to Dora Valkanova and Nyasha Mboti

Stelios Stylianou

Cyprus University of Technology

Thank you, dear Dora and dear Nyasha, for your comments.  I am addressing your points below, trying to synthesize as much as possible.  I am organizing the text thematically to include replies to your comments together rather than following the order in which the comments were presented. 

Antagonism and protagonists

The concept of antagonism, as used in my analysis, is not related to an underlying power structure or hierarchy, as in drama genres and elsewhere.  The opposing fans are analyzed as equal, they are both antagonists, in the same sense that two teams are equal at the beginning of the game.  Superiority and dominance are sought, not given, and if/when they are attained, they must be constantly reaffirmed and defended.  To use a parallel example from UEFA Champion's League, when we say that e.g., Real Madrid will try to "defend her crown" we do not imply that Real Madrid has a given structural advantage on the playing field.

Antagonistic fans' discourse refers to language and other symbols used by each side against a theoretically equal opponent.  Yet, Nyasha's observations about how power differences are important in sustaining the opposition and, more so, making it worthwhile, hold.  In Limassol, the second-largest city in Cyprus, AEL and Apollon are the top-tier teams and they often compete with good chances to win the League or the Cup or enter the European championships.  The games between them are the most intense, both in the field and on the terraces.  Aris, the other Limassolian team, is much weaker on the field and on the terraces, and games between Aris and AEL or Aris and Apollon are less intense.  Nevertheless, the discursive landscape that unfolds during or around games involving Aris is still the same research object: fans' antagonistic discourse.  (Interestingly, this season, Aris is the "pleasant surprise" in the First Division League, ranked 4th and entering the Europa Conference League qualification stage).

Nyasha further observes that if "one rival is not doing well over a long period, and ceases to be a threat, the nature of the antagonistic discourse [...] is less sharp."  This is mostly true; but, note that a "long period" must be quite long.  Sports journalists refer to well-established clubs as "historical clubs", "great teams," and "eternal enemies," even if such clubs do not do well for a while, say a few years, but even more.  Consider Liverpool FC, for example, which was the "Queen of Europe" in the 1970s and 1980s and has only recently returned to the top ranks.  When the club was not doing well for quite a while, it was still a "great team."  In Cyprus, the recent example is Omonoia, who won her last title before 2020 in 2010.  It has now returned to "where she belongs" but even when she was doing badly, for about a decade, while her "eternal enemy" APOEL was winning the championship every single season from 2012-13 to 2018-19, the game between them was always named a "derby."

Returning to the fans, a club's performance does stimulate specific discursive themes, depending on which team is doing well on the field (and in the bank!).  During the aforementioned period, APOEL was being constantly accused by fans of most other top-tier clubs for being a "client" of the system, i.e., favored by the Football Federation authorities.  At the same time, APOEL fans were trolling Omonoia for its failure to enter the European championships.  So, there is a specialized discourse, yes, but the overall mode is the same: use any discursive means available to attack the opponent.

Nyasha points out that "winning over the opponent" may be contradictory in the sense that if you win over someone, the game is over, so "what next?" Perhaps the expression "winning over" is confusing.  The way I use it, "winning over the opponent" means prevailing on the terraces during each game (operationally speaking, being louder, more visible, and more offensive).  The goal is to prevail during the game and elsewhere and fans constantly attack their opponents sustaining the opposition, rather than resolving it.  Envy is also part of the motivation.  We talk about antipalon deos, in the sense that you need a worthwhile opponent, one that is a real threat, one that inspires awe, one that you can take seriously (Theodoropoulou, 2007).  One interview participant told us that in the last few years, when Omonoia was not doing well, APOEL fans started feeling lonely! 

Finally, can "antagonistic discourse be expanded to include beneficial acts as well, rather than just the negative and harmful?"  In free-market economies, "antagonismos" indeed means competition, a struggle to be better than others and therefore more successful in selling your product or service, and it can be beneficial, assuming that the object of antagonism is a well-valued one, like healthier food, safer cars, faster computers, etc.  In football, as a game, to struggle for victory or the league is in a sense beneficial, as the quality of the games is elevated, coaching techniques are developed, etc.  There are good things that can come out of fans' activity as well, such as the development of the social and esthetic aspect of antagonism.  There are instances where wonderful things happen, such as a beautiful coreo, a nicely performed non-insulting chant, social events around victories, etc.  In our data, such positive elements are found under the category "praising the in-group" but they are much less prevalent, compared to those that I have focused on in the present exchange.

The prevalence of racist discourses

The question about the prevalence of any kind of content in football fans' antagonistic discourse is hard to answer at the European level.  UEFA records and occasionally sanctions players, clubs, and national teams and this is evidence of the existence of the problem.  In the last few years, various entities have been punished, e.g., Slavia Prague, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Slovakia.  Locally too, there are incidences of racist behavior by players or fans which are occasionally sanctioned.  

Yet, the frequency of these publicized incidences is a poor estimator of the prevalence of racist and supremacist discourses in football games in Europe or elsewhere.  One reason for not including a quantitative discussion on this matter is that I have not studied the epidemiology of these discourses systematically.  What I have mentioned is that, in the last few years, non-racial politics and sex are noticeably more prevalent in football fans' antagonistic discourse in Cyprus, compared to racism.  This is the case in the physical field during football games, where my data come from.  I can also mention a bachelor's thesis that I have recently supervised, in which very little content was found on race, ethnicity, or religion on football-related Facebook pages in Cyprus (Nikolaou, 2020).  So, racism is not among the prevalent themes of the opposition discourse.  

Nevertheless, the current discussion is not about prevalence; our concern about racism in football is always academically and socially legitimate and it is further fueled by the general presence of racism on the internet.  Occasional events, spikes in social media, or reports by www.kickitout.org are enough to remind us that we are nowhere near the end of exclusion discourses and practices.  We can refer to numerous examples, as Dora has already done in her comments.  I would highlight one from the top level of European football, the recent social media racist abuse of England players Saka, Rashford, and Sancho, who missed penalties in the Euro 2020 final (July 2021).  Studying racist, sexist, homophobic, and all other discriminatory and exclusion discourses in football is and will continue to be a big and challenging project.  In my present work, I study these discourses in qualitative terms, within the theoretical framework that I call the cultural hypothesis.  Dora's comments are mostly supportive of this idea and this is very encouraging.

The "seriousness" of football fans' antagonistic discourse

Nyasha's comment that my presentation "seems to regard antagonistic discourse as non-serious in that it merely seeks to annoy and irritate the other side, rather than to reflect or entrench a long-lived national schism" offers an opportunity to present a more elaborate explanation.  

This discourse is always "serious," in two ways.  The first lies in the historical dimension, where history and politics are enacted and reiterated as ends in themselves.  This dimension, which is emphasized in my analysis, reflects the history of political conflicts.  When fans orally or otherwise use political—in the narrow sense, e.g., related to political parties—slogans in football games, the soundscape is indeed political, sometimes reminding pre-election gatherings.  Alternatively, when fans denounce political figures, such as the President of the Republic or Members of the Parliament, for their political actions, they are making political statements that are quite serious as well.  All this concerns the surface structure of the content of football fans' antagonistic discourse.

The second way lies in the game dimension, where history and politics are used as means to pique the opponent, not enacted as ends in themselves.  This communicative practice is serious too, precisely because, even though it is not explicitly focused on politics, it still is profoundly political. In Stylianou and Theodoropoulou (2019), we put it this way: 

Our game dimension should not be interpreted as an ahistorical explanation or one that defies culture.  By using historically and culturally specific elements as weapons in the symbols war, fans, without necessarily having an intention and without necessarily realizing that they do so, contribute to the sustaining of binary divisions and to the drawing of difference marking boundaries and inclusion-exclusion discourses. (p. 1986)

Extending this discussion to racism, to address Dora's question, let me first confirm that fans do use racist slurs to attack black players of opposing teams, when in fact there are black players in their own team as well.  It is "bizarre" in a sense, as Nyasha notes; but, not so in my game dimension analysis.  In this case, race becomes a selectively convenient attack weapon (like gender, sexuality, politics, and history) or, to quote Dora, "racist abuse becomes an instrument in the larger toolkit for abuse of players of the opposite team."  Thus, the point here, which I try to address by investigating the deep structure of the content of this discourse, is that the instrumentalization of race is a manifestation of the racism that exists in wider society and, as such, it is very serious and it bears critical (i.e., political, in the broader sense) analysis.  To quote Dora again "these 'instruments' have unintended consequences as well, namely—the very real dehumanization of nonwhite players."  I also agree with Kassimeris (2021, p. 33) that "not every fan using racist language is a racist," adding that fans using racist language still represent and promote racism.

To return to politics and history, let me present one more example where reducing history to a game involves contempt for pain, victimihood, and suffering.  The instance is a nostalgic chant about Anorthosis' home city, Famagusta, which is under Turkish occupation since 1974, sung by Anorthosis fans with love and devotion.  Omonoia fans occasionally sing a parody of this chant, in which they blame Famagusta residents as traitors and/or cowards because they abandoned their city when the invaders were approaching.  Blaming victims of war for cowardliness and/or accusing them of treason is certainly serious, morally, politically, and symbolically speaking, and it is as disturbing as the "say yes to racism" banner that Dora mentions.

Sex and politics in the game dimension

Is the sexual discourse a dimension of the political discourse? It certainly is, assuming that we refer to "political" in the broader sense, i.e., power structures and relations at all levels.  In my analysis, I also refer to politics in the narrow sense, i.e., macro-political processes around the distribution of power at the level of political institutions and authorities, i.e., government, parliament, legal system, political parties, etc.  This separation is analytical, not substantive.  

Let me extend this discussion to address Nyasha's comment that "the game dimension which makes history and politics irrelevant might also end up making the [sexual] normative underlying structures irrelevant."  Let me use two parallel real (from my data) examples of expression of binary opposition: (a) Displaying a banner with a picture of Che Guevara, to contrast the ingroup to the outgroup in terms of ideology, and (b) displaying a penis-shaped balloon, to contrast the ingroup to the outgroup in terms of masculinity.  The content of the first banner is "irrelevant" in the sense that the manifest purpose of using it is to irritate the opponent, not the promotion of Che's ideology.  But the display of the banner is not irrelevant as a political act: the instrumentalization of Che rests on the prerequisite that Che is a well-established figure of leftist ideology, one that you can conveniently use to compose your ideological superiority text.  The same explanation can be applied to the second example: the penis-shaped balloon is "irrelevant" in the sense that the manifest purpose of using it is to irritate the opponent, not to degrade women or gay men.  In this example too, the display of the balloon is not irrelevant as a political act: the instrumentalization of the penis rests on the prerequisite that it is a well-established symbol in the gender/sexuality discourse, again, one that you can conveniently use to compose your masculinist superiority text.  This is a point that I was making from the early stages of my study.  In Stylianou (2011), I stressed that we should not only study the surface structure of fans' antagonistic communication but the latent structure as well.  Attacking with homophobic tools is a homophobic act, regardless of whether your purpose is to attack homosexuals or to attack fans of the opposite side. 

Symbolic Contradictions

The observation about the use of swastikas (and other symbols of fascist, Nazi, or other extreme right ideologies) in the Bulgarian context confirms that this phenomenon is not unique to the Greek-Cypriot context.  Football has been a vehicle for the promotion of worldviews, ideologies, political parties, regimes, and historical narratives.  In Bulgaria, this has been the case with CSKA, a child and instrument of the Bulgarian Communist Party.  This made me think that the CSKA case presents a contradiction: the recent/current use of swastikas and similar symbols by its fans is dissonant to communist or left-wing discourses (although, in political analysis, communist and fascist/Nazi regimes have both been classified as forms of authoritarian/totalitarian projects).  This antithesis seems a prima facie negative case in my game dimension analysis.  

Let me discuss this further with an example: in Cyprus, it has happened that fans of Omonoia, a left-oriented team, connected to the former communist and currently major left-wing political party (AKEL), displayed the flag of China in games against APOEL and other right-oriented teams.  This has been a joking response to slogans directed against Omonoia fans, calling them "Chinese" (because they are "too many" and because they are "communists").  Displaying the flag of China sends the message that "yes, we are Chinese, as you want" which is annoying as it invalidates the original message but also because it makes any defeat by the "Chinese," for those who devalue the "Chinese," more painful.  This explanation does not seem to hold in the case of CSKA fans displaying swastikas.  If we consider CSKA's history, who are the fascists or Nazis?

But then, after receiving Dora's second set of comments, I am thinking that this negative case in my game dimension analysis, may be very useful.  Using analytic induction, I can conceptually expand the game dimension analysis to include this case as an instance where the communicative function of language and other symbols can develop around contradictions, which make original or literal meanings less important (vis-à-vis the desired outcome), irrelevant, and even opposite.  The example of CSKA fans displaying swastikas and that of the "racist pastry" that "upsets" the foreigners can be consistently interpreted as such within the game dimension analysis.  The display of a symbol that stands for racism to defy UEFA or American culture or American imperialism, is a communicative act the purpose of which, on a manifest level, is to upset whomever the opponent or the enemy is.  So, the answer to the question "who are the fascists or Nazis?" is that you do not need them, as long as their symbols are effectively irritating, when it comes to seeking ways to challenge the opponent.

Returning to the "seriousness" discussion, the very fact that such symbols are used as tools of opposition, even when their original meaning is irrelevant or opposite, is an indicator of a deeper culture of prejudice, disrespect, and contempt.  The same applies to sex- and gender-related symbols. 

Gates and Ultras

Gates and Ultras fans are central actors in football fans' antagonistic discourse.  They are engaged in pre-game activities, including preparing banners, gathering in Clubs, marching or driving to the game together, making their presence visible and loud, sometimes blocking traffic, etc.  During the game, they are typically clustered in the "horseshoe" stands (behind the goalkeepers) and they are significantly more active than the rest of the fans.  They are the "fanatics," those who are more likely to also engage in physical violence and vandalism.  They are the ones who will—to answer another question—throw objects and fireworks and set off smoke generators.  In my research, they are the richest data sources.  Still, football fans' antagonistic discourse is not limited to those fans.  Participation in communicative acts during the game is typically massive in almost all discursive practices, including curses, offensive slurs, and body language.  This massive involvement is one thing that impressed me from the beginning of the fieldwork and it is supportive of my cultural hypothesis.

Sex and violence

Finally, a word on the violence dimension of the sexual discourses.  Τhe element of violence is always present in the sex-related themes in football fans' antagonistic discourse.  The discursive "fucking" of the opponent, be it the opposite team, its agents, its fans, their family members, affiliated politicians, historical figures, etc. is always violent.  Physical sexual violence (rape scenarios) is effectively degrading because the other party's body is being forcefully violated.  Even when physical violence is not explicitly present (as in slogans and chants that imply that members of the opposite side are promiscuous or are enjoying sex) and not necessarily implied (as in the case of praising the ingroup members for being super-masculine in that they have consenting sex with many women), the penetrated party is always degraded and this is a form of symbolic violence.  There is no positive vibe and certainly no "love-making" in any sense in our sex-related data. 

References

Kassimeris, Christos. 2021. Discrimination in Football. Routledge

Nikolaou, Konstantinos. 2020. The Presence of Racist Language in Fandom Facebook in Cyprus and Greece. Bachelor's Thesis. Cyprus University of Technology. [in Greek].

Stylianou, Stelios. 2011. The Use of Political Symbols by Young People in the Public Sphere of Cypriot Society: Summary of Main Findings and Conclusions. Cyprus Center for European and International Affairs. Nicosia, Cyprus. [in Greek].

Stylianou, Stelios, and Vivi Theodoropoulou. 2019. Explaining the Presence of Political Content in Football Fans’ Antagonistic Communication in Cyprus. Sport in Society 22: 1975-1989.

Theodoropoulou, Vivi. 2007. The Anti-fan within the Fan: Awe and Envy in Sport Fandom. In Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 316–327. New York: New York University Press.

Global Fandom: Stellios Stylanou Responds

Reply to Dora Valkanova and Nyasha Mboti

Stelios Stylianou

Cyprus University of Technology

Thank you, dear Dora and dear Nyasha, for your comments.  I am addressing your points below, trying to synthesize as much as possible.  I am organizing the text thematically to include replies to your comments together rather than following the order in which the comments were presented. 

Antagonism and protagonists

The concept of antagonism, as used in my analysis, is not related to an underlying power structure or hierarchy, as in drama genres and elsewhere.  The opposing fans are analyzed as equal, they are both antagonists, in the same sense that two teams are equal at the beginning of the game.  Superiority and dominance are sought, not given, and if/when they are attained, they must be constantly reaffirmed and defended.  To use a parallel example from UEFA Champion's League, when we say that e.g., Real Madrid will try to "defend her crown" we do not imply that Real Madrid has a given structural advantage on the playing field.

Antagonistic fans' discourse refers to language and other symbols used by each side against a theoretically equal opponent.  Yet, Nyasha's observations about how power differences are important in sustaining the opposition and, more so, making it worthwhile, hold.  In Limassol, the second-largest city in Cyprus, AEL and Apollon are the top-tier teams and they often compete with good chances to win the League or the Cup or enter the European championships.  The games between them are the most intense, both in the field and on the terraces.  Aris, the other Limassolian team, is much weaker on the field and on the terraces, and games between Aris and AEL or Aris and Apollon are less intense.  Nevertheless, the discursive landscape that unfolds during or around games involving Aris is still the same research object: fans' antagonistic discourse.  (Interestingly, this season, Aris is the "pleasant surprise" in the First Division League, ranked 4th and entering the Europa Conference League qualification stage).

Nyasha further observes that if "one rival is not doing well over a long period, and ceases to be a threat, the nature of the antagonistic discourse [...] is less sharp."  This is mostly true; but, note that a "long period" must be quite long.  Sports journalists refer to well-established clubs as "historical clubs", "great teams," and "eternal enemies," even if such clubs do not do well for a while, say a few years, but even more.  Consider Liverpool FC, for example, which was the "Queen of Europe" in the 1970s and 1980s and has only recently returned to the top ranks.  When the club was not doing well for quite a while, it was still a "great team."  In Cyprus, the recent example is Omonoia, who won her last title before 2020 in 2010.  It has now returned to "where she belongs" but even when she was doing badly, for about a decade, while her "eternal enemy" APOEL was winning the championship every single season from 2012-13 to 2018-19, the game between them was always named a "derby."

Returning to the fans, a club's performance does stimulate specific discursive themes, depending on which team is doing well on the field (and in the bank!).  During the aforementioned period, APOEL was being constantly accused by fans of most other top-tier clubs for being a "client" of the system, i.e., favored by the Football Federation authorities.  At the same time, APOEL fans were trolling Omonoia for its failure to enter the European championships.  So, there is a specialized discourse, yes, but the overall mode is the same: use any discursive means available to attack the opponent.

Nyasha points out that "winning over the opponent" may be contradictory in the sense that if you win over someone, the game is over, so "what next?" Perhaps the expression "winning over" is confusing.  The way I use it, "winning over the opponent" means prevailing on the terraces during each game (operationally speaking, being louder, more visible, and more offensive).  The goal is to prevail during the game and elsewhere and fans constantly attack their opponents sustaining the opposition, rather than resolving it.  Envy is also part of the motivation.  We talk about antipalon deos, in the sense that you need a worthwhile opponent, one that is a real threat, one that inspires awe, one that you can take seriously (Theodoropoulou, 2007).  One interview participant told us that in the last few years, when Omonoia was not doing well, APOEL fans started feeling lonely! 

Finally, can "antagonistic discourse be expanded to include beneficial acts as well, rather than just the negative and harmful?"  In free-market economies, "antagonismos" indeed means competition, a struggle to be better than others and therefore more successful in selling your product or service, and it can be beneficial, assuming that the object of antagonism is a well-valued one, like healthier food, safer cars, faster computers, etc.  In football, as a game, to struggle for victory or the league is in a sense beneficial, as the quality of the games is elevated, coaching techniques are developed, etc.  There are good things that can come out of fans' activity as well, such as the development of the social and esthetic aspect of antagonism.  There are instances where wonderful things happen, such as a beautiful coreo, a nicely performed non-insulting chant, social events around victories, etc.  In our data, such positive elements are found under the category "praising the in-group" but they are much less prevalent, compared to those that I have focused on in the present exchange.

The prevalence of racist discourses

The question about the prevalence of any kind of content in football fans' antagonistic discourse is hard to answer at the European level.  UEFA records and occasionally sanctions players, clubs, and national teams and this is evidence of the existence of the problem.  In the last few years, various entities have been punished, e.g., Slavia Prague, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Slovakia.  Locally too, there are incidences of racist behavior by players or fans which are occasionally sanctioned.  

Yet, the frequency of these publicized incidences is a poor estimator of the prevalence of racist and supremacist discourses in football games in Europe or elsewhere.  One reason for not including a quantitative discussion on this matter is that I have not studied the epidemiology of these discourses systematically.  What I have mentioned is that, in the last few years, non-racial politics and sex are noticeably more prevalent in football fans' antagonistic discourse in Cyprus, compared to racism.  This is the case in the physical field during football games, where my data come from.  I can also mention a bachelor's thesis that I have recently supervised, in which very little content was found on race, ethnicity, or religion on football-related Facebook pages in Cyprus (Nikolaou, 2020).  So, racism is not among the prevalent themes of the opposition discourse.  

Nevertheless, the current discussion is not about prevalence; our concern about racism in football is always academically and socially legitimate and it is further fueled by the general presence of racism on the internet.  Occasional events, spikes in social media, or reports by www.kickitout.org are enough to remind us that we are nowhere near the end of exclusion discourses and practices.  We can refer to numerous examples, as Dora has already done in her comments.  I would highlight one from the top level of European football, the recent social media racist abuse of England players Saka, Rashford, and Sancho, who missed penalties in the Euro 2020 final (July 2021).  Studying racist, sexist, homophobic, and all other discriminatory and exclusion discourses in football is and will continue to be a big and challenging project.  In my present work, I study these discourses in qualitative terms, within the theoretical framework that I call the cultural hypothesis.  Dora's comments are mostly supportive of this idea and this is very encouraging.

The "seriousness" of football fans' antagonistic discourse

Nyasha's comment that my presentation "seems to regard antagonistic discourse as non-serious in that it merely seeks to annoy and irritate the other side, rather than to reflect or entrench a long-lived national schism" offers an opportunity to present a more elaborate explanation.  

This discourse is always "serious," in two ways.  The first lies in the historical dimension, where history and politics are enacted and reiterated as ends in themselves.  This dimension, which is emphasized in my analysis, reflects the history of political conflicts.  When fans orally or otherwise use political—in the narrow sense, e.g., related to political parties—slogans in football games, the soundscape is indeed political, sometimes reminding pre-election gatherings.  Alternatively, when fans denounce political figures, such as the President of the Republic or Members of the Parliament, for their political actions, they are making political statements that are quite serious as well.  All this concerns the surface structure of the content of football fans' antagonistic discourse.

The second way lies in the game dimension, where history and politics are used as means to pique the opponent, not enacted as ends in themselves.  This communicative practice is serious too, precisely because, even though it is not explicitly focused on politics, it still is profoundly political. In Stylianou and Theodoropoulou (2019), we put it this way: 

Our game dimension should not be interpreted as an ahistorical explanation or one that defies culture.  By using historically and culturally specific elements as weapons in the symbols war, fans, without necessarily having an intention and without necessarily realizing that they do so, contribute to the sustaining of binary divisions and to the drawing of difference marking boundaries and inclusion-exclusion discourses. (p. 1986)

Extending this discussion to racism, to address Dora's question, let me first confirm that fans do use racist slurs to attack black players of opposing teams, when in fact there are black players in their own team as well.  It is "bizarre" in a sense, as Nyasha notes; but, not so in my game dimension analysis.  In this case, race becomes a selectively convenient attack weapon (like gender, sexuality, politics, and history) or, to quote Dora, "racist abuse becomes an instrument in the larger toolkit for abuse of players of the opposite team."  Thus, the point here, which I try to address by investigating the deep structure of the content of this discourse, is that the instrumentalization of race is a manifestation of the racism that exists in wider society and, as such, it is very serious and it bears critical (i.e., political, in the broader sense) analysis.  To quote Dora again "these 'instruments' have unintended consequences as well, namely—the very real dehumanization of nonwhite players."  I also agree with Kassimeris (2021, p. 33) that "not every fan using racist language is a racist," adding that fans using racist language still represent and promote racism.

To return to politics and history, let me present one more example where reducing history to a game involves contempt for pain, victimihood, and suffering.  The instance is a nostalgic chant about Anorthosis' home city, Famagusta, which is under Turkish occupation since 1974, sung by Anorthosis fans with love and devotion.  Omonoia fans occasionally sing a parody of this chant, in which they blame Famagusta residents as traitors and/or cowards because they abandoned their city when the invaders were approaching.  Blaming victims of war for cowardliness and/or accusing them of treason is certainly serious, morally, politically, and symbolically speaking, and it is as disturbing as the "say yes to racism" banner that Dora mentions.

Sex and politics in the game dimension

Is the sexual discourse a dimension of the political discourse? It certainly is, assuming that we refer to "political" in the broader sense, i.e., power structures and relations at all levels.  In my analysis, I also refer to politics in the narrow sense, i.e., macro-political processes around the distribution of power at the level of political institutions and authorities, i.e., government, parliament, legal system, political parties, etc.  This separation is analytical, not substantive.  

Let me extend this discussion to address Nyasha's comment that "the game dimension which makes history and politics irrelevant might also end up making the [sexual] normative underlying structures irrelevant."  Let me use two parallel real (from my data) examples of expression of binary opposition: (a) Displaying a banner with a picture of Che Guevara, to contrast the ingroup to the outgroup in terms of ideology, and (b) displaying a penis-shaped balloon, to contrast the ingroup to the outgroup in terms of masculinity.  The content of the first banner is "irrelevant" in the sense that the manifest purpose of using it is to irritate the opponent, not the promotion of Che's ideology.  But the display of the banner is not irrelevant as a political act: the instrumentalization of Che rests on the prerequisite that Che is a well-established figure of leftist ideology, one that you can conveniently use to compose your ideological superiority text.  The same explanation can be applied to the second example: the penis-shaped balloon is "irrelevant" in the sense that the manifest purpose of using it is to irritate the opponent, not to degrade women or gay men.  In this example too, the display of the balloon is not irrelevant as a political act: the instrumentalization of the penis rests on the prerequisite that it is a well-established symbol in the gender/sexuality discourse, again, one that you can conveniently use to compose your masculinist superiority text.  This is a point that I was making from the early stages of my study.  In Stylianou (2011), I stressed that we should not only study the surface structure of fans' antagonistic communication but the latent structure as well.  Attacking with homophobic tools is a homophobic act, regardless of whether your purpose is to attack homosexuals or to attack fans of the opposite side. 

Symbolic Contradictions

The observation about the use of swastikas (and other symbols of fascist, Nazi, or other extreme right ideologies) in the Bulgarian context confirms that this phenomenon is not unique to the Greek-Cypriot context.  Football has been a vehicle for the promotion of worldviews, ideologies, political parties, regimes, and historical narratives.  In Bulgaria, this has been the case with CSKA, a child and instrument of the Bulgarian Communist Party.  This made me think that the CSKA case presents a contradiction: the recent/current use of swastikas and similar symbols by its fans is dissonant to communist or left-wing discourses (although, in political analysis, communist and fascist/Nazi regimes have both been classified as forms of authoritarian/totalitarian projects).  This antithesis seems a prima facie negative case in my game dimension analysis.  

Let me discuss this further with an example: in Cyprus, it has happened that fans of Omonoia, a left-oriented team, connected to the former communist and currently major left-wing political party (AKEL), displayed the flag of China in games against APOEL and other right-oriented teams.  This has been a joking response to slogans directed against Omonoia fans, calling them "Chinese" (because they are "too many" and because they are "communists").  Displaying the flag of China sends the message that "yes, we are Chinese, as you want" which is annoying as it invalidates the original message but also because it makes any defeat by the "Chinese," for those who devalue the "Chinese," more painful.  This explanation does not seem to hold in the case of CSKA fans displaying swastikas.  If we consider CSKA's history, who are the fascists or Nazis?

But then, after receiving Dora's second set of comments, I am thinking that this negative case in my game dimension analysis, may be very useful.  Using analytic induction, I can conceptually expand the game dimension analysis to include this case as an instance where the communicative function of language and other symbols can develop around contradictions, which make original or literal meanings less important (vis-à-vis the desired outcome), irrelevant, and even opposite.  The example of CSKA fans displaying swastikas and that of the "racist pastry" that "upsets" the foreigners can be consistently interpreted as such within the game dimension analysis.  The display of a symbol that stands for racism to defy UEFA or American culture or American imperialism, is a communicative act the purpose of which, on a manifest level, is to upset whomever the opponent or the enemy is.  So, the answer to the question "who are the fascists or Nazis?" is that you do not need them, as long as their symbols are effectively irritating, when it comes to seeking ways to challenge the opponent.

Returning to the "seriousness" discussion, the very fact that such symbols are used as tools of opposition, even when their original meaning is irrelevant or opposite, is an indicator of a deeper culture of prejudice, disrespect, and contempt.  The same applies to sex- and gender-related symbols. 

Gates and Ultras

Gates and Ultras fans are central actors in football fans' antagonistic discourse.  They are engaged in pre-game activities, including preparing banners, gathering in Clubs, marching or driving to the game together, making their presence visible and loud, sometimes blocking traffic, etc.  During the game, they are typically clustered in the "horseshoe" stands (behind the goalkeepers) and they are significantly more active than the rest of the fans.  They are the "fanatics," those who are more likely to also engage in physical violence and vandalism.  They are the ones who will—to answer another question—throw objects and fireworks and set off smoke generators.  In my research, they are the richest data sources.  Still, football fans' antagonistic discourse is not limited to those fans.  Participation in communicative acts during the game is typically massive in almost all discursive practices, including curses, offensive slurs, and body language.  This massive involvement is one thing that impressed me from the beginning of the fieldwork and it is supportive of my cultural hypothesis.

Sex and violence

Finally, a word on the violence dimension of the sexual discourses.  Τhe element of violence is always present in the sex-related themes in football fans' antagonistic discourse.  The discursive "fucking" of the opponent, be it the opposite team, its agents, its fans, their family members, affiliated politicians, historical figures, etc. is always violent.  Physical sexual violence (rape scenarios) is effectively degrading because the other party's body is being forcefully violated.  Even when physical violence is not explicitly present (as in slogans and chants that imply that members of the opposite side are promiscuous or are enjoying sex) and not necessarily implied (as in the case of praising the ingroup members for being super-masculine in that they have consenting sex with many women), the penetrated party is always degraded and this is a form of symbolic violence.  There is no positive vibe and certainly no "love-making" in any sense in our sex-related data. 

References

Kassimeris, Christos. 2021. Discrimination in Football. Routledge

Nikolaou, Konstantinos. 2020. The Presence of Racist Language in Fandom Facebook in Cyprus and Greece. Bachelor's Thesis. Cyprus University of Technology. [in Greek].

Stylianou, Stelios. 2011. The Use of Political Symbols by Young People in the Public Sphere of Cypriot Society: Summary of Main Findings and Conclusions. Cyprus Center for European and International Affairs. Nicosia, Cyprus. [in Greek].

Stylianou, Stelios, and Vivi Theodoropoulou. 2019. Explaining the Presence of Political Content in Football Fans’ Antagonistic Communication in Cyprus. Sport in Society 22: 1975-1989.

Theodoropoulou, Vivi. 2007. The Anti-fan within the Fan: Awe and Envy in Sport Fandom. In Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 316–327. New York: New York University Press.

Politics and Sex in Football Fans' Antagonistic Discourse in Cyprus

I dedicated my blog last year to the Global Fandom Jamboree — a series of conversations amongst scholar from many different nations about fandom and fandom studies. I have been gratified by the level of interests this undertaking generated. We are already seeing unexpected collaborations — from conference sessions to co-authored papers — emerge from the match-making that was required to make this series work. But there were still some outstanding (in both senses of the term) conversations still to be completed when the blog shut down for the summer. So for the next few weeks, I will be sharing a bit more consideration of the topic.

Politics and Sex in Football Fans' Antagonistic Discourse in Cyprus

Stelios Stylianou

Cyprus University of Technology

About 12 years ago, two colleagues invited me to take part in the preparation of a grant proposal to study the use of political symbols by young people in the public sphere of Cyprus (area controlled by the Republic of Cyprus).  The idea was attractive as Cyprus has been a place of intense political struggle, including armed conflicts from the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies and a public sphere of political antagonism that has been effervescent well into the decades that followed.  Public use of political symbols was part of the political process, both in elite and lay discourses.  As a sociologist, even though my specialization was in criminology, I gladly accepted, we luckily got the grant, and we dived into the field.  One major site of data collection was football (soccer) games.  Part of the curiosity that motivated our study was the readily observable fact that football fans are the most vocal and loud among young people in publicly, massively, and constantly communicating political messages, especially during and around football games, but also on city walls, school desks, their bodies, and on the internet.  Our study soon entered the area of football fandom and focused mainly on fan identities.  In the following years, I ended up continuing this project, as I had moved to a communications department, I met a colleague who studied football fandom, and I had the opportunity to do more field research, mostly observations of football games and in-depth interviews with fans.  The focus of my study shifted toward football fans' antagonistic discourse.

Football fans perform and reaffirm their collective identity as fans of their team, members of fan clubs, residents of the team's home city, etc.  One mode of doing this is by expressing their devotion to their fandom object during football games, as other fans express their devotion to other fandom objects during other occasions or rituals: citizens express their devotion to their country during parades, believers express their devotion to their God(s) during religious services, and music lovers express their devotion to their favorite musicians during concerts.  Similarly, football fans chant, dance, paint themselves and display banners in favor of their team.  

There is a second way in which football fans produce and take part in the antagonistic discourse: they apply the us vs. them model, whereby, what they are (what they claim to be, what they identify with) is defined in binary opposition to what they are not (what they detest, what they condemn).  The embodiment of this latter element (them) is the opposite team and its fans.  Thus, through antagonistic discursive practices, fans praise the superiority of the ingroup by exposing the inferiority of the outgroup.  During football games, this is enacted in a game-like mode, with informal goals and rules, winners and losers (who will be louder, who will be more offensive, who will be more "creative" in destroying the opponent's reputation).  This game runs simultaneously with the football game: while 22 players play football on the field, hundreds or thousands of fans play symbols on the terraces.  Regarding the content of this communication, there are two main cultural domains where the antagonistic discourse is located: politics and sex (interestingly, sport-related content, e.g., about the opposite team's poor performance is almost absent).

Beginning with the former domain, there is, plainly speaking, a lot of politics in football fans' antagonistic discourse, as it would (reasonably but not necessarily) be expected in an intensively public political setting like Cyprus.  Football fans present identity discourses that densely contain political messages, such as praising or condemning political ideologies, parties, and figures.  What we are finding in our ethnography is that there is a political-historical dimension that explains the political elements in football fans' antagonistic discourse.  The presence of such elements is expressive, yet rational: fans affirm their political identity as citizens and this identity correlates with football clubs' origins, histories, ideological orientations, and party affiliations.

On the other hand, we are finding that the political gravity of these messages is variable and often noticeably light.  During antagonistic communication, fans exchange curses, call names, and otherwise discursively attack their opponents in ways that transform politics into a playful game, where the sacred becomes profane, heroes become bastards, and victims of violence become objects of contempt and ridicule.  Indicatively, emblematic historical figures, like Che Guevara, or symbols representing extremist ideologies, like swastikas, are displayed with the prime or sole intention to irritate and pique the opposite team's fans (rather than to promote what these symbols historically or politically stand for).  We term this the game dimension.  Our conclusion is that in their struggle to win over the opponent, fans use political symbols in an auxiliary-instrumental mode, whereby the historically established meaning of such messages becomes irrelevant.  In other words, these messages are just convenient and effective means to attack the opponents.  This is the first idea/observation that I would like to share in this conversation, asking to what extent this happens elsewhere too.  Do football fans use historically and politically sensitive derogatory (perhaps anti-patriotic, extremist, vulgar, etc.) terms to pique their opponents in the course of a symbols game?

Turning to the second domain, sex, we must first note that sex-related themes are more widespread than politics in they manifestations in football fans' antagonistic discourse, both quantitatively as well as in terms of discursive structures.  Their content and intensity differ across societies but they follow a more or less common discursive form: to be a (serious, active, real, etc.) fan of a football team, you "must be" reputable, heterosexual, masculine, and you must (be able to and actually) penetrate others (interestingly, these formative "criteria" apply to female fans as well).  These identity elements are displayed in various ways, including what fans say and do during and around the game.  Various sex-related themes are found in our data, the most prevalent among which are those articulating us vs. them divisions concerning gender, sexuality, and family or descent reputation.  If I were given a word limit of just four words to present our thematic findings, those would be fags, pussies, sluts, and bastards.  These are the main claims against the outgroup, which simultaneously signify the superior qualities of the in-group; that is, we are heterosexuals (not fags like them), males (not pussies like them), reputable (not sluts like their mothers and sisters), and honorable (not bastards like them).

Why do fans choose to use these sex-related themes? Part of the answer comes from the nature of antagonistic sports, where a binary opposition (winner vs. loser) is native, more clearly so if winning is a function of scoring against an opponent. In football, scoring involves the physical violation of a designated territory, which conceptually invites penetrative metaphors. But such interpretation makes sense only if contextualized in a heteronormative sexist milieu, specifically one that promotes penetrative, hegemonic, or otherwise dominant masculinities. This necessary condition leads to a more sociological explanation, obtained by zooming out of the football game as an event to ask where these discursive elements come from. My answer is mainstream culture. The evidence, at least as I interpret it, is in favor of what I call the cultural hypothesis: what we see and hear in and around football games are manifestations of the underlying normative structures of sexism, heteronormativity, and patriarchy. These structures are discursively manifested during football games, as, there, they more easily find their way out of mainstream normative barriers (this discourse is also found in mediated content, such as print newspapers and on the internet, albeit to a lesser degree, due to formal or informal censorship). I support this answer by juxtaposing it with an alternative explanation, namely the subcultural hypothesis. I argue that football fans are not a subculture, as they share with mainstream culture more than they oppose. They are significantly different only in behavioral terms: they depart from mainstream norms of communication and decency. To conclude, I quote one of our interview participants: "Just go to a football game to understand our society". So, the second question I would like to discuss is to what extent hegemonic or otherwise dominant masculinity (as expressed in my description above) persists or is declining in football fans' antagonistic discourse.

Transformation of the Functions of Kazakh Television in the Information Society

Transformation of the Functions of Kazakh Television
in the Information Society

 

ULBOSSYN M. YESSENBEKOVA

L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University

Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan

 

During the research, we obtained the results that substantiate the necessity to transform television in Kazakhstan which is a universal institution of public life in the information society performing political and socio-cultural functions. Meanwhile, it is worth noting that over the past 10 years the Kazakhstan government has initiated institutional measures to create and maintain the system of socially responsible television, and to improve information legislation and to reconstruct the paradigm of the state information policy.

The Kazakh society promotes and supports the idea of establishing equal relationships between television broadcasters and their audience and developing a transparent media economics and media research. In the present paper, we systematize the national legislation of Kazakhstan in the field of freedom of speech; creation, acquisition, processing and dissemination of information; and organization of activities of journalists and mass media.

The fundamental principles of socially responsible television should embrace openness and transparency. The same characteristics of television were specified in the European Convention on Transfrontier Television. The Convention also names universality, diversity, responsibility and independence.

Thus, the old broadcast schedules are being replaced with editorial policy, and social irresponsibility of media-managers’ television is superseded by a growing responsibility. Under such conditions, TV ratings and measuring TV audience will encourage institutional changes, expansion of TV audience and its transformation from a passive segment into an active participant in social and political discourse.

Modern convergence-prone television implies the transformation of passive audience into active consumers and full-fledged participants in the complicated communication process. With the emergence of interactive television, this process takes on a different quality.

In this context, we can identify the information society with the civil society, in which not only instruments of political communication, but also the major actors of these processes have been significantly changed. Thus, society and its institutions, as well as the entire audience, are becoming active participants in multilateral communication that can influence not only the program policy, but also take part in forming and administering the television agenda.

The legislative acts adopted by the Kazakh Parliament regulating the spheres of the information policy and information communications contain principal provisions on the place and the role of television in the territory of Kazakhstan, and stipulate the necessity to reconsider television as a single complex of mass media.

In the given paper, we intend to demonstrate the degree to which the legal system of Kazakhstan in the sphere of the information policy is formed and integrated. We believe that further democratic modernization of the social system, accession of Kazakhstan to international agreements on human and civil rights and freedoms, as well as on cross-border movement of information flows, will become a catalyst for further development of the information society and the Kazakh digital television.

Therefore, it is necessary to continue to implement tasks on enhancing the effectiveness of the public administration system and ensure the access to innovative infrastructure in the field of information and communication. Creation of the information environment for socio-economic and cultural development of the state and society, as well as the expansion of the Kazakh information space, also suggest pooling the effort of the state and society. Since the government program “Information Kazakhstan-2020” is implemented in two stages (Stage 1 – from 2013 to 2017; Stage 2 – from 2018 to 2020), with a view to achieving its main objectives the following key indices have been determined:

1.                  Availability of the information and communication infrastructure in households of the Republic of Kazakhstan – 100%; the number of Internet users in 2020 – 75%; the level of computer literacy of the population – 80%; coverage with digital television and radio services of Kazakhstan’s population – 95%.

2.                  The share of the sector of information and communication technologies in the country’s GDP – 4%; the share of public health organizations operating within the single health care network – 100%; the share of scientific and educational organizations operating within the single national scientific and educational network – 100%.

3.                  The share of electronic mass media in the total number of mass media registered in Kazakhstan – 100%; the share of Kazakhstani online stores in the total turnover of products and services with electronic payment – 40%.

4.                  The share of public services provided electronically – 50%; the share of electronic public services rendered in relation to the total number of services provided in the traditional form – 80%.

Official documents adopted in 2010 do not contain exhaustive answers to modern challenges, some of them are concentrated on resolving technical issues about introduction of digital broadcasting, but they lack approaches to organization of television in the digital environment.

Tendencies in the development of the global information space require the state and society to jointly search for and establish new categories of electronic mass communication tools reflecting the processes of inevitable convergence of information and communication. It is also necessary to realize the inevitability of an increase in social responsibility of television and its development in the information society which become increasingly topical in the conditions of Kazakhstan.

Nowadays, the special importance in attributable to network-based mass communication tools, online and other information and communication resources that provide open access to informational and moral values, encourage the audience to freely express their opinion, and generate a massive inflow of original ideas. The abovementioned principles are the fundamental democratic values of society.

The problems of formation of the information society in Kazakhstan are reflected in many legislative acts and government programs. In general, they are aimed at resolving political-economic and social issues about eliminating information inequality in society, as well as technocratic and technological problems.

There is an integral legal institution developed in the country, i.e. legislation in the field of freedom of speech; creation, acquisition, processing and dissemination of information; and organization of activities of journalists and mass media. This system is constantly and actively evolving. Several objective factors have a stimulating effect on this process. Such catalysts incorporate further democratic modernization of the social system, accession of Kazakhstan to international agreements on human and civil rights and freedoms, as well as on cross-border movement of information flows, etc.

Government agencies and authorities gradually change their attitude towards mass media and create departments to deal with mass communication channels. The program of electronic government is being gradually implemented. The early 2000s were marked by a discussion about the issues of further strengthening the democratic trajectory of Kazakhstan’s development. This work culminated in the adoption of two important documents: the Concept of Civil Society Development in Kazakhstan for 2006–2011 and the Concept of Development of the Information Space Competitiveness in Kazakhstan for 2006–2009.

Later, all these changes in legislation were enshrined in the law “On Amendments and Additions to the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan”. Under the influence of these factors, the liberal trajectory of the development of media law in Kazakhstan was approved. It was implemented by adoption of the following documents:

1.     The laws “On Mass Media”, “On Informatization”, and “On Communications”.

2.     The Concept of Civil Society Development.

3.     The Concept of Development of the Information Space Competitiveness in Kazakhstan.

4.     The Concept of Information Security in the Republic of Kazakhstan.

5.     The Program for Reducing Information Inequality in the Republic of Kazakhstan (the government program “Information Kazakhstan-2020”).

The government program “Information Kazakhstan-2020” underlines a crucial role of electronic mass media in strengthening democratic institutions and society development. This is attributable to traditionally high level of coverage with conventional television which represents the most effective means of gaining information. The recent sociological research studies have shown that 88% of Kazakhs prefer watching domestic TV channels, while 53% of respondents watch them daily. Online media encompass a wide range of various resources, the most important of which are presented in Table 1.

 

Table 1. Audience of online media projects in Kazakhstan

Indicator

Mail.ru Group

Vk.com

Ok.ru

Monthly Reach

Thousand people

4209,7

2718,2

1937,5

Population ages 12–54

80,1%

51,7%

36,9%

Average Weekly Reach

Thousand people

3635,8

1923,0

1282,6

Population ages 12–54

69,2%

36,6%

24,4%

Average Weekly Frequency

142,4

114,6

55,7

Average Daily Reach

Weekdays

Thousand people

2462,7

1027,3

681,4

Population ages 12–54

46,9%

19,5%

13,0%

Weekends

Thousand people

1922,6

925,9

566,0

Population ages 12–54

36,6%

17,6%

10,8%

Average Daily Frequency

32,1

31,8

15,7

Kazakhstani television broadcasters are represented by several binary oppositions: conventional television and innovative electronic mass communication channels; television and the environment of online and mobile television; open access to information and the problem of restricting access to data; opportunity to freely express opinions and inability to take it.

Hence, society and the sphere of electronic mass media in particular experience serious problems associated with the necessity for institutional changes. These changes are impossible without improvement and further liberalization of national legislation, implementation of the updated information policy and modernization of the system of television and radio broadcasting in the conditions of formation of the information society as an important element of civil society.

Admittedly, in practice, the development of television is hindered by the inadequacy of legal regulation in information relations within the socio-political system and by poor social awareness of the issues mentioned, which creates managerial risks.

We believe that the only effective mechanism for its construction is the introduction of the model of the public media sphere. To preserve and augment considerably the advantages of television in the Kazakhstani context, one should understand the nature of the impact of information and communication technologies on the media industry. We suppose that today’s television system in Kazakhstan can be characterized as a combination of all-Republic and regional, state and commercial, production and network companies. We assume that the need of the information society can lead to formation of a more flexible system of TV channels that will rely on solely the interests and needs of different segments of the audience.

Interactive technologies should facilitate this process due to their capability to establish the so-called “feedback” with the audience. Without them, it is impossible to achieve a qualitative programming that meets the needs of public institutions and individuals. Such an audience becomes an active social object of television communication acquiring the properties of a functional element of the political order, which means returning to a new technological paradigm – the instruments of the direct democratic public governance. Building new media relationships and game-changing content management result in increased civic engagement. And this will be an effective way of changing the social segment.

 

 

Ulbossyn M. Yessenbekova is a professor in the Department of Teleradio and Public Relations at L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Republic of Kazakhstan. Her research interest is scientific direction of media such as trends in the development of modern mass communications, and human in the information society.