Wang, Erika Ningxin;
Ge, Liang;
(2023)
Fan Conflicts and State Power in China: Internalised Heteronormativity, Censorship Sensibilities, and Fandom Police.
Asian Studies Review
, 47
(2)
pp. 355-373.
10.1080/10357823.2022.2112655.
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Abstract
Fans as consumers of cultural products have received a great deal of attention from sociologists and cultural studies academics in recent years, and research on the relationship between fans and state power is gradually gaining traction. Through a 12-month digital ethnography of a large-scale fan conflict surrounding The Untamed, a popular ‘Boys’ Love’-adapted drama in China, we uncover a complex picture of two-way exploitation between fans and state power. By doing so, the article challenges previous assumptions by Chinese and Western scholars that fan culture is resistant to or negotiates with mainstream culture. We show that by perpetuating heteronormativity and censorship, fans internalise ‘reporting’ as a norm of legitimacy in consumer culture. Some fans portray themselves as ‘fandom police’ and use censorship to report ‘illegal’ comments by their rivals in order to prevail in fan conflicts. However, the power gained by these fandom police is illusory. Their practices are exploited by the state as a tool for censoring media users’ speech and cultural production, with the ultimate consequence of perpetuating censorship and heteronormativity.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Fan Conflicts and State Power in China: Internalised Heteronormativity, Censorship Sensibilities, and Fandom Police |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/10357823.2022.2112655 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2022.2112655 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Fan conflicts, fandom police, state power, fan communities and subcommunities, heteronormativity, censorship, The Untamed, consumer culture, China |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10200881 |
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