Michael Elliott
Appearances
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
is Emile Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life. And it was when I was watching a documentary by Morgan Spurlock. It's a documentary about San Diego Comic-Con. As I was watching, it struck me that this reminded me a lot of Durkheim's book. And so that led me to bring that documentary into the classroom and try to test some of these ideas myself.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
We all, I think by now, are familiar with fans. dedicated fans, whether they're sports fans or comic book fans or Star Wars fans, I think this particular culture has grown a lot in popularity over the last 15, 20 years. San Diego Comic-Con started in the 1970s, but I think it was in the late 2000s, maybe 2006, 2007, that San Diego Comic-Con started to sell out.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
We also saw movies related to comic books and superheroes really become popular. So I'm thinking of Iron Man in 2008 and the rise of Marvel movies. I think this is when you really started to see that culture, Comic-Con culture, really take off and enter the zeitgeist and the mainstream.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
So when I embarked on distributing the survey and talking to fans, I didn't know exactly what I would find. I had seen the Spurlock documentary, which got me thinking about it. I was familiar with some of the literature. I pilot tested my survey in 2018. And when I was going through those responses, it's really when that struck me. how much these interests mean to people.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
And so my survey not only has stock answers, they're organized along a Likert scale, but I also have some open-ended questions. So for example, one of the questions on the survey asks, have you learned any moral values from your interests? And those who agree or strongly agree with that question have a follow-up question, which is open-ended.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
And that is, tell me what some of those moral values and virtues are. And it was those responses that were so compelling and so powerful that made me see that these interests give people a lot of meaning and they mean a lot to people beyond merely escapism or entertainment.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
That's a good question. I think of them as existing along a spectrum. But if we're talking about who's a super fan... I think somebody whose interests are a big part of their daily lives. And you mentioned the word sacred before. I delineate particular dimensions of the sacred and I test them through the survey. So a superfan, I think, derives meaning from their interests.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
They experience it as something powerful, perhaps as something transcendent, something beyond themselves that they connect with. That's how I would describe a superfan.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
Some people, I would say the majority of people I've interviewed, have connected with these interests at a fairly young age. It was a family member that introduced them. It was a mother or a father or some other family member who was into it that got them into it. It also could have been what they saw on the television.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
Not everybody grew up with comic books, you know, around the spinner rack at the supermarket. But it's usually something that comes to somebody, I think, fairly early on. And they stick with it. Maybe they meet other people in junior high and high school and start to solidify those connections with other people and really get drawn into a community.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
Based on the literature, I delineate seven dimensions of the sacred, which comes from scholars in religion and the sociology of religion. So when we speak of the sacred, the sacred tends to be something that is special. In other words, it's unique, it's important. The sacred is often holy, meaning it's hallowed, it's blessed, it's worshiped.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
The sacred is powerful, it's potent, it garners respect, it garners awe, sometimes fear. The sacred is transcendent. It's something above and beyond individual everyday affairs. The sacred is inspiring. It empowers and motivates people. It evokes emotion. The sacred generates meaning. It's a source of essential values and purpose. And the sacred also involves identity.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
It shapes collective affiliation and personal identity.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
In some ways, the antithesis of the sacred is the profane. And the profane can mean a couple things. It can mean the everyday or mundane, i.e. that which is not special, which is not holy. But the profane can also be things that are sacrilegious, according to adherence to the sacred.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
So at the end of the in-depth interviews, I ask respondents, is there anything in your interests, your group that you consider out of bounds or inappropriate? And this is another question where the responses really struck me in their consistency. More often than not, the answers I get are people are upset and consider it out of bounds when people are sexist, racist, homophobic,
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
All those things that we associate with toxic fandom. And this, I thought, was really interesting because you're right. Toxic fandom is out there. It's loud. It's often inappropriate and out of bounds. So it was really interesting to hear from the vast majority of interviewees that they consider that kind of behavior out of bounds.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
I sometimes feel like the main group that I'm trying to convince about the importance of these groups and my results are academics rather than the general public. In many ways, I feel like the general public kind of gets this, and it's my colleagues that don't.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
I think there's a stereotype about popular culture as being something less than traditional culture, whether it's rituals and rites or language. But what I think my results show is that we need to take popular culture seriously as something that generates meaning and give people purpose.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
Absolutely. Community is a big part of this. And the questions that sort of measures that transcendent dimension, the most common answer when I ask people, what do you consider above and beyond yourself? Something larger than yourself in your interest. More often than not, the answer relates to the larger community, the community of fans and what they all gather around.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
Comic-Con is an abbreviation. It stands for Comic Book Convention. And so the kinds of fans that I'm researching are those engaged in what I call Comic-Con culture. So these are particular interests that revolve around a comic book convention. Fans of comic books, superheroes, science fiction, anime and manga, cosplay and gaming. Those are the main interests.
The Excerpt
SPECIAL | Can fandoms be as deep and meaningful as religion?
I think I was compelled based on my experience in the classroom. So I've been teaching sociological theory at Towson University ever since I started in 2008. And one of the things you always try to do in a class like that is to make sociological theory relevant to students. And one of the main books that we read, it's a classic in the discipline,