Mediating Relationships with Parasocial Others: Relating, Connecting, and Making

Meanings

A dissertation presented to

the faculty of

the Scripps College of Communication of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

John Marc Cuellar

August 2020

This dissertation titled

Mediating Relationships with Parasocial Others: Relating, Connecting, and Making

Meanings

JOHN MARC CUELLAR

has been approved for

the School of Communication Studies

and the Scripps College of Communication by

William K. Rawlins

Professor of Communication Studies

Scott Titsworth

Dean, Scripps College of Communication

Abstract

CUELLAR, JOHN MARC, Ph.D., August 2020, Communication Studies

Mediating Relationships with Parasocial Others: Relating, Connecting, and Making

Meanings

Director of Dissertation: William K. Rawlins

I explore connections made with mediated others, parasocial relationships, in this study. I was guided by Bakhtinian understandings of mediation between consummated parties. To investigate, I interviewed participants who connected with a parasocial figure(s). Engaging in crystallization, I layered my story onto the stories of others who make mediated connections, using autoethnography as an additional methodological tool.

I interpretively categorized the themes using Rawlins’ dialectical perspective as a lens through which to analyze the findings. The themes that emerged included three overarching dialectical features: The Dialectic of the Freedom to be Independent and the

Freedom to be Dependent, the Dialectic of Judgment and Acceptance, and the Dialectic of the Ideal and the Real. The first overarching dialectic encompassed three subthemes: the Dialectic of Pride and the Need for Recognition, the Dialectic of Availability and

Disengagement, and the Dialectic of Stalker and Fan (Stan). The second overarching theme included two subthemes: the Dialectic of the Freedom to Share and the Freedom to

Keep for Oneself and the Dialectic of Satisfaction and Cancellation. Finally, the last overarching theme also comprised two subthemes, which included the Dialectic of

Emotionality and Rationality and the Dialectic of the Real and the Unreal. These dialectical features emerged when participants spoke of competing tensions within their iii

mediated connections. When making sense of the dialectical features, I recalled personal stories that resonated with the same tensions experienced by the participants.

Dedication

To the connections that have meant the most to me throughout my life: Estella,

Isabella, and Liam

Acknowledgments

This project was not a solo effort. I am always connected: connected to friends, connected to peers, connected to advisors, connected to scholars, connected to family. I am appreciative of those connections that have fostered personal success and relational satisfaction.

I thank Dr. Lynn Harter, Dr. Christie Beck, and Dr. Theodore Hutchinson. Each of you contributed greatly to this work. Whether it was guidance delivered through a reading, words of encouragement, ideas that benefitted the research, or modeled ways of relating with an academic apprentice, you all inspired me in ways you will never know. I thank you for your inspiration.

I thank the others who guided me along the way: Dr. Angela Hosek, Dr. Roger

Aden, Dr. Austin Babrow, Dr. Raymie McKerrow, Dr. Stephanie Tikkanen, Dr. Brittany

Peterson, and Dr. Laura Black. My time at Ohio University is precious time that I will remember fondly—this is largely because of the impact each of you had on my studies.

Additionally, I would like to thank other academics whose help motivated me: Dr.

Tony Adams, Dr. Keith Berry, Dr. Sandra Pensoneau-Conway, Dr. Carolyn Ellis, Dr. Art

Bochner, and Dr. Derek Bolen. Without your motivation, I would not have made the next move in my academic progression. I thank you for that motivation.

I wish to thank my cohorts: Hanan, Shawn, Gang, Melissa, Marion, Shermineh,

Ji, Rachel, Nicole, Val, and Caroline. You each provided encouragement, stories, coffee breaks, and support. My time at Ohio University was made pleasurable because of those

connections I made with each of you. I additionally wish to thank others, whose presence inspired me while in Athens: the Deardorffs, Quang, and Mauvette.

To my immediate family, I would like to extend my appreciation. I would like to thank my father, mother, brother, and sister. You all kept me feeling fully loved, fully encouraged, and fully connected.

Jennifer, you sacrificed a great deal to support this dream of mine. I will always appreciate your gift(s).

Seth, you came into my life while studying here in Ohio. I look forward to creating many more stories with you!

Grandma, I will always be saddened that I missed a few years there, at home, with you. I am happy to know that, no matter what, you are here, connected with me. Your connection is the strongest, as you guided me through those first moments and never left my side. I hope that I always make you proud!

Dr. Rawlins, I was honored to work with you. I feel privileged that you shared your knowledge with me. Thank you for guiding me along this academic trajectory.

Thank you for all of those ways that you demonstrated how, by relating, a caring teacher can make an irreplaceable difference in one’s life.

Finally, Isabella and Liam, I want to thank the two of you. This time spent away from you was the most difficult task of all. I cherish each moment I spend with the two of you. You keep me moving forward, through your loving connection. I thank the two of you most of all!

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Table of Contents

Page

Abstract ...... iii Dedication ...... v Acknowledgments ...... vi Chapter 1: Prologue: Relating More Than One-Way ...... 1 Introduction ...... 4 Chapter 2: Relating with Others: The Meaning of Interpersonal Connections ...... 8 The Potential for a Parasocial Alternative ...... 15 The Postmodern Parasocial Connection ...... 18 Uninvolved ...... 25 Dismissive ...... 26 Aware ...... 26 Interactive ...... 26 Fully Involved ...... 27 Narrative Constructions of Self and Other: Making Meaning from Meeting ...... 31 Identifying with Others: Contemplating Sexuality and Stigma ...... 36 Chapter 3: Investigative Practices ...... 48 Turning Away From, Coming Away With ...... 49 Putting into Wor(l)ds: Practices of Interpretation ...... 51 Putting Stories Together: A Choice for Narrative ...... 55 Doing Autoethnography: Self, Culture, and Writing a Story ...... 58 Crystallization: Blending Multiple Genres ...... 60 Procedure ...... 61 Participants ...... 63 Codification and Emerging Themes ...... 64 Chapter 4: The Freedom to be Independent and the Freedom to be Dependent ...... 68 Mediating the Dialectical Tensions of Independence and Dependence ...... 73 Having the Pride not to be NSYNC with Society ...... 73 Pride ...... 75 The Need for Recognition ...... 78 viii

You Had Me at Hello; Please Don’t Say Goodbye ...... 82 Available ...... 84 Disengagement ...... 88 Wrestling with Stalker/Fan (Stan) Connections ...... 94 Chapter 5: Mediating the Dialectical Tensions of Judgment and Acceptance ...... 107 Crowded Theatres, Private Screenings, and Multiple Connections ...... 108 Shared ...... 111 Unshared ...... 114 A Moment to Celebrate (Erase) ...... 118 Satisfied ...... 120 Comedy, Chappelle, and Cancel Culture ...... 123 Cancelled ...... 125 Chapter 6: Mediating the Dialectical Tensions of the Ideal and the Real ...... 130 Encountering Larger-than-Life Figures: Magical Moments in the Cuellar Family Narrative ...... 131 Rationality ...... 138 Emotionality ...... 139 Real Loss Made Better through (Un)Real Connections ...... 142 Real and Unreal ...... 147 When in Need of Something Else ...... 151 Chapter 7: Discussion ...... 158 Interpretation of Findings ...... 162 Limitations of Research ...... 170 Future Possibilities ...... 174 Chapter 8: Conclusion ...... 178 Epilogue: A Golden Connection ...... 180 References ...... 184 Appendix ...... 205

Chapter 1: Prologue: Relating More Than One-Way

A nudge against my motionless body is all it takes to awaken me. I am in a deep state of sleep, but boundless energy comes in an abundant supply for those situated closest to birth on the birth-death lifespan continuum. At this age, I have yet to scar my body through any of the usual scab-producing activities that will later become routine

(e.g., scraping my knee when I am propelled from my bike, scratching my leg on the sharp edge of a chain link fence while trying to hop over to my best friend’s house, or falling victim once again to the uncontrollable excitement of Snoopy #2 as he breaks my skin when jumping up and down to greet me after school). Beckoned by my grandmother to join her in the kitchen, I instantly become alert and anticipate the poorly-concealed surprise she has in store for me somewhere just around the corner and down the hallway of my childhood home. It is an expected surprise, one that has become part of our morning ritual.

“Hurry. Our song is playing,” she informs me. I spring toward the hallway, leaving my bedroom. I’m proud that I survived an entire night in my own bed, instead of succumbing to my usual, baseless fears, produced by an overly active imagination and an addiction to HBO, where frightening villains can be viewed on a nightly basis. I often feel such an intense degree of terror at night that I make a dash for the protective security of my grandparents’ room. That is where I normally start my days since it possesses a magical energy that wards off any imaginary monsters that might be lurking underneath some kid-sized bed. Only a record-breaking amount of coincidence or our unfortunate helplessness to combat fate could explain why these imaginary creatures only seem to 1

surface whenever I’m all alone in my bedroom. On this night, some other form of magic must’ve worked against the monsters because I was able to achieve a full night’s sleep.

Maybe they were scared away by the first rays of light peering through my bedroom window. Maybe they were thwarted by the prayers my grandmother uttered at least five times a day, prayers to the Lord and Savior for the protection of her loved ones. It’s just quite possible, however, that the Texas swing-styled melodies of Willie Nelson were too much for any wicked force to handle. Willie’s song was playing on the antique record- player stand, being powered into our kitchen through the courtesy of a local AM radio station, and nothing could get in the way of our morning ritual. It was another opportunity for my grandmother to claim yet one more dance with her favorite five-year- old boy.

Willie Nelson has always had a strong presence in my life. One theory could be that since I was from Texas, I was indoctrinated at an early age to the complete discography of the heir to Bob Wills’ king-of-Texas-swing title. Another line of thought could be promoted by anyone who subscribes to the idea that Willie simply made an impact on me at a very impressionable age. I mean, I remember hearing “On the Road

Again” (Nelson, 1980), catching glimpses of Honeysuckle Rose (1980), and even attending a concert featuring the “red-headed stranger” at such a tender age that the only things wandering through my mind were trivial questions about why Goofy possessed all of the benefits of privilege (i.e., an ability to walk erect, a higher level of communicative capability, and the means and aptitude for applying the same, exact wardrobe day after day after day) while Pluto, another animal of the same exact species, seemed to be a 2

poverty-stricken (no clothes), failed-body possessing (cannot walk erect), and mentally- disadvantaged (cannot communicate using symbolic meanings) mutt cursed with a marginalized status among the Disney crew. At five years old, conundrums such as the aforementioned were the only items of inquiry needing analysis. Now, in hindsight, I analyze Willie Nelson’s presence in my life, in our lives.

For reasons I cannot explain, back then, I called Willie Nelson my Uncle Willie.

That was until my parents corrected the genealogical error. He seemed to be closer to me than just a figure on the screen or a voice heard over the radio speakers. He seemed to be everywhere, actively present in my day-to-day business. Yet, despite all of this, other than watching him play music from afar a few times throughout my life, I have never actually “met” Willie Nelson. Willie Nelson’s presence in my life cannot be characterized by mutually felt involvement or collaborative interaction. Willie comes to me through mediated channels, as a seemingly-real connection with whom I share a relationship, a relationship I perceive to be authentic. I, in contrast, do not come to him.

When my grandmother and I danced to his rendition of “All of Me” (Simons &

Marks, 1978), it felt like Willie was there with us, experiencing the same ethereal moment that captivated the two of us. We made him a part of our morning ritual. Yet,

Willie felt none of me. He was unaware of the significant part he was playing in such a meaningful series of moments from my childhood—moments that provide form for the rich, storied connection between the single-most notable influence in my life, my grandmother, and me. Within our interpersonal history, Willie has come between us and simultaneously brought us closer together. He has mediated and coursed in between us, 3

as we danced in harmony together toward a meaningful and significant relationship. He entered in between our personal connection, as sort of an enter-personal mediator. This presence in one’s life by a figure that does not reciprocate any type of emotional closeness, but rather provides a perceived body through which feelings of emotional closeness can both be projected onto and taken from by an individual connected through a mediated channel, is referred to as a parasocial relationship. Parasocial relationships provide a unique and complex system of human connectedness that can be examined both for their potential to offer many of the same outcomes available for parties who connect with others interpersonally and for the dissimilar qualities from any type of relationship between parties who reciprocate interaction and possess mutually-felt levels of closeness.

Introduction

I begin by relating. I can relate with people who share a parasocial connection because, throughout my life, I have had many. I still continue to have parasocial relationships, some stronger than others. I relate with others who relate with them.

I relate with the parasocial figures because they help me relate with others. The parasocial figure can remind me of my grandmother or can help me conjure up a memory shared with a significant other. I relate with the parasocial figure who helps me relate with others around me.

I relate through stories. The story helps me connect with others. It helps me connect with my culture. It connects us all through the shared narrative, as we tell and retell. The story also helps me relate with myself.

I relate to myself. I relate to myself when I examine the story. It helps me to recall, in hindsight, moments that create the story of me. The story helps me remember moments of connection with others. It helps me recall parasocial connections

I relate through the story on the screen, in the book, and coming from the speakers: the movie, the show, and the song. They all help me remember other stories, recreate stories, make new stories, and project future stories. Ultimately, they help me relate.

The relationships formed with loved ones, friends, teachers, peers, neighbors, partners, and children all make life meaningful. Each relationship helps give form to the totality of my life, rendering me wholly realized as one, but not just one—one who is connected, joined, and relating to/with others.

This endeavor speaks of relationships. Particularly, it focuses on parasocial relationships. Still, to speak of parasocial relationships is still to examine other relationships—for relating is not practiced in the absence of other relationships. Even when the immediate relationship is punctuated, every other relationship helps inform the one shared between two.

Thus, when I consider the parasocial relationships of my life, I also must re- examine all of the other relationships that inform them. To relate with a parasocial figure is to be connected, and those connections move through a plurality of pathways.

In this study of relationships, parasocial relationships and the many others connected to them, I begin in Chapter 1 with a prologue and an introduction. Chapter 2 provides a literature review that highlights literature on interpersonal relationships, 5

Bakhtinian theory, Rawlins’ dialectical perspective, parasocial relationships, a postmodern turn, the Continuum of Mediated Involvement I have developed, narrative sensemaking, and social stigma.

Chapter 3 provides a description of my investigative practices, elaborating on the crystallized method I chose for my study. It emphasizes dialogic conversations, interpretivism, and the value of autoethnography. In this chapter, I also provide details about the participants and describe the coding process.

In Chapters 4-6, I present my findings. I emphasize Rawlins’ (1992) dialectical perspective and provide a framework for the themes that emerged. The themes include three overarching dialectical features: The Dialectic of the Freedom to be Independent and the Freedom to be Dependent, the Dialectic of Judgment and Acceptance, and the

Dialectic of the Ideal and the Real. Each overarching dialectical feature also included subthemes. Chapter 4 focuses on The Dialectic of the Freedom to be Independent and the

Freedom to be Dependent, which included the Dialectic of Pride and the Need for

Recognition, the Dialectic of Availability and Disengagement, and the Dialectic of

Stalker and Fan (Stan). Chapter 5 centers on The Dialectic of Judgment and Acceptance, which included the Dialectic of the Freedom to Share and the Freedom to Keep for

Oneself and the Dialectic of Satisfaction and Cancellation. Finally, The Dialectic of the

Ideal and the Real is presented in chapter 6. This overarching dialectic included the

Dialectic of Emotionality and Rationality and the Dialectic of the Real and the Unreal.

Chapter 7 provides a discussion of the findings. In this chapter, I cover the implications of the dialogic stories shared by the participants and provide my 6

interpretations of those conversations. Additionally, I include my voice, as I layer my own stories onto the stories provided by the participants interviewed for the study.

Finally, chapter 8 provides a conclusion and an epilogue. Throughout this dissertation, I include stories from my own history of parasocial interaction.

I hope this story—my story, a cultural story, the shared stories of others, a mediated story—is one in/with which you can relate.

Chapter 2: Relating with Others: The Meaning of Interpersonal Connections

This chapter frames parasocial relationships as more than unidirectional connections. I begin by contemplating multiple types of relationships, embracing all forms of connecting with others. I then elaborate on one unique type of relating, the parasocial relationship. After providing a history of the theoretical foundings of the phenomenon, I move toward a postmodern conceptualization of the mediated form of connecting. Acknowledging that varying levels of interaction with parasocial figures exist, I introduce the Continuum of Mediated Involvement I have developed, which includes uninvolved, dismissive, aware, interactive, and fully involved levels of engagement. Following this, I provide an account of the narrative turn in research, detailing how stories work as acts of meaning-making. Finally, as I move toward relevant inquiries that intrigue me as a researcher, I consider how stigma intersects with mediated connections and marginalized communities. I explore how consummation characterizes the dynamic bonds that are formed when interested fans enter into a relationship with a parasocial figure and use Bakhtinian notions of mediation to understand the meaningful relationships that ensue.

When one conjures up notions of what it means to share a relationship, certain types of relationships quickly emerge as the standard by which all other types of relationships are compared. This standard form often obscures alternative types of relationships, preventing them from attaining comparable recognition. One tendency for individuals, when reflecting upon relationships as a behavioral, communicative system of interaction, is to limit understandings of relating to dyadic forms of interaction. Research 8

has largely been focused on dyadic pairs, ignoring other types of relational groupings, and different types of relationships are rarely studied in tandem, although individuals commonly maintain multiple types of relationships simultaneously (Furman &

Buhrmester, 1985). So central is this relational paradigm that Finn and Malson (2008) assert that “the couple domain is not only spatialized but also privileged, psychologized, and conceived of as that which contains life’s essence” (p. 525). In these types of dyadic interactional systems, relationships are usually characterized by a degree of closeness, both proximal and emotional. Levels of passion and intimacy are used to define the success of an interpersonal relationship, with more intimate bonds thought to strengthen over time (Rubin & Campbell, 2012). Closeness, passion, and intimacy are a few of multiple potential benefits attainable from a positive relationship. Thus, a useful analytical goal when examining interpersonal relationships is to study the diverse benefits of relational connections—the array of rewards one can gain from entering into an interpersonal relationship.

Within an interpersonal relationship, unique relational meanings kept hidden from others (Hughes, Morrison, & Asada, 2005), shared life narratives (Philippe, Koestner, &

Lekes, 2013), deep expressions of positive emotions (Slatcher & Pennebaker, 2006), and empathic levels of concern and investment (Rusbult, 1980) are possible outcomes if the two relational parties like one another and view their relationship as supportive, worthwhile, and positive. While not all interpersonal relationships would be characterized as positive, the ones that are thought to be of crucial importance to an individual’s well- being usually foster a greater degree of warmth (Donnellan, Assad, Robins, & Conger, 9

2007), affect (Gable, Reis, Impett, & Asher, 2004), and evaluations of success (Hendrick,

Dicke, & Hendrick, 1998). In fact, some interpersonal relationships are ranked on their merit, evaluating the status of the relationship on a continuum that extends from perceptions of failure to perceptions of success. When interactional parties cannot relate in positive ways that lead to perceptions of success (Hendrick, Dicke, & Hendrick, 1998), relationship dissolution is a likely outcome (Rollie & Duck, 2006). While many would argue that interpersonal relationships are usually successful if the relating parties behave unselfishly and express care for one another, limiting relationships to binary evaluations of either good or bad fails to recognize the range and complexity of involved human interaction. Often, relational distance can have beneficial effects on a relationship if there is a need for autonomy. Relational conflict can, in similar fashion, lead to beneficial outcomes, such as increasing a relating pair’s problem-solving skills (Cramer, 2000).

Therefore, relating partners must negotiate what works for them, as what might be advantageous in one relational dyad might not have the same effect for the parties of another relational pairing. This makes judging the merit of a relationship based on potential rewards a difficult task, as such judgments are dependent upon the particular relational intricacies shared by relating partners.

In addition, when individuals seek a bond with another person, they might weigh their options, judging the potential costs of an interpersonal relationship versus the potential for rewards (Osborn, 2012). This conflict highlights the differing possibilities for potential outcomes of a committed relationship. However, as previously noted, what is beneficial to one pairing might be detrimental to the next; pairings may also argue over 10

different issues (Heiman et al., 2011; Kurdek, 1994). So, it remains unclear which benefits specifically are sought by relating individuals when initiating contact with a potential partner with whom they can share a deep, personal bond. Numerous possibilities are available with each type of relationship offering both similar and unique functions that can be rewarding for someone seeking the benefits of an interpersonal connection

(Barry, Madsen, Nelson, Carroll, & Badger, 2009). For one, interpersonal relationships vary in relational categories depending on their participants. One relationship might involve a parent and a child (Collins & Russell, 1991), another the bond between siblings

(Gamble & McHale, 1989). Some interpersonal relationships involve two parties who relate to one another primarily on the level of a trusting friendship (Rawlins, 2009). On a different level, some interpersonal relationships involve two people who share a deep romantic connection, often associated with the emotion of love (Meeks, Hendrick, &

Hendrick, 1998). Other relationships lack any emotional closeness and are formed by two individuals merely fulfilling a role for the other (e.g., a barber and the person getting a haircut might have a very limited connection to one another or they might share a lifelong bond where the other is considered to be irreplaceable). The dynamics that help categorize each interpersonal relationship vary. Thus, different types of relationships lead to different desires for possible relational outcomes. The relating partners yearn for different rewards for each different type of relationship (Trenholm & Jensen, 2013).

Another aspect of relationships, not typically considered in traditional studies, is the quality of flux. Relationships are not finalized. They are in the process of becoming.

At various moments, a close relationship might seem extremely close and personal. At 11

others, it might seem distant. As interactants within a relationship navigate the loose contours of an unpredictable, yet entangled, involvement, they prepare for the unexpected. The momentary episodes between parties with a relationship is often contradictory. Individuals are connected then disconnected, agreeable then disagreeable, satisfied then unsatisfied. A relationship is far from a trajectory that moves along a linear pathway. Instead, it involves communicative behaviors that are dialectical. Rawlins

(1992) notes that “totality, contradiction, motion, and praxis are basic elements of the dialectical perspective…” and professes that “…antagonistic yet interdependent aspects of communication between friends form the pulse of routine as well as volatile and transitional moments of such dyads” (p. 7).

Drawing from and contributing to Bakhtinian notions of dialogism, Rawlins

(1992) proposed two dialectical features, contextual and interactional dialectics, as useful in analyzing pairings between close friends. Contextual dialectics describe the intersection between interactants within relationships and how larger, social understandings permeate the interaction between the two. Interactional dialectics focus on the actual interaction between the two relating parties. Rawlins (1992) adds, however, that “these principles extensively interconnect in the communication of friends” (p. 8).

Rawlins (1992) developed several subclasses to help expand upon the analytical classes that emerged when he analyzed the findings of his discussions with participants who belonged to friendship pairings. The following subclasses were contextual in quality: the

Dialectic of the Private and the Public and the Dialectic of the Ideal and the Real. The subclasses found to be more interactional were the Dialectic of the Freedom to be 12

Independent and the Freedom to be Dependent, the Dialectic of Affection and

Instrumentality, the Dialectic of Judgment and Acceptance, and the Dialectic of

Expressiveness and Protectiveness. The dialectical features are useful in analyzing how friends, or individuals within any type of relationship, shift from moments of desiring one dialectical tension to moments of another, such as moving from dependence to independence, protectiveness to expressiveness, or acceptance to judgment, as well as tensive moments involving simultaneous demands.

Rawlins’ (1992) dialectical perspective better theorizes the contradictory, moving, unique interactions of individuals in relationships, providing room for analyses that include multiple distinct considerations: ongoing development within relationships, unique attributes of both the individuals and the relationship, and prevailing cultural understandings that also shift and move as popular thought changes. Rawlins’ (1992) dialectical perspective is useful in ways where other theories concerning relationships were limited. Rawlins’ research findings were conducted using research practices and methodologies that took into account the phenomenological tradition, which as Pilotta and Mickunas (1990) explain “is not a theory imposed from above by some autocratic reason, but rather…an exposition of the communication process as it takes place in experience” (p. 81). Fraught with the difficulty of analyzing an object of inquiry that is contradictory and always in praxis, Rawlins (1992) utilized an interpretive methodology to study friendships because such a method “both upholds dialogue as an ideal form of communication, [while] also [demonstrating] the inherent difficulty of sustaining dialogue” (Craig, 1999, p. 139). 13

With this in mind, I felt that an interpretive analysis and a qualitative study utilizing the dialogical responses of participants in an interview setting would yield diverse feedback concerning the nature of their involvements in relationships. I support

Rawlins’ (1992) notion that relationships involve inherent dialectical tensions. I believe that people in interpersonal relationships, in short, would likely desire different benefits from each particular relationship and that the dynamics of those desires and behaviors would constantly change and evolve throughout the course of the relationship. These varying, shifting desires would stem from both the relational dynamics between the two relating partners as a connected pair and from the unique needs and goals of each independent party. The benefits of such a relationship could come in the form of a connection that diminishes feelings of loneliness for an autonomous individual. In bonds such as these connections can be made with someone who elicits identification, a benefit that allows a marginalized or stigmatized quality to be underscored and alleviated through the solidarity gained from sharing a sense of relational community. Such a bond fills a void within one’s life when certain relational connections are missing, and it can provide supportive, communal, instrumental, and/or therapeutic services. The meaning- making process undertaken by the relating parties is unique to each relational connection.

Perhaps that is a drawing force or basis for the initial contact. Relating parties gain from making meaning together, meanings that would be unattainable if one was sheltered from interpersonal connections.

The Potential for a Parasocial Alternative

Since the onset of their capacity for philosophical thinking, humans have been on an enduring search for meaning. In pursuing answers to the ontological mystery of human existence, many researchers have branched off into separate paradigmatic camps containing very divergent ideologies, ranging from those seeking objective truths to those who primarily attempt to understand what kinds of meanings can be drawn from life events, cultural phenomena, or human engagement with others (Bochner, 2014). With this latter aim, a vast amount of research has been advanced with a focus on one area in which meaningful connections are made, the study of relating.

As previously discussed, interpersonal relationships provide meaningful connections through which many human desires and needs can be fulfilled. When we reach out and become fully immersed in communion with those who simultaneously reach out to us, we transcend being partial, unfinished beings and become more fully realized. Holquist (1983) reflects on the theoretical ideas of Bakhtin, noting that the philosopher firmly held onto the conviction that:

All existence is divisible into two kinds of being: the almost obligatory post-

Kantian distinction between matter, which is simply there, given (das Gegebene,

dan), and consciousness, all that which is created by mind, conceived (das

Aufgegebene, zadan). Everything is more or less dan or zadan. (p. 309)

We as humans possess the knowledge of our own inner thoughts. Others, along with nature, exist outside of us. Yet, when we lean toward others and connect in a meaningful way, we attain the final pieces to the puzzle to complete an unabridged entity that would 15

not have been possible by holding only the puzzle pieces belonging to an isolated self.

Buber (1958) provides a deeper understanding of the separate/connected quality of humans, adding “I do not experience the man to whom I say Thou. But I take my stand in relation to him, in the sanctity of the primary word” (p. 24). He continues:

The primary word I-Thou can be spoken only with the whole being.

Concentration and fusion into the whole being can never take place through my

agency, nor can it ever take place without me. I become through my relation to

the Thou; as I become I, I say Thou. All real living is meeting. (p. 26)

Bakhtin (1990) echoes the I/Thou consummation of personhood with his theories concerning the author and the hero. Describing the meeting of the two as an aesthetic event, he affirms that:

We have to do with a meeting of two consciousnesses which are in principle

distinct from each other, and where the author’s consciousness, moreover relates

to the hero’s consciousness not from the standpoint of its objective makeup…but

from the standpoint of its subjectively lived unity, and it is this, the hero’s own

consciousness, that is concretely localized and embodied…and lovingly

consummated. (p. 89)

The meeting that occurs between self and other, I and Thou, author and hero gives life its most meaningful activity, its greatest reward. As individuals we yearn for this fulfilling connection. We move toward a space in which we can meet the other in a consummating dance, moving both with and through the other. Yet, when there is nobody there to take our hand and lead us into the dynamic performance of mutuality, we are left in need. We 16

are incomplete. We need an intermediary connection that will brings us closer to the aesthetic event of consummation.

Over fifty years ago, Horton and Wohl (1956) remarked on the characteristics of new media -- which for them included radio, television, and cinema -- that have contributed to the changes in how individuals can connect to the outside world. These authors observed the way in which mediated figures take shape as potential relationships within our lives, particularly how “they give the illusion of face-to-face [relationships] with the performer” (p. 215). While these images may closely resemble in important ways actual, embodied people we encounter in our everyday lives, they come to us as images from the screen, as voices over the radio, or as characters imagined when reading a book. These mediated images appear to us as representations of actual individuals with whom we have social relations. Representation, as Baudrillard (1994) notes, occurs when an equivalence appears to exist between the sign and the real. The mediated figures we come to “know” as social relations can take on such an equivalence, one in which they appear to be real relationships experienced as minimally different from ones we could potentially have with our neighbors, co-workers, or even family members. These relationships are social in the same way that they persist and offer bases/stimuli for constructing meaning outside of our inner-consciousness. Yet they often differ through lacking the physical presence, responsiveness, or reciprocity of another person. Thus, they are similar to social relationships; yet, they are parasocial.

In their ground-breaking piece on parasocial interaction, Horton and Wohl (1956) defined parasocial relationships as a “seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator 17

and performer” (p. 215). They noted that the main difference between a parasocial relationship and a typical social relationship is the lack of reciprocity from the parasocial other. Responsiveness from the parasocial other might have been imagined or even felt, but there was little to no direct feedback, at least not in the same way that one would receive it in an interpersonal relationship. The parasocial relationship was considered unidirectional with little control by the spectator over the parasocial other’s performed contributions to the interaction and without the possibility of mutual adjustment to and development of the interaction. The ways in which the spectators could make their feelings known to the performers, writers, or creators of the program, according to

Horton and Wohl (1956), “[lay] outside the para-social interaction itself” (p. 215).

Despite these differences, parasocial interaction still provides a sense of social connectedness with mediated entities and characters that potentially alleviates a completely detached existence from our social environment. Our current and continually evolving advanced technological age also raises new questions concerning parasocial connections and the intensity of mediated interaction that should not be overlooked.

The Postmodern Parasocial Connection

The emergence of postmodernist thought, which “celebrated heterogeneity” and celebrated “the explicit quest for a true pluralism” (Spiridon, 2012, p. 70), provided a rationale for alternative voices to be heard. As taken-for-granted truths have begun to be questioned, multiple theories have been re-examined and re-imagined by scholars from multiple fields. In this spirit, while Horton and Wohl’s (1956) parasocial interaction theory remains the dominant theory on interpersonal relationships between people and 18

mediated figures, with postmodernist sensibilities I alter and extend the theory in two important areas.

First, I question the notion that spectating bodies have individualistic goals that drive all connectedness throughout the duration of a parasocial relationship and that move toward a consummated connection between the interconnected bodies, that is, between mediated and spectating bodies. The suggestion of a parasocial connection between a spectating body and a mediated figure reduces such relations to an individual with autonomous motives becoming involved as a detached observer with the figure represented on some form of media. In this view, an autonomous individual acts alone in pursuing, enhancing, and maintaining the connection. The mediated figure, on the other hand, is not perceived to be connected in the same way. The one-sided relationship is shaped and affected only by the autonomous spectator. The mediated figure is presumed to have no influence on the interconnectedness. A popular belief concerning this type of relationship is that the autonomous spectator, acting alone, seeks such a relationship for the purpose of serving personal needs.

While the original article analyzing parasocial interaction (Horton & Wohl, 1956) emerged from the field of psychology, most subsequent research has derived from two other substantive areas: mass media and communication research, and psychometric traditions utilizing the uses and gratifications theory (Giles, 2002). Uses and gratifications theory explores the “functions of the media and the role of audience members’ needs and expectations in mass communication behavior” (Rubin, 1983, p.

37). This theory, which posits that individuals act based on motivations (Ruggiero, 2000) 19

to seek specific outcomes for social and psychological needs (Cantril, 1942), also grants agency to the autonomous individual. It does not take into account situational or social factors that might lead to engagement with a mediated figure. Not every instance of an individual entering into a relationship with a parasocial other is caused by the motivation to actively seek out a connection for personal gain. Consequently, some outlooks have called for a “multidimensional view of audience activity” (Ruggiero, 2000, p. 10).

Embracing these more communication-based theoretical outlooks, researchers shift the focus from an individual’s autonomous agency and the motivations of one isolated person to “treatment of both the media and its audiences as integral parts of a larger social system” (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976, p. 4). One such theory, Ball-

Rokeach and DeFleur’s (1976) media dependence theory, proposes a tripartite relationship between audience, media, and society. Yet, although the media dependency model adds social influence to the relationship between audience members and media, the resulting theoretical model that guides one in making predictions about the possible effects of media use is still one that is limited. It also suggests that individuals act based on self-motives and ignores the polyphonous qualities of any particular authorial voice.

For example, a person might become interested in a program after watching it at a friend’s house. Scheduling conflicts might make one show easier to watch and another more difficult. Individuals may catch a show on a free day with nothing else to do, may watch something at the suggestion of a friend, or sometimes may watch programs because they come from specific creators, writers, or directors who share social identities or outlooks. Further, once a viewer becomes fond of a program, connections form 20

between the viewer and a parasocial character. The relationship is more complex than a linear model that predicts only discrete individual motivations and outcomes. Therefore, rather than examining the linear effects of media on single targeted audience members, my aim is to explore how audience members participate in making meanings through acts of consummation whereby the aesthetic activity is co-created by both self and other—the parasocial other.

Therefore, Bakhtinian understandings are integral for research based on the premise that the self is not a unified and sealed-off, autonomous body capable of acting based on one-sided motivational impulses. Bakhtin’s (1990) theoretical contributions, instead, consider together the consciousness of both self and other, referred to as author and hero. Bakhtin (1990) states:

The author must take up a position outside himself, must experience himself on a

plane that is different from the one on which we actually experience our own life.

Only if this condition is fulfilled can he complete himself to the point of forming

a whole by supplying those values which are transgredient to life as lived from

within oneself and thus can consummate that life. He must become another in

relation to himself, must look at himself through the eyes of another. (p. 15)

This excerpt provides support for relational conceptualizations that deviate from understandings based on the agentic potential of purely autonomous selves. While uses and gratifications theory helps explain how media function within the lives of isolated viewers, it fails to move beyond the idea that individuals follow predictable patterns as otherwise isolated players. Focusing not on linear causal processes with predictable 21

outcomes, I aim instead to examine how meanings are made in interaction/dialogue between interconnected parties who validate one another through the process of consummation.

Accordingly, the second area in which I diverge from Horton and Wohl’s (1956) initial theory is in its description of the purely one-sided nature of the parasocial relationship. Horton and Wohl (1956) conceived of parasocial parameters being limited to a unidirectional form of communication and relating. In the mid-fifties, communication with a mediated figure was almost impossible for someone without direct connection to the person behind the character on the television screen or the performer heard on the radio box. Such interaction was also impossible if the parasocial connection was with a fictitious character from a novel or comic book or with a public figure who had already passed away. It was not a stretch to call all parasocial interaction unidirectional because, for the most part, any interaction with a mediated figure followed a trajectory from the fan to the public figure, with little potential for interaction to be reciprocated from the public figure back to the fan. In the mid-fifties, communication technology was drastically limited compared to today (Hilmes, 1997). As a result, parasocial interaction had constraints concerning communication between the famous and the not-so-famous fans who idolized them. However, as technology has advanced, so have the possible degrees to which fans can communicate with all types of mediated figures, from fictional to real, living to deceased, performer to reality star, and so forth.

In the past, fans would consume programs by watching a television screen, listening to a radio show, or reading a favorite book (Hilmes, 1997). Feedback was 22

reduced to sending a letter in the mail to a favorite star, which may or may not have reached that star (Orgeron, 2003). Letters were most likely read by someone else, an individual employed by the star or production studio, and then the middle-person would respond to the fan letters. The stars, themselves, had little time to respond to the numerous letters sent daily from adoring fans. Social media, however, have drastically changed the ways in which consumer-public figure interaction can occur and the degree of reciprocity between the creators of the show and those who watch it (Highfield,

Harrington, & Bruns, 2013). Burgeoning media have created multiple avenues through which consumers can interact at a much quicker rate with mediated figures of all kinds.

Possibly the greatest change in this interaction, however, is the degree to which public figures reciprocate (Hilmes, 1997; Marwick and boyd, 2015). In modern times, parasocial interaction differs from the kind of interaction first postulated by Horton and Wohl

(1956). Pearson (2010) emphasizes that “the digital revolution has had a profound impact upon fandom, empowering and disempowering, blurring the lines between producers and consumers, creating symbiotic relationships between powerful corporations and individual fans, and giving rise to new forms of cultural production” (p. 84). Now, when a fan of The Big Bang Theory (2007) tweets to Sheldon Cooper, a fictional character from the show, there is a good chance that Sheldon Cooper might tweet back with a response, ranging anywhere from a friendly greeting to helpful advice to “Bazinga!”

It is true. Although Sheldon Cooper is a fictional character portrayed by Jim

Parsons on the popular CBS comedy The Big Bang Theory (2007), the character has a

Twitter account— @TheRealSheldonC—with over 515,000 followers 23

(@The_Real_Sheldon_C, 2018). Social media have made parasocial interaction much more complex (Vonderohe, 2016). Almost no kind of interaction is limited, as consumers can tweet fictional characters, highly visible political figures, A-list celebrities, and even deceased stars, as demonstrated when @ElvisPresley recently posted an old picture on

Twitter of the King of Rock and Roll with the King of the Ring, remembering to include

@MuhammadAli in the post (@Elvis_Presley, 2018). How much does it matter that consumers are not receiving responses from the real Elvis Presley or the real Muhammad

Ali, since neither of the two celebrities are still alive? The same might be asked of consumers concerning a potential response from Homer Simpson, who was never alive, but has a following of 2.23 million (@Homer_J._Simpson, 2018).

Thus, it might, to the consumer, matter more how interactive the mediated figure is in comparison to how real. A birthday wish from Batman might be cool, regardless of whether it came from an actualized version of Batman or not. Parasocial interaction might not be unique in this aspect. When one stands at the gravesite of a deceased relative and begins to communicate with that loved one, the communication is therapeutic, meaningful, and, in a sense, real. It is real for the one doing the communicating regardless of whether reciprocation takes place or not. Yet, reciprocation from a mediated figure in postmodernity is much more possible. The actors portraying the characters and the writers and producers of the show imagine their audience

(Marwick & boyd, 2011) when creating a show that might cater to a particular demographic. With the complexities of a postmodern turn and with new meanings created from new technological contexts, parasocial interaction exists on a continuum. 24

There are multiple modes of interaction; parasocial relationships are no longer simply unidirectional.

I distinguish among five levels of parasocial interaction on the Continuum of

Mediated Involvement I have developed. For example, in the same way that one person’s involvement in an interpersonal relationship may range from fully involved to barely involved with another, mediated figures now have comparable levels of interaction, thanks to advanced technological contexts that make consumer-public figure interaction more possible. The five levels of involvement on the continuum include Uninvolved,

Dismissive, Aware, Interactive, and Fully Involved.

Uninvolved

Uninvolved interaction between a consumer and a mediated figure includes celebrities that choose not to use social media and almost never respond to fans in any kind of format. This level also includes figures that are not alive, including fictional characters and deceased figures. However, as previously mentioned, it does not include all nonliving figures, as some have agencies that manage fan interaction regardless of the living status of the mediated figure. Thus, it would only include those figures that are so uninvolved in fan interaction that they choose not to interact on social media, do not attend conventions, and seek no involvement with those who follow their programs or consume their products. Very little communication from this mediated figure exists, outside of communication with those individuals who actually have a direct relationship with the figure.

Dismissive

Dismissive interaction includes interaction between consumers and a mediated figure that indeed has a social media presence but chooses only to interact with others who are viewed as peers or fellow industry insiders. On social media, the mediated figure might communicate opinions concerning current events and might promote an upcoming product but is not likely to respond to comments from fans. Therefore, communication from this mediated figure exists, but it is not directed at fans. It is dismissive of any type of fan interaction and only exists to send out a message with no desire for feedback.

Aware

Interaction between consumers and mediated figures exists on the awareness level if the mediated figure interacts in limited ways. For instance, if a celebrity sees tweets from fans and occasionally likes or acknowledges those tweets but does not reply. This type of feedback indicates an awareness, even if the feedback is not the most desirable form of reply for a consumer. An aware celebrity might also attend a fan convention but would likely insist that fans purchase an item to be autographed by the celebrity, avoiding photographs and discourse so that the line for autographs can move more swiftly.

Therefore, interaction at this level does exist, however it is not the most desirable or affirming form of interaction for the consumer.

Interactive

Interactive involvement between a mediated figure and a consumer is the most common type of interaction that would likely be evaluated as desirable by a consumer.

This type of interaction is positive for both parties, as it fulfills the consumer’s desire to 26

connect with the celebrated figure while simultaneously allowing the public figure to perform celebrity, manage impressions through fan maintenance, and acknowledge the public (Marwick & boyd, 2015). Consumers communicate with mediated figures as if they were a personal acquaintance (Giles, 2002), and the interaction is reciprocal. The mediated figure responds in kind, interacting with the consumer as if a personal relationship indeed exists. The interaction is seemingly mutual. Yet, there is a distinction here between this type of parasocial interaction and close interpersonal relationships.

Marwick and boyd (2015) note that “celebrity practice reinforces unequal power differentials” (p. 309). Both sides acknowledge that one party is the celebrated while the other is the adoring fan who does the celebrating. In addition, mediated figures, either on their own or through a management firm, attempt to present a consistent face and an identity (Goffman, 1959) that is positively evaluated by the public. The interaction has a monolithic commercial purpose. In most cases, the mediated figure interacts with consumers only as a means to produce positive impressions with a public that has an impact on the figure’s professional success. So while there is interaction, it often comes with self-focused goals on the part of the mediated figure for professional advancement.

Fully Involved

The fully involved type of interaction between a consumer and a mediated figure is the highest level of involvement. This type of involvement resembles a closer, interpersonal relationship where two parties share a direct personal connection with one another. Similar to the way in which closer personal relationships grow over time, a fully involved mediated relationship moves from limited involvement between consumers and 27

mediated figures to full involvement. For instance, after tweeting her crush to the

Wizards of Waverly Place (2007) star Jake T. Austin for five years, Danielle Ceasar caught his attention enough to where the pair began a romantic relationship (D., 2017).

The two parties moved from a consumer-mediated figure relationship with little personal connection to one in which both parties now intimately know one another. They became fully involved. Other parasocial relationships on this level range from public figures who are intimately knowledgeable of a consumer’s personal life status, keeping updated on matters such as the birth of a child or a job promotion, to public figures who are intimately connected to a consumer with daily personal contact. At this level, the consumer moves from a fan to a more personal status of friend or family member.

The Continuum of Mediated Involvement emphasizes that parasocial relationships have the potential to span levels of connection. A person pursuing parasocial connection can enjoy a traditional one-sided relationship or span levels of connection including one where both persons can become more fully realized through perceiving or receiving communicative acknowledgment as a consummated whole. I draw on Bakhtinian theory to conceptualize parasocial interaction as accomplishing to varying degrees a dialogical meeting, “the celebration of difference and singularity,” and a “continuous acknowledgment and consummation of another” (Harter & Rawlins, 2011, p. 268). As I focus on lived experiences in which viewers enter into the presence or communicative reach of a parasocial other, I emphasize a moment of entering into the personal realm between the two (the enter-personal). In my view, involvement increases as meaningful connections are made between the unique story of the consuming individual, the cultural 28

narrative represented in the mediated individual’s life story or a program’s storyline/plot, and the story that becomes through the parasocial relationship with the mediated figure.

Narrative conceptions provide a useful lens through which we can examine how we make meaning from the shared events between self and parasocial other.

* * *

With all of my selected belongings that I would take with me from Texas to Ohio packed in the back of a U-Haul truck, I stopped one last time to say goodbye to my grandmother. I would not be seeing her again, at least not regularly, for several weeks. It was the first time we would ever endure such spatial and temporal distance. I was heading off to a doctoral program but would never forget the flood of memories that were brought to mind when I thought of my shared history with my grandmother. This shared storybook of memories was extensive. Due to the circumstances, the ones I conjured up were all related to the word ‘doctor’: that time a lie was given in order to convince me to visit the doctor’s office with her, a visit that led to an undesirable injection via a painful needle; or that time we spent Thanksgiving in the hospital, as a result of undetected heart issues that temporarily threatened my grandmother’s health; or that unforgettable moment in which my grandfather gasped his last breath while uttering her name three times, a moment that signaled the end of our time with him.

As I prepared to head off in pursuit of my doctoral studies, it would be a while before I could connect with my grandmother in a face-to-face manner. That meant it would be a while before I could add more memories to our interconnected storybook, our relationship narrative. This visit was to be my last memory of being in her presence, at 29

least for a while. I struggled to say goodbye, knowing neither of us would successfully leave the encounter without the aid of multiple facial tissues, or more precisely without emptying an entire box.

My grandmother’s living room stereo could potentially break this moment of sorrow and add a well-needed change of mood. Realizing that something was needed to alleviate the spirit of dejection, I stood up to go press the power button. There was only one CD in her stereo, the same one that had been there since I first placed it there all those many years ago. My grandmother was as knowledgeable of newer technology as a newborn is of most things beyond the skills of crying, suckling, and bodily excretions. I had made that CD specifically for her, on a milestone birthday, knowing that each song meant something special to her. I pressed the play button and the first song came on.

When the music began, there was Willie, again, ready to save the day.

We walked toward one another, embraced, and danced one last time…at least until we should meet again. I could feel her entire presence in that moment. I also felt that she was too wholly consummated through our collaborative dance. We danced as he sang…

You took the part

That once was my heart

So why not take all of me

(Simons & Marks, 1978, track 4).

Narrative Constructions of Self and Other: Making Meaning from Meeting

I believe that parasocial interaction potentially provides the meaningful connection spoken of by Buber (1958), one in which a person attains “the spiritual form of natural solidarity” (Buber, 1958, p. 67). The story reflected on the screen by the parasocial other can give one a basis for constructing relevant understandings of one’s own life. Andrews (2014) contends that “who am I (and who are ‘us’) invariably invites the question of who are ‘they’ (or other), just as the reverse is true” (p. 8). She promotes a narrative imagination in the ongoing “attempt to penetrate the meaning-making system of another,” while also attempting to understand the reverse, noting that “we must imagine how we are imagined” (p. 10). When we relate with the mediated images that enter into our presence, we examine our own personal story, both seeing it reflected by the story presented on the screen (identification) and imagining how it might be narrated from the standpoint of (an)other through their unique excess of seeing. Bakhtin (1990) parallels these sentiments, emphasizing that:

We are constantly and intently on the watch for reflections of our own life on the

plane of other people’s consciousness, and moreover, not just reflections of

particular moments of our life, but even reflections of the whole of it. And while

seeking to catch these reflections, we also take into account that perfectly

distinctive value-coefficient with which our life presents itself to the other—a

coefficient which is completely different from the coefficient with which we

experience our own life in ourselves. (p. 16)

He adds that “I can never experience within myself in any unmediated way that which constitutes me as a legal person, because my legal personality is nothing else but my guaranteed certainty in being granted recognition by other people” (p. 49).

Storytelling weaves together the narratives of a multiplicity of relations. Frank

(2000) notes that “stories reaffirm what people mean to each other and who they are with respect to each other” (p. 354). It would be impossible for one to tell a life story that left out the interconnected stories of those with whom the individual shared an interpersonal relationship. Our stories become ours through our intermingling with those around us.

While “being a self entails having a story” (Crites, 1986, p. 162), MacIntyre (1984) attaches the belief that “the narrative of any one life is part of an interlocking set of narratives” (p. 218). In addition to the connectedness of life stories between the self and others, the larger, cultural story also informs our personal story. Our personal histories are “embedded in and made intelligible” by any number of “larger and longer histories” of multiple traditions (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 222). Personal narratives, then, are not purely personal. Just as the self can only be fully realized when consummated by/with/through another, the story of the self is incomplete without the linked stories of social relations and social traditions. I argue that among those interconnected stories are the stories of our relationships with the mediated figures we encounter through parasocial interaction.

The bond we form with parasocial others can take on perceptions of a real relationship (Horton & Wohl, 1956). Moreover, such parasocial relationships have become commonplace in modern times since, as Osborn (2012) notes, “television occupies a central place in our lives” (p. 740). Likewise, social media have enlarged the 32

social realm connecting people to figures they do not know beyond interaction that flows unidirectionally. Social media provide more capacity for reciprocity of a limited, typically impersonal nature than was available with prior mass media. This “mediated quasi-interaction” (Thompson, 1995) is undertaken with the perception that a parasocial figure is a personal acquaintance, despite the fact that the mediated figure is usually unaware of the existence of the audience member. The belief frequently held by audience members is that they know the parasocial other in a fashion closely resembling in important ways their interpersonal bonds with close friends, romantic others, or family members (Rubin & McHugh, 1987). These connections can sometimes become intense, sometimes involving sustained attachment (Cole & Leets, 1999), emotional stress when the relationship seemingly ends (Cohen, 2004), a move toward fandom (Earnheardt &

Haridakis, 2009; Kassing & Sanderson, 2009; Pearson, 2010), a longing for companionship (Wang, Fink, & Cai, 2008), and identification through similar qualities

(Tian & Hoffner, 2010).

Audience members become so immersed in the mediated relationship that their life narratives interconnect with the scripted narratives featured on the regularly-viewed program (Beck, 2012). Layered on top of that is the co-constructed narrative between the audience member and parasocial other. This narrative activity is aided by the “merging of one’s mind and the mind of the [imagined] other” through a disinhibited process in which the individual treats “others as characters in one’s own internal world” (Miller, 2015, p.

639), a process Suler (2004) called solipsistic introjection. As this interweaving of a story simultaneously highlights the unique identity of the individual and the merged union of 33

self with other(s), it demonstrates the Bakhtinian idea of consummation. Thus, through the consummating act, one can say “I give shape both to others and to my self as an author gives shape to his heroes” (Bakhtin, 1990, p. xxx). While such shaping differs when it occurs in lived experiences versus “more mediated expressions,” both activities are similar in that they are “driven by a perceptual mandate to consummate” (p. xxx).

With co-present embodied participants, the consummated process allows for insights to be gained through the collaboration, as both relating parties gain and learn from the sharing of stories, the co-experiencing of meaningful moments, and the invitation to express hidden thoughts. Together, the two make sense of the situation. Even so, sensemaking, which occurs in hindsight, is an activity in which participants in any kind of engagement, such as a parasocial relationship, think about what happened, what it could mean, and how it might be meaningful to them. Weick (1995) describes sensemaking as “a thinking process that uses retrospective accounts to explain surprises”

(p. 4). It involves perceiving, interpreting, believing, and acting (Weick, 1995). Freeman

(2010) adds that “to ‘make sense of’: in this simple term, there is reference both to

‘making,’ in the sense of a kind of constructive doing, and to ‘explicating,’ in the sense of discerning what is actually there, in the world” (p. 43). Freeman (2010) places sensemaking in a hermeneutical dimension, in which one is “irrevocably enmeshed within the circle of interpretation, bringing to bear all that [one knows] and [all that one is] upon the ‘text’ at hand” (p. 62). Koenig-Kellas (2017) also argues that sensemaking functions harmoniously with narrative accounts.

Thus, sensemaking is simultaneously an individualized endeavor and a social activity, as “most interpretations involve political interests, consequences, coercion, persuasion, and rhetoric” (Weick, 1995, p. 7). When multiple parties share stories, they reflect on those stories, with the gift of hindsight, and attempt to make sense of what emerged from the structure of the story. Individually as well as together, participants make sense of it all. In a constructivist view, they make the reality expressed from the story, they provide a narrative truth. Freeman (2010) describes the engagement as a process through which “meaning is found through being made” (p. 181). What is deemed meaningful, out of the insights extracted from the narrated tale, is provided such a status by the collaborative sensemaking activities undertaken by all who join together when telling stories, when entering into one another’s presence, or when wholly consummating one another. Narrative temporalities are necessary for the sensemaking process. To make sense of any present moment is to look back and reflect upon a moment from the past.

Additionally, one projects a future story through the examination of what past events might have meant, with a narrative understanding that is created dialogically through the sharing of stories.

Despite the collaborative spirit of sensemaking, Weick (1995) warns that

“meetings assemble and generate minorities and majorities” (p. 144). All plausible explanations for a sequence of events told through a narrated form are compared and contrasted with expected outcomes. Bruner (1986) provided an equation that combined cues and expectations to ultimately produce units of meaning. Expectations can become so canonical that any deviation is presumed to be unlikely and/or disvalued. In such 35

situations, those who subscribe to unpopular theories or interpretations thereby lose privilege. They are aligned with the minority when viewed in terms of the judgments made from the canonical sensemaking perspective. Often, those with minority views are also situated in lived experiences where they are treated as minority others, people thought to be less than human, or at least in possession of traits and qualities deserving of an unequal status in society (Nussbaum, 2010). Nonetheless, such individuals deserve a presence in sensemaking spaces. These individuals also deserve a format through which they can express their voices and share their stories. With equal necessity, they also deserve a meaningful connection with someone who will make them feel wholly consummated. Interaction of this kind, an interpersonal connection and source of affirmation, is desirable. Yet, when others are not available for an edifying interpersonal attachment, other possibilities exist—possibilities that can mediate the interconnected pursuits of those with identities that are often scrutinized or rejected in society.

Identifying with Others: Contemplating Sexuality and Stigma

Just as parasocial interaction has evolved over time due to technological advances and new mediums that make such interaction easier, so too have the types of relationships shared between spectating and mediated bodies. What was once only restricted to one- sided relationships has now become open to multiple types of relationships, including very close and personal ones. The possibilities are virtually endless for the multitude of consumers out there who enjoy mediated programs, and who are themselves a diverse population. While notions of men adoring Marilyn Monroe and women idolizing James

Dean were popular in the cultural consciousness of years gone by, the present potential 36

for parasocial relationships is manifold, spanning numerous types of interactions and identities. The consumers can move from spectator to spouse. They might resemble the mediated figure or might differ. Multiple audiences “co-exist in a single social context,” in what Marwick and boyd (2015, p. 309) refer to as a context collapse (boyd, 2008). The multiple audiences include all types of identities: older and younger, ethnically and racially diverse, all degrees of able-bodiedness, with a vast array of gender performativity, and spanning the entire spectrum of sexuality. Not only are spectators no longer hidden from the purview of the celebrated media figure, who previously had no image to attach to the fan mail, but identities that once were relegated to the closet

(Adams, 2011) are now proudly available for public recognition. In other words, regardless of one’s identity, which might be privileged or scrutinized, a consumer has the same opportunity to witness, appreciate, and enter into a personal connection with a mediated figure across multiple levels of interaction.

Bakhtin (1990) stresses that before consummation, “we open the boundaries when we ‘identify’ ourselves with the hero and experience his life from within” (p. 91).

Parasocial interaction often begins with an identification—when the viewer sees similar qualities between self and a mediated other (Tian & Hoffner, 2010). Those who identify with parasocial figures can behave in a number of ways, ranging from only partially relating with the parasocial other to becoming obsessed with the character. Many times these audience members become a part of a fandom culture, participating in cosplay

(performances in which an audience member will dress and act like a favorite character, typically enacted at a fan convention), watching shows in group settings, and joining 37

forums where they can interact with other fans of the mediated programs. Fandom often involves identity work (Sagardia, 2017). Additionally, identification with another or others can be beneficial, generating a sense of community or social support.

This identification with mediated others is especially significant if the individual viewing the program suffers from a social stigma caused by a marginalized identity.

Stigma is defined by Goffman (1963) as “an attribute that is deeply discrediting” (p. 3). It is hard to recognize the social construct behind each type of stigma, as many opinions concerning social categories are so habituated that they seem to be factual. Goffman

(1963) notes that “society establishes the means of categorizing persons and the complement of attributes felt to be ordinary and natural for members of each of these categories” (p. 2). The stigmatized individual is not accepted in society, being castigated for perceived transgressions to socially constructed norms. Viewing the stigmatized as a non-human, the privileged ones referred to as normals, discriminate against the less privileged individuals with a social stigma. For the stigmatized, treatment is unfair, chances are reduced, identities foreclosed, and privilege is off limits. To support the discrimination, “[the normals] construct a stigma-theory, an ideology to explain [one’s] inferiority and account for the danger [one] represents, sometimes rationalizing an animosity based on other differences…” (Goffman, 1963, p. 5). Members of the LGBTQ community struggle with social stigma. This marginalized population is “suffused with appeals to disgust,” as public perceptions vilify the sexual practices and life choices of those who are categorized as different in matters of sexuality (Nussbaum, 2010, p. 2).

The demarcation of the LGBTQ population as immoral and abnormal began in the late 38

1860s, when sexologists first created a term—homosexual—to label individuals who participated in same-sex behaviors. Eventually, “the ‘homosexual community’ was pathologized by the medical and psychiatric professions until the 1970s.” Many acts of same-sex partners were made illegal with the aim of making criminal the practices of this stigmatized group (Eliason, Chinn, Dibble, & DeJoseph, 2013).

Of the three types of stigma, LGBTQ individuals are marked with a character- based stigma, one attained through perceptions of flawed character traits. The other two types include physical stigmas, granted to those with perceived physical deformities of the body, and tribal stigmas, which are qualities (e.g., ethnic markers) passed down from one generation to the next. The LGBTQ stigma is also one that is usually discreditable, one that is not immediately visible, in contrast to discredited stigmas (Ramasubramanian

& Yadlin-Segal, 2017). In addition, there are three manifestations of sexual stigma: enacted, felt, and internalized. Enacted stigma refers to behaviors aimed at ostracizing

LGBTQ individuals. Felt stigma refers to the possession of knowledge by an LGBTQ individual that their identity is one that carries a social stigma. As a result, members of the LGBTQ community modify their behavior to prevent becoming the targets of such ostracism and discrimination. Finally, internalized stigmas refer to when the targeted individual—the member of the LGBTQ community—begins to share the negative views of society and harbors attitudes of self-hate (Herek, 2007). For one reason or another, the stigmatized individual becomes placed in the marginalized category and the consequences for such an offense are numerous and severe.

Much in the same way that marginalized races are subject to prejudice due to perceived differences, LGBTQ individuals face prejudicial treatment as a result of social displeasure or disagreement with certain distinctions. LGBTQ individuals desire partners of the same sex, either exclusively or part of the time (Adams, 2011). They often engage in sexual acts that are perceived to be atypical and occasionally viewed as unsanitary

(Nussbaum, 2010). They are sometimes blamed for the spread of harmful diseases

(Nussbaum, 2010). They periodically deviate from gender norms, shifting notions of masculinity and femininity (Yep, 2003). For these and other perceived transgressions, they are stigmatized. Yep (2003) likens stigmatization to a process of othering, in which an “invisible center” (Ferguson, 1990, p. 3) creates a social public that is “deemed to be less important, less worthwhile, less consequential, less authorized and less human based on historically situated markers of social formation…” (Yep, 2003, p. 18). In the case of the LGBTQ community, heterosexuals are granted a privileged status due to a process of normalization (Yep, 2003). This systemic process is referred to as heteronormativity; in essence, the heterosexual becomes the norm and anything other than the norm is viewed as abnormal.

When marked with a stigma, an individual often struggles with forming interpersonal bonds with others. To combat isolation and loneliness, as well as to attain social support, a stigmatized individual might seek a connection with an agreeable party. Goffman

(1963) suggests that one population that the stigmatized can depend upon for social support consists of “those who share [one’s] stigma and by virtue of this are defined and

define themselves as [one’s] own kind” (p. 28). This connection helps show the stigmatized person that others with similar qualities exist (Goffman, 1963).

Ramasubramanian and Yadlin-Segal (2017) stress the importance of media in helping to form, maintain, and counter social stigmas. Mediated figures, in addition, can serve as friends who provide positive identification, harmonious socialization, and group solidarity. This solidarity provides community; and this connection gives rise to consummation. Bakhtin (1990) stresses that “any aesthetic existence, i.e., a whole, integral human being, is not founded and validated from within—from a possible self- consciousness” (p. 91). In league with a parasocial other, one finds unity, connection, and a shared bond through which a stigmatized individual, such as one from the LGBTQ community, can make meaningful sense of lived experiences. The goal of my research is to examine the meanings made through the relationships shared between interdependent bodies—the spectating body and the mediated body—in localized moments of coming together (or of becoming together). With this goal, I was guided by the following research questions:

RQ1: How do individuals from the LGBTQ community make meaning with

mediated others in parasocial relationships?

RQ2: What significance does that meaning making embody, as it relates to

stigma, for individuals from the LGBTQ community?

In addition to providing a mediated form of connection, “parasocial contact with admired and likeable media celebrities from stigmatized out-groups also has the potential to reduce prejudice against the group as a whole” (Ramasubramanian & Yadlin-Segal, in 41

press). In certain situations and under specific circumstances, parasocial relationships could provide benefits for stigmatized individuals who often face discrimination in many social settings. Goffman (1963) described the unfortunate dilemma facing the stigmatized individual, who might feel “that mixed social situations make for anxious unanchored interaction” (p. 18). Rather than entering an uncomfortable space in one’s social environment, one might choose to navigate through a mediated realm where more agreeable and pleasant bodies await an enter-personal connection. Could mediated connections substitute for a lack of interaction or unpleasant interaction in one’s social environment? Can mediated figures, of one’s own kind (Goffman, 1963), help a stigmatized individual with personal and social struggles? For example, do members of the LGBTQ community, who have largely been marginalized socially, culturally, and historically due to heteronormative ideologies (Foucault, 1990; Warner, 1999), benefit from viewing a positively-portrayed character with whom they can identify? Shame is a potential result of discriminatory treatment, leading a stigmatized individual to seek support—some way to cope with the dilemma. Perhaps a proliferation of positively- portrayed characters from the LGBTQ spectrum might aid in one’s ability to cope with a stigmatized identity. Even so, the possible benefits and conditions of such a process remain unclear. Therefore, the following research questions additionally guided my research:

RQ3: What are the potential benefits of a parasocial relationship for individuals

from the LGBTQ community?

RQ4: Under what conditions are parasocial relationships beneficial for individuals

from the LGBTQ community?

Through shared experiences from a mediated meeting between self and parasocial other, one can potentially benefit in a multitude of ways as the relating parties make meaning together. Examining the potential insights gained from parasocial relationships as experienced by actual participants in such relationships is the research objective of this project.

In this chapter, I began by deliberating social perceptions of relationships. My ruminations then moved from the more popular notion of relating, interpersonal bonds between two people, to one of less notoriety, the parasocial relationship. In considering this type of relationship, one between a spectator and a mediated public figure, I argued that past theoretical postulations are limited and move toward a postmodern conceptualization of parasocial relationships. I demonstrated that connected parties, brought together in a mediated capacity, have differing levels of interaction. To aid in attempting to understand the levels, I proposed the Continuum of Mediated Involvement.

This continuum includes uninvolved, dismissive, aware, interactive, and fully involved levels. I then noted how stories reaffirm the importance of relationships, even parasocial connections. I asserted that connected parties make meaning together through their shared stories. This meaning-making process is particularly valuable to individuals facing social stigma. Finally, I posed the research questions guiding this study. These questions address how parasocial relationships provide meaning for a certain group facing stigma, the LGBTQ community, and the benefits such a relationship could provide. In what 43

follows, as I consider the larger, cultural story of the LGBTQ community and its connection to parasocial figures, I will relate my own stories.

* * *

Although we are forever connected, as grandmother and grandson, as loving caretaker and devoted descendant, as consummated partners, we do not know everything there is to know about each other. Certain statements have not been disclosed. While I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that my grandmother would accept me no matter what surprise might be unveiled during a moment of dialogical connection, I have chosen, thus far, not to share one of my longest-held secrets with her. Perhaps it is because I remember watching images of feminine men on mediated programs and hearing my grandmother ridicule them for not performing gender in typical, traditional ways that are considered the norm. Such images were either met with uproarious laughter

(the object of mockery) or with utter disapproval (the object of shame). Would Grandma treat me the same way she did those mediated figures on the television screen? Spewing slurs at the presumed-to-be-gay characters on the television screen, she called them jotos, a Spanish pejorative for a queer person. I’d like to think that she wasn’t guilty of possessing prejudicial views. I tell myself that she was a victim of her upbringing—being brought up during a tumultuous time when some people were still having to fight for civil rights in the face of unjust scrutiny by individuals who lacked the wisdom to see beyond the color of one’s skin, or, in this case, the gendered performance or sexual preferences of queer bodies. Such bodies were considered abnormal in her time. Still, I cannot blame

one’s temporal location in the passage of time for a lack of humanity. I know that she has an excuse, but I now believe the excuse should not be excused.

What is my excuse? Why do I allow antiquated ideologies to shame me into hiding my often-marginalized identity? Why do I keep such a vital part of myself hidden from the person who has been my closest confidante for the better part of my life? I only recently came out to anyone, proudly proclaiming my sexuality only as far back as four years ago. Perhaps, with more time, I could have expressed such an important detail about myself to my grandmother. However, time is not in abundance at this juncture in our shared story. The conclusion to our story, at least in a physically embodied notion, is drawing nearer and nearer as each day materializes and each nightfall puts a cap on the day that preceded it.

It happened in a moment’s notice. One day my grandmother was reasonable, brilliantly recounting the story of a former dog that had a tendency to hunt chickens, resulting in an awkward dinner party where she had to act unaware of what had actually happened while in the presence of her neighbor, the person who owned several lost chickens. Coincidentally, as the story goes, dinner consisted of a deliciously-cooked chicken entrée. The next day she was unreasonable, insisting that she needed to go home, all while arguing with anybody who would listen to her from inside the parameters of her well-maintained place of residence. Grandma no longer had the mental clarity to realize that she was home. The same place where we, wholly consummated, danced to Willie less than three years ago was now unrecognizable to my grandmother. What would be next? Would she soon not be able to recognize me? 45

Maybe she never really knew me. I mean, how much of the real me did my grandmother actually know if I never even told her that I was gay? Or, as some have suggested, maybe she knew. Some say that those who are closest to you know things about you before you even have the courage to tell them in person what you think was always hidden from them. Does it even matter? Being gay is a big part of my identity, but it does not encapsulate the entire fabric of my being. I am other things, including many important things. My grandmother knew those things about me. Willie Nelson, a parasocial figure who has often managed to mediate the relationship between my grandmother and me, is also a product of those antiquated times. I would have imagined

Willie Nelson, an icon for a state that is associated with the masculine performances of bull-riding and cattle-roping cowboys, would also have held prejudicial views. Those assumptions were erased when Willie released a song entitled “Cowboys are Frequently,

Secretly Fond of Each Other” (2009). Maybe if Willie can hold progressive views, my grandmother might also be capable of possessing enlightened beliefs that recognize the value of all people, regardless of any stigmatized identity.

I guess now that she is in the early stages of senility brought upon by advanced age, I will never know how my grandmother would have reacted if I had told her something I should have shared with her long ago. I regret not having pursued that moment with my grandmother; I would have revealed something important about myself.

And my grandmother would have confirmed that love does not fade away when someone reveals something about themselves that society often depicts as shameful and immoral.

Yes, I will never know what her reaction would have been, but I know that whatever it 46

might have been, my grandmother would have loved me no less. She would have loved me just the same and just as much. She would have loved me…all of me.

Chapter 3: Investigative Practices

I am intrigued by quandaries that consider the question of what is meaningful about a particular situation, relationship, or engaged interaction. This core question informs my research. When better understood, those meanings provide a route to discovering insights that might further clarify an issue in need of illumination. Qualitative inquiry is poised to contribute understandings that might draw one closer to answering this question, perhaps not with a solitary truth as the lone answer but rather with a multiplicity of answers that serve as provisional truths for certain moments, relations, or ways of being/doing in the world. As a methodological tool inextricably tied to specific philosophies concerning research, “qualitative inquiry seeks to discover and to describe in narrative reporting what particular people do in their everyday lives and what their actions mean to them. It identifies meaning-relevant kinds of things in the world”

(Erickson, 2011, p. 43).

This chapter details the methodological practices I employed for this project. In detailing the methodological tools utilized, I simultaneously reveal my own ontological leanings. The methods I chose are not just choices…they are personal convictions. They disclose facets of my identity as a researcher.

I begin by looking at the value of meaning-making practices in understanding the phenomena of social research. I discuss how interpretive methods are useful for unpacking the subjective, meaningful accounts provided by participants, accounts that can be shared through dialogical conversations during a research interview. Highlighting how such personal stories provided by participants compose rich texts to study, I then 48

make a narrative turn. I describe how I connect their stories with my own personal accounts and thereby present autoethnography as a beneficial tool for making sense of relational conundrums. I explain how my layering of autoethnographic accounts onto the multiple stories provided by my participants performs crystallization, which Ellingson

(2011) characterizes as a “boundary-spanning work along the qualitative continuum” (p.

605). I conclude the chapter by providing details on the specific procedures I utilized to accomplish this study, information about my participants, and the coding process I employed.

Turning Away From, Coming Away With

In agreement with the shift in emphasis to meaning-relevant findings rather than objective truths, Bochner (2014) stressed that “life is saturated with predicaments and contingencies—losses, traumas, illnesses, disappointments, deaths—twists of fate and chance,” which provides the rationale for doing research that speaks to “what it feels like to be alive” (pp. 22-23). Bochner (2014) concludes that “we can’t build a human science on a foundation of prediction and control because to do so would make it necessary to ignore too much of life” (p. 23). Researchers who conduct inquiries utilizing qualitative frameworks choose such methodologies, privileging desires to understand “how people create and negotiate meanings” (Bochner, 2014, p. 55) over desires to meet the standards of “a singular, monolithic conception of social science” (Bochner, 2001, p. 134). A qualitative outlook involves a commitment to discovering ways to answer the multiple questions we may have about life and the world in which we live. With this shift toward findings that illuminate meanings, qualitative researchers make choices to implement 49

alternative methodologies that are not intended to help one predict outcomes, collect data, or create replicable designs that yield objective answers, or to contribute to what might be considered factual knowledge.

Turning away from orthodox social scientific methodologies, qualitative researchers can use alternative methods to investigate topics of interest, coming away with gains that could only be attained through a more inviting, more inductive, and more in-depth type of study. Expanding upon existing thoughts about qualitative standards

(Ellingson, 2009; Scarduzio, Giannini, & Geist-Martin, 2011), Tracy (2012), observes that “the criteria for qualitative quality are quite different than the validity criteria for quantitative studies” (p. 121). Qualitative inquiry, ideally, is practiced with commitments to “rich, detailed descriptions of human experience, dialogic encounters between the self and other, sensitivity to ethical and political issues, and the inductive development of theory from intimate knowledge of situated practices” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011, p. 29). It moves away from the traditional approaches that seek to know what and how and, instead, examines a topic with a more in-depth and localized approach that provides an insight into what it is like (Tracy, 2012).

This type of philosophy, equipped with inductive forms of methodology, holds distinctive views of both ontology and epistemology. Knowledge about the world is not a quest for one true reality. Rather, it is the continuation of a dialogic conversation in which new meanings extend established meanings, new utterances join with already- spoken utterances, and alternative stories are included with traditional stories. In advocating for a philosophy of research that promotes conversational continuities over 50

closed-off discussions that center on rigorous attempts to verbalize a solitary notion of truth, Rorty (1979) emphasizes that:

To see keeping a conversation going as a sufficient aim of philosophy, to see

wisdom as consisting in the ability to sustain a conversation, is to see human

beings as generators of new descriptions rather than beings one hopes to be able

to describe accurately. To see the aim of philosophy as truth—namely, the truth

about the terms which provide ultimate commensuration for all human inquiries

and activities—is to see human beings as objects rather than subjects… (p. 378)

Bochner (2014) endorses this idea, adding that “we’d all be a lot better off if we understood knowledge as the practices we acquire to cope with reality rather than a product of the procedures we use to get an accurate picture of reality” (p. 269). The ultimate goal of research, under this philosophical belief, is to connect an underlying research question to meaning: How meaningful is it? What does it mean to me? How can

I use it in my life? In short, “where once we were concerned primarily with the accuracy of descriptions, now we ask how useful our descriptions are and what we can do with them” (Bochner, 2014, p. 304). The meaningfulness of a cultural phenomenon provides a certain type of truth that serves as helpful to individuals going about their everyday lives.

Life is ultimately a search for meaning (Frankl, 1959).

Putting into Wor(l)ds: Practices of Interpretation

Bateson (1951) countered arguments that privileged perceptions thought to be the result of objective research findings. Bochner (2014) agrees with his insistence that:

If we only perceive the product of our perceptions, then the idea of an untarnished

objectivity is an illusion. Any ‘truth’ out there in the world has to make its way

through human perception, codification, and translation. The known is

inextricably connected to the knower, the observed to the observer, and the self to

others. (p. 131)

Reflexively, then, researchers guided by qualitative principles understand that their knowledge claims will always be “positioned and partial” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011, p. 9).

Claims come from the way one perceives when making observations, and perceptions are simultaneously unique and shared. The self, as Mead (1934) underscored, is a member of a community and “the raw materials out of which this particular individual is born would not be a self but for his [sic] relationship to others in the community of which he [sic] is a part” (p. 200). In a collaborative sense, individuality is tied to solidarity and connection

(Harter & Rawlins, 2011).

Knowledge and evidence, under a perspective guided by symbolic interactionism, is viewed as “part of a communication process that symbolically joins an actor, an audience, a point of view, assumptions, and claims about the relations between two or more phenomena” (Altheide & Johnson, 2011, p. 582). The researcher belongs to the community, either in a specific or broader sense, under investigation. Thus, the findings one interprets when examining texts are culled from grand discourses belonging to the larger community. Interpretive knowledge claims emerge from the interdependence between researcher and the community being observed (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011).

Collectively, we create meaning in the world. Thus, a researcher’s interpretations of an 52

observable text, which includes human activity and interaction, might emerge from the unique perspective of a lone individual. But they also are chosen from cultural understandings that have informed that researcher’s perspective throughout a lifetime as one member of a larger community. Additionally, all research involves interpretation.

Even the hardest social science moves forward through the interpretive labor of a researcher who has been affected by culture, limiting any attempt at absolute objectivity.

Bochner (2014) provides an argument for reflexivity, encouraging scholars to remember that the researcher influences the observable while the observable simultaneously and reciprocally affects the researcher. Human sciences are different from the natural sciences in several important ways (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011), making interpretive methodologies ideal for studies of “situated and reflexive social action” (p. 9).

Interpretive studies have several advantages for researchers interested in understanding how meanings are made collectively in localized settings. Key commitments of interpretive research are to “achieve deep understanding of human actions, motives, and feelings” and to “illuminate how humans use cultural symbol systems to create shared meanings for their existence and activity” (Lindlof & Taylor,

2011, p. 9). Interpretive methodologies examine how people are connected in the making of shared meanings, while also bringing people together, namely the researcher and researched person(s). One’s ontological assumptions about the world are collected from a community of philosophers gathered under the same paradigmatic umbrella, observing the drops of rain “out there” from within a particular location that limits the ways in which interpretations can be made. 53

Our worlds are collectively constructed by those who both share and inform our values, understandings, and philosophies. Thus, I see interpretive researchers as not just observing a culture and putting into words what was discovered, but also as putting theories into worlds—worlds informed by ways of knowing that encourage certain research methods over others. As a scholar who firmly believes in the importance of understanding how shared meanings guide people through their everyday lives—a scholar who comes from a world informed by interpretivism—I find value in research that enables all voices to be heard. The researcher provides the voice of thick description, making claims about the culture being observed. The culture observed, in turn, voices their reading of their own experience, which is “a story they tell themselves about themselves” (Geertz, 1973, p. 448). Reflexively, I understand the partial quality of all research. Communally, I participate in meaning-making. Ethically, I voice my interpretations and give voice to others when they share their stories. I lean toward research guided by commitments such as these. I seek collaboration: in the field, in the conversation, and in the process of meaning-making. Therefore, I find certain interpretive methodologies beneficial when seeking a response from others who can provide further understandings about a topic of interest. Conversational engagement with others is a paramount concern that motivates my decision to use interviews as a research method.

Lindlof and Taylor (2011) note that qualitative researchers use interviews for a variety of purposes, including to understand unique perspectives, to obtain descriptions from others, to gain insight from a cultural insider, and to produce a record that can later be analyzed. Additionally, “interviews are particularly well suited to understanding the 54

social actor’s experience, knowledge, and worldviews” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011, p. 173).

At the most basic level, interviews allow social actors to give accounts, using in-group language forms, so that one can analyze the explanations of a cultural insider. Open- ended interviews with my participants offer multiple benefits for my attempt to address the research problem at hand. That is, I examined meaning-making practices between spectators and mediated bodies when a person, struggling with a stigmatized identity, enters into a parasocial relationship. Akin to the joint interaction that informs interpretive insights, interviews can be treated as “a local manifestation of the discursive formations that circulate broadly in society” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011, p. 179). In this way, interviews can be seen as a dialogue between self, other, and the larger culture at hand.

These dialogical instances provide an opportunity for social discourses to be mediated through social actors, who themselves are simultaneously engaging in dialogue with the researcher conducting the interview. One voice carries multiple voices from the larger society, as indicated by the concept of heteroglossia, which was illustrated in the works of Bakhtin (1981).

Putting Stories Together: A Choice for Narrative

Questions remain concerning the status of narrative. Robert and Shenhav (2014) ask if narrative is “the very fabric of human existence or a representational device amongst others” (p. 2). In other words, is our life inherently a narrative itself? Do we live through a storied existence that precedes representational attempts to understand an experience? Epistemological ideologies, thus, are dependent upon how one would answer such a question. As a representational device, narrative provides an aesthetic retelling of 55

an event by layering on a story where a story originally did not exist. The story would be produced so that one could better understand in retrospect something that took place, something that was initially devoid of the conventions of a story (i.e., character, plot, sequence of events). Yet, without stories we could never fully understand who we are in this world. Crites (1986) argues that “being a self entails having a story” (p. 162), with

Macintyre (1984) adding that the self resides in the unity of a narrative. The recollection of self, situatedness of the self, and hopes for the future self all exist through narrative strategies concerned with temporality. We have a capacity to imagine multiple selves, as

Bruner (2002) remarks, noting that “it is not just who and what we are that we want to get straight but who and what we might have been, given the constraints that memory and culture impose on us, constraints of which we are often unaware” (p. 14). Crites (1986) adds that “those recollected are capable of high definition, a large measure of completeness” (p. 164).

Stories not only allow us to build understandings of self and others, but they inform our language as well. We communicate with beliefs that there will be a beginning, middle, and end to lived events. It is how we structure our language, starting with a capital letter to signify the beginning of a sentence and ending with a punctuated stop that completes a thought. Bruner (2002) points out that “we are so adept at narrative that it seems almost as natural as language itself” (p. 3). We tell stories to communicate to others and use narrative conventions to understand what others communicate to/with us.

Stories bring us together; they require both a teller and a listener. Engaging in storytelling provides an invitation. According to Bruner (2002), “the sharing of common stories 56

creates an interpretive community” (p. 25). Narrative, thus, contributes to the creation of self and community, while also providing a means through which we can become fully present with the other.

While narrative provides an account of the life trajectory, Bakhtin (1990) stresses the importance of others, with whom we build relationships, to help grasp the entirety of one’s life by providing an excess of seeing. Birth, death, and other significant events are not witnessed by the self. They are witnessed, and thus storied, by others who share our lives with us. Bakhtin (1990) states that “the terminal points of my own life cannot have this plot-determining significance; my own life is that which temporally encompasses the existence of others” (p. 105). Therefore, the process of creating, recollecting, sharing, and imagining stories is an act that both enables meanings to be made and provides meaning for the pursuit of a good life worth living. This process is always a collaboration. Stories are relationships (Frank, 2000). For what is most meaningful about any story is the way that it intersects with the life narratives of others. The best story is the story between, an enter-personal enterprise or the enter-prize of meeting—which alludes to Buber (1958), all real storytelling is meeting.

The story connects the teller, the hero, to the life lived, to the listener. It mediates the relationship between the narrator and the involved audience. Bochner (2014) affirms that “you’re not trying to stand above the story; you’re standing under it, trying to understand it, or beside it” (p. 253). Narrative can serve to provide a better understanding of a lived experience. As for aims toward objective truths, narrative paradigms replace social scientific standards with understandably situated, localized, and partial narrative truths. 57

As a research tool, creative representations “enable us to learn about ourselves, each other, and the world through encountering the unique lens of a person’s (or a group’s) passionate rendering of reality into a moving, aesthetic expression of meaning”

(Ellingson, 2011, p. 599). Under the philosophical tenets of a narrative paradigm, one acquires epistemological, axiological, and ontological commitments that guide an approach to qualitative inquiry. However, what does this say about methodology? Are there methodological tools that, with narrative principles as an ideal framework, enable a researcher to make connections with others, contemplate meanings that are made collaboratively, and utilize the strengths of storytelling? This quandary prompts one to make a narrative turn, a turn toward a method in which the researcher, the teller of the story, becomes the object of investigation. The story, in essence, helps bridge a connection with others through the aesthetic sensibilities and mutual identification gleaned from the sharing of a personal narrative.

Doing Autoethnography: Self, Culture, and Writing a Story

Autoethnography, when examining the etymology of the word, connects self to both culture and writing. More succinctly, it involves “stories of/about the self told through the lens of culture” (Adams, Holman Jones, & Ellis, 2015, p. 1). With autoethnography, one can find one’s body in the text (Ellingson, 2005).

Autoethnography, however, must negotiate between the tension of presenting an aesthetic account of the self while also imbuing that narrative with cultural connections, remembering not to overemphasize the personal aspect of such a storied account. Certain benefits of autoethnography include: 58

(1) Disrupting norms of research practice and representation; (2) working from

insider knowledge; (3) maneuvering through pain, confusion, anger, and

uncertainty and making life better; (4) breaking silence/(re)claiming voice and

“writing to right” (Bolen, 2012); and (5) making work accessible. (Holman Jones,

Adams, & Ellis, 2013, p. 32)

The aim of autoethnographic work is to make sense of lived experiences, in hindsight, analyzing how grander cultural phenomenon were at play at integral moments of one’s life. Often used as a verb, autoethnography is a doing as much as it is a telling. Despite aesthetic tendencies to follow the conventions of a story, autoethnographic works may or may not provide a clear resolution to one’s story (Pensoneau-Conway, Adams, & Bolen,

2017). Sometimes, it is up to the reader to glean something useful from the narrated account and/or to consummate the story offered. Therefore, the personal work of one, in many ways, is a work of/by/with many.

Due to its gift of making connections (e.g., storyteller to audience, individual to culture), autoethnography is another useful methodological tool for my particular research goals. With a core interest in understanding how meanings are made collectively, autoethnography provides a useful tool through which people can connect with one another, encouraging each to share their own story, especially when a similar phenomenon presents obstacles, or insights, for the storyteller and one or many members of the listening audience. Autoethnography provides a means for one to reflect on a lived experience through a retelling of that event so that this retelling might enable the storyteller and/or audience member(s) to live a better life. Simultaneously, both the 59

author and the audience can collaborate on making meaning of such a situation, analyzing how this situated event fits within a larger discourse of a cultural phenomenon. This particular genre, which is about me but extends beyond me (Bochner, 2014), is strengthened when linked to theory, not for data-testing purposes, but so that we can think with a story. This connection helps us better understand the “emotional truth of the story” (Bochner, 2014, p. 301). Autoethnography makes connections. Yet, as a methodological framework, it too can benefit from a connection—a blurring of genres.

Crystallization: Blending Multiple Genres

Seeing value in both interpretive and narrative methodologies, blending multiple genres and forms of sensemaking, I found a crystallization framework to be appropriate for this study. Crystallization can be referred to as a “messy, multigenre, paradigm- spanning approach to resisting the art/science dichotomy” (Ellingson, 2009, p. xii).

Crystallization connects methodology to epistemologically broadened ways of knowing.

With the aid of selected sensemaking theoretical constructs, I aim to understand the larger, cultural phenomena of parasocial interaction by considering the meanings that are made of mediated connections by individuals who relate to mediated figures when interacting parasocially. I also examine story—stories told, stories shared, and stories created—to add an extra layer to my research, or as Ellingson (2009) would say, to

“construct and articulate multiple lived truths” (p. xi). By employing “multiple methods of analysis and multiple genres of representation” (Ellingson, 2005, p. 14), I borrow from

Ellingson’s crystallization, or the postmodernist demystification of the method of triangulation. 60

I proceed with this framework in two steps: First, I used an interpretive epistemology to code transcribed texts from the dialogical conversations I shared with participants who identify as both belonging to a parasocial relationship and to the

LGBTQ community. Second, I provided a self-storied embodiment of a personal lived experience that can connect my story to the shared stories of the interview participants and to the larger, cultural stories that speak to the multiple topics related to parasocial interaction. In short, I conducted one-on-one interviews with people who identified as both a member of a parasocial relationship and as a member of the LGBTQ community.

Meanwhile, I provided complementary autoethnographic examples from my own lived experiences that, in qualities similar to the accounts expressed by the research participants, also connected to the themes that emerged during the project. In fact, many of these autoethnographic vignettes occurred to me while I was interviewing/conversing with my research participants.

Procedure

I began by conducting one-on-one interviews with participants from the LGBTQ community who indicated that they once had or presently pursue the experience of participating in a parasocial relationship. This particular method falls under the interpretive paradigm, which posits that “reality is not something ‘out there’” for a researcher to find, but instead is the result of a process where reality and knowledge are both “constructed and reproduced through communication, interaction, and practice”

(Tracy, 2013, p. 40). Research interviews are a social process where the interviewer and respondent talk for a set amount of time. The collaboration between researcher and 61

participant has dialogical possibilities. Lindlof and Taylor (2011) suggest that the ideal scenario would entail a “richly expressive inter-view that neither person could have produced alone” (p. 171).

The process was implemented through voluntary participation, as some participants responded to a call posted on several LGBTQ-affiliated Facebook sites, including LGBTQ Austin, and Southeastern Ohio Rainbow Alliance Group, as well as

Communication Graduate Students Connect. Other participants were reached via word- of-mouth, as some colleagues helped me contact individuals whose identities reflected the population I sought. Thus, the volunteers were recruited as part of either a voluntary response sample or a convenience sample—basically anyone I could find who met my stated criteria, was interested in participating, and was willing to cooperate with the parameters of my study (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011, p. 116). Once participants were found, I conducted mediated interviews using TechSmith Snagit, a video chat recorder.

Upon beginning the interview session, all participants were notified of their confidentiality rights and were informed of the process by which all materials with identifiable information would be kept private until the time of disposal, at which time they were destroyed or erased from software belonging to the researcher. Essentially, paperwork with participant information was shredded and files kept on the researcher’s personal computer were erased. The only identifiable information required for the study was demographic information, including relationship status, gender, age, level of education, race/ethnicity, and sexuality. The interview process was guided by a structured interview format [Appendix], but I allowed for a dialogical flow to be set by the engaged 62

communication, creating occasional deviations from the script. The TechSmith Snagit files provided a recorded session that was then reexamined and transcribed, to provide a text copy of the dialogical event. The sessions ranged in duration from 21 minutes and 3 seconds to 1 hour, 10 min and 41 seconds. The total combined duration of all 16 mediated interviews was 11 hours, 50 minutes and 24 seconds.

Participants

Overall, finding participants who matched the desired qualities necessary for this study proved difficult. Sixteen participants volunteered for the study. In order to protect confidentiality and strive for anonymity, each participant was identified in the study by the parasocial interest they connected with most (e.g., Friends fan, Kardashians fan, and

WWE fan). I recruited 16 participants and asked the following demographic questions: relationship status, gender, age, level of education, ethnicity, and sexuality.

For relationship status, 7 identified as single (44%), 4 identified as married (25%), and 5 identified as in a relationship (31%). For gender, 8 identified as male (50%), 3 identified as female (19%), 1 identified as a cisgender-woman (6%), 2 identified as genderless (13%), 1 identified as gender fluid (6%), and 1 identified as gender queer

(6%). The ages of the participants ranged from 22 to 45 years old. The mean age of the set of participants was 29.4 years. The median age was 27.5. For level of education, 4 selected High School/GED (25%), 1 selected Some College/2-year degree (6%), 4 selected 4-year degree/Bachelor’s degree (25%), and 7 selected Graduate education/Graduate degree (44%). For race/ethnicity, 9 identified as white (56%), 4 identified as Hispanic (25%), and 3 identified as Black (19%). Finally, for sexuality, all 63

fell under the LGBTQ community spectrum, with 7 identifying as gay (44%), 2 identifying as lesbian (13%), 4 identifying as queer (25%), 1 identifying as bisexual/pansexual (interchangeable) (6%), 1 identifying as bisexual (6%), and 1 identifying as pansexual (6%). I sought enough participants to yield varying degrees of perceptions concerning parasocial relationships.

Additionally, in moments when the participants named the current president, I purposefully chose to name him without the distinction of a capital letter to denote a proper noun (e.g., trump). This was done out of personal detestation toward the individual who currently resides in the White House because I find his behaviors, his policies, and his authenticity anything but proper.

Codification and Emerging Themes

Aiming for sensemaking discoveries rather than objective truths, I utilized a coding process that was free of any rigid or predetermined structures that could potentially prevent me from fully engaging with the texts. Saldaña (2016) suggests that a qualitative understanding of the coding process moves from “coding to categorizing” (p.

10). In accordance with this practice, I began my coding process by first re-examining each of the recorded videos from the interviews conducted with my participants. This allowed me to create transcripts for each of the interview sessions. The transcripts were created on Word documents, which allowed me to number the pages and track the lines of dialogue. Next, I read the transcripts to familiarize myself with the dialogical engagements. Then, while going over the transcripts, I began underlining words that materialized as significant to an interpretive evaluation. Next to the underlined words, on 64

the margins of my transcripts, I wrote down jottings that described the dialogue worthy of being underlined. I then created categories by looking at the jottings and placing them into groups that seemed to cover the multiple related utterances from the transcribed documents. The categorical groups were identified by highlighting the jottings in various colors, each following an emergent color-coded system explained in my inductively created codebook. Once categories emerged, I created a document that collected the dialogical moments that were previously highlighted and placed them under the corresponding categorical groups. This helped me then to interpret the findings. I reexamined the categorical placements until I was comfortable with my interpretive analysis. At this point, I looked for emerging themes and patterns that both shaped and reflected the meaning-making process.

Utilizing crystallization, I then processed the themes and reflected on my own life story to select stories of my own experiences that connected with the topics explored by the research participants when communicating about their own experiences with parasocial others. In order to connect my personal story with the stories of the research participants, I utilized an autoethnographic methodology.

Viewed as an investigative approach, Tracy (2013) defines autoethnography as

“an autobiographical genre of writing that connects the analysis of one’s own identity, culture, feelings, and values to larger societal issues” (p. 6). Autoethnography entails a relationship, between self and culture, aesthetic form and theory, and potentially between audience member and parasocial figure. Adams, Holman Jones, and Ellis (2015), while consciously avoiding the creation of a static set of guidelines that limits a writer’s 65

expressive potential, provide six issues that are of primary concern to crafting an autoethnography. First, an autoethnographer becomes the object of study, analyzing personal experience as part of the research-writing process. Second, autoethnographers engage in sensemaking processes. A third concern is with the ethical necessity of reflexivity, which asks us to acknowledge our position of power as decision-maker composing the printed product. Fourth, an autoethnographer illustrates insider knowledge of the phenomenon being examined (e.g., I would write about my inside knowledge as a member of multiple parasocial relationships). Fifth, autoethnographers are driven to critique cultural norms, particularly structures that contribute to the marginalization of those without privilege. Finally, through writing, an autoethnographer seeks a response from the audience. One’s work must speak to an outside audience in such a way that the reader can embody the storied figure—the author—as both become ravaged by the struggles described in the narrative.

Parasocial figures enter into the presence of individuals seeking a relational bond, as they encounter one another through mediated possibilities. The unity of the two relating parties provides a feeling of wholeness for the person who, without such a relationship, might otherwise lack any type of relevant social connection. In a similar way, a researcher and an interview participant come together into a dialogical space in which the sensemaking process flourishes through the engaged collaboration and from the interconnected stories that speak to identity, relationship, and culture.

Autoethnography connects the individual, realized through narrative sensibilities, to the larger culture, highlighting one’s unique story with shades from the enveloping stories 66

that are part of the culture at large. It is this meeting, this interconnected quality between two mutually informing bodies that assemble together to make each better, as harmonious collaborators, than transcends what they would be if left disconnected from the consummating other. We yearn for this relationship that comes between the two…the relationship that mediates a meaningful connection.

In summary, I have provided details on my research practices throughout this chapter. I started by celebrating the values of meaning-making ways of knowing. I came to this research by entering into the presence of cultures, utilizing interpretive methodologies to analyze the subject(s) of inquiry. Valuing the benefits of narrative for making sense of lived experiences that relate to broader phenomena within the larger culture, I leaned toward autoethnography as a methodological tool. Thus, combining interpretive methodologies with autoethnographic accounts, I have engaged in crystallization throughout the process of this research. Finally, I provided details on my research procedures, describing the participants who connected with me through mediated interviews, and supplying information on my codification process.

Chapter 4: The Freedom to be Independent and the Freedom to be Dependent

For as long as heteronormativity has held privilege over alternate ways of doing sexuality, members of the LGBTQ community have dealt with social stigma for multiple reasons related to sexuality, gender, and identity politics. LGBTQ individuals have been marginalized for entering relationships deemed inappropriate according to societal standards of normative behavior. In similar ways, yet less dehumanizing, bodies have been stigmatized when they connected too closely with mediated others. LGBTQ bodies have experienced the stigma of entering into the wrong types of relationships. As a distinct relational bond that differs in certain ways from typical face-to-face relationships, parasocial connections bring similar social judgments, although with nuanced differences of extreme importance when considering the ramifications for each perceived relational transgression. Nonnormative bonds between same-sex partners are evaluated as immoral while parasocial bonds are characterized as trivial. Both, however, fall short of holding privilege in the hierarchy of relational pairings described by dominant social discourses.

Perhaps then, for LGBTQ individuals, critical judgments made against those who enter into interpersonal connections with the wrong partner, even a parasocial partner, resonates as unremarkable to the already-stigmatized.

Parasocial relationships are both different than and similar to other kinds of relationships. These relationships between spectating bodies and mediated bodies, much like those of a face-to-face quality, undergo constant change. Rawlins (1992), in offering a dialectical perspective through which to analyze relationships, points out that “motion, activity, and change are thus fundamental properties of social life in a dialectical 68

perspective, and the present state of any relationship is considered an incessant achievement” (p. 7). Dialectical configurations organize the behaviors of interactants within a relationship, even those of a mediated quality. One moment an individual might choose dependence, only to favor independence later on. In one instance, an individual might offer judgment over a relating party, only to lean toward acceptance moments later.

Additionally, a relationship might move from real to ideal due to the constant state of flux that occurs with any type of interaction. I found that these properties similarly characterized parasocial relationships when examining such relationships between mediated bodies and spectating bodies within the LGBTQ community.

Upon the completion of conducting interviews with individuals who claimed both to belong to the LGBTQ community and to a parasocial relationship, I identified three themes that demonstrated the dialectical tensions between interactants. Each of these three overarching themes also contained subthemes that revealed with more specificity further categories of dialectical features. The overarching themes, first postulated by

Rawlins (1992) when analyzing friendships, included The Dialectic of the Freedom to be

Independent and the Freedom to be Dependent, the Dialectic of Judgment and

Acceptance, and the Dialectic of the Ideal and the Real.

Rawlins’ (1992) Dialectic of the Freedom to be Independent and the Freedom to be Dependent proved useful in interpreting the words of the participants I interviewed.

This theme emerged in three ways. First, it occurred through discussions concerning pride within the LGBTQ community. Proud LGBTQ community members navigated through an interplay between self-sustaining pride in their difference and simultaneous 69

needs for recognition from the public domain. Thus, I categorized these findings under the subtheme of the Dialectic of Pride and the Need for Recognition. Secondly, interview participants alternated between seeking connection and enjoying the ability to simply walk away from the relating party, a feature not typically available within a more face-to- face type of relationship. I categorized these findings under the subtheme of the Dialectic of Availability and Disengagement. This subtheme emerged when interviewees would discuss the options of either tuning in or tuning out, either literally or figuratively. Lastly, the extreme side of dependence versus independence was demonstrated through disclosures of obsessive behaviors interplayed with less fanatical connectedness in the

Dialectic of Stalker and Fan (Stan).

Rawlins’ (1992) Dialectic of Judgment and Acceptance was also revealed through interpretive analyses of my interviews. This dialectic was demonstrated through two subthemes. The first, the Dialectic of the Freedom to Share and the Freedom to Keep for

Oneself, was demonstrated when participants chose between contrasting options of either sharing their parasocial interactant with others or preferring to connect in isolation, away from a larger group. Similarly, the Dialectic of Satisfaction and Cancellation demonstrated alternating aspects of judgment and acceptance. This dialectic formulated the interplay between satisfaction with a mediated body and dissatisfaction. However, dissatisfaction, in recent times, has resulted in a phenomenon called “Cancel Culture.”

Social media has given everyone a voice. When mass followers become dissatisfied with a celebrity due to any number of reasons for disapproval, the spectating bodies collect and cancel that public figure by either initiating boycotts against the performer, 70

petitioning producers to remove the figure from current projects, and even dehumanizing the figure through public shaming (Bromwich, 2018; Emba, 2019; Kinos-Goodin, 2018).

Cancelling, thus, would be an extreme form of judgment within the Dialectic of

Judgment and Acceptance.

Finally, Rawlins’ (1992) Dialectic of the Ideal and the Real proved useful when interviewees discussed the interplay between notions of logic versus emotion. The first subtheme, the Dialectic of Emotionality and Rationality, was demonstrated when participants would discuss feeling emotional about outcomes on the episodes of the mediated programs they viewed and then would, alternately, discuss how they understood that it might not be perceived as rational to have such feelings. The final subtheme was closely connected to the overarching theme. The Dialectic of the Real and the Unreal speaks to a different definition of real. Rather than referring to relations that might be less than ideal within the “real” world, this label refers to the distinction between fantasy and reality. Interviewees, when discussing parasocial relationships, navigated between the interplay of real and unreal, in terms of corporeal embodiments and fictitious, mediated connections.

Similarly, each of these parasocial connections, while demonstrating dialectical qualities that often overlap, are also characterized by changing dynamics within an interactional framework, which I term the Continuum of Mediated Involvement. This continuum does not box relationships into finalized categories without the possibility of movement. Instead, interactants move back and forth between the levels of the framework, often in a nonlinear fashion. The levels denote levels of intensity but do not 71

limit the type of movement interactants can make, as they connect meaningfully through mediated channels. I should also point out that interactants might be at differing levels within the relationship, just as interpersonal parties might differ in their levels of intensity within a typical face-to-face relationship. Therefore, the categorized levels of intensity within the Continuum of Mediated Involvement describe relating parties in much the same way as do dialectical tensions. Connecting bodies, both mediated and spectating ones, move through a complex web of interaction as they alternate between being uninvolved, being dismissive, being aware, being interactive, and being fully involved.

This chapter provides both participant exemplars and autoethnographic accounts that illustrate the first dialectical feature that emerged when I interpreted the dialogical discussions I had with my participants who identified as belonging to a parasocial relationship. This dialectical feature, The Dialectic of the Freedom to be Independent and the Freedom to be Dependent, was exemplified when discussions moved between opposing desires of autonomy and desires of connectedness. I further categorized the dialectical tensions that emerged into three subthemes related to the overarching dialectical feature of the Freedom to be Independent and the Freedom to be Dependent.

These subthemes, the Dialectic of Pride and the Need for Recognition, the Dialectic of

Availability and Disengagement, and the Dialectic of Stalker and Fan (Stan) further demonstrate contradictory shifts between wishes for dependence and independence in parasocial relationships.

Mediating the Dialectical Tensions of Independence and Dependence

The first dialectical feature of communication within parasocial relationships concerned interrelated struggles between independence and dependence. The availability of mediated figures provided the opportunity for spectating bodies to attain three affordances of dependence: recognition and acceptance amid stigmatization, social contact with others during isolated moments, and the chance to make deep, often even extreme, contact with parasocial figures. Likewise, the affordances of independence were also present, as spectating bodies attained three contrasting, yet interrelated, aspects of parasocial connection: self-pride when individuality is salient, the opportunity to disengage when privacy is prioritized, and fandom with less fanaticism, if one possesses a less intense form of emotional attachment.

Having the Pride not to be NSYNC with Society

“Oh no, man, I just read where Lance Bass from NSYNC is gaaaaaaay.”

It replayed in my mind long after he said it. My then-brother-in-law, a guy who I considered a close friend and someone whose company I enjoyed, thought nothing of his statement. He expressed shock at the thought that someone who seemed to be normal was, in terms of sexuality within a heteronormative culture, gaaaaaaay.

It’s also how he said that word, gaaaaaaay. He didn’t just utter it, nonchalantly, the way he did other words. He gave it value. He made it a pejorative term. He stressed it, turning a three-letter, one syllable word into an extended outcry of disgust. How could

Lance Bass, a blonde-haired, blue eyed, member of one of the most popular boy-bands of the time, come out as gaaaaaaay? He seemed to perform masculinity with the same skill- 73

set possessed by Marlon Brando when playing a character for any of his multiple award- winning acting performances. He didn’t act like most of the other queer men who had been displayed on mediated platforms at that particular time, in the summer of 2006. He didn’t dress in drag like RuPaul. He performed masculinity more “success”fully than did the two comedians on In Living Color (1990), who played gay film critics in the most stereotypical of ways. My former-brother-in-law was confused: Lance Bass couldn’t be gay because he was not like all of those other gaaaaaaay men. He was different. He was more like…more like him.

My former-brother-in-law, at that time, did not know that I was gay. Lance Bass might have been the first gay male, who happened to be a public figure, with whom I most could identify. I too performed differently. I didn’t see myself in those two stereotypical portrayals of gay men on In Living Color (1990). At that time media offered very limited portrayals of gay men. Most were either hyperfeminized, as if to suggest a failure in performances of masculinity or vilified and marked with the stigma of being either a sexual predator or a carrier of an acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Thus, gay men were either presented as jokes, deviants, or threats. Lance Bass did not represent any of those stereotypes. Society had not yet, at least as far as I was concerned, been introduced to a gay man who could not be placed into any of the typical boxes of marginalization that were reserved for those guilty of perceived sexual transgressions.

That’s why my then-brother-in-law was caught off guard. If I am to be completely honest, however, I too was caught off guard. I didn’t know, at that time, that one could

perform sexuality in those ways. I was guilty of subscribing to society’s notions of queerness, which offered very limited ways of performing/doing sexuality.

So we were both caught off guard, but for very different reasons. For my then- brother-in-law, his notions of performances of sexuality had been disrupted. For me, my ideas of queer performances had widened. My community had just become vaster, as I now had an example of a gay public figure who didn’t perform in the stereotypical ways I had been accustomed to. As for Lance Bass, he was gaaaaaaaay. What did that mean?

Well, now, now I could be more like…more like him.

Pride

The participants interviewed for my study represented a small sample of a larger

LGBTQ community. All expressed pride about their identity and felt proud to be a part of a community that was born out of the need for connection among bodies who had been cast away from society - socially, politically, and historically. Meaningful connections with parasocial bodies often substituted for disowning parents, disapproving friends, and difficult-to-find peers. Yet, the relationship between the spectating bodies and the parasocial figures, often role models for LGBTQ individuals, was characterized by change and motion. Often, once the instrumentality of connecting with a public figure, even a role model, became of less importance, and the spectating individual attained self- pride and confidence, the relationship became less intense. It was less necessary in some ways.

For instance, Eli Lieb fan, in discussing his feelings after losing touch with a parasocial interest—Eli Lieb—via social media, stated: 75

I would speculate that it would be adverse if I had, like, not developed the

confidence or if I was still feeling in the closet or ashamed of my sexuality kind-

of-thing. Um, I feel like that may have been more impactful, but because, like, I

was kind of going through some changes and stages to like really developing an

identity, um, I don’t think it was nearly, I don’t feel like I’ve had any adverse side

effects. Like, I don’t, I’m not like, “Oh, I’ve lost this connection with someone

who was super important to me.” Right? Um, it was much more of this idea of

I…my tastes have changed since I was 18. Like, I don’t have that same sense of

identity or sense of who I was back then. Um, and I feel a lot more secure in it, so

I don’t feel like I’ve really lost anything from that as opposed to maybe someone

who does not have that or never really developed in that kind of way, if that

makes sense.

To Eli Lieb fan, a parasocial connection helped inspire LGBTQ pride during the vulnerable phase of deciding whether or not to come out to friends and family. Once Eli

Lieb fan matured and felt more confident in his queer skin, the parasocial connection was less essential. Thus, growing apart was not as traumatic as it would have been had it occurred when the connection was much more vital. It is as if Eli Lieb provided the support needed, as a fellow member of the LGBTQ community, for Eli Lieb fan to make the next move forward in the coming out process. Eli Lieb provided a shoulder to lean on, through a mediated connection, and presented a model for other LGBTQ individuals to emulate so that they too could live freely and have pride in their identity.

RuPaul’s Drag Race fan expressed how queer models inspire LGBTQ individuals to live with pride, stating that “what they do is, um, they make you realize that there are others out, other people, out there that are just like you and they make you think, ‘Well damn, I’m a special human being also.’” All My Children fan mentioned how, growing up, there were not a lot of gay couples on soap operas but when gay storylines were presented, he felt “it was refreshing.”

Still, once pride is attained, the parasocial connection is of less importance. Eli

Lieb fan gave an example of how this plays out when stating:

I think it’s always just been very laid back. Like, I’ve known, even when I

tweeted at him and stuff, like yeah, it’d be really cool to get a response from him,

um, but I was never, like, expecting it. Like, I was very aware, or, like, conscious

that it was very one-sided. Like, he was just someone I admired as a public figure

as opposed to, like, being a super-close kind of connection, um, but also, like, I

didn’t have people who I was close to that were gay or that could be that kind of

role model or be that person to kind of give me confidence or strength, so I didn’t

actually, I didn’t have those connections in my life…

Eli Lieb fan’s connection, which at moments would be characterized as somewhere situated around the dismissive and aware levels of involvement on the Continuum of

Mediated Involvement, was less intense than other relationships and, thus, once the inspiration was no longer needed, the connection was of less value. Eli Lieb fan attained pride, with the aid of parasocial connections, and then found mediated engagements with others from the LGBTQ community who were less distant in terms of physical proximity. 77

Many fans gave accounts of how parasocial connections helped elicit feelings of pride. Being proud implies confidence, having the self-assurance in your own identity to live life according to your own desires. This alludes to independence. However, interconnected with pride is the need for recognition and acknowledgement.

The Need for Recognition

Coming out of the closet is a process that provides LGBTQ individuals with many benefits, including the freedom to live as desired, the ability to attain social camaraderie, and the relief of casting away a deep secret. Still, this process comes with an even greater collection of risks. For one, the support of one’s friends and family is not always guaranteed. Prejudices connected to sexuality still exist despite the recent gains made by the LGBTQ community in areas of social justice. In addition, coming out could result in several losses: economic gains, marital or parental rights, and roles within society. The threat of social punishments highlights the strengths that come with companionship and solidarity. Thus, while individuals might feel confident and proud, they still are simultaneously in need of connection. Parasocial relationships are a form of connection that is consistently accessible.

Finding rapport through mediated connections can be meaningful to one who regularly navigates social environments with the stigma of perceived nonnormative sexuality. These connections matter to those who do not often connect socially with others who share the stigma, do not see images of themselves represented with/in media, and do not routinely hear uplifting comments connected to LGBTQ issues. The LGBTQ

individual, as a result, becomes dependent on the connection, valuing the solidarity and warmth it provides.

Xena: Warrior Princess fan revealed that the connection shared with a parasocial figure was long-lasting, stating, “I think what I’ve noticed is I kind of have connections with different characters for a while, like I told you before with the Xena: Warrior

Princess.” The relationship, according to the participant, started when she first connected parasocially at the age of ten. She added, “So I feel like I know her and that one’s been a long time.” When another show she viewed, Person of Interest (2011), ended, Xena:

Warrior Princess fan continued:

I did feel a little empty inside after it was over. I was like, “Oh, now what?” Yeah,

I was super sad and one of the characters died, and I think for maybe a week or

two after, I would watch clips of stuff. So, oh, that’s weird. Yeah. What does that

mean? Oh no, um, so yeah, I did feel a little alone.

The solidarity formed with the parasocial figure provides a type of social connection, but also helps advance feelings of pride in oneself.

Xena: Warrior Princess fan expressed how parasocial figures provide a model for her and other women living in a patriarchal society, claiming “they’re just all strong female people that use their, I guess their fame for positive things, and I mean, just equal rights, really.” She included a disclosure of respect by saying, “I think it’s a little like, I wish I had that courage,” noting how the figures resembled her mother who would tell her, “Don’t let a man make you do what you don’t want to do.”

Representation matters, according to Xena: Warrior Princess fan, who indicated,

“I think seeing someone that is like you on TV, and that can go for anything, you know, your real race, your gender, your…who you identify with, um, seeing a representation of yourself, I mean, is positive.” She reflected on a memory:

Ellen coming out when she was, I don’t remember how old I was. I know I wasn’t

out, or at least I don’t think so. Probably the rest of my family knew, but I hadn’t

told them. So, I mean, just all the little instances I remember seeing someone that

was like me on TV and just every little drop kind of added to my security where I

could feel like, “Yeah, this is me and I’m okay with it. That should be normal.”

So, it made it normal I guess for me to see it on TV…Stereotypes suck, but I

mean at least we’re on there, at least we’re on TV and it, it’s getting

better…Seeing commercials, I know I’ve seen commercials with, with gay

people…I get a little smile because I’m like, hey, that’s, that’s me and I’m

represented on TV. So, I think it’s been a positive thing for me.

Viewing a person “like [her],” made a difference for Xena: Warrior Princess fan when she needed a model to help exemplify the possibilities of living as a proud LGBTQ person.

Representation also mattered to Eli Lieb fan. The need for recognition is closely connected to desires for representation. This desire was illustrated when Eli Lieb fan admitted:

I was also a big fan of, like, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) because I always

kind of see a little bit of myself in Buffy and, like, the way she kind of deals with 80

things on her own. And then, um, you know, people always talked about the

coming out parallels when she tells her mom she is a slayer kind-of-thing and her

mom is all, like, ‘Are you sure that’s what you are? Like, is it because you don’t

have a strong father figure?’ That kind of thing…

Despite having pride, LGBTQ individuals still feel a need to connect with parasocial others in whom they can identify and in whom they attain representation via mediated programming.

A need for recognition was also demonstrated when individuals voiced displeasure with inaccurate representations of LGBTQ people and limited depictions of a vast community. When a lesbian started sleeping with a guy on a favorite show, Grey’s

Anatomy fan stated that she “[didn’t] like this show anymore.” The Magicians fan criticized how LGBTQ fans usually only get represented in stereotypical ways, claiming:

Yeah, I think, uh, just having, like, bisexual representation on TV is something I

get really excited about. Um, particularly seeing, like, LGBT people who are not

young teenagers just coming out, you know. I feel like coming out stories are

important, but I feel like a lot of times, like, what we get is, like, ‘Oh no. What am

I going to do? Maybe I’m gay.’ And you’re like, ‘Yeah. Some people are gay. So

chill.’

Inaccurate or limited displays foster a greater need for recognition, a recognition that involves both LGBTQ representation from mediated figures and a recognition of the spectating fan who needs to feel important in a heteronormative society.

Limited LGBTQ representation, via mediated connections, also reifies a heteronormative status quo. Lucifer fan seemed to simultaneously express guilt and satisfaction when revealing, “I really like sharing in the joy of characters. Um, so like, although I really don’t care for heteronormative practices, um, I get into the proposals and marriages of characters.” WWE fan echoed those sentiments when stating, “There really isn’t a lot of gay content in wrestling, unless it’s in a demeaning way. Um, I can look at hot guys, but they’re not supposed to be there for people like me. I think it’s changing though.” These exemplars reveal how, even when LGBTQ individuals feel pride in their sexuality, they still desire for connection. They still need to be recognized for who they are as individuals.

Often, the difference between independence and dependence, when simultaneously confident in your own skin but also relying on connecting with examples set by others to feel more emboldened, is not a movement along a bilateral trajectory.

Instead, these two tendencies complement each other and work in harmony, resembling the way that the mediated connection conjoins two bodies, both mediated and spectating, into a consummated gathering.

You Had Me at Hello; Please Don’t Say Goodbye

It’s the weekend so that can only mean one thing. Just as I’ve done for countless weekends in a row for the past couple of years, I’ve reluctantly agreed to spend the entire weekend at my parents’ house because I don’t want to have to hear my mother’s complaints. I’ve been guilted into staying there for all weekends, ever since high school when I moved in with my grandparents. Since I’m not there that much, my mother insists 82

that I stay for those few days and it’s become a weekly expectation. I’m not quite sure why. Other than the one outing we take on Friday nights to grab dinner at some local restaurant, we really don’t spend too much time with one another. It’s like I’m not even there.

My depression and anxiety don’t seem to be going away. I had always thought I was a happy person, but ever since the start of the fall semester, I’ve been struggling to find a reason to smile…or talk…or eat…or pretty much do anything. I have no idea what brought this on. All I know is that when it fully engulfs me, I feel completely lost and helpless and I am starting to have unwanted thoughts about how to go about ending this torment. As a descendant of the first Hispanic Baptist pastor to preach the gospel in my hometown, I’ve always been taught that suicide is an unforgivable sin. Even so, I still weigh which is worse: hell after life or hell during it.

My current hell will last until Sunday. I can continue to wallow in this depressed state, or I can attempt to distract myself. Distractions are like a sedative. But they fail me in my useless attempts to rid my mind of all the unhealthy thoughts. Nonetheless, I gamble on the third back-to-back showing of Jerry Maguire (1996). I first saw the movie a few weeks back when things weren’t quite as bad as they are now. It was actually an enjoyable night. Perhaps Cameron Crowe can work some of his movie magic on me again. What else do I have to lose?

I try to escape into the narrative on the screen. The only reason I’m able to watch this film repeatedly is because my father has one of those illegal boxes that transmits movies on demand, which is a privilege that normally only comes with a monetary fee. 83

While my father contributes to cinematic theft by illegally receiving copyrighted content,

Cuba Gooding, Jr. is exclaiming, “Show me the money!” In my current state, I’m thankful for the free service and choose not to judge. In fact, for a short while, the mediated distraction begins to work. I’m immersed. I identify with the character on the screen.

Like Jerry, portrayed by Tom Cruise, I used to have an exuberance about life.

And for the few moments that I’m captivated by the dramatic diversion on my father’s

TV, I once again enter into a more agreeable state. Soon, however, the panic inside of me awakens once I realize that the drama is headed toward its resolution. I don’t want the movie to end. For these brief few moments of contentment, Jerry Maguire (1996) has been my companion. I feel a sense of belonging. I yearn to be embraced by somebody who will simply assure me that everything is going to be okay, and that is what Jerry has done for me. More succinctly, as I wander alone back into my depressed state, I realize that the short-lived relationship I shared with Jerry Maguire (1996) on that Friday night at my parents’ house was consummating. When in need of social companionship, Jerry was there. He, in better words, completes me.

Available

Perhaps the most easily recognizable benefit of a parasocial connection is its consistent availability. A parent, romantic partner, or friend will eventually need time to be alone. The need for autonomy is a given, whether that time be spent simply relaxing, contemplating distressing issues, or doing personal things that necessitate privacy. While all face-to-face, embodied relationships consist of interactants who, sooner or later, will 84

need to disengage from the connection, even if only momentarily, parasocial connections are always available, at least in mediated forms.

One spectating body interviewed for my study, labeled Friends fan, recited the lyrics of the theme song to the popular television show, Friends, when describing the differences between a parasocial relationship and a face-to-face relationship. Friends fan confessed:

Um, so earlier I think I said something like they're always there and I know

they're always going to be there. Um, because I, um, I have a really hard time

with relationships, whether it's friendships, whether it's family, whether

it's...whether it's partners, definitely partners, um, any of that stuff, um, at this

point I just assume people are going to leave. Um, like when my mom died, that

became a very, you know, you kind of see your own future and your own

whatever when people you love die. So like watching her die, I was like, nothing's

guaranteed. Right? Like people are going to leave.

Let down by relationship partners of a face-to-face type, Friends fan further discussed the benefits of a mediated type of relationship, adding:

I don't know. I probably, just knowing that like I can always access them, if that

makes sense, like if and when needed. Right? Cause I don't need them right now.

Just like I said, like the other day I was like, ‘Oh, I kind of like want. Nah, I'm not

ready.’ Right? So, and it's also, like, I’ve always told people, like, the best part

about having a dog is that I talk to them and they don’t talk back. Right? So most

people in my life, I'm a lot for, because I'm a lot of human, and I have a lot of 85

history, and screwed up, and trauma, and all this stuff, but like they don't really

care. Like I can fall into them and they don't care. They, like, it's an unconditional

thing. Right?

Friends fan described a benefit of mediated connections at the uninvolved level. These relational partners are not put off by what some would refer to as personal baggage.

Regardless of the spectator’s personal profile, which could include numerous stigmatized characteristics, the mediated body will just as easily connect with a stigmatized viewer as it will with a viewer without any stigmatized markers. This could be of value to a community stigmatized for character-based qualities that evoke discrimination, such as the LGBTQ community. A parasocial connection comes to a viewer with open arms, regardless of the character-based stigma, which appeals to many LGBTQ viewers.

Parasocial connections are sometimes also available throughout a majority of one’s lifespan. WWE fan provided an account of how “it’s always been there,” by professing “I’ve watched WWE since I was little and a lot of the stars are new, but a lot of them also come back, um, some of the stars from the past.” Grey’s Anatomy fan said similar statements, admitting that “Grey’s Anatomy has been on TV for a really long time, and I’ve been watching since it first began.”

Xena: Warrior Princess fan spoke of how she was able to connect with parasocial figures when her partner was not available. They mediated her feelings of loneliness, which was revealed when she said, “I was just looking for a show to watch, um, to fill the time. Cause last year, you know, [my partner’s] father was sick, so I just, she wasn’t around so I was kind of filling the time.” 86

Face-to-face partners are also not available when distance becomes a factor within a relationship. The Magicians fan revealed:

I tend to feel about my favorite characters like they’re my best friends. We moved

around a lot when I was little and I’ve also done that as an adult, like following

jobs and going into school, or whatever. So, I tend to be one of those people

where it’s like if you’re not a friend where I am then, like, we lose touch. And, uh,

being able to bring your friends with you, bring these characters with you, like,

adds to the longevity of that relationship and also, like, oh, I have like nobody

familiar in this new place where I’m living, but I get to see these people every day

and I know who they are. Like, I know how they’re going to react to different

situations. And generally, they don’t die…

Thus, no matter where one moves, a spectating body can take comfort in the knowledge that the parasocial body will be available anywhere one chooses to live.

Mediated connections are available in the same way that a 24-hour store is always open for customers who might urgently need a forgotten grocery store item. Thus, in an emergency, they provide much-needed connection. Lucifer fan talked about a time when mediated connections helped in a therapeutic way during a critical moment, revealing:

I think it allows for more stuff, like, reflection that I don’t…It sounds, like, kind

of a little therapy role. Like, I get to think about the character and, you know, why

am I sad or, like, uh, you know, to really contemplate why am I relating to this

character and then also, like, I also take out my emotions onto the characters. So,

it provides that kind of bringing out. Like, maybe I want to cry about my life, but 87

instead I’m going to watch this character and cry about their lives cause that’s

easier…I think I’ve done that throughout my entire life, just with different

characters. So, like when I was in seventh grade, um, my best friend told me that

she was sexually assaulted by her stepfather and as a seventh grade person, I

couldn’t really handle that, and so I put on Friends and engaged with those

characters because I knew the characters are friends and I just needed to, like, go

into that world for a while. And so I think that that’s what those relationships

allow me to do is take a break from reality.

Even if a face-to-face partner would have been available, the mediated figure seemed to almost be favored in such a situation by the participant, who saw the mediated connection as a way to express feelings with an available partner while also simultaneously feeling separated from “reality.” Entering a personal connection through mediation, the enter- personal, provided benefits not available within most face-to-face relationships. This exemplar demonstrated how despite features that might seem less personalized, less immediate, or less connected, a parasocial connection’s constant availability is one benefit that is not present in other types of relationships.

Disengagement

One reason parasocial relationships afford constant availability is because, in many cases, the parasocial interactant is not as involved in the relationship as the spectating body. As opposed to the deeply-devoted fan, the parasocial figure is either uninvolved, dismissive, or somewhat aware of the other interactant. The feeling of being in a relationship where the other interactant is not as involved can sound devastating to 88

someone longing for closeness, but the only work one has to do in order to maintain this type of relationship is simply what one desires. The other party will always be accessible and will always be agreeable. It is as constant as a relationship can possibly be, with fewer worries of the mediated party fleeing, arguing, controlling, or disrupting the relationship. Additionally, if one wants autonomy, one simply has to turn off the television, close the book, stop listening to the track, or leave the theater. If one wants closeness, doing the opposite of the preceding tasks would just as easily provide satisfaction. With mediated relationships that are uninvolved, dismissive, or somewhat aware, you can connect successfully or be as distant as desired.

Thus, uninvolved, dismissive, and somewhat aware levels of connecting with parasocial others might seem undesirable, since it is not always reciprocal, but it can afford multiple benefits. These benefits are dialectical, providing a freedom to be independent and a freedom to be dependent (Rawlins, 1983). Whenever a need arises, these parasocial others are available, much in the same way that I could rely on Jerry

Maguire to help me during anxious moments during a certain stage of my life. Yet, whenever one wants autonomy, the benefits of an uninvolved, dismissive, or somewhat aware parasocial relationship become apparent. One can disengage from this mediated relationship, if it is situated at the uninvolved, dismissive, or aware levels on the

Continuum of Mediated Involvement, as easily as leaving the room. There are no hurt feelings, there are no need for explanations, and there are no apologies to be made. Any uninvolved, dismissive, or somewhat aware parasocial figure would react to our

departure the same as Rhett Butler would to Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind

(1939), by just not giving a damn.

Sometimes disengaging from the connection is favored by the spectating body.

Skarsgard fan considered the ability to have a connection without the responsibility of keeping in touch as a positive, stating:

Yeah no, this is ideal. I wouldn’t want to personally know the people who I, like,

consume the work of because I think I would have a harder time getting lost in it.

Like, I like watching his things because I can be sucked into them. And I think if I

knew him in a personal way, that’s not what my reaction would be. Umm, and

even now because I feel like I know him a little bit more because I’ve watched so

much of his stuff, I’m like, I call him Bill in his shows now, not like whatever his

character’s name is. I’m like, it’s Bill Skarsgard doing this, not like the character,

whoever his character would be in a show. Umm, so like the more you get to

know someone, the less I feel like their work is the work. So I wouldn’t want to

know how any more than I do.

The ability to lean in and then lean back out, at one’s own discretion, is appealing to participants like Skarsgard fan because it provides a quick connection without the demands of a personal relationship, in which reciprocity is expected. Skarsgard fan continued:

I don’t feel like most of the shows that I’ve watched in the last couple of years

have been that influential. Maybe like earlier life shows, but nothing at this

particular stage. Uh, but it’s been a, a way to unwind and like check out of that 90

Ph.D. bubble because I get to do this activity with my friend that I don’t really

have to think about and, like, talk about this guy’s life that in no way impacts my

life. So it’s been more of a, a source of relaxation that I’ve gotten out of it than

anything else. Uh, and of course it’s something that I do like. He, he to me is

more of an activity than a person. I think in a way that, like, I can engage with

him in a way that lets me, like, pull back from my own life.

Ironically, the ability to pull back from commitment and solely connect without obligation, which was considered a benefit for Skarsgard fan, allowed one to pull back from one’s own life while getting lost in the mediated connection. In a unified way, having the freedom of independence in a mediated connection simultaneously gave one freedom with/in their own life.

Another reason why fans might seem okay with disengaging from the mediated connection is because many of the forms through which the connection is mediated allow for the relationship to be ongoing, constant, and even reoccurring. Lucifer fan admitted to feeling upset when a favorite show was cancelled, stating, “I was so upset because I was just like, ‘this is one of my favorite shows. I can’t believe they’re doing it.’” Later, however, Lucifer fan expressed relief at the fact that “Netflix had picked it up,” which meant that the show could now be rewatched on the streaming premium. This had apparently been a customary practice, as Lucifer fan added that “I probably would have kept watching it and replaying the episodes because I do watch a lot of things that’ll loop, so I’ll start watching it again.”

Sometimes disengaging, only to rewatch later is also rewarding. As The

Magicians fan indicated, it can bring back a certain type of nostalgia. The Magicians fan stated:

I’m a big re-watcher and a re-reader, and so you kind of get to, like, I have

growth, but then there’s, like, a nostalgia of, like, going back and seeing your old

high school friends, you know. And so, it’s like, okay, these people remember

when I was having that bad time and, you know, like, they were with me when I

was going through this. So then they’re attached to that time for you and, so, kind

of like looking at somebody on Facebook and being like, ‘Oh yeah, what are they

up to?’

Mediated connections provide a momentary break from one’s ongoing life, but they are susceptible to disengagement for the same reasons. They are ongoing relationships. Thus, one can jump out of the connection and reconnect, as if one was finding a friend on

Facebook, whenever the desire for dependence reemerges.

Degrees of involvement are in flux, constantly changing. Sometimes the spectating body desires more connection; sometimes the spectating body wants independence. While the mediated figure, if the connection is of less reciprocity, is usually always available, the degree of involvement from the spectating party can be less consistent. Lucifer fan feels the connection is a “form of escape” that allows one to “tune in and tune out,” while adding:

I like to go escape into it and relax to it and turn off everything that’s in my real

life. And I prefer it that way because I think if it makes it into my real life, it 92

would distract from important things. Like, it’s a good stress relief and that’s

where I like it to be.

A relating party could desire independence with/in any type of relationship, but the affordances of a parasocial connection allow for separation to occur without many consequences, if any at all.

Thus, disengaging is not deleterious to a parasocial relationship if the mediated interactant is unaware of the connection. As with any type of relationship, this would not be the case if the mediated connection shared a more interactive or fully involved connection. As a result, disengagement is typically a benefit of mediated connections that are situated with/in uninvolved, dismissive, or somewhat aware levels on the Continuum of Mediated Involvement.

As with any type of relationship, however, parasocial relationships are not always identical and cannot be generalized into any one specific category. Some parasocial connections are actually fully involved. Joe Dombrowski fan, a person who actually got to know his parasocial interest personally, first described coming into contact with the parasocial figure:

I think my most direct one, um, so Ellen had that teacher come on who did the,

like, the prank spelling tests, um, Joe Dombrowski. Um, so I started following

him because that was hilarious. Um, and then he came to [my university] and I

went to his lecture, um, and we, like, talked after. Um, and so, like, for a while I’d

be, like, ‘Yes, girl. Teach those kids,’ or, you know, whatever. Like, ‘Oh, it looks

like a good lesson’ kind of thing. Um, and I even, I went to Chicago maybe a year 93

or two ago, uh, and we were trying to go, like meet up and go dancing, but it just

fell through.

However, as relationships are susceptible to change, Joe Dombrowski fan revealed that the intensity diminished and now the relationship is more closely resembling one at the aware or interactive levels on the Continuum of Mediated Involvement. Joe Dombrowski fan admitted, “It was like, uh, intense. Like, we’d, like, comment on each other’s things, blah, blah, blah, and then in time it kind of waned.” This dialogical confession demonstrated how moments of availability are always struggling with moments of disengagement due to the changing element inherit in all relational connections, including those of parasocial varieties. Sometimes, however, availability extends to extreme forms of engagement with parasocial interests, forms that go beyond mere fandom.

Wrestling with Stalker/Fan (Stan) Connections

They say your eyes dilate when you catch a glimpse of someone who gives rise to feelings of attraction. My pupils must have widened the first time I looked at Shawn

Michaels, a professional wrestler known as The Heartbreak Kid, in a new way. He was starting to attain a more toned physique, now that he was a singles wrestler after recently betraying his longtime tag team partner, Marty Jannetty, in a wrestling storyline. In typical wrestling storyline fashion, Shawn had turned heel, a wrestling term for an antagonist, and betrayed the babyface, a wrestling term for a protagonist. Along with his newfound persona, the actual figure behind the character seemed to have altered his bodily figure, with the help of a reinvigorated determination to attain a chiseled physique.

There, in my grandparents’ living room, while examining the summer World

Wrestling Federation (WWF) spectacle, Summer Slam, I watched in awe as Shawn

Michaels strutted to the ring while the sound system played his theme song, with the lyrics echoing my own sentiments:

“I think he’s cute. He’s so sexy. He’s got the looks that drive the girls wild. He’s got the moves that really move me. He sends chills up and down my spine” (Hart &

Maguire, 2002, track 18).

I was sixteen years old, secretly admiring the physique of the adult male gyrating on my grandparents’ television screen, and continuing the yearly tradition of watching the summer pay-per-view offering from the dominant company within the field of professional wrestling—a program with pre-determined results that was just as much theatre as it was athletic competition. I felt condemned for my closeted affections toward the male wrestler but just as stigmatized for following, with quite the fevered fandom, the ongoing drama unfolding within the World Wrestling Federation. Nonetheless, I looked on with adoring eyes as Shawn Michaels entered the ring. It was the moment my fandom began to grow. I was down for the count, struck by Shawn’s finishing maneuver, the superkick aka his Sweet Chin Music.

* * *

The line that separates admiration from infatuation is often blurry. What’s the difference between a fan and a stalker? Sometimes it’s obvious; sometimes it’s more inconspicuous. Extreme fandom can span from learning intricate facts about a cherished celebrity to invading a celebrity’s personal space, occasionally resulting in restraining 95

orders or other measures to be placed against the offender in order to protect the target of the stalking fan.

The concept of an overly-obsessive fan has been around since the dawning of celebrity glorification. Yet, the amalgamation of the two—stalker and fan—first gained notoriety when Eminem, a successful songwriter of the hip hop genre, used the term

‘Stan’ for the title of a track off of his 2000 studio album, The Marshall Mathers LP.

Used both as a noun (a Stan who is overly obsessive toward a particular celebrity) and a verb (I’m stanning the latest song by my favorite artist), this term is now recognized in the Oxford English Dictionary. While the original Stan, the character from the same-titled song, harms himself and his family in order to gain the attention of the subject of his admiration, Eminem, the practice of stanning is not one that always results in tragedy.

Yet, there are many examples of stanning going too far.

Actress Rebecca Schaeffer, famous for the CBS situational comedy My Sister

Sam, was murdered by a man who claimed to be her biggest fan after he found her place of residence through the use of a private investigator. After tracking down the actress and intruding into her personal life, by knocking on her front door and convincing the star to engage in a brief conversation, the man left momentarily, only to return yielding a .357- caliber handgun, which was used to murder the parasocial interest (Weisholtz &

Caulfield, 2019). This act echoed earlier horrific scenes in which an obsessed fan stalked rock-and-roll legend John Lennon with fatal results, and where another obsessed person attempted to assassinate then president Ronald Reagan in order to impress actress Jodie

Foster. 96

These examples are situated on the extreme side of the stalker-fan spectrum and demonstrate the sometimes-tragic effects of mixing parasocial fandom with interpersonal obsession. Although, it should be noted that most of these instances involve figures who try to manage issues related to mental health, such as interpersonal obsessive disorder.

Also, many of these examples took place decades ago. The proximity and accessibility provided by modern social media offer new avenues through which eager fans can stan their favorite stars. Thus, protective measures have since been implemented in order to help guard public figures.

Still, celebrity stalking persists, such as the examples of a stalker having to be deported to Canada after multiple attempts to invade reality TV star Kendall Jenner’s privacy. And the continuous invasions by an obsessed fan into the private life of Taylor

Swift, which include the unlawful act of breaking into the star’s place of residence

(Weisholtz & Caulfield, 2019). These events demonstrate both the determination to attain closeness and the degree of commitment toward a beloved public figure. Fortunately, they are rare instances—outliers—within a culture of parasocial fandom.

Not every fan who possesses the determination to connect in more intense ways should be considered dangerous to the parasocial other. Some intense fans can become dangers to their own mental wellness. If the parasocial connection exists within an entangled web, coinciding with mental health issues, the problem can become profound.

For example, The Magicians fan disclosed a serious pattern that involved binge-watching while feeling sad:

I think I touched briefly on my sadness spirals, and I think because I identify so

strongly with these characters, uh, not necessarily so much when it happens in the

show, uh, like something sad is on the show and I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s sad.’ I might

cry and then I go on about my day. But when I reached back to the characters to

deal with, like, my own emotional processing, um, you know, you’re watching a

lot of sad things, you’re reading a lot of sad things and you’re feeling them for

yourself, but you’re also feeling them for these characters. And so, it like

compounds the shame or it compounds the guilt, or it compounds the sadness and

that helps me to feel understood, but it also can, like, lead to, like, multi-day, like,

binges of just, like, sad, horrible things. And then you have to, like, claw yourself

back out from that and you’re like, ‘Hmm…did I do anything for the last three

days or did I just, like, cry?’ And sometimes, like, that has gotten dangerous.

The parasocial connection provides comfort by being available for the spectating fan in times of need. However, when mixed with mental health issues, spirals of sadness, and intensely negative ways of connecting, the parasocial connection can heighten feelings of melancholy in a problematic way. In times like these, disengagement would seem to be the option that would be in one’s best interests. Therefore, both forms of obsessive behaviors, stalking to get closer to the mediated body and connecting parasocially in an intense way during times of emotional need, can have undesirable results.

* * *

I hadn’t taken a trip to intentionally stalk Shawn Michaels. I was there, in San

Antonio, Texas, to buy tickets to the upcoming WWF event, The Royal Rumble. It just so 98

happened that I had the bright idea to listen to local radio stations, while in town, to see if any wrestlers were doing publicity on the day tickets went on sale. Sure enough, I soon heard that gruff voice blaring out of my grandfather’s green Buick LeSabre. Shawn

Michaels was being interviewed on KISS-FM, a local rock station. This news delighted me, but it also left me with a decision to make, whether or not I should drive all the way to the radio station to try to meet him. After all, I had driven over two-hundred miles to get from my hometown to San Antonio. Still, what more would a few extra miles hurt if I somehow could manage to find out the location of the KISS-FM radio station? My mind was made up.

After locating the address in a telephone book at a gas station on my way and then driving for what seemed like at least an hour, I pulled up to the KISS-FM radio station. I was worried that The Heartbreak Kid was long gone because the interview had ended about thirty minutes prior to my arrival. Then, I saw three figures standing in front of the radio station, one of which was immediately recognizable. I was in luck. Shawn Michaels was still there!

Beside Shawn Michaels were an older woman and an older man, who I recognized as his onscreen manager, José Lothario. Lothario had temporarily escorted

Shawn to the ring as an angle, a wrestling term for storyline, where his mentor returned to help him make the climb toward the championship title. In actuality, Lothario was one of a handful of individuals who helped train Shawn Michaels to become a professional wrestler, so it was an instance of reality blending in with wrestling mythology. The older woman, to me, was unrecognizable. I was very apprehensive, but I had searched long 99

enough and there was no reason not to get out and meet Shawn Michaels. My grandfather decided to stay in the car, while my grandmother, who was also a wrestling fan, trailed along after me.

“Everything is coming along just fine, mom. You should see it,” I heard him utter as I got closer to the former WWF champion.

“I know it’s going to be beautiful,” said the older woman, who I now concluded to be his mother.

I didn’t want to interrupt a conversation between mother and son, one that was likely rare, since WWF wrestlers were usually on the road traveling around three-hundred days of the year. I had heard of multiple scenarios in which it would be considered impolite, and in some cases hazardous to one’s health, to interrupt a wrestler in public for autograph or picture requests -- while eating, while with one’s family, while working out at the gym, while in a restroom, and sometimes while rushing to catch a plane. This seemed to be one of those moments. So, I simply stood back, at a considerate distance, and waited for Shawn to finish his conversation with his mother. In the meantime, I struck up a short conversation with José Lothario.

“You trained Gino Hernandez?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer to the question I had just hurled at a tired José Lothario.

“Why yes, I certainly did,” replied Lothario with enthusiasm, as if he was amazed that someone would recall the famous eighties wrestler Gino Hernandez, who had died at a young age from a drug overdose.

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Lothario must have welcomed the question, as a smile immediately appeared on his weary face. I imagine he must’ve awaited what else I could ask that might allow him to tell stories of his past days of glory, an era of wrestling that had been forgotten in the wake of the new spectacle brought about by Vince McMahon’s global giant, the WWF.

Lothario typically stood by, silently, as he watched the newer superstar, Shawn Michaels, answer question after question from the multitude of fans who enjoyed the WWF’s programming. Now, it was his opportunity to shine, as he awaited my response with great anticipation.

“That’s cool,” I muttered and then stood back again, waiting for Shawn Michaels to finally become available.

At just that moment, Shawn seemed to signal an ending to his conversation.

“Well, we’re going to have to get back to the airport,” he told his mother as the two of them embraced.

“I’ll keep you updated on the progress on your house,” she said.

As they seemed to walk away from each other, my opportunity emerged. My grandmother elbowed me, as if to hint that it was now or never.

“Excuse me, could I get your autograph?” I asked.

“Sure,” said Shawn Michaels, as he grabbed the pen that I was holding in my hand. He signed my picture with the rapid speed of a praying mantis instinctively grasping unaware prey and then devouring them in a moment’s notice. And just like that, he was ready to drive off in a limousine that was prepared to take him and José Lothario to the airport. 101

My grandmother could see the look of sorrow on my face and stopped him.

“I bet you two are tired. It must be tough going from town to town, wrestling every night,” she questioned.

“Yes, ma’am, but we do it for devoted fans like you two. Where are you from?” asked The Heartbreak Kid.

“San Angelo, Texas,” she said.

“Oh, that’s a long drive. You two have a safe trip back home. Thank you for coming to town to see us,” he added.

“Thank you very much. You too,” she reciprocated.

“Your son knows a lot about wrestling,” added José Lothario.

“Thank you,” my grandmother replied.

The two of them then walked toward the limousine, opened the door, and were soon driving off toward the airport, where they would then travel to their next destination.

Shawn’s mother walked in our direction.

My grandmother, as is her custom, started conversing with her as if she had known her for years.

“You must be proud of him,” she said.

“Oh, I certainly am,” replied his mother.

No longer nervous, since I was no longer in the presence of my parasocial interest, I entered the conversation.

“I hated how the fans in New York treated Shawn at the last pay-per-view,” I said. It was a comment aimed at her opinion on how the New York fanbase had poorly 102

received Shawn Michaels at the last televised event. He was the champion going into the main event that night and he was the babyface. Yet, New York has a tendency to support the heels. Thus, they passionately booed Shawn Michaels the entire night and cheered on the villainous antics of his opponent, Sycho Sid, who won the match to become the newly crowned WWF champion. The event I had just bought tickets for was to showcase the rematch between the two, and it was to emanate from Shawn Michaels’ hometown of San

Antonio, Texas.

“Oh, that’s just New York,” replied his mother. “I think he’ll get a better reception here,” she said, as she smiled in my direction.

The conversation went on for a minute or two longer, and then both parties separated to head toward their separate destinations. It had been a great day. We made the long journey back home, one that took over three hours. The entire way, I kept replaying the events of the day over and over in my mind. As far as I was concerned, I couldn’t have asked for a better first conversation with my biggest interpersonal interest, “The

Heartbreak Kid,” Shawn Michaels.

* * *

When I restory this event, I characterize it as one reminiscent of a Hallmark channel romance movie. It has a feel-good vibe to it and a happy ending. If produced by

Walt Disney, animated birds would fly into the sunset as my family and I drove off in my grandfather’s green Buick LeSabre, all while a cheerful Sherman brothers-produced song played in the background. That’s how I retell this story.

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Still, there are details I do not accentuate, details that are not harmonious with a typical Disney animated classic. First, I intentionally searched the radio dial to see if any of the WWF wrestlers would be doing publicity for the upcoming event. Second, once I heard Shawn Michaels speaking on KISS-FM, I then located the address of the radio station in order to hopefully get close to my parasocial interest. Third, I left out the aftermath of the event. Two months later, when we returned for the pay-per-view rematch between Shawn Michaels and Sycho Sid, I read an article in the local newspaper that named the street on which Shawn Michaels now resided (the house he had been building). The day before the event, I took my grandparents on a long journey around

Charles W. Anderson Loop, a 95.6 mile loop that encircles San Antonio, in search of

Shawn’s address. When I approached the area, I realized that he lived in a gated community. I can rationalize my behaviors by adding that I had no intention of entering his property and that I was only looking to catch a glimpse of his house. However, I look back in hindsight at these actions and wonder where on the stalker-fan spectrum they would be situated. How close was I to locking Shawn Michaels up in the trunk of my grandpa’s green Buick LeSabre and driving off a bridge into a body of water, as did the character in Eminem’s song Stan?

While I exaggerate the lengths of my obsession, this story still demonstrates how blurry the lines can be when dividing the space between stalker and fan. Is it a fine line that divides the two, or is it a pendulum that swings further one way and then further the other, back-and-forth in a fluid process of demarcating between the stigmatized notions of stalking behaviors and the socially-accepted ideas of innocent fandom? 104

To summarize this theme that I found from analyzing my discussions with participants— the Dialectic of the Freedom to be Independent and the Freedom to be Dependent— dialectical tensions between spectating fans and their parasocial interests emerged in three ways. The first, the Dialectic of Pride and the Need for Recognition, was highlighted when participants mentioned how, despite an appreciation for individuality, the parasocial provided connected inspiration. Meanwhile, many persons also mentioned how the relationship became less intense when the instrumentality of needing an LGBTQ inspiration wore off. Alternately, the same participants mentioned how the parasocial figures provided solidarity and models to emulate, especially when thinking about coming out to friends and family. Thus, they expressed displeasure when the LGBTQ parasocial figures were not accurately depicted. The second subtheme, the Dialectic of

Availability and Disengagement, was demonstrated when participants noted how parasocial interactants, in some cases, were always there, would not let you down like face-to-face partners, would be available for one’s lifespan, and could be there when close relationships were unavailable. They additionally spoke of how they could dump their baggage on the parasocial figures without consequences and mentioned how there was less distance, through mediation, when the parasocial figures were the only ones who could travel with them to new places. Yet they also spoke of disengaging from the parasocial relationship, noting how there was less responsibility in such a relationship.

There was no loss if one became detached because one could always return to the relationship later on. Finally, I added my own voice to the subtheme of The Dialectic of

Stalker and Fan (Stan) when I layered my own stories onto the accounts provided by 105

multiple participants, who also spoke of the blurry self-enacted line between stalker and fan.

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Chapter 5: Mediating the Dialectical Tensions of Judgment and Acceptance

The next dialectical feature of communication within parasocial relationships, the

Dialectic of Judgment and Acceptance, concerns conclusions one makes about the character or actions of the other, determining whether they are favorable or unfavorable.

Judgment involves both jealousy and disappointment. Spectating bodies can decide whether they wish to connect communally, sharing their parasocial figure with others, or whether they want the parasocial other all to themselves. Judgments in this case are made in favor of or against the community at large, asking whether the public also deserves the company of the mediated connection. This type of judgment involves the tripartite relationship shared between the mediated body, the spectating body, and a larger community of bodies. Another contrasting judgment involves only appraisals against or in favor of the parasocial figure. In such instances, the fan determines whether an initially favorable connection remains satisfying or whether the mediated connection should be reduced or, even more drastically, terminated. Dialectically, the tensions of judgment simultaneously operate in connection with tensions of acceptance through a dynamic interplay.

In this chapter, I provide participant accounts that elucidate tensions between judgment and acceptance and illustrate how these struggles have arisen in my own personal experiences with mediated figures. I elaborate on the subthemes connected to the overarching dialectical feature of the Dialectic of Judgment and Acceptance. I will start with the dialectical tension between sharing parasocial connections and choosing not to share them, the Dialectic of the Freedom to Share and the Freedom to Keep for 107

Oneself. Then I will move toward tensions between satisfaction and dissatisfaction, as they play out in contemporary examples. This dialectical feature, the Dialectic of

Satisfaction and Cancellation, extends beyond dissatisfaction and moves toward a complete repudiation of a parasocial figure.

Crowded Theatres, Private Screenings, and Multiple Connections

I miss the theatre-going experience. That’s not to say that going to the movies is no longer possible. It’s just different. It used to be an event. Now, most persons retreat to the privacy of their homes to stream films on Netflix or Hulu. To me, gathering into the car with friends or loved ones and heading off to the majestic theatre is/was ideal. The marquee announces the latest attractions. The posters promote the latest films. The crowd arrives to gather in the darkness as the magical lights begin to dance on a gigantic screen.

What is revealed is a visual narrative that not only entertains but also evokes emotions.

There, with solidarity the crowd gathers together to enjoy the spectacle on the screen.

* * *

The mediated connection is ideal because it is shared—it’s communal.

* * *

As a fan of both films and lists, I often ponder as to which feature films I would include on my list of all-time greatest films. Once, I made up such a list. While it included many films that often populate the lists of film critics, such as The Godfather

(1972) and It’s A Wonderful Life (1946), it also had a few unusual selections. One of my favorite films of all time is The Sixth Sense (1999). I love this movie for many reasons: superb acting, a gripping story, and that extraordinary twist at the end. However, I believe 108

the main reason why I continuously gravitate toward this film is because of the fact that it evokes such strong emotions from me. Despite multiple viewings, I rarely watch the film without crying. It’s not the typical tear-jerker. In fact, most would categorize the film as a horror movie. Yet, there’s one scene that always reduces me to a misty-eyed, emotional wreck.

A paramount character in the film, Cole Sear, is a young boy with a special gift, or curse depending on one’s outlook. He sees dead people. Feeling stigmatized by this ability, he chooses not to disclose this information to others including his mother. Toward the end of the film, after a major development in the plotline, he finally chooses to share his secret with the person closest to him. He comes out to her. As he and his mother are stalled in traffic, which the viewers find is due to a fatal car accident ahead of them, he reveals his secret to his mother by stating that a woman died in an accident ahead of them. She looks and asks if he can see her, to which he replies yes. When she asks where she is, he says that she is standing beside his window. He then tells his mother that he sees ghosts and asks if she thinks he’s a freak. She says she could never think that about him.

Comforted by his mother’s admission that she would love him despite any stigmatized characteristic, Cole tells his mother that he has been in conversation with his grandmother. This catches his mother by surprise. He reveals that his grandmother told him that on the night of his mother’s dance recital, the two of them had an argument. He tells his mother that, unbeknownst to her, his grandmother still went to her recital. His grandmother told him that his mother looked like an angel. Finally, he tells his mom that 109

at the place where they buried his grandmother, his mother asked her a question. As Cole continues his story, his mother begins to recall the moment to which he’s referring. As she succumbs to her emotions, he reveals that the answer to the question was “every day.”

After finishing his revelation, he shifts from teller to questioner, asking his mother what she asked his grandmother when she stood at the site of her grave on the day of his grandmother’s burial. Now in tears, his mother pauses and slowly tells him the answer to the unknown detail from his story, responding “Do I make [you] proud?”

In that moment, I am connected with the mediated figure on the screen. In that moment, I am also connected with my parallel lifelong inspiration, my grandmother. I think, as I empathize with the figure portraying Cole’s mother, who would be the person I would want to be proud of me the most. Tears well up in my eyes. I imagine what it would be like. I put myself within the narrative I see unfolding before my eyes; I infuse me into what I see. It both mirrors my lived experience and provides me with equipment for living (Burke, 1973) with/in a mediated connection that ties together the parasocial, the relational (my grandmother), and the personal (myself).

This moment is too private. I want it for myself. Suddenly, the theatre is too crowded. This communal ideal has become less desirable. It’s nice to sit among peers, basking in the enjoyment of visual stimulation. We connect with one another in our shared experience. Now, however, the experience has become too personal. I move from desiring a communal screening toward needing privacy. This film has become too real, and I do not want anyone to notice how emotionally involved I have become. I imagine 110

my children asking me about questions I’d have for my grandmother if faced with the incredible loss I know will eventually come. I’d wonder, “Do I make her proud?”

* * *

The mediated connection is ideal because it is unshared—it’s personal.

Shared

When a spectating body shares their mediated connection with others, they have given approval to their social group to come into the relationship. The connection becomes even more enjoyable because it can be shared with others. Typically, this will involve watching the parasocial figure on a program, and it will involve routine screenings with a consistent pairing or group.

Skarsgard fan admitted to first connecting with Bill Skarsgard at the suggestion of a friend, noting that “it’s largely been motivated because a really close friend of mine is so obsessed with this guy and I like talking about a shared interest, so I follow him too.”

This indicates that the parasocial interest can often provide a cause for conversation, a social gathering, or even a stronger bond between shared friendships or other kinds of relational connections. Skarsgard fan continued:

Yeah, so my best friend, Olivia, is obsessed with Bill Skarsgard and like four

other people, but Bill Skarsgard is the only one I could get into of her, her like,

selection of people that she’s, she’s a huge fan of. Um, so I started watching

Hemlock Grove because she was talking about it all the time, and I was like,

‘Whatever. I’ve liked a lot of other shows she’s liked.’ So I watched it with her

and our friendship, because it’s been long distance since I left Boston, umm, a lot 111

of times on Sunday nights we’ll watch together. It’s been a lot of our basis of how

we’ve, like, stayed connected over the years.

Thus, connecting with others separated by distance is yet another benefit of sharing parasocial connections.

Sometimes the social connections with other fans are formed with other forms of media. Using multimodality, spectating bodies can enjoy the mediated connection and then connect with other fans on other mediated sources. For instance, The Magicians fan stated:

I think I tend to really appreciate fan communities. Um, I read fan fiction and I

watch fan videos, and it kind of helps you know that, like, other people appreciate

the same parts of those characters and relationships that you do.

The parasocial connection can be achieved from the original source and also through interaction with other consumers on blogs, fan appreciation sites, and social media devoted to the parasocial figure.

WWE fan admitted that sharing his fandom with others, even unknown others, through multiple platforms helped foster more appreciation. He stated that “seeing what other people post sometimes makes me want to see it more, and it can help me, um, get more excited about it.” Additionally, The Golden Girls fan revealed how watching a favorite show with family can enhance the experience, even if desires shift from a desire to watch communally to a desire to watch alone. The Golden Girls fan said:

I started watching with my parents and that was always great. Sometimes when I

rewatch episodes I remember first watching it with them, as if they’re always 112

going to be there with me when I see those episodes, those scenes. Um, but I think

now I like seeing it alone. I mean, it changes. Both are good for me…

The experience of watching the show in a communal setting was pleasurable. Now, even when The Golden Girls fan watches the show alone, other spectating bodies that are not present in the moment come together through shared parasocial histories.

Still, sometimes the tripartite relationship formed with a parasocial body and other spectating bodies necessitates more privacy. In these cases, programs are shared only with one other, rather than a larger social group. This way, deeper feelings that emerge from the mediated connection can be shared with the single relational party with whom the programs are shared. Lucifer fan, in talking about how a program is shared with a romantic partner, stated:

It’s significant enough because I tell her how I feel about him and, um, like I told

her today, I said the reason why I really connected with him, um, was because I

felt like he, like the idea of the character of Lucifer on the show is that it’s a

different conception of the devil. And he, you know, he goes on vacation to L.A.

and he has an identity crisis of, you know, ‘Am I the devil or did people make me

evil?’ And everyone kind of demonizes him as the devil and he gets really upset

about it. And I felt that connection of how I always feel like I’m demonized by

other people where, like, they’ll take my actions or things and they will

misconstrue them in an evil way. And I get labeled as this negative person, which

I don’t ever connect to. And so, I told her that today and she was really surprised

because she was just like, ‘I just think he’s pretty.’ 113

Deep disclosures, such as the one from Lucifer fan, are often only shared with intimate others. The people you trust the most are often the ones with whom you accept as qualified co-consumers of a mediated fandom.

Unshared

Thoughts of jealousy, guilt, shame, privacy, or even unworthiness are all factors involved in one’s choice not to share a mediated connection. When a spectating body feels embarrassed because of a deeply intense involvement with a mediated figure, the connection is often kept private to avoid public scrutiny. The Magicians fan said:

But also, like, in my personal life, uh, I can’t watch TV that I care about with

people that I care about. I dunno, I deal with um, like, the TV interviews. They

become very personal to me, and I get really embarrassed, like, watching that play

out in front of other people. Like, what if they can see how I feel, like, while I’m

watching this? So, I tend to kind of watch, like, news and, you know, comedy

shows or whatever, like, with the family and then go hide in my room to watch,

you know, dramas and things that I feel more attached to.

The parasocial figure, in those instances, is kept apart from the family because the spectating body does not want the family to see how closely one is connected to a figure that is considered less real than a face-to-face interactant. This could then lead to possessing a character-based stigma, the stigma of connecting too closely to a parasocial other.

Eli Lieb fan recalled an incident in which he felt embarrassed for connecting with a parasocial figure that was not considered famous enough. Eli Lieb fan disclosed: 114

Um, like, probably back in 2012 on my Instagram, I posted him. It was my man

crush Monday and literally everyone was like, ‘Who is this?’ I think I had, like,

four likes. Like, I’m embarrassed because I was, like, ‘This is something I think is

really cool and I like this person.’ And everyone’s like, ‘I don’t know who the

fuck that is.’

Reactions such as the ones Eli Lieb encountered engender feelings of embarrassment, which make it likely that a fan will not want to share their parasocial interest with others in future moments.

At times, the mediated connection is not shared with a particular audience, such as with one’s family, because the parasocial figures represent the ideal family when one does not feel as close to family members as would be desired. The connection is unshared because the community of choice is not as available, in a closely connected way, as the parasocial figures available through mediated connections. Kardashians fan expressed:

Their family life, their family dynamic is very close. They’re all in touch with

each other and they all, you know, are within a few mile radius living from each

other. And so I differ from that, not being close. I’m not close with my siblings.

Um, and so that’s something that I enjoy. I do enjoy watching them interact with

each other. Um, and I wish, you know, that was my family dynamic and I don’t

have that. So I get that through the show.

The idealized family, as presented by the Kardashians, stood in for the real family that connected in less-than-ideal ways for Kardashian fan. RuPaul’s Drag Race fan echoed these sentiments, suggesting “Sometimes I think they’re my real family. I mean they 115

never, um, were ashamed of me or turned their backs on me like my real, so-called family did. It’s messed up, but you know?”

Still another reason, as given by Kardashians fan, as to why the connection might be unshared is due to the stigma of the show. Already stigmatized for an LGBTQ identity, perhaps the further stigma of watching a critically-panned show, one with cultural disapproval, would be too much. Kardashians fan stated:

I would say it’s a negative kind of impact just because it’s so a highly judged

thing. Like people, when you say Keeping Up with the Kardashians, they think

you’re just some dumb, typical, like, high school girl, you know. They don’t think

of necessarily just, like, a young man watching it. Um, so I kind of keep it secret

really. I don’t tell a lot of people that I keep up with the Kardashians.

Kardashians fan kept the connection private out of fear of public shaming. The mediated meetings he regularly schedules with the famous family, one often chastised by the larger societal culture, could cause others to look upon him with similar critiques. The

Kardashians are on the lower end of social acceptance, along with other mediated connections like professional wrestling. WWE fan stated “I love it, but I don’t always tell everybody I watch it because of, um, well, because it’s not really accepted by society as, um, good, or even entertaining.” All My Children fan agreed, saying “Men can be ridiculed for watching soap operas. It’s not something usually considered masculine, I guess. My family knows I watch it but not many others.” However, even if the connection is not one that generates mass critiques from the grander culture-at-large,

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mediated connections already have a degree of stigma because of the perception that these connections are not real.

Some fans almost act as if they do not want to share the parasocial figure with creators of the content featuring the character. They speak as if they know the figure better than producers of the show. The Magicians fan expressed:

That’s the same thing too, where, like, you’ll be reading a book and you’re just

like, ‘That’s not in character.’ And it’s like, well, they were writing the character

so they kind of get to decide whether it’s in character or not, but people don’t

really like that. I get really annoyed when it’s like, ‘That’s not my version of this

character and they wouldn’t do that.’

In situations like these, the character becomes so internalized that the spectator disagrees with versions of the character that stray from perceived notions of what the character truly should be like.

The parasocial figure seemed real to Boy George fan because of his unique position with/in the relationship. He explained by saying, “I guess my relationship with someone like Boy George is entirely real to me because it’s solely mine. You know?”

Still, the process of sharing is also undergoing constant change. They dynamic interplay of sharing and unsharing does not result in a final state of one or the other. Boy George fan spoke to the interplay of sharing and unsharing by suggesting “…music is a social thing. It’s as much personal as it is, you know, a public piece. So, yeah, I absolutely share my music with my friends. I tell them what it means to me and stuff like that.” Moving

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back and forth from decisions to share or unshare one’s mediated connection is a constant feature of this dialectical tension.

A Moment to Celebrate (Erase)

I smiled as I watched the dramatic conclusion to WrestleMania XX. Two of wrestling’s good guys had finally succeeded. Many wrestling fans had long wished that both Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero would finally get a chance to stand atop the wrestling world and be written into top storylines, storylines where they could finally be recognized as contenders to the world championship, the top prize in professional wrestling. To many wrestling fans, after working hard and paying their dues in smaller wrestling promotions in Japan, Mexico, Canada, and the United States, they deserved to finally be rewarded.

Both Guerrero and Benoit had a chance to rise to the top in Ted Turner’s World

Championship Wrestling (WCW). Neither, however, succeeded. At that time, WCW focused only on top stars of the past, such as Hulk Hogan, Randy “the Macho Man”

Savage, and “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair. Tonight, on the night of WrestleMania XX, things had finally changed.

Their time had finally come. The moment was surreal. As Chris Benoit’s theme music blasted from the speakers, the ring announcer proclaimed him the winner of the main event, having overthrown two legends of the ring, Triple H and Shawn Michaels.

He was now the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) champion. WWE had recently purchased WCW, making it the only true competitor for global domination in the wrestling business. Chris Benoit was now its top star. 118

Then, Eddie Guerrero appeared in the ring, as the confetti started pouring down on the emotional Benoit. Guerrero, earlier in the night, had defeated Kurt Angle to become the World Heavyweight Champion, a title that continued the legacy of the now- defunct WCW. The two embraced in the middle of the ring. The Madison Square Garden audience stood and applauded in approval. The two good guys had finally made good. It was a moment I will never forget. Nothing could ruin that moment. It was a moment to celebrate.

* * *

It is the month of June in the year 2007. I hear news reports that Chris Benoit, famed professional wrestler, killed his wife and 7-year-old son before taking his own life

(Goodman, 2007). The wrestling world was without words. Promoters, fellow wrestlers, and fans alike could not come to terms with the monstrosity of the matter. Benoit had, it seemed, been depressed. The depression could have started when his longtime friend,

Eddie Guerrero, died of heart-related issues, suddenly and unexpectedly, two years prior

(Associated Press, 2005).

Now, only three years later, I reflect on that WrestleMania XX moment that seemed to stand, forever in time, as a happy moment to celebrate. The good guys had done well. Now, both were gone. On top of that, one had committed an act that could not be described, in any way fathomable, as the actions of a good guy. I had felt that nothing could ruin that moment. Now, the moment has been cancelled. Footage of it is never shown on WWE programming. It’s as if it never happened. The moment has been erased… 119

Satisfied

The dialectic of satisfied and cancelled, a feature of a parasocial relationship, involves the interplay between satisfaction with the mediated connection and dissatisfaction. Most spectating bodies connect with parasocial figures because those connections provide satisfaction. The feelings of satisfaction can create a bond between parasocial and spectating bodies that permeates temporal dimensions. The satisfied spectator always wants to connect.

Dolly Parton fan stated that it’s a “pretty strong connection. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t listen to, um, Dolly Parton. I mean, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t quote The Golden Girls,” and then added, “Every situation, anything that happens in my life, there’s a Golden Girls quote that is applicable 100%.”

Similarly, Friends fan referred to the relationship with the figures from Friends as

“probably my longest long-term relationship,” before adding:

I can probably find a gif for any situation that’s Friends. Sometimes it’s

frustrating because I know it so well that I know the specific things and, like, the

interwebs can’t, like, the iPhone gif system that I have, I don’t know. It sucks. So,

like, I type in the specifics and it’s like ‘No Hits,’ and I’m like, ‘No, this is

actually a thing. I need you to find it.’ So sometimes that’s weird that I know it so

well.

Other spectating bodies connected as a means to have an outlet. Kardashian fan discussed the initial encounter with his parasocial interests, the Kardashian family, and discussed how they still provide satisfaction for him. He explained that it, the show, was “kind of 120

just was, like, an outlet for me to just, like, laugh and kind of something that I wanted.”

He recalled a past memory of initial contact by saying, “I remember watching the first episode, and I just fell in love with it and I literally have watched it every Sunday since.”

Thus, feelings of satisfaction can create enduring bonds where the mediated body is with the spectating body every moment of their life. They carry the figure with them, rewatch programs, and interject content from the shows into situations they encounter in their everyday lives. The satisfied relationship allows one even to modify behaviors.

Boy George fan was inspired by Boy George so much that the spectator altered a drag performance to embody the likeness of the parasocial interest. Boy George fan recalled:

There’s this one particular show where I was just really going through this

hardcore Boy George phase, and I decided that instead of doing the typical, you

know, drag performance songs, I just wanted to do Boy George. So, that’s what I

did, and it just felt right, and it felt good and it was very well received.

The inspiration of a parasocial other can lead to feel-good moments during times of sorrow, can help contribute strength when faced with stigmatization, and can endure even when the connection is disrupted by separation, such as the ending of an episode. Xena:

Warrior Princess fan described how she and her wife were saddened when a show ended, but they enjoyed it so much they decided to start watching it from the beginning all over again. She said:

She really got into it, and so, and she, I could tell, she seemed kind of sad when it

was over, and she was like, ‘We can watch it again.’ So, that [show] we really 121

liked, so I’m, I’m assuming that she could relate to the characters too. Yeah. It

wasn’t a spoken thing that we talked about, but I know she really liked the

characters too. She liked one more than the other, and I liked the other one, so

maybe she saw herself more in the one and I saw myself more in the other. And

so maybe that’s where the bond came…

Providing an exemplar of how a satisfied connection with a parasocial other can benefit one in times of need, Dolly Parton fan disclosed:

2018 sucked for me. It was a bad year. 2019 has been amazing. I’ve completely

turned stuff around and a lot of it, I try to look at the positive in life and try not to

keep people’s negative comments. People’s comments keep me down, and I think

that, you know, that’s Dolly right there in a nutshell. She wants to find the

positive, you know, and I think, you know, I just ask, ‘What would Dolly do?’

The Golden Girls fan echoed these sentiments when describing how the parasocial figures bring happiness and positivity to his life:

The happiest moment with them is practically every moment. Even when I watch

them while sad, they help cheer me up. I find myself laughing at their antics even

when I don’t want to laugh. That brings me satisfaction. It makes it all feel

worthwhile. Sometimes I wonder if this matters or that matters. What even

matters? But to me, The Golden Girls matter. I don’t think my life would have

been as happy or as fun had that show never been created.

The joy attained from connecting—the consummation that occurs—allows for satisfaction with/in the parasocial relationship. Still, the dynamic interplay between 122

competing forces can change instantly. This demonstrates the close connection between the dialectical tensions of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, which brings to mind the recent phenomenon of Cancel Culture.

Comedy, Chappelle, and Cancel Culture

I have a small number of things in life that I’m completely passionate about; family and social justice are just a few. I’m also passionate about more trivial things, like good situation comedies, cinema, music, professional wrestling, and one other…stand-up comedy. At times, I feel as if I betray my academic persona when I find amusement in the comedic offerings from stand-up greats, such as Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Jerry

Seinfeld, Rodney Dangerfield, or Chris Rock. After all, the content is certainly not politically correct. Many set-ups and punchlines experiment with material that borders on language that is racist, sexist, ableist, and every other means of discounting others on the

-ist list. So I question: Why do I enjoy stand-up comedy so much?

Maybe it’s because I know most, if not all, of these comedians are liberal. They too favor the advancement of social justice. Maybe it’s because I know many of them also come from marginalized communities. Still, intersectionality affords only certain privileges to certain groups; I cannot laugh at a racist joke if I am not of that race, but I can laugh at a gay joke since I am gay. Is that how that works?

Possibly my favorite stand-up comic of all time is Dave Chappelle. When I divulge that to others, they either agree with my tastes and consider him to be a very talented comic or they contort their face in a way that suggests they are disgusted I could admire such an offensive person. Chappelle, as have many other comedians, has recently 123

railed against political correctness. He suggests it inhibits comedy (Fry, 2020). I think political correctness corrects past cultural atrocities. As a communication scholar, I believe communication matters. Still, I see Chappelle’s point. If we can’t laugh at ourselves, do we then only leave room for hate? Maybe it’s a point of separating the intent from the communication. I convince myself that Chappelle and his peers are merely trying to make us laugh by providing humor to blanket the ugly aspects of everyday life.

Cancel culture, according to Bromwich (2018), is the act of cancelling—through boycotts and disinvestment—a celebrity for perceived transgressions. Massive followers collect together, usually on some mediated platform, and decide to utilize their agency by

“cancelling” the figure. The reasons for cancellation can vary, ranging from criminal acts to offensive language to wearing materials made out of animal skins. I know that Bill

Cosby, Louis C. K., Roseanne Barr, Kevin Hart, Aziz Ansari, and Michael Richards, all comedians, have been targets of cancel culture. Could Dave Chappelle also eventually be cancelled?

What about when the products being cancelled are from days gone by? The

Christmas song, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” was cancelled because the lyrics suggest misogynistic acts of sexual advancements. Should we give allowances to products that offend our sensitivities if those products emerged at a time when popular thought, at least among the privileged, more readily-accepted those transgressions?

R. Kelly and Michael Jackson have been cancelled. In some instances, their music catalogs have been cancelled as well. Do we now cancel every movie, show, or program 124

that featured their music? Can we possibly, when the two are so intrinsically intertwined, separate the artist from the art?

Here’s a joke for you: Bill Cosby, Kathy Griffin, and Kevin Hart walk into a bar.

Punchline: None come out.

Cancelled

Even the parasocial figures that provide satisfaction are not exempt from letting us down. While satisfaction might be salient in most parasocial relationships, movements toward dissatisfaction are always possible. Some spectators may wish to avoid hearing news that might disrupt the idealized relationship. Jake Gyllenhaal fan described an experience in which he avoided a face-to-face connection with a mediated interest out of fear that dissatisfaction would become more punctuated. He recalled:

That’s like I want to maintain that, like, fantasy just in case, so like, I actually,

um, my senior year, the summer before I came to OU, so like in 2016…yes, 2016.

I saw this band Moose Blood with my friend from New Jersey and I saw, like, all

of the band members, like, outside. They’re just kind of, like, smoking outside,

like whatever, and I was like, ‘Do I say hi?’ But I was like, ‘Oh, what if I don’t

like them? Like, what if they’re a bunch of assholes?’ And I don’t want to know

that about them.

Lucifer fan also preferred less information about the parasocial interests, stating:

I honestly, I don’t want to know actors in particular right now because of the Me

Too movement…Like, I don’t want to dig and find that the actor is, uh, like a

sexual harasser or assaults or, uh…So, for example, I love Gordon Ramsey as a 125

person. Um, and a video popped up on my timeline of, like, when he was being

kind of sexual harassing on a talk show. And I couldn’t, like, I didn’t want to

engage with it. I didn’t want to watch it. And like, I just don’t want that image of

Ramsey in my head…And so I feel that with other actors right now. Like, I don’t

want to dig in more because I don’t want that to affect the character relationship

because, I hate to say men are kind of evil. They’re terrible. Men are terrible, and

so I don’t really want that to leak into the character.

Alternate attitudes and beliefs held by the parasocial figure or discriminatory tendencies toward marginalized groups create a disruption from the mediated satisfaction. Xena:

Warrior Princess fan described what would occur if a parasocial figure was found to have ideological beliefs that conflicted with her own. The spectator said:

I would probably not follow them anymore. I’m not a big fan of, of some, well

actually I’ve been very lucky cause nobody really is a trump supporter because I

don’t, I’m not a big fan of that. And that really turns me off. I’m like, I gotta go

away…I run the other direction, but luckily no one has. Um, like I said, most

people, they’re very liberal. So, I haven’t had any connections with anybody that

doesn’t see eye to eye and same beliefs that I have. So, but on the other hand, if it

was something to the effect of abuse, uh, I think I would, I mean, I’m totally, I

just, I can’t deal with that. That’s, I mean, trump’s a horrible president, but if it

was abuse, so, um, there’s just no way I could relate to them anymore.

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Xena: Warrior Princess fan also disclosed how a parasocial figure could let her down if the character on the show was written in ways that did not accurately portray queer sensibilities. For instance, she said:

I don’t know if you’ve seen Station 19, another Shonda [show], I think ‘cause of

the female lead…one of the girls in the beginning, she was a lesbian and then she

started sleeping with the guy. I’m like, what? No.

If the queer parasocial interest behaved in heteronormative ways, the spectating fan was often dissatisfied. Still, despite queer connections, Eli Lieb fan revealed that he would not stray from cancelling an LGBTQ parasocial figure if that person’s attitudes and beliefs were problematic in other ways unrelated to gay pride. He stressed:

My standards were much lower when I was younger because now, like, as I have

gotten older and I’ve become more educated on certain things, like, the whole

white gay thing is more problematic to me…If they do something that’s

discriminatory I guess, or they don’t, or they do something that perpetuates

something that I find problematic, um, I don’t really associate on that same

identity level. Like, just because we have that one factor that connects us, I don’t

necessarily feel that connection, um, which I think has altered over time. So back

then when it was kind of a turning point in my life, I kind of clung to that gay

identity as a way to connect with other people who are also sharing that, but as

I’ve developed that a little bit more, it’s seeing things as more uni…, or more

multidimensional, instead of just on that one dimension.

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He lamented the appreciation that has now faded, recalling how a parasocial figure let him down. Eli Lieb fan continued:

He shares a lot of pseudo science things that, as I’ve become more like going on

in my doctorate/PhD, it’s like that’s, that’s not right. This is accurate. This is not

an accurate portrayal of the science. Um, so it kind of, um, um, discredits him a

little bit in my eyes that, like, knowing that he just shares these things, that he’s

like, ‘Hey, did you all see this fake news quote?’ Um, like, ‘hmmm. Like I respect

you but, like, this is not science.’…It really highlights kind of where we’re

different in those aspects, I guess, to me. Um, and so I don’t necessarily follow as

closely as I used to, um, whereas he could’ve posted whatever and, like, yeah. It’s

great back then, but, like, now it’s, like, ugh.

When ideological beliefs are strong, an act of nonconformity to those strongly-held beliefs by the parasocial figure can result in displeasure, dissatisfaction, and ultimately cancellation. Skarsgard fan added “I mean I’d probably stop following his work if he did something horrible, um, or it came to light that he did something bad in the past.”

Cancelling a parasocial figure with whom one shares a strong relationship seems unthinkable, but certain acts or revelations can present a situation in which the unthinkable becomes possible.

In summary, The Dialectic of Judgment and Acceptance was demonstrated through two subthemes that emerged when analyzing my dialogues with participants. The

Dialectic of the Freedom to Share and the Freedom to Keep for Oneself was exemplified by expressed desires both to share parasocial connections and desires to keep them 128

private. These dialectical tensions were displayed in exemplars of participants revealing they watched mediated figures with persons who were close to them, grouped together with other fans on multiple modalities, and were often reminded of moments when they shared the connection with loved ones in the past. Thus, the connections brought back moments of watching together with others. Meanwhile, the participants also described how some connections were too personal to share. Some were not shared due to attached stigmas related to the shows/figures. Some were not shared because they represented the ideal in comparison to a less than ideal social group. And some were not even shared with producers of the product, as the fans felt they knew the characters better than those who produced the show. The Dialectic of Satisfaction and Cancellation was highlighted when participants fluctuated between having strong connections with parasocial figures and avoiding contact out of fear that the figure would let them down or possess differing ideological beliefs. When satisfied, participants would mention how the shows tied to life moments, how the connections could be maintained throughout life, and how the figures were there in times of need. Even so, judging these mediated characters who provided them with diverse possibilities for acceptance, my participants mentioned instances in which they disagreed emphatically with parasocial figures. At other times they deliberately avoided finding out too much information about parasocial associates in order to prevent the possibility of learning unfortunate news that would lead to dissatisfaction.

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Chapter 6: Mediating the Dialectical Tensions of the Ideal and the Real

The next dialectical feature of communication that emerged from the discussions with participants who shared a parasocial relationship with a mediated body, the

Dialectic of the Ideal and the Real, concerns the interplay between idealized notions of the relationship and more authentic realities. The subthemes that fall under the umbrella of this dialectic involve two types of knowing that are categorized separately as part of

Cartesian dualism (Descartes, 1998). The first, rationality or the real, fall under knowledge attained from the mind. These ways of knowing have historically maintained privilege within the Cartesian mind/body split. The other way of knowing, emotionality, involves things felt, things unseen, and things considered not to be real. These features are expressed through considerations of parasocial relationships as being unreal, only emotional attachments. The interplay between the two questions a concrete definition of the term real.

In this chapter I consider how dialectical tensions between relational idealizations and less-than-ideal realities play out within parasocial relationships using Rawlins’

(1992) the Dialectic of the Ideal and the Real as a guiding framework. I provide exemplars from my dialogical conversations with research participants that underscore the dialectical struggles. I divide the section into two subthemes. The first, the Dialectic of Emotionality and Rationality, emerges from participant discussions that demonstrate struggles between emotional explanations for parasocial connectedness and rational descriptions of the mediated relationships. Finally, I end with the Dialectic of the Real and the Unreal, which is a transmuted theorization of Rawlins' (1992) original 130

overarching dialectical feature utilized for this chapter. The Dialectic of the Real and the

Unreal is presented when participants shift between referring to their parasocial connections as real relationships and ones that could not be characterized as real.

However, this subtheme also plays out in another way when the unreal connections represent idealized forms of relating that differ, often in favorable ways, from relationships thought to be authentic.

Encountering Larger-than-Life Figures: Magical Moments in the Cuellar Family

Narrative

My great-grandfather, Valeriano Casillas Cuellar, once worked at a roadside fill- up station. In the middle of nowhere, on a desolate, dry landscape situated on the southwestern edge of the Edwards Plateau, this roadside station attracted only the occasional passers-by who might be in need of another supply of fuel while drifting through the Texas desert. Thus, my great-grandfather spent many lonely hours at the full- service stop, awaiting the next patron to drive on through.

There in the distance, a cloud of dust began to billow up into the sky, as the sound of a Ford Deluxe Fordor Sedan engine could be heard humming closer toward the station.

My great-grandfather, hearing the vehicle approaching, looked out of the window and readied himself in case the vehicle turned into the full-service lot. The Sedan, now within the distance of a rock’s throw, turned into the lot and parked parallel to the only gas pump in front of the store. My great-grandfather, who had been reading that day’s newspaper, walked out of the store and approached the vehicle.

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“Fill ‘er up, please,” said the dark-haired gentleman in the front seat of the vehicle. My great-grandfather, avoiding staring at the gentleman, recognized his profile in a moment’s glance.

“Yes, sir,” he said, as he placed the gasoline nozzle into the fuel tank.

My great-grandfather filled up the tank and then grabbed a rag to start working on the windows. He cleaned the front and then moved around to the passenger’s side. A woman wearing a blue-sequined hat, sitting in the passenger’s seat, gave him a quick smile, as if to show appreciation for the service. Both the gentleman and the woman riding next to him looked tired. My great-grandfather, fearing he might do something to upset them, remained calm and worked swiftly so as to satisfy them. Their demeanor was relaxed, but they also looked like they were in a hurry.

The hot, Texas sun pressed down hard on my grandfather, as he moved from the windows to the tires. A bead of sweat started to form on his brow. Upon checking the final tire to ensure it had enough pressure, he raised and spoke to the gentleman at the steering wheel.

“Can I check your oil for you?” he asked.

The handsome fellow smiled at my grandfather, and in a deep southern drawl, replied, “Naw, that won’t be necessary. I certainly do appreciate your service. You’ve been mighty helpful.” The gentleman reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty- dollar note.

“This here’s for your trouble, mister.”

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“Why thank you very much, sir. I appreciate it. You two have a blessed day,” replied my great-grandfather.

“Oh we’ll try,” reported the gentleman, in a twangy drawl, as he looked back at my great-grandfather with a mischievous smirk.

The woman, in the passenger’s seat, spoke up, “Don’t go around here saying you seen us, nice man.” Then, she gave a wink.

My great-grandfather restarted their engine and winked back, saying “I don’t even know what you’re talking about, ma’am.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” she hollered back. The gentleman revved the engine and then the two drove off in a flash. It was as if they had never even been there, with only a trail of smoke, emitted from their tailpipe, signifying their swift disappearance. No other signs of their arrival were available…none, that is, other than the twenty-dollar bill tucked into my great-grandfather’s pants pocket.

My great-grandfather walked back to the store and opened the door, as a bell clanged to announce his return to a crowd of zero. Then, my grandfather picked up the newspaper he had been reading and returned to the story that had been interrupted by the dream-like arrival of that dashing pair in the Ford Deluxe Fordor Sedan.

The headline of the newspaper read: Texas State Highway Patrol Offers $500

Reward for Couple Wanted for Murder, Robbery, Kidnapping, and Auto Theft. Slightly below the headline was a picture of a man, sporting that same mischievous smirk, and beside him was another photo of a woman donning a stylish beret. Underneath each

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photo was a caption with the names of the two individuals, Bonnie Parker and Clyde

Barrow.

* * *

It was March of 1958 and my grandfather, Roger Reyes Cuellar, was stationed at

Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. He was finishing his tenure there, soon to be discharged from the United States Army, after already having served in the Marine Corps and soon to be enlisting in the Army National Guard. At that time my grandfather ranked as a

Sergeant First Class E-6. He had fought at the Battle of Guadalcanal during the Pacific theater of World War II and had been assigned to help with combat during the Korean conflict. Thus, he was ready for a more relaxed schedule. Still, as a long-tenured military veteran, he recognized no other type of lifestyle and did not want to completely disengage from a regimented day-to-day program.

His future excited him but so did the present. He cherished the responsibility of leading a squadron through training rituals, helping to prepare them for further service in the military. Each day was just another day; but each day was more than just ordinary.

That was no truer than today. For today a new group of enlistees were to arrive, including one particular standout who was navigating, undesirably, along the opposite trajectory of jack to king. This standout, “The King,” was soon to be just another soldier—a private whose life was anything but private.

My grandfather treated Elvis Presley no better than any other soldier undergoing basic training, but he also did not have to exert much disciplinary control over the former

Reserve Officers’ Training Corps student. Elvis’ ROTC days had proven useful, as they 134

helped mold him into a fine soldier. That’s why the two took to each other in a rather favorable way.

While my grandfather’s enlistment had him currently stationed at Fort Hood, my grandmother and their four children were residing back in San Angelo, Texas, almost 200 miles away. My grandmother adored Elvis, and my father, aunt, and uncles were all fans of the King of Rock and Roll as well. That’s why on one unexpected evening in the spring of 1958, they were all shook up when my grandfather called home and surprised them with a special guest on the other end of the line.

“Somebody here wants to say hello,” joked my grandfather as he moved toward the end of his call.

My grandmother waited, wondering what my grandfather was talking about.

“Cuellar?” she responded. She lovingly called my grandfather by his last name, although she pronounced it with a Spanish pronunciation, which made it sound more like Kway- yad.

“Hello, ma’am. Your husband has told me a lot about you and the family. This here is Elvis Presley.”

I’d imagine my grandmother was shocked, but being one never to know a stranger, she immediately started up a conversation with Elvis Presley, as if she’d known him for years. “Oh my goodness, we have all of your albums. How are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m doing fine, ma’am. They treat me real nice here in Fort Hood,” replied the

King. 135

My grandmother talked to Elvis for a short while longer, even letting my father, aunt, and uncles get to say hello. Then, my grandfather, along with Elvis, had to hang up and get back to their duties.

“It was very nice talking to you. God bless you,” concluded my grandmother.

“Thank you very much, ma’am. It was nice talking to all of you too.”

A few weeks later, my grandmother, aunt, and uncles got to meet Elvis when the squadron graduated from basic training. My grandmother told me about how he helped check on civilians when one of the bleachers started to collapse during the graduation ceremony.

As she reminisced about days gone by, tears began to form at the corners of her eyes. “He was such a nice gentleman,” she’d tell me. Then, she’d go back to washing dishes, while whispering the words to “My Way” (Anka & Revaux, 1973).

* * *

I’ve heard these stories time and time again throughout my lifetime. My grandparents would tell these stories every now and then, each time solidifying more and more their place within the Cuellar family narrative. There are more just like them: My grandmother’s nephew married baby Jessica, the child who fell into a well in Midland,

Texas back in 1987 and captivated the nation when her rescue was aired nationwide on a then-burgeoning CNN. One of my grandfather’s best friends, L. D. Montgomery, was the homicide detective who found the brown paper bag at the Texas School Book Depository that might have been used to carry Lee Harvey Oswald’s weapon, the weapon allegedly used to assassinate President J.F. Kennedy. He also was there to help tackle Jack Ruby to 136

the ground when Ruby later shot and killed Oswald. My grandmother remembers sitting along the side of the road as a publicity truck drove by with country music legend Ernest

Tubb belting out some of his famous tunes while standing on the flatbed. That’s my family, and those are the stories I’ve heard since I was a young boy. Those are the stories they told and retold. They met star after star in mundane situations as if they too, like

Forrest Gump (1994), were situated in a story that was part ordinary and part extraordinary—the meeting between the spectator and the parasocial figure.

A historian might check the validity of the dates of these stories. A detective might compare notes with existing notes that could counter these claims. A social scientist might seek objectivity, in search of the truth. Yet, what is truth in relation to narrative? Does narrative truth depend more on structure, reception, existential pertinence, relational resonance, or verifiability?

Over time, these stories have been altered. In one telling, Bonnie and Clyde are overly-pleasant and outwardly friendly. In another, they are nice but more reserved. I, as the one who retells the story, fill in the gaps to give it a narrative flair. I do not know if my great-grandfather was working alone or if there were other employees who also made the acquaintance of the famed outlaw duo. My biases and prejudices determine how I’ll paint the picture. Do I speak of Elvis with reverence or do I belittle his name, thinking of him as lower than a King of Rock and Roll distinction? Do I glorify the famous bank robbers, or do I blemish the names of two individuals who, in the eyes of many, lived a life characterized as less-than-moral? How do I take my subjectivity out of the retelling of the story, granting it the honor of verisimilitude? 137

Perhaps, the question should not be one of truth versus fiction. Perhaps, the narrative is useful in ways that do not involve matters of truth and objectivity. The narrative works with/in lives, providing meaning in a myriad of ways. Whether vulnerable to tests of falsification or not, narratives help people navigate through life by making their roles matter, by making their episodes worthwhile. Dialectically, the story is just a story while simultaneously not just a story—it’s “real.”

Rationality

Perhaps one of the most dominant descriptions of a parasocial relationship is the notion that such a connection is not real. After all, the parasocial other is not there; the parasocial is on the other side, separated by mediation…mediated despite separation. The subtheme of emotionality versus rationality points out the obvious, that the parasocial figure is not present in a face-to-face way, while simultaneously failing to take into account how much the connection matters with/in the life of the individual. It fails to consider how the everyday, mundane moments of connecting collect together to form an enduring often permanent bond between two relating bodies—the parasocial and the spectating.

Some spectators merely connect as a means to an end. For them, the connection is less intense. They are satisfied with uninvolved, dismissive, and somewhat aware levels of involvement with a parasocial other. Such choices are often a result of making rationality more salient in the relationship. For instance, while Skarsgard fan enjoys connecting with Bill Skarsgard through various forms of media, the spectator admitted

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that “[parasocial connections] are significantly different for me. I’m not a, uh, I don’t invest. I mean, I don’t invest in most things.”

The sentiments were the same for Xena: Warrior Princess fan. Xena: Warrior

Princess fan felt the relationship paused once the mediated connection was interrupted.

She proclaimed, “I think I just watch them and leave them there,” before adding that certain aspects of the figures prevented identification because “the other two girls were contract killers, sort of.” Thus, while certain facets of identity mirrored her own; she was loath to identify with others.

Lucifer fan also didn’t view the relationship as real. The participant stated, “I don’t really view it as, like, I feel like I’m more of a spectator and like watching the person’s life than a, like, real connection.” Even though the connection evoked strong emotions from Lucifer fan, at the end of the day the participant prioritized rationality when contemplating the authenticity of a mediated relationship.

While rationality holds privilege in popular thought concerning parasocial relationships, most of the participants I interviewed had strong connections with their mediated interest. A first step in beginning a consummated connection with a parasocial figure is suspending disbelief. Thus, it was much more common for participants to value emotionality over rationality when discussing the place in their lives and the meaning of their parasocial relationships.

Emotionality

As opposed to rationality, emotionality was apparent when participants talked about how the individual portraying the character mattered, almost as if the two were 139

interchangeable and inextricably interconnected. All My Children fan talked about how a favorite character from the show was recast, suggesting that the parasocial connection wasn’t the same after the role was no longer portrayed by the original actor. He revealed:

I would watch the soap with my family, and we had become accustomed to

certain characters. That’s why when they recast Greenlee, we were all horrified. I

was, like, ‘They can’t do this.’ It just wasn’t the same. Greenlee was one of my

strongest connections and then it was just different. We were so happy when the

original actress returned. My family and I, we, I mean it’s like that didn’t happen

to us. We pretend that never happened, that those episodes were still a part of the

ongoing saga but in a way they weren’t, if you know what I mean.

This highlights how the individual matters, when emotionality is emphasized. As in a face-to-face relationship, one cannot simply replace an existing connection, if the relationship is strong.

Lucifer fan, also connecting strongly with characters from the Marvel cinematic universe, suggested the same would be true if the role of Captain America were recast.

Lucifer fan stated:

I think I do picture them as the same person. So if he was like, oh, let’s say it was

um, what is that show? Dr. Who? Is that the show that, like, changes actors?...I

think it’d be kind of hard to watch another actor play him or, like, um, say...I also

love the Marvel characters. If there was, you know, I’d say, um, oh my God,

Chris Evans was killed off and they replaced him with a different Captain, I

would hate it. I would like, no, that’s not Captain America. 140

Rather than thinking in a rational manner, which would suggest that nobody truly is

Captain America, Lucifer fan punctuated emotionality, which made the spectator certain that only Chris Evans could portray the fictional character in a realistic manner. Lucifer fan added:

I don’t know if I’m going to watch it. And I like his, I mean those, I think Captain

America is another like parasocial relationship I have in particular. Um, I, I love

him so much and I’m, I don’t know if I can watch a franchise where he’s not in it.

And I’ve been trying to tell myself, like, maybe it’ll be okay. It’s Marvel. They’ll

do a good job. But the idea of him being gone is like too much sometimes. Like,

no, like, you can’t have The Avengers (2012) without Captain America.

Expressions where the participant describes feeling that the character is irreplaceable demonstrate emotional attachments to certain actors in certain roles.

Sometimes emotionality prevailed over rationality when the characters remained the same, but the dynamic of the show altered when a certain character left the show.

Grey’s Anatomy fan complained:

The show has been going on for what, ten, fifteen years? I still watch it. But it’s

different. The characters, I mean the actors, have all left the show. I think there’s

only one or two of them left, from the original seasons of the show. Like, it’s still

good but it’s almost an entirely different show.

The same sentiments were expressed by The Golden Girls fan who complained about a spinoff, which did not feature an integral cast member, Dorothy Zbornak. The Golden

Girls fan protested: 141

When I think about The Golden Girls and how, uh, they didn’t try to reboot it, but

they had another season without one of the main characters, and it just didn’t

work. And it was cancelled. Uh, Dorothy didn’t return, and it was just the other

three: Rose, Blanche, and Sophia, and they moved into a hotel and were running a

hotel business. It just wasn’t the same. It was, it was kind of terrible, actually.

Emotionality versus rationality involves questioning one’s emotional ties to a parasocial figure, while acknowledging that the parasocial relationship is different from an everyday, face-to-face relationship with a close friend or loved one. The question of whether the relationship is real or not is a further point of inquiry closely connected to the subtheme of emotionality and rationality.

Real Loss Made Better through (Un)Real Connections

Loss is a constant; the loss of day as we enter night, the loss of one’s appetite, the loss of thought mid-sentence in front of a hiring committee, the loss of memory as dementia robs the mind, the loss of a true love, the loss of morality in a country controlled by just a few, the loss of a brother or sister, the loss of parents, or the loss of a child. We feel loss as much as we feel any other emotion. Our losses count, they matter

(Holman Jones, 2016).

To a child who has yet to feel the sting of loss, the prospect of a first loss may be considered trivial. Until the unbidden moment arrives in which a young person must actually experience the loss of a relative, friend, or family pet, the idea of one’s first loss is often less significant. Mine was a plush Snoopy that I took with me everywhere I went.

I lost it when I carelessly left it on the bumper of my grandfather’s car one evening after 142

playing with my next-door neighbor after school had let out. After school the following day, it was no longer where I had left it, as it had likely been thrown off of my grandfather’s bumper and into traffic when he left for work early that morning. For a day or two, I was inconsolable.

I had grown up on Peanuts, not the peanuts you find in an assortment of mixed nuts where they become pushed aside for almonds or cashews, but the Peanuts that has occupied the comic section of newspapers for almost seventy years. Charles M. Schulz first published his Peanuts comic strip in 1950 (Schulz, 2009). It wasn’t the comic strip that attracted me, but rather the variety of animated television features and motion pictures. Every holiday season, I would sit, mesmerized, in front of the family television set in the living room and religiously watch the assortment of Charlie Brown television specials on CBS: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966); A Charlie Brown

Thanksgiving (1973); A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965); Be My Valentine, Charlie

Brown (1975); It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown (1974). Charlie Brown was just as synonymous with the holiday season, to me, as were jack-o-lanterns, Christmas lights, and Easter baskets. However, my appreciation for Peanuts did not end with holiday specials. I remember going to the movie theater with my grandparents to enjoy the theatrical releases of Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don’t Come Back!!) (1980) and

Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977). I always rooted for Charlie Brown, the ‘little man’ who constantly struggled against the odds and often came up short (Inge, 2000).

Perhaps for me, as one who identifies as LGBTQ, Charlie Brown was identifiable due to the way the other kids in the Peanuts comic strip always ostracized him. Linus even tells 143

Charlie Brown, in A Charlie Brown Christmas, “of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you’re the Charlie Browniest” (Melendez & Mendelson, 1965).

Still, it wasn’t Charlie Brown that I connected with the most. I loved Snoopy,

Charlie Brown’s whimsical pet beagle. Snoopy’s antics provided the perfect comic foil to compensate for the depressiveness attributed to Charlie Brown. This made Snoopy a favorable character to the children like me enjoying Schulz’s programs. To show my appreciation for everything Snoopy, I had everything imaginable devoted to Snoopy: a homemade Snoopy blanket, the original Snoopy sno-cone [sic] machine, Snoopy picture books and records, Snoopy t-shirts, and what I thought to be a one-of-a-kind Snoopy stuffed animal, which was now serving as a speed bump somewhere on a busy street in

San Angelo, Texas.

The loss of this plush Snoopy, to someone highly connected parasocially to the animated character, was traumatizing, at least at the tender age of seven. What made this loss so trivial by others’ estimations? Was it the fact that I was so young and hadn’t truly understood the gravity of what most consider to be true loss? Was it how quickly I was able to bounce back and, within months, find an exact replica of that one-of-a-kind

Snoopy at a local K-Mart, somewhat appeasing my feelings of loss? Or was it how uninvolved Snoopy was, as one party within this parasocial connection? Neither the animated character nor the plush toy Snoopy had any idea I existed. That’s because

Snoopy, as a living, breathing entity, did not exist himself. How meaningful are parasocial relationships when the connection is truly one-sided?

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Parasocial others bring us connection. They allow us to connect with the world, with our feelings, and with another body with whom we can achieve consummation. On this day, I needed connection. I needed to experience what I was already experiencing.

Something needed to mediate my feelings of loss.

My dog Spot, named by my older brother, was my fifth dog. When I was a toddler, our family had a dog named Tiger, who I called Tie-Shoe. I guess I was not yet able to pronounce Tiger. After Tiger there was a flurry of Snoopies: Snoopy 1, Snoopy 2, and Snoopy 3. All of these pets had quick tenures, as I don’t think my parents/grandparents were adept at preventing dogs from getting loose and running away.

Spot was different. He was the first dog that we kept for a considerable amount of time.

He was faithful, he was affectionate, and he was playful. Now, however, he had become a nuisance.

He, like the comic strip character Snoopy, was part-beagle, which is why I think I took to him right away. He also had border collie mixed into his genetic makeup. I’m guessing it was the border collie genes that gave him his Superman-like qualities, making him “faster than a speeding bullet” and “able to leap over tall [fences] in a single bound”

(Fleischer, 1941). Whatever the reasoning, Spot had a propensity for jumping over the backyard fence anytime he heard a car turning onto our street and driving past the house.

Then, he would chase the car, often getting in front of the vehicle. This would anger the drivers, who had to suddenly hit their brakes to avoid hitting a daffy canine set on gnawing on their rear tires. The complaints began to pile up and soon a police officer was at our front door. Spot had to go. 145

My father put an ad in the newspaper. He worked for the paper, so it was easy for him to do. Soon, a new home was found. Spot was going to go live on a ranch, where he could exert his energy toward a job for which he was domesticated, herding livestock. I knew in advance that the new owner was coming to take Spot away, but I was still unprepared the moment the gentleman arrived and left with my dog, Spot.

It would probably be considered a bad idea to do what I did next. I had cried all day long. Now, I wanted to share those emotions. The best way I knew how was to watch something that would allow me to connect with someone else who felt the exact same way. I put in my family’s VHS copy of Snoopy, Come Home (1972). With a tissue box at my side, I braved what was to come next.

Snoopy, Come Home (1972) is to melancholy what Christmas carols are to cheer.

The sad songs, the scenes filled with characters crying, and the dreary colors all combine to create a perfect storm of complete sorrow. In the animated film, Snoopy finds his original owner, the little girl that had him prior to his introduction to Charlie Brown.

Feeling it is the only responsible thing to do, Snoopy decides to move back in with his original owner. This sets up the perfect plotline for sadness to ensue. There is a going- away party in which all of the Peanuts characters tearfully give Snoopy a parting gift, culminating with a scene in which Charlie Brown and Snoopy cannot even look at each other before erupting into helpless sobs of anguish. There is another depressing scene in which Charlie Brown cannot sleep at night and goes outside to look at Snoopy’s dog house. This scene is accompanied by a mournful track entitled, “It Changes” (1972).

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Before the final credits of the show pulled up, I was a miserable mess. Yet, somehow, I felt better. Something had happened. I had connected. I wasn’t all alone.

Even though the film had a happy ending while my story did not, I could still empathize with Snoopy and Charlie Brown. My feelings of loss were not meaningless. Somebody else felt the same way I felt. My feelings were consummated. My grief was made good.

Good grief!

Real and Unreal

Contextual dialectics shape and reflect relationships individuals might have with mediated figures, both real and unreal. Society stigmatizes parasocial relationships as possessing less connection than a typical face-to-face relationship. Connections we make through dreams, through entering the realm between mediated body and spectating body—the enterpersonal, and through fantasies created while drifting off into intrapersonal thought all seem real when in the moment. Yet, prevailing social notions prescribe what is to be determined as fantasy or fiction, in terms of “actual” meeting, and what should be considered true forms of connecting with others. Even among those meetings that stray from corporeal embodiments, certain connections have privilege.

Nobody would think of institutionalizing me if I proclaimed to have spoken with God, spiritually, but social judgments would become harsher if I proclaimed to have spoken with God, in the flesh. What distinguishes connections between a corporealized interactant and a spiritual deity from a meeting between mediated and spectating bodies?

Does religion have a monopoly on incorporeal connections considered to be real?

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Still, social constructions imposed by society remain heavy. Even the parasocial fans struggle with questions about the reality of mediated connections, those of an incorporeal distinction. Dolly Parton fan felt confident in his assertion:

Yeah, they’re real. Um, they’re…I mean, you can watch them on TV just as well

as I can. Uh, it’s just whether or not you’re going to connect to them the same

way I do. You know? And that’s all across the board and with everybody. Uh,

yeah. I mean, I haven’t ever touched Dolly Parton’s arm or, you know, seen

Lucille Ball’s henna-colored hair firsthand, but that doesn’t change anything. You

know? It’s still very real.

According to Dolly Parton fan, the disconnectedness between other spectators and Dolly

Parton does not diminish the connection he shares with the country music icon. The same could be said of relationships between face-to-face interactants. A stranger does not have a real connection with my grandmother, but I would certainly consider my connection with her to be genuine. Dolly Parton fan makes a distinction between quality over quantity. The aspect that others might not be as connected with Dolly makes no difference to him; he feels wholly connected.

Dialectically, however, social contexts still frame Dolly Parton fan’s thoughts.

While suggesting he knows the parties with whom he maintains a mediated connection, he revises his beliefs to add, “I appreciate the way that it is now, but I would have loved to have every single one of [The Golden Girls] over for dinner, just one time, to talk to them, get to know them, ask them questions.” Additionally, while suggesting that the actor cannot be untangled from the role by claiming, “You know, Estelle Getty comes 148

along with Sophia Petrillo,” he also admits that he favors the characters he comes to know through his mediated connections. He continues:

I know their characters. I know, um, their personal lives. I would want to know

about their personal lives, but nothing too…uh, I don’t want to delve too deep

because I don’t want my mental image or anything—how I view them—to be

skewed. I just want some questions answered.

This struggle between considering the parasocial connection to be real or unreal, even among the most ardent supporters, demonstrates the dialectic of the real and the unreal

(which for devoted fans often also involved idealized attributes). This dialectic was not always voiced directly, although many of the participants I interviewed for this study, when asked if the relationship was real or not, gave direct answers. Meanwhile, the dialectical tension often was revealed in the way they would contradict their previous answers with later statements suggesting they understood social orders which denied meaningful connections between spectating and mediated bodies. Or despite their doubt in the realness of their own mediated connections, they insisted that these relationships were meaningful to them in ways that transcended mere entertainment.

When deciphering whether a parasocial relationship was real or not, Lucifer fan described a mediated connection with qualities typically associated with face-to-face connections, deeming it even more empathetic than a typical interpersonal bond. This observation followed an initial response in which the interviewee originally labeled the connection as less connected:

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Um, so I don’t really view it as, like, I feel like I’m more of a spectator and like

watching the person’s life than a, like a real connection. Like, I don’t feel, like, I,

you know, I can connect by talking to them. I think that’s a significant part of any

relationship, but at the same time…Like, here I can care more. Yeah. I can care

more about what happens to that character because I get to see the whole scene of

what’s going on, um, which is like, so, like when you have a friend who goes

through something and you don’t really get to watch it act out, usually. Um, and

so the level of empathy I feel, like, is almost spiked in the parasocial relationship

versus a relationship that I have in real life.

Further describing the strong emotional connections between self and mediated other,

Lucifer fan added that the level of intensity was somewhere between obsessed and uninvolved:

Um, probably in-between. I don’t know. So, like, I don’t follow them [on social

media], the actors…But, like, I can have very strong emotional reactions to it

where I think people, most people, would not. I, like, can bawl over a scene and,

like, I can even have heartbreak with the character to the point where there’s, um,

something I refuse to re-watch because they were so heartbreaking. I didn’t want

to, like, relive it again or, like, watch the character go through it again, so I think

it’s more intense in that way of my emotional reaction to it.

Thus, the question might not even be whether the relationship is real or unreal. Instead, the inquiry might focus on how meaningful the relationship is to the consummated individual. 150

When in Need of Something Else

Repetition has become my safety crutch. If I happen to start the day without feeling completely helpless and if there is a glimmer of hope that it might not end badly, then I need to prevent unforeseen change from messing things up. I walk a delicate pathway, like a dizzy saunter across a tightrope, between numbness, which at this point is welcome, and a complete downward spiral. I fear the engulfment of another panic attack, one that could potentially be worse than all the others. So I do what seems to be working.

I do not change a thing.

My Honda Civic is back from the shop, but I do not dare divert from the routine. I continue driving my grandfather’s green Buick LeSabre, in spite of the fact that it seems like an antiquated ride for a college kid to be using. It doesn’t give off the vibe that I’m styling on my drive to class. Adding to the wack presentation is the soundtrack to my back-and-forth between lying in bed and surviving the monotony of class. I’ve been playing a soundtrack to the animated show The Animaniacs (1993) on loop for about three weeks now. It’s a wonder that I don’t have the nations of the world memorized by now. I’m stuck in a conundrum: I’m tired of the monotony of life, but change presents a danger because any little deviation from the routine could result in something even worse, perhaps something that would destroy all hope.

I fathom the unthinkable. I am so tired of listening to the same songs on constant repeat. Without delaying any further and knowing this could result in a decline in my current condition, I eject the cassette tape and immediately hear the cacophonic interruption of FM radio. To my surprise, I am unphased. Nothing seems to be going 151

wrong…yet. Perhaps my safety crutch was not really fending off any further dives into depression. Maybe The Animaniacs (1993) were only helping to take my mind off of things. My mind can tend to wander toward melancholy lately. The song on the radio is unfamiliar, but I like it. It’s almost speaking to me. Maybe this can become part of my new routine. I drift back into a welcome numbness and take in the lyrics:

“I want something else

To get me through this

Semi-charmed kind of life

I want something else

I’m not listening when you say

Good-bye” (Third Eye Blind, 1997, track 3).

* * *

“What’s wrong with you,” she asks?

“Nothing.”

“You don’t look like it. Something seems to be wrong,” she persists.

“There’s nothing wrong. I’m doing just fine,” I repeat.

My grandmother worries. She knows that I have been acting differently as of late. The things that used to cheer me up just don’t seem to be doing the trick anymore. I don’t take joy in anything and spend most of the day lying in bed. It’s not my typical behavior.

“Well if you want to talk about it…”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I interrupt. “I’m telling you, I’m doing just fine.”

* * * 152

When one thinks of quintessential films to watch for repeated viewings over the holidays, It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) is usually toward the top of the list. However, much of its content does not match the cheerful, festive images one thinks of when picturing the merriment of Christmas. After all, the main character is intent on ending his life. Unable to escape the insurmountable problems he’s wrestling with, George Bailey decides his best option is to terminate his distressing issues by extinguishing his own existence. Seemingly left with no hope, he decides his next move is one toward eternal darkness, toward a separation from the world he knows.

I knew what it was like to feel hopeless. The scene on the television screen resembled a mirrored reflection of the drama unfolding a few feet away, in my personal story.

“God…God…Dear Father in Heaven, I’m not a praying man,” pleads George

Bailey, “but if you’re up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I’m at the end of my rope. Show me the way, God.”

This performance by Jimmy Stewart is one I consider to be among the greatest ever captured on film. Perhaps I’m biased. Perhaps I am so taken by his acting because, in that moment, his words echo my own. I do not know what will happen in the next scene. I simply know that this feels like the end. It feels like, after a life of joy and contentment, I’ve lost the ability to feel anything other than despair…I’ve lost an ability to see any value in continuing to keep on living. Afraid of death, dismayed by the threat of the wrathful punishment for committing an unpardonable sin, frightened by the loss of everyone and everything I love, I am most fearful of one thing…hopelessness. I see no 153

way out. Like the character of George Bailey in the Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful

Life (1946), the only escape I see from the enclosing clutches of depression is to end life as I know it and enter into the freeing realm of nothingness.

* * *

The person with whom I spend most of my time, the one who would eventually become my partner before our relationship evolved into something else—something not characterized as romantic but still characterized by a deep closeness—tearfully wishes me well as I leave. She has seen me slowly grow less and less content with my place in this world. There was something about that moment that told me it was time. Unable to mollify this most intense episode of anxiety, I can no longer sit back. I am left with one last option. I have to let my loved ones know what is happening to me. They are the last source of help. I have to seek the one who kissed away the scrapes and bruises of my earliest tumbles, the one who protected me from the clouds of gloom lurking ahead when

I was first learning how to deal with the complexities of life. I needed her now.

* * *

Exploding with a guttural wail created by the uncertainty of what is to happen next, the tears rapidly flow down my cheeks as I manage to drive home from the dorm room where my eventual partner resided. It is simultaneously a quick drive to my grandmother’s house and one that takes what seems like forever. That moment in time is like a deafening silence. I do not know how I traversed the unsettling pathway. I simply know that I eventually arrived at my destination, and when I got there, there she was.

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I unlocked the front door, clumsily wrestling with the keys in my hand. At first, there was nothing. Then she appeared from around the corner, entering the living room from the kitchen where she had been cooking one of her usual culinary wonders. The smell of Spanish rice with beans and a strong aroma coming from her pot of chilé made me recognize the welcoming embrace of home. When our eyes first locked, she initially began to start up a typical conversation, but she immediately could see something was wrong. Trembling, crying, and peering at her with a panicked expression, I attempted to give her an educated description of my current situation, but words failed. All I could mutter out as I sobbed uncontrollably was a cry for help. “Grandma,” I exclaimed. Before

I could say anything more, she wrapped her arms around me and embraced me, creating a sense of wholeness that I had not felt since the devastation of my issues with mental health had first appeared.

* * *

On the way to the hospital, I finally felt a sense of relief. It looked like I might not have lost all hope after all. I didn’t know if I was going to start feeling better and, if so, I didn’t know when. All I knew was that I felt like I had help. Still, I reflected, I don’t think I ever felt alone.

I knew that when I was ready to finally seek her help, my grandmother would be there. I was also accompanied through the daily struggles with my rapidly intensifying state of depression by my future companion. She never left my side.

Still, even in those moments when I was alone, I never felt abandoned. There, showing me that I was not unique were the characterizations on the television screen, like 155

George Bailey, of others who were suffering with depression just like me. Providing me companionship when I was afraid of slipping back into despair were the mediated connections that affirmed my condition, like how Jerry Maguire (1996) would complete me on solitary nights while staying with my parents. I was even encouraged through the sympathetic words of Third Eye Blind. Lead singer Stephan Jenkins seemed to identify with my sudden loss of interest with the mundane episodes that connect together to create the story of our lives. Whether they brought a brief smile to my face or gave me the freedom to cry, they were there with me, connected: Willie Nelson, Cole Sear, Shawn

Michaels, and even Snoopy. Some mediated the distance between desperation—the total surrender of one’s will to live when faced with the complete loss of all hope—and completion, the wholeness created by the edifying connections that make life worthwhile.

Some mediated the distance between isolation and community, providing inspirational examples to mimic in a life full of social stigma. They stood in. The stood between. They stood with. These are the connections we make with others with whom we can relate, whose recognizable stories provide an outlet for emotional release, and who represent the misunderstood individuals who struggle with the multiple complexities associated with the tears and the triumphs of one’s storied struggles with stigmatization.

***

This chapter has focused on the Dialectic of the Ideal and the Real in my participants’ and my own accounts of parasocial relationships. I highlighted two subthemes of this dialectic. First, the Dialectic of Emotionality and Rationality was emphasized when participants transitioned from logically appraising their parasocial 156

connections as not real, less intense, and suitable for detachment to emotionally involved moments when they described these same connections as irreplaceable. The Dialectic of the Real and Unreal focused on tensions between viewing parasocial relationships as less intense than physically copresent attachments, due to prevailing social notions -- and viewing the mediated connection as more tangible or actually closer to the individual, even if others did not endorse such a “real” connection. Often, the judgment of whether the parasocial relationship was real or not was not voiced directly. Still, these relationships were described to me and by me in ways that strongly resembled close, personal connections. The mediated connections were experienced as meaningful to the participant, even if societal standards deemed such relationships as unreal. Thus, the

Dialectic of the Real and Unreal emerges as a permutation of the Dialectic of the Ideal and the Real, where the unreal embodies ideal potentials. The fans I spoke with noted that simultaneously the connection is unreal yet still lived as real in its most idealized conceptualization. And their accounts resonated meaningfully with my own narratives.

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Chapter 7: Discussion

Merriam-Webster provides multiple meanings for the word relate. It can mean to give an account of or tell. It can mean to show or establish a logical or causal connection between. Also, it can mean to have a relationship or connection. Yet, another meaning is to understand and like or have sympathy for someone or something. I often relate to figures I see on the screen. This connection takes on a deeper significance when the ways in which I relate with the figure are impacted by a history with stigma. I might identify with a character’s pain and suffering if the pain reminds me of something I have experienced as a result of my stigmatized identity. I often find that I gravitate toward stories of pain, ones that resonate with feelings of hopelessness, because it takes me back to occasions in which I felt hopeless and lost.

I am not unique. My stories reflect multiple other stories people can tell of the intersections between LGBTQ sensibilities, stigmatized labels, and connections mediated with/through parasocial others. As revealed to me from the multiple interviews I conducted with LGBTQ participants who identified as spectating bodies within a parasocial relationship, individuals connect with mediated others in meaningful ways that make life worthwhile. The meanings made with parasocial connections grant admiring fans multiple benefits, including satisfaction, community, pride, emotional release, and solidarity. Still, as with any type of relationship, my discussions with these participants revealed that parasocial relationships cannot be characterized with static general descriptions. Relationships are unique and change is inevitable.

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First, I found each parasocial bonding discussed by the participants to be unique.

Some connections had uninvolved interactants, making the relationship truly one-sided.

Other relationships were more dismissive. The parasocial other was knowledgeable about desires from fans to connect but did not share the same desires, making the relationship less mutual. Some interactions between fan and mediated other involved an awareness, in which the celebrity connected in ways that went beyond mediated bonds. Other parasocial interests were more interactive, making the relationship more reciprocal. The most extreme form of reciprocity, however, came in the form of fully involved relationships between both the spectating and mediated bodies.

Thus, the Continuum of Mediated Involvement was useful for examining how all parasocial connections are unique in their own way. The Continuum of Mediated

Involvement categorizes interactional qualities based on levels of intensity. Connecting bodies within parasocial relationships move between multiple levels of intensity when interacting with one another. The first level, the uninvolved level, is characterized by interactants who do not reciprocate relational connectedness. The next level, the dismissive level, is characterized by relational parties that dismiss the other interactants as potential relationships. The aware level is characterized by figures that are aware of the other relational parties but do not participate with the same level of intensity. The interactive level involves relational parties that communicate back and forth with one another reciprocally. The fully involved level also involves mutual exchange but is characterized by a more intense degree of connection, akin to close friendships and other significant relationships. My participants shared relationships with mediated figures that 159

could be categorized as either uninvolved, dismissive, aware, interactive, or fully involved. Some fans dialectically shifted their levels of intensity, navigating among the competing levels of connection in actively achieving their parasocial relationships.

Some fans, like The Golden Girls fan, connect with figures who are fictional and portrayed by actors who are mostly all deceased. Other fans, like All My Children fan, connect with figures mostly out of admiration for characters rather than the actors that portray them, which is especially highlighted when shows end up being cancelled and the fan chooses not to follow the actors onto new productions. Some, like Dolly Parton fan, connect with real people. These types of connections can involve less face-to-face interaction, or they can be fully involved, as was the connection shared by Joe

Dombrowski fan and the actual Joe Dombrowski. Some connections involve an assemblage of real person with fictional character, as is the case when individuals like

WWE fan connect with professional wrestlers who, in some cases, almost become the fictional figure.

Additionally, many of these relationships differ not only in terms of intensity but in duration. Some fans merely watch a show until it ends and then lose that connection altogether. Other fans, like Friends fan, revisit the program until it becomes part of the fabric of one’s personal narrative. Still other fans welcome parasocial figures into their lives for the long haul, as was revealed by WWE fan, Kardashians fan, and Dolly Parton fan. These fans connect to figures who are not tied to shows that are likely to be cancelled. They are figures that either achieve fame outside of any one identifiable program or achieve fame through programs that continue to air past the typical length of 160

most series. Therefore, one cannot easily categorize a parasocial relationship in all- encompassing terms as either good or bad, close or distant, this or that. Each connection is unique.

Second, change is an inherent feature of parasocial relationships. Some connections started off strong and then became less intense. Others moved from distant to close. Some connections were shared communally and then kept private, shared only between the individual and the parasocial figure. Some were instrumental in eliciting feelings of pride and then became less instrumental to individuals who gained confidence in their sexuality. Thus, due to constant activities altering the momentary state of each unique relationship, the parasocial relationships discussed by the participants were not easy to analyze. I needed to use theoretical concepts in a sensitizing way to help answer the questions I posed.

The continuities and discontinuities of parasocial connections made analyses difficult. Participants changed from desiring close connections with their parasocial interests to desiring autonomy. This contradiction was best understood through a dialectical perspective. Thus, I utilized Rawlins’ (1992) contextual dialectic of the

Dialectic of the Ideal and the Real and the interactional dialectics of the Dialectic of

Judgment and Acceptance and the Dialectic of the Freedom to be Independent and the

Freedom to be Dependent as a guiding framework in my analysis of the dialogical conversations. I simultaneously made sense of the contradictory tensions through my autoethnographic analysis that connected my personal parasocial relations with cultural bonds. Both connections, the parasocial relationships of the participants and my own 161

personal connections, were formed at the intersection of mediated consummation, stigmatized identities, and contradictory discourses of relating.

These contradictory discourses were further categorized into subthemes that borrowed from Rawlins’s (1992) original dialectical features. I came to a better understanding of the continuities and discontinuities of the parasocial relationships studied when I approached my inquiry through a framework that acknowledged simultaneous discourses of unity and discourses of difference. These shifts between unity and difference were framed with the following dialectical features: the dialectic of pride and the need for recognition, the dialectic of availability and disengagement, the dialectic of stalker and fan (Stan), the dialectic of the freedom to share and the freedom to keep for oneself, the dialectic of satisfaction and cancellation, the dialectic of emotionality and rationality, and the dialectic of the real and the unreal.

Interpretation of Findings

As detailed above, Rawlins’ (1992) dialectical perspective was important for accomplishing my analysis. As the dialogues with my participants revealed an unpredictability in interpreting parasocial relationships, a dialectical perspective was useful in investigating how meanings are made when LGBTQ individuals, facing social stigma, connect with parasocial figures. A dialectical perspective incorporates multiplicities of possibility and allows for adjustments to be made when patterns begin to deviate. In this study, I posed four research questions. I questioned (a) how individuals from the LGBTQ community make meaning with mediated others in parasocial relationships, (b) what significance the meaning making embodies, as it relates to stigma, 162

for individuals from the LGBTQ community, (c) what the potential benefits of a parasocial relationship are for individuals from the LGBTQ community, and (d) under what conditions parasocial relationships are beneficial for individuals from the LGBTQ community.

In research question one, I asked how individuals from the LGBTQ community make meaning with mediated others in parasocial relationships. Meanings are made in momentary episodes that connect together to create life narratives. The participants provided accounts of how they gained agency with/in their lives through the mediated connections. Informed by parasocial examples, they regained control whenever discriminatory practices and stigmatized identities denied them the same privileges in their everyday lives. Whenever parental figures, romantic partners, social companions, and other members of the LGBTQ community were unavailable, spectating bodies connected with parasocial bodies to create alternate pathways through which they could live feeling proud, free, satisfied, and socially accepted. The active fan, therefore, has the power to create new realities in a world that limits possibilities for those marked with social stigma. A new trajectory, a brand-new narrative, can be created collaboratively with the mediated figure through narrative possibilities that emerge when a fan enters into the realm of an/other space.

As Frank (2000) alludes to the relational benefits of storytelling, the same is true for mediated stories that connect the spectator with the figure on the screen, enveloping both with/in the story. Even if spectating fans are connecting with mediated others rather than face-to-face partners, the stories that animate the two connecting bodies, 163

nonetheless, “reaffirm what people mean to each other and who they are with respect to each other” (p. 354). The mediated connections give meaning to the lives of those who are open to the presence of the enter-personal space because it makes the personal meaningful. It gives value to the usually-stigmatized individual, rendering them just as special as any other body who chooses to relate with a parasocial figure.

LGBTQ individuals also become consummated, as meanings are produced between the two mediated bodies. While the parasocial figure is a separate entity seemingly disconnected from the admiring fan, either because the figure is deceased, fictional, or outside the physical reach of the fan’s body, the connection between the two becomes consummated. Bakhtin (1990) makes sense of the consummated connection between fan and parasocial figure when emphasizing, “I have to answer with my own life for what I have experienced and understood in art, so that everything I have experienced and understood would not remain ineffectual in my life” (p. 1). By providing connection, the parasocial other provides form to the spectating individual, as is expressed when

Bakhtin stresses:

Nevertheless, if I fail to take a stand outside my entire life as a whole, if I fail to

perceive it as the life of another, I shall still find that I lack any inwardly

convincing principle for giving form to myself from outside. (p. 86)

Through the consummation offered, the parasocial figure also grants the LGBTQ individual voice. The individual voices new actions and endings to otherwise limited life narratives, previously constrained by the blemishes of social shame. As a result, the individual gives voice to discourses that counter dominant ideologies that inhibit social 164

justice. The voice of the parasocial figure amplifies a multiplicity of voices, a broadcast heteroglossia utilized against heteronormativity, which grants LGBTQ individuals the agency to speak out against social inequities when meaning is made through mediation.

In research question two, I asked what significance the meaning making embodies, as it relates to stigma, for individuals from the LGBTQ community. As noted earlier, the type of stigma placed upon members of the LGBTQ community is a character-based stigma. Thus, the only blemish possessed by members of this community is one attained from social perceptions that characterize them as immoral, indecent, abnormal, and shameful. Social stigma creates an atmosphere where members of the

LGBTQ community stand outside the privileged center, making them outsiders.

Yet, when LGBTQ fans connect with parasocial figures, they are invited in/to a relationship. The move from the outside to inside the relevant social circle. Reaffirmed and reconnected, the LGBTQ fans meet with figures who (are) like them. The connection provides tangible storied meaning to the life of the LGBTQ individual. This meaningful living is created through the dialogical moments of mediation, as the individual becomes validated through the parasocial other.

Placed in a space between, where the LGBTQ individual casts away the blemishes of social stigma, the individual is able to feel worthy of acceptance. Many participants from my study spoke about how they felt proud when they connected with a parasocial figure that represented a dignified LGBTQ model. Others noted how they were able to connect with such parasocial others in meaningful ways that generated feelings of acceptance, availability, and satisfaction. This mediated space in/between also presented 165

an idealized culture through which the inequities of a marginalized culture could be thrown out, albeit momentarily, and replaced with a more inviting, accepting, and satisfying environment. In the face of stigma, this mediated space with ideal potentials became real, once the mediated connection was realized.

As LGBTQ individuals made meaning from the parasocial connections, they realized new possibilities for the ways they could story their lives. Instead of feeling castigated for perceived iniquities, they could feel accepted by tolerant partners that were available whenever a moment of need emerged. Instead of feeling isolated in a culture where they were made to be social minorities, they could feel connected to a communal group of unified peers and allies. Instead of feeling unique, as hosts of a shameful queer body, they could feel harmonious with others who shared in their shame, others who shared their vulnerabilities.

It should be noted, however, as the parasocial connections granted agency to the

LGBTQ individuals, they also were able to choose which mediated spaces they entered.

The interactants within the relationship struggled with dialectical tensions between competing discourses that made the connection positive at times but also negative during other moments. Thus, if the parasocial connections added to feelings of stigmatization or created feelings of dissatisfaction, the spectating fan had the ability to disconnect. Many participants expressed moments in which they would disengage, opt for independence, judge the parasocial figure as unacceptable, and even cancel the connection.

In research question three, I asked what the potential benefits of a parasocial relationship would be for individuals from the LGBTQ community. The participants in 166

my study provided accounts that demonstrated multiple benefits from the parasocial connections made with mediated figures. These benefits included pride, availability, satisfaction, acceptance, expressiveness, and connection. Yet, through the many discourses shared with my participants, connection seemed to be the most often mentioned benefit of the meeting between fan and parasocial other.

Connection adds meaning to life, as Buber (1958) contends that “All real living is meeting” (p. 26). When we connect harmoniously, we attain a degree of completion that is unavailable through solitude; we are consummated in reaffirming ways (Bakhtin,

1990). Those with whom we connect offer, according to Rawlins (2009), “edifying practices for addressing significant contingencies of social life” (p. ix). As we are always in the process of becoming who we could potentially be, it takes the gift from others, their excess of seeing from the outside (Bakhtin, 1990) to add the needed extra layers of our consummated selves. In turn, we help to co-author them in an act of reciprocity

(Thornton, 2015). We often fail to recognize how much others contribute to our individuality. Through/with others, we are socialized into the world we come to know, and we are given unique substance through comparative identification (Burke, 1969). To elaborate further, while we think of our expressions of individuality as separate and distinct, they are rather the product that results from our comingling with others

(Rawlins, 2009; Harter & Rawlins, 2011).

Mediated connections have been helpful in many avenues of social life, including providing community for those who feel isolated as well as helping to foster positive reflections of identity (Boylorn, 2008; Marwick & boyd, 2011; Tian & Hoffner, 2010). 167

The participants in my study echoed such benefits, recalling moments of how Ellen inspired pride, how Friends bridged feelings of isolation, and how RuPaul’s Drag Race provided community. Each of these benefits became available when the spectating body, first connected parasocially with the mediated other. Even when marked with social stigma, the connection offered by the parasocial other proved to be of paramount importance for individuals desiring relational bonds.

Finally, for research question four, I asked under what conditions parasocial relationships would be beneficial for individuals from the LGBTQ community. I should note, first, that I do not perceive individuals from the LGBTQ community to all fit under one generalized category, and I do not believe that LGBTQ individuals differ in any paramount way from individuals of any other culture. Still, LGBTQ individuals are unique, as personal situatedness within a heteronormative culture creates problems that make a queer life distinctive. When interpreting the findings, I began to believe that question four could be best examined with/through a dialectical lens.

LGBTQ individuals navigate through competing discourses when connecting with parasocial others. At times, the relationship is beneficial when a need to be dependent arises. In other moments, the relationship is beneficial when a need to be recognized— achieving solidarity through proud connections—emerges. When acceptance is salient, the parasocial connection becomes beneficial. Thus, as with any type of relationship, a parasocial relationship is beneficial in a multitude of ways, many of which become centered or decentered depending upon the prevailing need at any given moment with/in the relationship. 168

The spectating body is simultaneously unique and connected. Using Bakhtinian

(1981) dialogism, I recognize the value of both singularity and answerability. As separate from the parasocial other, the spectating body becomes unified through an act of consummation, as each interactant provides form to the otherwise disconnected bodies.

Therefore, while the spectating body could identify with the parasocial other, could share sensibilities with the parasocial other, and could emotionally connect with the parasocial other, the meeting was not one that rendered one selfless. Provided the agency to choose, the spectating body now had the ability to shift preferences if the relationship became less desirable.

Meanings are made through the mediated connection and the benefits that emerge are vulnerable to change. Levels of intensity shift as spectating bodies move from parasocial connections across the Continuum of Mediated Involvement. For the participants interviewed in my study, the intensity shifted as the needs changed. Thus, as conditions changed, certain benefits became more desirable for the participants within a parasocial relationship. Typically, the conditions that initiated the parasocial contact included boredom, solitude, a need for emotional release, a need to escape a stigmatized reality, a need to identify with a similar figure, and a need for connection. Once the conditions were met, the spectating body then had the agency to choose between multiple alternatives. A person could choose whether further connection was desirable

(intensifying the relationship) or whether the connection should be cut off (choosing independence), whether new connections were needed (seeking alternate desires) or whether the connection should become more intimate (choosing not to share the 169

connection with others), and whether the connection led to dissatisfaction (judging the parasocial other) or whether the connection was satisfying (fostering realized idealizations).

Limitations of Research

Inspired by Bakhtinian theoretizations, I aimed to provide a multiplicity of voices.

In certain ways, this goal was not met. This limitation was apparent in the voices not included. The first limitation emerged in one voice that was missing, the parasocial voice.

Making a postmodern turn, I shifted from previous research on parasocial relationships.

This choice was made to emphasize the importance of both spectating body and mediated body within the parasocial relationship. I argued how a one-sided perception of parasocial relationships only captured one side of the story. Through the dialogical discussions I sponsored, participants revealed how the parasocial figures would relate with them, that is, in uninvolved, dismissive, aware, interactive, and fully involved ways.

Thus, the Continuum of Mediated Involvement became useful in order to analyze the parasocial figure’s level of involvement.

Still, I often failed as a researcher or was limited due to constraints beyond my control in analyzing the two relating parties equally. Most of my research came from the interpretations of either researcher or participant (spectating body). Seeking understandings from the parasocial figures was beyond my capacity for the research project undertaken. Either due to time limits, distance, lack of access, or insufficient funds, I was not able to secure an interview with any of the spectated individuals who were a part of the parasocial relationship. 170

Second, although I made numerous attempts to attain the participation of multiple individuals who professed to share a parasocial relationship, the sample size utilized for this study was smaller than I initially desired. The dialogical experiences I was able to achieve aided in my understanding of the phenomenon. Nonetheless, my group of participants do not represent the larger population, as multiple cultures within the

LGBTQ community were unintentionally excluded or underrepresented. I failed to request information on polyamory. In doing so, I am not sure if I included participants who identify as polyamorous or if I included such participants but with less representation. While I managed to interview participants who identified as genderfluid, genderless, or gender queer, I was not able to reach trans participants. Additionally, the majority of my participants were white, with very few identifying as black or Hispanic.

There were no participants of other minority groups represented. I also did not interview

LGBTQ participants over the age of 45. These exclusions and underrepresented groups leave out integral LGBTQ community members, all of whom have lived experiences and personal accounts that matter. Ideally, I would like to have engaged in discussions with a more expansive and inclusive group of individuals who could provide insights into their unique experiences with parasocial figures.

Third, at those points when I have chosen to provide my own autoethnographic accounts, they embody one instance and way of knowing but leave out other ways. This type of writing grants me narrative privilege. My story wants to represent the possibilities of multiple other stories, but it does not represent every story. I come from a particular standpoint, hold a particular worldview, and have particular experiences that only 171

partially reflect other standpoints, worldviews, and experiences. I merely stand with and cannot claim to stand for these other persons. Thus, in highlighting a sample size of only one, I simultaneously argue that I try to connect my personal narratives to those shared by a larger culture, while also acknowledging that, in telling only my story, I leave out multiple other stories that could have been told. I appreciate how autoethnographic methodologies have allowed me to connect my personal stories to cultural ones. Still, valuing polyphony, I encourage others to contribute their stories so that further understandings of parasocial relationships can be attained through multiple ways and instances of telling, sharing, and storying. I call for others to provide autoethnographic accounts and to make the personal political so that our stories do not stand alone (Holman

Jones, 2008).

My story is also limited in its scope of retelling. When I choose to retell a story, I highlight certain events and leave others out. I recall events from my vantage point, neglecting to give recognition to the subjectivities of others. Moreover, my memory itself is limited. I do not provide a full account; my every account is partial. Further, I communicate from a particular location, choosing words that connect to the particulars of my experiences, my learning, and my social connections. Hodges (2014) notes that “there will always be discontinuity between our lived experiences and the stories we tell about them because of the inadequacies of language and memory” (p. 2). The discontinuities between lived events and their representational tales, as well as the disconnections from other voices whose stories are not represented create a gap in research that must be acknowledged. 172

Finally, I recognize that my own feelings about parasocial relationships possess a positive perception. These perceptions drive my research toward questions and interpretations that often neglect the negative characteristics of parasocial relationships.

Reflexively, I realize that my own experiences have most often been positive, providing benefits such as connection, identification, and guidance. My past and current parasocial relationships have offered worthwhile bonds that fill voids in my life, provide connectedness when isolated, and exemplify models when stigma creates obstacles for me. These experiences lead me to evaluate parasocial relationships with a positive bias, which renders me less prepared to thematize the negative aspects of parasocial connections.

Guided by a dialectical framework, I do not advocate that parasocial relationships are either good or bad. I do not suggest they are situated at one end or the other on a binary path. Instead, like all relationships, they are characterized by a quality of flux.

While there were moments when I narrated potentially harmful situations involving my parasocial connections, I did not dig deeper to fully investigate the negative aspects of such bondings. Additionally, participants spoke of their parasocial relationships in positive ways, suggesting that they would prevent encounters that might provide undesirable information so that they could continue to view the relationship in a satisfactory manner. Still, I know that parasocial connections can often lead to harm.

Parasocial relationships have the potential to foster extreme attachments.

Individuals might become too dependent on the connection, which could present an unrealistic model for other types of relationships. As discussed in the section about 173

stalker/fan (Stan) dialectical tensions, some individuals might become controlling and start to feel that the parasocial relationship belongs only to them. They might expect closer relations with the celebrated figure. When the spectating body becomes hypercritical of the mediated body, the parasocial relationship often becomes harmful for the famous figure. Parasocial relationships can also add to feelings of stigma, if the marginalized facet of identity is depicted in a discriminatory or negative fashion. There is a myriad of possibilities for the relationship to move toward harm in a dialectical struggle between positive and negative aspects of mediated connections.

Perhaps I was limited in highlighting the harmful aspects of parasocial relationships because of their hopeful appeal to me. One of the earliest photographs taken of me was one in which I was climbing my family’s vintage television set. My life has seemed to have been immensely inspired by my parasocial connections; my narrative is one made up of stories that intersect with mediated relationships. They have had an undeniable impact on my life, one which has created a positive bias in my perceptions of their meaningfulness. This is not to deny that parasocial relationships do not provide multiple benefits. Instead, I want to acknowledge that I neglected their shortcomings to create a bigger space for discussions about the beneficial possibilities of parasocial connections.

Future Possibilities

I believe that future research in the area of parasocial relationships should continue to use a dialectical lens. Many studies have involved questionnaires where participants self-report their levels of satisfaction or other types of beneficial feelings 174

toward a parasocial other. These studies look at relationships as moving along a trajectory of bad to good, failing to recognize the movement inherent in particular relationships. For example, once a relationship reaches a satisfactory status level, that does not mean that the relationship is guaranteed to remain perfectly satisfactory. Relating parties navigate through competing discourses that shift their momentary desires, creating unpredictable patterns that cannot be analyzed using predetermined categories or fixed methods of inquiry. A dialectical perspective acknowledges the ebbs and flows of such an unpredictable interplay.

In my opinion, future research should also follow in a postmodern direction.

Many studies about parasocial relationships subscribe to the “one-sided” philosophy first postulated early on by Horton and Wohl (1956). However, with modern technology, many parasocial figures are now more accessible, which has led to varying degrees of connection. The Continuum of Mediated Involvement is a useful lens for gauging the levels of intensity. However, in my future research I hope to go farther and use the continuum in a more multidirectional manner. For instance, a spectating fan can also be dismissive when a parasocial body seeks to be fully involved. Both parties have the agency to choose their levels of intensity. If the fan decides to cancel the celebrity, then the fan is situated on the dismissive level while the parasocial figure might be trying for more interaction. Future studies should look at both sides of the relationship to see how interactants navigate through intensity differentials.

Future studies should also include different populations to allow for more diversity. My sample size included only LGBTQ participants. While studying a 175

marginalized group is refreshing, it also fails to include the voices of people who do not identify as LGBTQ. Further, varying privilege exists even within the LGBTQ spectrum.

Most of my participants identified as gay males. While gay males are subjected to social stigma and other types of prejudicial punishments in a heteronormative society, they still possess the privilege granted by patriarchy. Additionally, most of my participants were white. Seeking a more diverse sample would improve future studies in the area of parasocial relationships.

In addition, while my participants were sought through calls on social media and word of mouth, many were currently enrolled in colleges and universities. This clearly does not represent the total population of spectating persons. College and university students have different life experiences than other members of the larger community, and a more diverse sample would help to add multiple layers of understanding to the study of the phenomena. Since most of the participants were in college or enrolled in a university, most were also of a certain age. Expanding the age demographic would provide more insights and allow for a multiplicity of voices across the life course to be included in the research.

Relatedly, future research should focus on longitudinal studies. Researching parasocial relationships throughout the life course could provide further insights concerning how the relating parties navigate a mediated connection, highlighting age- situated dialectical features of such a relationship. Longitudinal studies could examine how fans react when long-spanning series finally conclude, how they feel if a beloved character is killed off, or how past shows still play a part with/in their lives. Similarly, 176

longitudinal studies could further examine the new phenomena of cancel culture to see if formerly beloved figures have a chance at redemption or if the cancellation will persist.

Finally, exploring further uses of the Continuum of Mediated Involvement, future studies could compare parasocial relationships situated at different levels of involvement.

A clearer picture of parasocial relationships could be attained from findings that include fully involved parasocial relationships. As with any type of relationship, parasocial relationships are unique and should not be categorized in any type of one-size-fits-all (or one-sided) type of configuration.

177

Chapter 8: Conclusion

The room is empty, but it’s not alone. The individual sitting there, longing for companionship, is empty inside as well. Something, or rather someone, needs to provide a remedy for the empty feelings inside. Still, nobody is around. The lonely person is seemingly destined to wander through the day, possibly longer, without connection, detached from the social environment, detached from others, and even detached from self.

Then, it comes. Something emerges ready to mediate those feelings and provide a connection. It comes from a book, from a radio, from a screen—the mediated connection allows one to connect with a parasocial figure who provides the much-needed contact that had been missing from an individual’s life.

This is what happens when relating parties form a parasocial connection. For this study I investigated the phenomenon of parasocial relationships as it relates to members of the LGBTQ community who face social stigma. A dialectical lens proved useful in coming to the phenomena with certain considerations, like mediated consummation, competing desires, and movement with/in the relationship. These interactants shifted in their levels of intensity, being uninvolved, dismissive, aware, interactive, or fully involved. They also shifted in their desires, moving betwixt and between dependence and independence, judgment and acceptance, and real and ideal. Overall, the relationships described to me were revealed to be unique and evolving.

Perceived by society as less than real, my participants’ parasocial relationships had the potential to fully consummate their connected bodies. The narrative on the screen 178

became interwoven into the fabric of the spectator’s personal narrative, as viewing became communal gatherings, songs became parts of a personal memoir, and connectedness to figures became a facet of one’s identity.

Social stigma is another public perception that limits possibilities. When labeled with a social stigma, an individual has to fight against narrow-minded perceptions in order to achieve the same level of privilege given to those without stigma. Parasocial connections can help remedy social stigma by providing the social support not available from dominant society. The parasocial realm becomes an alternate society where support, identification, acceptance, and connection are attainable. In turn, the support provided through the mediated connections is highlighted in such a way that the outside society takes notice. Thus, media has the potential to alter prejudices and stigmatized perceptions.

Using crystallization, I added layers to the stories my participants shared of parasocial connectedness by including my voice as an interconnected voice among their multiple voices and stories. I storied how parasocial connections have worked in significant ways throughout my life. Whether it was a moment to cry with Snoopy, an

LGBTQ model to follow in Lance Bass, or support provided by Jerry Maguire (1996) when struggling with issues of mental health, the parasocial figures in my own life have provided comfort, companionship, and connection.

The “para” prefix can mean many things. In this context it refers to a resemblance. A parasocial relationship resembles a “real” relationship. However, para can also refer to something alongside or beside. I tend to think that connotation applies 179

more accurately to the connection made in actual parasocial relationships. A parasocial relationship to me (in the story I tell) is a relationship between two bodies who are situated alongside/beside one another. When there is nobody else to connect with, the parasocial figure is beside me. When I need a stronger connection with loved ones, a parasocial figure can help strengthen that bond as the figure is mediated alongside us.

Through the many moments of my life, I know that I can look back in hindsight and make sense of my own grand narrative. But I do so with the mediated connections that help provide understandings of my lived and recalled experiences. When I think of my childhood, I think of Snoopy. When I think of my youthful years, I recall Shawn

Michaels. When I think of the years to come, I look toward The Golden Girls (1985).

I can feel assured that they will be available. They will be there, always…beside me.

* * *

Epilogue: A Golden Connection

Picture it, Texas, 1985. A young boy happens into the living room, joins his family on the couch, and takes in the spectacle presented on the large illuminating box in the front of the room. It’s the beginning of a relationship with four older women who laugh in the face of adversity, connect through personal stories told with a serving of cheesecake, and share in the embrace of dear, close, personal loved ones. My introduction to The Golden Girls (1985) was not without aspects I already recognized from my own lived experience. For I was raised by a wise-cracking, sometimes overly direct, mature type who shared qualities with many of The Golden Girls (1985), but who 180

most reminded me of the lead character’s mother on the show, Sophia Petrillo. The similarities did not stop there. Later in life, the actress that played Sophia Petrillo, Estelle

Getty, was diagnosed and eventually succumbed to dementia. While the TV guide next to the television provided a preview for next week’s episode, it did not provide a glimpse into the future that would have alerted me to my grandmother’s eventual struggles with dementia.

No matter how much you prepare for it, you’re never truly ready for that moment when your life will change forever. It became clear that something was wrong when my grandmother started slurring her words and was having trouble standing. We were in need of urgent help. I alternated between moments of panic and moments of remaining calm so that I could take care of what needed to be done. But for a brief moment, I paused. I questioned, “Could this be the moment I lose the person who has meant the most to me for the better portion of my life?” What would I do if I were to lose this person who, to me, was truly golden? I wanted to make sure that I would not regret a thing. I had to check off everything on the list of what you want to say before you lose a loved one. Grandma, I love you! Check. Grandma, I’m going to be okay. Check.

Grandma, God is with you. Check. Grandma, I’m gay. Well…I couldn’t check everything off of the list.

I still turn on The Golden Girls (1985) from time to time. I can always thank them for being a friend. When I’m down, they help to brighten my day. When I am homesick, they take me back to moments when I laughed at their antics with family members back in my hometown. I can turn to them for an emotional release. They bring all the 181

emotions. Blanche, a character from the show, describes it as magenta—not quite blue with sadness, not quite green with envy, not quite scared enough to be yellow. Instead, it’s magenta, all kinds of feelings tumbling all over themselves.

Maybe I look to The Golden Girls (1985), still, because they allow me in some ways to continue that dialogue with my grandmother. My grandmother is in good health, but she can no longer understand things as well as she once could due to the progression of her illness. If she could, I wonder what she would say if I were to tell her about my sexuality. I wonder if she would react like Blanche, who at first felt embarrassment when she discovered her brother was gay, until she eventually realized that love doesn’t go away simply because you fail to understand a facet of a loved one’s identity. I wonder if she would have the acceptance of Rose, who although she was surprised when a lesbian character on the show expressed an attraction for her, she opted for friendship and compassion rather than rejection. Maybe she’d be more like Dorothy. Dorothy through it all was always the voice of reason. My grandmother was a very reasonable person.

No. When I think of my grandmother, I can’t help but draw a mediated connection to Sophia. Sophia reminds me of my grandmother. Thus, I always think of an episode in which Sophia has lost her son, way too soon, but cannot come to grips with her emotions because her son happened to be a crossdresser. Rose finally moves Sophia, allowing her to express her emotions, when she tells her, “It’s okay that you loved him.”

I cannot check the last item on my list. I, to this day, have not told my grandmother what

I freely tell others. Yet, my relationship with my grandmother is steeped with so many cultural connections. We are not alone, two autonomous bodies connecting in a singular 182

embrace. We come together with a multiplicity of connections. One of those is with The

Golden Girls (1985), who give me hope that in spite of any obstacles that could potentially create struggles for our relationship, my grandmother would always express that ‘It’s okay and she loves me just the same.’ My list might remain incomplete, but my heart is filled with love, my mind is put at ease, and my continued connection to my grandmother remains simply golden.

183

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Appendix

Introduction – (5 minutes)

I want to thank you for volunteering for this discussion about parasocial relationships. My name is John Marc Cuellar, and I will be posing questions for you today as part of an open dialogue about my topic of study. I am a Communication Studies Graduate student at Ohio University and my research concerns parasocial relationships—connections we share with figures we engage with through media, either by a watching film or television show, listening to a song, reading a book, participating on social media, or using some other technological device that serves the purpose of connecting us with another person through media. I do want to remind you that this project is completely voluntary, and you may choose to discontinue the discussion at any time. I want you to feel completely comfortable. I also want to remind you that this conversation will be recorded by a digital recorder, as we speak via this chat application. Your participation in this project is completely confidential and I will not use your name for any part of anything that is produced as a result of your contribution to my research. Your name will never be connected in any way with my project. Only your comments will be noted and used in my work. I thank you once again for your cooperation.

Questioning Route: Part I. Demographic Questions – (5-7 minutes)

1. How would you describe your relationship status?

2. How would you describe your gender?

3. How old are you? ______

4. What is your highest level of education? □ High school/ GED □ Some College/ 2-year degree □ 4-year degree/ Bachelor’s degree □ Graduate education/ Graduate degree

5. What race/ethnicity do you most identify with?

6. How would you describe your sexual identity?

Questioning Route: Part II. Opening Question – (30-60 minutes)

1. Let’s begin by talking about our experience with parasocial relationships. Please think about what you consider to be one or two of your most important parasocial relationships. 205

Can you describe some of the favorite experiences you have shared with this or these parasocial figures through some form of media?

2. What initially led you to engage with this mediated figure? Please describe for me how you came into contact with this parasocial other.

3. How long have you had a relationship with this mediated figure? If you have followed this figure across different (projects, programs, books, movies, social media platforms) over time - would you tell me a story about the shared history of this relationship? How has the length of your association with this figure affected the type of relationship you have?

4. In what ways has your LGBTQ identity influenced or impacted, in any way, your parasocial relationship? For instance, please describe any benefits that the relationship provides to you, as a person with an LGBTQ identity.

5. How do you feel connected to this mediated figure? How would you describe your level of connection with this parasocial other?

6. Please describe the types of interaction you feel you have had with this figure, such as watching a program, interacting on social media, or attending a fan event.

7. How would you compare yourself to this mediated figure? In what ways are you similar to or different from them? Please describe how those similarities or differences affect the kind of relationship you have?

8. How has this relationship provided meaning in your life, beyond your activities connecting with the parasocial figure through media? Would you describe how this relationship has been meaningful in other aspects of your life? Please describe a pivotal moment or event in your life that you believe occurred as a result of this connection.

9. Is this relationship shared with other persons in your life? For instance, do you watch a program with a friend or family member? How do you interact with other fans who enjoy the media? If so, how does a joint connection to a mediated figure affect the relationships you share with these other individuals?

10. How do outside factors (i.e., social influences, current events, news updates about the mediated figure) affect your relationship?

11. Please describe any similarities or differences between the parasocial relationships you have participated in and a more face-to-face kind of relationship you share with people you see every day.

206

12. Describe what you consider to be an ideal relationship with a parasocial other. What differences would there be from the relationship you currently share?

13. How do think parasocial relationships have changed over time, as technology has advanced? What are your feelings about these changes and the implications for such a relationship?

14. How do you feel this relationship has impacted you? For instance, how has it changed the way you behave, the way you relate with others, or the way you think about yourself? Additionally, how would your life be different had this relationship never began?

15. Overall, what has this relationship meant to you?

16. Please tell me a story about your favorite experience that you associate with a parasocial relationship.

17. Please tell me a story about your most regrettable or least favorite experience that you associate with a parasocial relationship.

18. Have you felt even more stigmatized or had negative emotions associated with the parasocial interaction?

19. Are there any questions that you thought I would ask you about parasocial relationships that I have not asked?

20. What questions do you have for me?

Conclusion – (3 minutes)

Wrap up conversation and close the discussion. This concludes our interview. Are there any final comments you would like to make? Before we leave, I want to thank you again for your participation. I appreciate your time, comments, and cooperation. I again want to guarantee your complete confidentiality and hope you have had a pleasant experience. Thank you so very much for your help!

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