Pop, the Question (S5: E41)
Fight For Your Right to Fandom
Featured Guest Kat Heller (Undergraduate, Animation & Visual Effects, Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, Drexel University)
Host and Producer Melinda Lewis, PhD (Associate Director, Marketing & Media)
Dean Paula Marantz Cohen, PhD (Dean, Pennoni Honors College)
Executive Producer Erica Levi Zelinger (Director, Marketing & Media)
Producer Brian Kantorek (Assistant Director, Marketing & Media)
Research and Script Melinda Lewis, PhD
Audio Engineering and Editing Brian Kantorek
Original Theme Music Brian Kantorek
Production Assistance Noah Levine
Social Media Outreach Jaelynn Vesey
Graphic Design Bhavna Ganesan
Logo Design Michal Anderson
Additional Voiceover Malia Lewis
Recorded May 20, 2022 through virtual conferencing.
Pop, the Question is a production of Marketing & Media in Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University.
The views expressed in this podcast are not necessarily those of Drexel University or Pennoni Honors College.
Copyright © 2022 Drexel University
Episode Summary
Fandom often gets a bad rap, with communities surrounding popular texts like Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and professional wrestling framed as toxic, desperate, or some combination of both. But fan communities are also the source of vibrancy and community-building with fans who make and share art, fan fiction, fanzines, clubs/message boards, cosplay, and conventions. Participatory culture helps expand the boundaries of the text, expanding its reach and meanings. Host Dr. Melinda Lewis explores these communities with Drexel University student, artist, writer, and consummate fan Kat Heller, who discusses their own research and relationship with fandom. The conversation also dives into the depths of the HBO Max series Our Flag Means Death, offering overt queer representation with its characters and, in turn, plenty for fans to enjoy.
TRANSCRIPT
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Speaker 1:
(Opening music)
Melinda Lewis:
Welcome to Pop, the Question, a podcast that exists at the intersection of pop culture and academia.
We sit down and talk about our favorite stuff through the lenses of what we do and who we are. From
Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University, Dr. Melinda Lewis here, I'm your host.
Hey everybody. I'm here with Kat Heller, an animation and visual effects major here at Drexel
university and also a scholar and maker of fandom, and we are going to talk about fandom and some of
the work that they're doing in their own fan communities, some of the history, and some of the ways
that we see fandom play out in popular culture. Hey, Kat.
Kat Heller:
Hi, Melinda. Happy to finally be here.
Melinda Lewis:
Hi, what's going on?
Kat Heller:
Lots of things. I have now three zines to talk about today, so that's very exciting.
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah! Let's get into it. I first met you doing the STAR Scholars Program. From your perspective, what is
the STAR Scholars Program?
Kat Heller:
It is a way for first year Drexel students to spend their summer researching any topic of their choice,
working with a mentor on a project that you outline, and you're essentially getting to geek out for the
entire summer over whatever you want in layman's terms. At least that's what I did. It's a lot of fun.
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah. And you're an animation and visual effects major, so what was your research for that program?
Kat Heller:
Well, whenever I was asked, I would say that I was researching fan and participatory culture, specifically
the entomology and the history, which essentially just means that I was researching fandom and its
participants and its history. So where did specific terms come from? Where did practices come from?
Where did stereotypes come from? That's something I really dove into. I asked the question, "All right. I
am a fan. I've been a fan my entire life. Where did all of these things that I have been doing since I was a
child with access to the internet, where did all of these things start?" So fan fiction, fan art, conventions,
terms like fan girl, fandom, where did these things come from and how have they evolved? And I was
very surprised to find roots in the 1920s and practices going back to Broadway and things like that.
Melinda Lewis:
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I'm interested to know what were the roots of that particular fandom? What did you find in that
research that made sense to you in terms of the root? Or what maybe struck you as interesting?
Kat Heller:
Well, first things that comes to mind is I remember the rabbit hole I went down that it came to be
matinee girls of Broadway. They really spearheaded female fandom specifically. They were these young
factory worker girls that would go hand in hand to these matinee Broadway showings. They would swap
postcards, they would engage with the stars, they would send letters to each other and to the theaters.
And one thing that I really loved researching was the fact that they would recreate costumes from these
shows and they would just wear them out and about. Obviously, that's what we would now refer to as
cosplay.
They were these young, poor immigrant women that were spearheading. They didn't know how
big this would grow. Nowadays, there's whole industries revolving around fandom, yet here are these
women just in their apartments, drinking tea and making dresses. Honestly, just what I trace back is that
it's always been about young people finding a community, or even older people, but it started with just
that young fire that's lit under, so it's like you love something and you love it so much. That's what I
traced a lot of it back to, and then further going down the timeline in the sixties, Star Trek. That's when
a lot of the stereotypes really started to come about.
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 5:
Space...the final frontier. To boldly go where no man has gone before.
Kat Heller:
There were plenty of panels and articles written about matinee girls as hysterical female fans. But we
see the formation of the modern stereotype when it came to the Trekkies. You have people getting
married at these very elaborate themed weddings and very feral fan conventions. I forget the name of
the magazine that specifically wrote this article, but it was all about one specific fan convention. It really
just shed a really negative, fanatic light. When I say fanatic, I'm really referring to original Latin definition
where it's fervent, excessive obsession with something. Not just, "I really like this thing and I'm engaging
with it with other people." No. It was essentially if you like this thing, you are crazy and you are engaging
with it to the Nth degree. Then, it was essentially packaged in this article as something that was not
really palatable.
Melinda Lewis:
It's like an otherness. It's like an oddity. And its own a side show narrative of like, look at these odd
figures who really like this thing too much.
Kat Heller:
Exactly.
Melinda Lewis:
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There's a limit where you can be a fan of something, but this is an extreme fandom that goes beyond
and makes us very nervous and scared. I don't know if you've thought about this, but do you have a line
where people seem to become too uncomfortable with fandom?
Kat Heller:
Frankly, as long as no one is getting hurt or is negatively impacted, it just bugs me that people give
people a hard time about engaging with this thing that they love. As long as no one is being disturbed or
hurt, and when I say disturbed, I don't just mean like, "Oh, I don't want to see this person running
around with a giant fake foam sword at a party." I'm talking an actual negative impact. Just let people do
what they want to do. You watch football on Sundays. I don't like football. I like wearing a sweater that
looks like that of a character. Just let me live. Let people do what they want to do.
Melinda Lewis:
I don't mind that you seem to think you are the football player when you put on that jersey.
Kat Heller:
Yeah, exactly. Is that cosplay? Let's unpack that.
Melinda Lewis:
I think that people feel pretty okay with music fandom and sports fandom seems to exist in this
threshold where people are comfortable, despite the fact that sports fandom is pretty intense. And we
can talk about the entire culture of sports fandom.
Speaker 5:
Ladies and gentlemen, the most beloved mascot in sports, your Phillie Phanatic!
Kat Heller:
That honestly reminds me. The first journalistic use of the word fan was actually in reference to
baseball. Now that we're throwing around the fact that, "Oh, yeah. Is wearing a jersey cosplay?" But
now I'm like, "Hmm. These people really don't have any ground to stand on right now." You are a fan
through and through as well. You are putting on that jersey and you are screaming right along. So now
I'm really thinking about that. Is it cosplay?
Melinda Lewis:
You know what this really got me also thinking about of so much of sports fandom is also centered
around what I would do if I were coach, if I were manager. Which to me, could that be a form of fan
fiction that you're just not writing down? Except your Twitter maybe of like, "If I were this guy, I would
da, da, da. I would move this person here, and I would put that there." You're essentially writing your
own Star Trek fiction, but with real life players. Is that a little bit more cool? Or is there a little bit more
to unpack to that? But where are those lines?
Kat Heller:
I think when people start romanticizing real people, for example, years ago when people would
obsessively write Dan and Phil fan fiction or YouTubers Markiplier and Jacksepticeye. People ship that to
the Nth degree. For me, shipping, which is wanting two people to be in a relationship, that's where I
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draw the line, because it's real people. And the people that are really into sports, the way you just
worded it, they're just saying like, "Oh, yeah. I would put this person here, this person here, this person
here," and I'm just drawing a weird flowy parallel there. So I guess that's where I draw the line when it
comes to fandom. Don't rope real people into it. Don't make them this parasocial person on a pedestal
that you're throwing into all of these situations. What if they found that piece of art or something that
you created or that piece of fan fiction you wrote? How would that make them feel?
Melinda Lewis:
I want to really talk about how you exercise your fandom or exercise your right to fan.
Kat Heller:
Exercise my right to fan. What's that song? It's the right to party or something like that?
Speaker 5:
(Singing) You've got to fight for your right.
Melinda Lewis:
You've got to fight for your right to fandom! Yeah.
Kat Heller:
Yes, exactly.
Melinda Lewis:
You are a fan, but you are also a fan maker. You create stuff. That's the thing I'm interested in. The
making of stuff.
Kat Heller:
I guess it just evolved from me being solely a consumer of fan content or of the source material to giving
back to the community, just growing into the avenues and the means to do that. The first instance of me
really engaging with fandom that I can think of was for a light and FX show in my hometown called
Ghoulmaster's Ghosts. It was put on at Six Flags Great Adventure. I was around eight years old at the
time. And this guy, he took inspiration from Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, and drag. It was this whole
Gothic extravaganza with lasers and EDM and whatnot. My little brain took it and ran.
Speaker 5:
Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you Ghoulmaster and his ghosts!
Kat Heller:
He was the Ghoulmaster. He had the mansion on the hill and whatnot. He was always strange. I would
not be the person I am without this stage show. I loved it, and the first piece of fan art to my memory
that I can draw was that of Ghoulmaster and the ghosts all dancing around. I took white chalk and I tried
to get the smoke right and whatnot. But I ended up bringing that to school one day, and I found two
other kids that were really into the show as well. That's the base of fandom. It's loving something and
finding a community based around it. Whether it's one friend, whether it's two, nowadays it's online,
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whether it's at your school. For heaven's sake, I'm in Drexel Dragon Jedi, which is literally a light saber
choreography group. That's a bunch of nerds engaging with fandoms, and it's recognized by the school
which is great!
Speaker 9:
Hey, it's your mom. I have a question about that podcast you do. Are you on the Instagram or the
Twitter or the Facebook? If I have an idea for a podcast, how do I get in touch with you? Love you. Bye.
Melinda Lewis:
Sup, Mom? Yeah. You can find us on all those things actually. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, just go to
Popquestpod on any one of those and follow. If you want to send us ideas, you can either go over to our
website and leave us a message at PopQPodcast. Or you can get us directly at popq@drexel.edu. You
can actually find us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher. I can help set it up when I get home, but then you have
to promise me to rate and review. All right. Love you. Bye.
Speaker 5:
(Song playing).
Melinda Lewis:
So in terms of where you're at now with fandom, what are you doing?
Kat Heller:
Great question. I'm figuring that out myself. I'm working on my third fan zene right now, or typically just
called a zene. And essentially it is just a collection of fan work centered around a specific topic. That can
be a specific movie, a franchise, sometimes even a specific chapter of something or an episode,
something like that. The second zene that I ever worked on was called Our Favorite Scene Zine. It
focused on people's different visual retellings of one very specific scene from the book Red, White, and
Royal Blue. Or the one that I'm working on now, Spring Tides, which is themed around the HBO Max
show Our Flag Means Death. Have you seen it?
Melinda Lewis:
Of course! Of course I have. Yes!
Kat Heller:
Dude! I'm broken! I'm broken for this show!
Melinda Lewis:
And the amount of fandom. The amount of fan art, the fan connection, just the amount of discourse
around the fandom is so massive. It's cool to see how people have responded to this particular show,
and so much of the discourse has been so much that used to be coded and then represented in fan
fiction actually made it onto the show. It actually feels like fan fiction as opposed to the base text, which
I think is why everybody's stomachs are gurgling with excitement. Because it's like, "Oh my gosh, you
put it!" I think somebody was like, "I'm sorry, I don't have to write it? It's already in there that they're
kissing?"
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Kat Heller:
We've been burned so many times and you're giving us overt, healthy queerness and positive minority
representation. We are sitting here like, "We don't need to do it ourselves for once?That's awesome!"
Speaker 7:
Bonifacia?
Speaker 6:
I go by Jim these days.
Speaker 7:
Well, come in, Jim. We'll have cake.
Speaker 6:
Coming, Nana!
Kat Heller:
I could talk about this show and its importance to fandom and just what it's doing online for all kinds of
discussion. I could go on about that for a hot minute, and I have with my friends. There we go. There's
some real life fandom. We're talking about the meta of this show. Whether it be the historical accuracy
of Stede's costumes versus Taika Waititi being like, "I'm going to be black beard in a purple t-shirt and
leather pants." Projects like these are just really something special. Oh, goodness. Here's a show that
has put the subtext in the text that so often was drawn out by people watching.
And saying, "Nah, this is what I'm going to do instead." And another really nice thing that was
awesome to see in this show was the fact that these queer characters, their queerness was not the
center of a crisis, which was awesome and something that fan works have been remedying within
source materials for years. You have, say, Olu and Jim from Our Flag Means Death for example, and Jim
is non-binary. I dare say in most other pieces of media, Olu would be having a full crisis like, "Oh, my
God. What does this mean for me, liking a non-binary person?" No! Instead it's, "Oh, I like my friend.
However, the big crisis here is they've been raised to be this mercenary killing machine bent on
revenge."
Speaker 6:
I was out there for weeks before anyone could find me.
Speaker 8:
Dude, that's awful, man. Look, for what it's worth, you're surprisingly well-adjusted for an orphan raised
by a nun to be a killing machine
Speaker 6:
She's my only family.
Speaker 8:
Well, look, if you wanted, I could be family.
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Kat Heller:
Seeing queerness not portrayed as a crisis? That was so refreshing to see in this show. And specifically
one thing that I'd like to mention for the zine I'm working on now for Spring Tides, there is this little
channel in there, and it's called Share the Joy. This really hearkens back to the fact that fandom is a
community, and it's just all of us talking about nice things in our lives. It's a community that is built
around this piece of media, but everyone is just online friends. There's a reason it's been adapted to so
many different platforms and mediums, is because something that's positive is bound to grow.
People are going to be drawn in. People are going to tell their friends. That just wouldn't happen
if it was the negative environment that some people stereotype it to be. I want to draw back on the
Trekkies for a second, because that gatekeeping stereotype, so many of the instances that really
spearheaded that, they happen at Star Trek conventions. There was that one SNL skit that would just
show really gate keepy fans. Like, "No, it came from this episode," that type of thing. And the, "For God's
sake, it's just a TV show!"
Speaker 5:
Before I answer any more questions, there's something I wanted to say. Having received all your letters
over the years, and I've spoken to many of you and some of you have traveled hundreds of miles to be
here, I'd just like to say get a life, will you, people? For crying out loud, it's just a TV show. I mean, look at
you. Look at the way you're dressed. You've turned an enjoyable little job that I did as a Lark for a few
years into a colossal waste of time. I mean, how old are you?
Kat Heller:
That whole stereotype.
Speaker 5:
What have you done with yourselves?
Kat Heller:
It's true for some people, but at least in my experience within these smaller communities, it really
doesn't exist. If you are creating something that you are passionate about, if you hold up whatever
you're doing at the end and you say, "This is cool," as long as it's not offensive or anything like that,
share it. Because odds are there is going to be someone who is going to be just as excited about it. But
when it comes to engaging in fandom online, just do it. If you have a fan fiction that you've written, just
post it on AO3. Put the right tags on it. There is an audience for it. If you create some kind of art based
on a piece of media, whether it be directly depicting the characters or something that happened in the
cannon or an alternate universe or something super abstract.
And this captures the vibes of this episode, someone is going to love it. I understand why
someone might be nervous, because I very much was nervous the first time that I posted a piece of fan
art, but there's really nothing to be afraid of. Just be smart online, don't make anything offensive, keep
it wholesome. That's what fandom really just needs to be. It needs to be an outlet. It's a positive
community. But I said it before, I wouldn't be the person I am today without fandom. I wouldn't be in
animation if it weren't for fandom. I loved How to Train your Dragon!
Speaker 6:
Not going to be afraid of.
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Kat Heller:
And I said, "I want to create that magic for other people!"
Speaker 6:
Toothless! What is wrong with you?
Speaker 7:
Back tracking.
Speaker 6:
He's not usually like this. Oh, no.
Kat Heller:
So that's the long and the short of that. I guess the long.
Melinda Lewis:
Well, Kat, I always appreciate you going into the long of it. And I could do this for another four hours,
but alas.
Kat Heller:
Alas.
Melinda Lewis:
Thanks so much for hanging out and talking to us about fandom. You are a fan maker, and you're an
expert on your own work. It's always a pleasure.
Kat Heller:
Thank you. I hope that I'm able to maybe inspire someone to post their art or a fan fiction or something,
what have you. I hope that some creative gets something out of this.
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah.
Kat Heller:
Take care! Thank you for having me.
Melinda Lewis:
Bye, everyone.
Pop, the Question was researched and hosted by Dr. Melinda Lewis. Our theme music and
episodes are produced by Brian Kantorek with additional audio production by Noah Levine. All of this
was done under the directorship of Erica Levi Zelinger, the deanship of Dr. Paula Marantz Cohen, and
the Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University.
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Speaker 5:
I know it's important. I do. I honestly do. But we talking about practice, man. What are we talking about?
Practice. We talking about practice, man.