I'm Your Biggest Fan!!!

As I was sitting here at my computer, I was trying to think about when I first remember becoming a fan of something. Back in the mid 1990s, I was talking with my past babysitter named Crystal. Crystal would bring over CDs every time she would come over to baby sit, and my three younger sisters and I thought that it was the most awesome thing ever (we only owned cassettes). One evening, Crystal brought over the Hanson CD, and she told me that since she had a crush on Taylor Hanson, I should have a crush on Zac Hanson (the youngest of the trio who was only a year older than I am). After a few minutes, I agreed and voila! I had my first celebrity crush and from that point on, I was officially Hanson’s biggest fan. At every gas station, I kept my eyes peeled for the latest issue of Teen Bop or Tiger Beat, which often featured the band on their covers and included inserts of Hanson posters. Although my mother warned me not to tape the posters to my walls, I just had to prove to my friends what a hardcore fan I really was. I can’t even come close to estimating how many hours I spend listening to their original tape and just HAD to have the new Hanson Christmas cassette as well. From then on, every time I would see Crystal in the neighborhood, we would spend a few minutes talking about how much we LOVED Hanson. Many of my friends didn’t understand why I liked this group of young guys so much, and often poked fun at me for it, but I didn’t care. If they didn’t want to share my interest with me, I had other people who I could dump my feeling and emotions about the band on. While I slowly lost interest in Hanson and eventually took down the magazine posters, this was my introduction to perpetual fandom that includes many areas of fandom.

Now, there is no way I can discuss what I am a fan of without including the incredible Harry Potter series. My grandmother introduced me to J.K. Rowling’s novels when I was in junior high school, and I became instantly absorbed in them. My younger sister, Lauren, also found that she was lusting over the series herself, so it was definitely to my advantage to have a fellow Potter fan living under the same roof as myself. Lauren and I would spend hours upon hours reading and rereading the same set of Harry Potter books until the next one would come out. Many of my friends read it too, and I LOVED the heated discussions and arguments over whether or not Sirius or Dumbledore were either actually dead, or if Snape really was one of the bad guys, and ultimately would Harry of Voldemort be the conqueror in the final battle between good and evil? It’s amazing how quickly the world-wide obsession with J.K. Rowling’s books spread, and how even though the series has been finished, people are still losing themselves in the hallways of Hogwarts. According to the Wikipedia article, “a March 2007 study showed that "Harry Potter" is the most searched-for fan fiction subject online.” While I have never participated in any type of fan fiction, it doesn’t come as a surprise to me that there are so many people who are so completely absorbed in the witchcraft and wizardry that they look for other stories written about the familiar characters to keep getting their fill. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series is another viral series of books that is spreading across the world. I have found myself wandering the streets of Forks, WA many times during my daydreams, and love to have discussions with other adults who made their way through all four novels.

In relation to education and popular culture, one can really map out the trends from generation to generation. While there are many timeless examples of fandom (i.e., Star Wars, Star Trek, Anime, Manga, etc.), many of them can be pinpointed to a specific starting point and could be used in many ways to assist educators. I feel that this would be particularly helpful in a social studies classroom when they are discussing what was popular a long time ago and how people felt about those different celebrities, hobbies, genres and fashions. I think that as teachers, we can really use this to our advantage to get students to realize how important popular culture and being a fan of something is and how it directly relates to them. For example: I am going to be a high school or middle school English teacher hopefully within the next 6 months. When I am choosing a classic text such as The Great Gatsby or something similar, if my students question as to why it is important for them to read it and how will this (by their standards) ancient piece of literature relate to them in the twenty-first century, I can bring up the likes of Harry Potter, Twilight, and other popular texts to help them understand that the feelings they have for these books are quite similar to those who read the classic texts when they were more modern.

I will again end this post with my favorite quote from this week’s reading regarding the relationship that didn’t happen between Harry and Hermione:

“My comments weren't directed at the shippers who acknowledged that Harry/Hermione was a long shot but loved the idea of them together. It was directed at the "militant" shippers who insisted that there was overwhelming canon proof and that everyone else was too blind to see it. You were delusional; you saw what you wanted to see and you have no one to blame for that but yourselves.”