Looking for comfort in fandom-a short journey
Google “fandom definition” and you get this: the state or condition of being a fan of someone or something; also, the fans of a particular person, team, fictional series, etc. regarded collectively as a community or a subculture. That definition may tell you what fandom is, but it doesn’t tell you what it does. It ignites people. Fandoms can bring people together. They can inspire. Fandoms can be forms of escape-they can also be allegories for what’s happening in the world. I’ve been thinking a lot about fandoms lately-mainly my own. This has come from some of my ultimate fandoms letting me down in various ways recently. Oh-what are my ultimate fandoms? Well…
I’ve always been a Star Wars fan. As long as I can remember. My older cousins were. My aunt painted a mural on the wall of my cousins room when we were young that looked like you were in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. R2 and C3P0 were there too. It was…the coolest thing ever. I was probably 8 or 9 years old. We grew up watching the movies and later whole heartedly embraced the prequels when they were both announced, and then released. I probably saw The Phantom Menace in the theater a half dozen times. The pod-racing scene on the big screen was spectacular.
Imagine my disappointment when The Rise of Skywalker turned out to be a fan-pandering mess of a film with no heart that made no actual sense. A force triad? Wut. Fast forward to my new favorite Star Wars character (and show) The Mandalorian. Which-in my opinion-is fantastic. Now, hyper jump forward again to The Book of Boba Fett which was-again, in my opinion-almost comically bad. Followed immediately by the good but not great Obi-Wan Kenobi series and I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this. What are they doing to my Star Wars!?
It’s hard to take. Not that we knew the stories that came before, after and in-between our favorite films but I feel like we all personally had a sort of…general idea of what could’ve taken place in those in-between times. It’s hard to put into words, almost like a vibe. You can’t really describe it sometimes, you can only feel it. And we all had a feeling of what these characters went on to do. Only to have Disney+ actually show us that the reality is…underwhelming and ultimately disappointing. So what do you do?
I don’t know what you do, but I’ve found what seems to be helping me, which is: revisit your firsts.
This blog post is inspired by an entirely different universe altogether: Lord of the Rings. My wife and I started watching the Extended Edition of all three LOTR films (yeah, we’re those people) because 1. we’re big fans and 2. it’s streaming on HBO Max right now! We finished watching The Two Towers last night and re-watching these films-which I was such a huge fan of in the early aughts-reminded me that I take what I want from my fandoms and I can leave what I don’t.
I love the LOTR films. I think the films are epic, and beautiful, and near perfect adaptations of the books. The world building, the cinematography, the set design, the soundtrack, the character arcs…EVERYTHING about them I love. Ten out of ten. Later they would make a Hobbit trilogy that would turn out to be bloated and messy and introduce things that the book never even dreamed of. There’s lots that went wrong with the Hobbit films-or so I’m told. You see, I only watched the first one and decided the other two weren’t worth the time (and I was right). The Lord of the Rings films can rise above the mess of the Hobbit though. I feel like they are echelons above. So why can’t the original Star Wars Trilogy be untouchable to me?
There’s no reason why it can’t. Part of my difficulty is the original films’ special effects. Though George Lucas was breaking ground when it came to movie making in the 1970’s, those films still pale compared to the special effects of today. That first lightsaber battle between Vader and Obi-Wan is…hard to watch, knowing what I know now. But where today’s films have the special effects, the original films have charm, a little bit of camp, a little bit of melodrama and a whole lot of fun.
I see people wearing their fandoms proudly on their sleeves these days. T-shirts, belts, earrings, purses, handbags, shoes, stickers, decals, coffee mugs, you name it, you can get it and with your favorite IP all over it. I have a shockingly low amount of merch when it comes to my favorite fandoms. This is because I often have a hard time being…a fan. So, I made a decision. I drew a line in the sand for myself and triumphantly declared: “These are the fandoms I am not ashamed of!” And to that list I wrote, the Star Wars Original Trilogy, The Mandalorian and Stranger Things. Today, I proudly announce I will be adding to that list the original Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I fandom I once loved that I’m running back to with open arms.
With all the IP being tossed around today among sequels and prequels and plus shows and limit series and amazon prime and HBO originals…it can get overwhelming. It only makes it worse when those sequels and prequels, etc. are just…bad. So, I take solace in my comfort zones. My OG fandoms that can’t let me down because they’re already made and I already love them. They look at me and open their doors, offer me a cup of coffee made just the way I like and say, “pull up a chair, spend some time.” They remind me why I was nerd before and why I’m still a nerd now. I rest-comforted by the idea-knowing the next Disney+ show can’t hurt me anymore.