Abstract
This paper explores how real person fiction (RPF) communities perform ethical fan identity and fetishize the idea of the “real.” Looking at the Taskmaster RPF fandom, I trace how the creators’ queering of the traditional panel show form and production creates a play space where fans feel emboldened to create and play through their fiction, but are also forced to be aware of the hyper-surveillance that pathologized expression in the digital sphere brings. I examine how Taskmaster RPF fans’ artistic works are consistently positioned as “unreal” by those that create it in an attempt to secure a moral high ground relative to other fannish practices. In doing so, I argue that RPF is an art form inherently concerned with the construction of an ethical fannish identity, regardless of whether a fan is a creator or a reader. As a result, the acts of reading, writing, and explaining fannish works of art come to function as mechanics of ethical identity construction, responding to several decades of moralization and pathologization from academic, popular, and fannish culture which posits their creation and expression as “wrong” or “other.”
Presenters
Lauren BalserMA Student, Media Studies, The University of Virginia, Virginia, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
The Arts in Social, Political, and Community Life
KEYWORDS
Performance, Ethics, Identity, Fandom, Fetishization
