Once a fan, always a fan??
Of what am I a fan?
The Simpsons
Interval workouts
Everything bagels
The Bayport Cookery
Anna Karenina
As a fourth grader, or was it third? In any event I was a youngster. I was a fan…no I attempted being a fan….no really, I feigned being a fan of the boy band, New Kids on the Block. It isn’t the embarrassment of age that has me revising the past. Even at the time I knew that my interest in this pop culture phenomenon was not on par with that of my classmates. Whereas in a rare moment of conformity, I had a tape or two (did they make a Christmas album? – according to YouTube they did and thus I had two tapes) and I joined in with the gossip and puppy love crushing. One day Mary and I bought magazines (Teen Beat, I suspect, or at least the like). It was my first venture into pre-teen print media consumption, but the walls of the room Mary shared with her sister indicated they had been on the stuff for a while. We cut out pictures; Mary affixed them to the collage on her side of the room, but my cutouts stayed in a folder with the rest of the magazine. The first sign that I was hiding a secret: I didn’t really care.
Even yesterday afternoon, after having begun this semi-essay, while working out at the gym my training buddy grabbed us magazines for the 1.75 hour long bike ride. She handed me the latest issue of Blender. My thoughts on this publication, which I had never seen before, are many but most immediately I was struck by my complete inability to read beyond a few headlines or captions. Musicians I like, may even be a bit fannish about, were mentioned or featured and to read such mundane 50 word “articles.� Secondary thoughts included: gosh to stay on top of what’s hot a teacher would have to read (or at least look at) this kind of publication; this piece of popular culture is ripe for student deconstruction (is it information, is it an advertisement, how are bands, fans, products, and so on portrayed).
When the band’s appearance at the Minnesota State Fair was announced, to my friends’ squealing glee, I agreed to campaign for my parents to let me go to the show with the other girls. Somehow, the posse of pre-teens made it to the bandstand and I did not. Let me be clear that my folks were neither so strict nor poor. Without informing the gals, I secretly just did not push that hard for a ticket and a ride. Even at that point I knew I could only fake being a fan for so long – even though the late 80s boy band was marketed to just my social circle: middle class, mostly white, urban pre-teen or teenage girls.
A pet theory of mine is of the inherent “whiteness� of boy bands, but without having thoroughly investigated I would not want to irresponsibly hypothesize. Ann Powers’ New York Times review suggests that I am not alone in thinking this. “One bit of sweet revenge accomplished by today's teeny-bop stars is the symbolic displacement of the popular boy. Boy bands like 'N Sync and the Backstreet Boys teach girls to favor sensitive choirboy types over the football-playing kind who barely assert themselves on a date until it comes to fumbling in the back of a car.� (Ann Powers, “Three Heartthrob Material Boys Threaten to Burst Bubble Gum,� The New York Times, Monday Late Edition – Final, 6 March 2000). While race does not arise specifically in her brief contextualization for the review of a concert performance by LFO it is implicit. Perhaps this idea could serve as the basis of a learning moment for the right age group: take three boy bands from three different decades (or five year periods, or the same year….) and compare to whom they might/do appeal based on image, music, performance outlets. Now compare boy bands to the girl groups.
Fandom is social. It involves interactions with other and a shared interest. There is status to be earned and maintained. I suspect, or at the least wonder, if my independent and introverted nature is not an ideal match for the efforts required to maintain or the benefits associated with an avid fan role. Has the study of fandom considered personality traits or developmental status in who and how fans exist and interact? Had my grade school teacher assumed that New Kids on the Block was a site for genuine popular interest among her students, would her adult reinforcement of the peer pressure negated the escape I found in my formal education? While it is unlikely that popular culture will in short time become the center of curricular planning, it seems important to acknowledge that while hegemonic, popular culture and fan status does not really speak to all members of a demographic group (Minneapolis, 10-12 year public school female students for example) in the same way even if it might externally appear as such. Education must engage students where they are, but it should always also provide opportunities and experiences beyond what is readily available through the radio, television, or social networking site.