In the world of popular culture and media, there are a number of ways people show their love and appreciation for aspects of the said phenomena; some simply revisit their media of choice multiple times, others enjoy discussing and reading more about the production or the behind the scenes. The existence of ‘fandoms’ are a product of this. Fandoms are defined as groups of people who are fans of a certain thing, most commonly bands/musicians, movie series, tv shows, and books.
A fandom as a concept is similar to the idea of culture as a whole- more specifically the ‘cult’ part of the word. Within a fandom, there are many things to take note of; there is jargon and slang known by those within the group, there is a sharing of information pertaining to the topic of interest, and there is usually the recreation or production of fan-made content that are related to the overall topic. An example of this would be the fans of modern Korean Pop Band BTS; one of the largest ‘fandoms’ existing in today’s society. The members of the fandom (fans) idolize the members of the band, and do their best to
1. Stay updated on the members’ appearances, lifestyles, fashion and more
2. Advertise the band’s music by resharing and talking about it on social media platforms, which is where fandoms thrive
3. Wear the merchandise created by the band to show both support and attract other members of the fandom
4. Create fan-made content featuring songs, or even the members from the band themselves.
In legal and ethical terms, things seem to go smoothly until one considers the potential breaching of privacy that the members of the band may experience; is it ethical to essentially be stalking someone purely for their involvement in the area of media you idolize? It is a tricky question, and brings a handful of other debates to the surface; if something (or someone) is presented to the public with the intent of public consumption, one cannot be surprised when people want to learn more. At the same time, privacy is a right and an ethical necessity for the sanity of human beings; just because a member of the band consented to appearing on stage, does not mean they consented to fans trying to learn where they reside/live.
The ethics of the fandom concept are varying, as they are extremely broad and contain multiple types of people who each of course hold their own judgements, values, and beliefs; thus there is no objective decision on whether they are unethical or not. Parts of this concept that can be considered unethical relate to
-Privacy
-Consent
-Safety.
Naturally, when each move is being monitored, the aspect of privacy becomes an extremely important variable. This is something all celebrities know, and it is something that merely ‘comes with the fame’. In the same light, while the celebrity consents to being in the public eye, they might not consent to the content that is created of them without their knowledge, i.e fan-made edits. An example of this would be the oversexualization of Natalie Portman in correspondence to the Star Wars movies she featured in. While she consented to being in the movie, she did not consent to people on the internet editing and warping her body and voice to say and do things. Moreover, the aspect of safety comes into light when considering real life human people who have fandoms dedicated to them; they are consistently watched via social media and more, with countless people trying to know everything about them.This can easily not only invade their privacy, but can very quickly lead to safety hazards and the leaking of locations, bank account details, and more.
This is in reference to the fandoms where real people are the focus- there are also fandoms dedicated to inanimate objects, books, and concepts.
Some of the ethical sides of fandoms, however, all revolve around the social implications of those within the fandoms; on most cases, fans group together into fandoms for the main purpose of having a community to exist within, share conversations, and simply be in company where their interests are similar. This sense of community is mirroring any other subculture or culture to begin with, and human beings are constantly looking for more places to fit in and make friends. As social creatures, the existence of fandoms provides people company and a space to create, discuss, and be surrounded by like minded people who share their niche hobbies and intricacies.
Point 4, “Create fan-made content featuring songs, or even the members from the band themselves.”
brings us to the creation of fanfiction and fan-made content, which are often topics that arise when discussing the ethics and copyright issues of using existing content to create more content. Taking the example of the popular book series Harry Potter, we can focus on written fanfiction, where a fan takes the characters or concepts from the original series and writes their own stories featuring those said characters and concepts, adding their own original twists and turns to the story, adding or altering characters depending on the genre of writing. In the publishing world, there are minor issues that come about when discussing the legalities of this form of expression. If one takes the intellectual content someone else has created and published and uses it for their own creation, does that not breach copyright laws, as well as bend the ethics of ‘stealing’ parts from someone else's writing?
One argument against the creation and spreading of fanfiction is that it is the exploitation of existing characters. One can easily take a concept someone else has created and republish it under a different name; this might make it legal, but it cannot be considered to be ethical. Another strange aspect to the realm of fanfiction is that in the cases where the fandom is dedicated to a real life group of people, one must consider the direct unethical behaviour they are committing when creating fanfiction of real people. This is often done without consent, and an example of this would be the now-movie fanfiction series called “After” written by Wattpad author Anna Todd, who wrote 3 fanfiction books on a made up romantic story between her own original character- and Harry Styles, former One Direction member. The writing contained explicit scenes and also depicted Harry as a violent, bad habit having, rude, mean college student. Harry Styles did not consent to his involvement in the stories, nor was it ethical to indirectly slander his image and make him into a character when he is a real person.
The After series faced its own legal issues, and due to fandom popularity, the series was eventually picked up by a publishing house- and then was made into a 3 part film. At first glance, this shows the power and seriousness of fanfiction.
The author was made to change the names of all the characters and edit certain parts out and state that the released story had no connection to the living people, although it is well known that the original inspiration behind the fiction was, without a doubt, the living members of One Direction.
The handful of ethical dilemmas extends further, well past the family friendly issues; the sexualization of characters, people, and sometimes even animals, is an issue that plagues society across all units and fandoms. Anime, notorious for containing lewd or otherwise sexually suggestive depictions of its characters, has earned a spotlight when talking about pedophilia, beastiality, and sexism.
Examples of this would be the unsettling fan-art created of underage characters, often female, often pre-puberty stage, drawn in explicit and 18+ scenarios. While these characters are works of fiction and are 'just drawings on a screen', it is the moral question of what one does with that knowledge. The viewing of an underage character should not inspire artists to create porn of that character, even though one has the legal right to add their own spin.
Sometimes just because you can does not mean you should.
The ethics and morals that are compromised in day to day life pertaining specifically to fandoms can be anywhere on a spectrum. The keeping of tabs of a celebrity who has willingly shared information cannot be compared to the sexualization of underage anime characters, but these are things that we have to think about- why?
Over the course of this year, from 2020 to 2021, a lot of people have fallen into fandoms of things they have grown to like more and more. Some people have resorted back to their original middle school interests, some have discovered new ones; many people see these things as safe spaces to enjoy themselves and escape reality for a bit, but all things are a mirror of something else.
We must be aware and vigilant of the morally twisted. We must be ready to to identify what does not sit right, what hurts people, and what could lead to larger issues.