Misty Copeland, Black Panther, Tyler Perry and the Contours of US Black Fandoms

Home , Debra Austin (dancer), Lauren Anderson (dancer), Misty Copeland

ICS0010.1177/1367877919854155International Journal of Cultural StudiesMartin 854155research-article2019

International Journal of Cultural Studies 2019, Vol. 22(6) 737–753 © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877919854155 10.1177/1367877919854155 journals.sagepub.com/home/ics

Article Fandom while black: Misty Copeland, Black Panther, Tyler Perry and the contours of US black fandoms

Alfred L Martin Jr University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA

Abstract Using 50 interviews with black people about their fandoms (and anti-fandoms) of Tyler Perry’s media output, the blockbuster film Black Panther and the African American ballerina Misty Copeland, this article illuminates black fandom’s four interlocking discourses. First, must-see blackness describes black fans’ “civic duty” to see blackness in all of its forms. Second, economic consumption drives “must-see blackness” in the sense that black fans are cognizant of the precariousness of blackness’s existence in spaces that are either historically white and/or have been hostile to the presence of blackness. Third, black fandoms (and anti-fandoms) are driven by their pedagogical properties: how fit are fan objects for learning and role modeling? Finally, the pedagogical fitness of fan objects intersects with economic consumption and must-see blackness, which, in turn, illuminates black fans’ attentiveness to the machinations of the culture industries.

Keywords audience studies, blackness, culture industries, fandom studies, race

Stardate: 45466.5, or 1992, the year Henry Jenkins’ book Textual Poachers and John Fiske’s essay “The cultural economy of fandom” were published. For much of fan studies, these two pieces of scholarship, which engage with Star Trek among other fandoms, are considered ground zero. These works functioned to set fandom’s agenda – one that is overwhelmingly white and male. That is not to say that Jenkins and Fiske completely

Corresponding author: Alfred L Martin Jr, University of Iowa, 127 Becker Communication Studies Building, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. Email: [email protected] 738 International Journal of Cultural Studies 22(6) ignore race. Quite the contrary: they both acknowledge that race exists and that it should be studied. However, they only offer apologies for failing to engage with “diverse” fandoms and half-hearted calls for more studies of racialized fandoms (Fiske, 1992; Jenkins, 2014: 97). Yet, as the volumes devoted to fandom increase, there remains scant attention to race. When attention is paid to race, it is usually “ghettoized” into its own “specialty” section while leaving white fandoms exnominated and normative, thus positioning race and fandom as fundamentally different from “regular” fandom. To be sure, several scholars have conducted studies of race and fandom while simultaneously calling out the discipline’s whiteness. Mel Stanfill (2011) argues that fandom has continued to imagine fans as “white people, particularly white men.” Rukmini Pande (2018: 11) maintains that fandom misses “any sustained examination of the racial makeup of [fan] communities, both in terms of participants and in the choices of characters and texts that form” its focus, resulting in a veritable whitewashing of how we understand fandom. Sarah Gatson and Robin Reid (2011: 4.1) forward that neglecting the intersections of fandom and race creates “a ‘generic’ or ‘normalized’ fan [… that] is not free of race” but rather simply exnominates it. This article is about black fandoms only. It does not use black fandoms as “deviant” from exnominated white fandoms. Rather, it focuses on how black fandoms of black media texts and personalities operate. This article works against fandom’s “reluctance to delve deeply into topics, communities, and literatures that center around nonwhite […] fans” to highlight the “fragmented and partial […] concepts, definitions, and theories” typically associated with fandom studies (Click and Scott, 2017: 241). At the same time, this article argues that black fandoms are/can be as extrapolatable and useful for white fandoms as the inverse is believed to be. In embarking on an empirical study of black fandom I de-center the utility of “universal” white fan studies for black fandom studies while illuminating what such universal fandoms miss (and could perhaps find if they looked) in only considering whiteness. Concomitantly, I echo Kristen Warner’s (2015: 37) concern that white fandoms have coopted “otherness” while failing to engage with race, LGBTQ identities and the intersections therein. In claiming “otherness” for white fandoms (largely because white fandom was initially studied as a fandom attached to “geeks”), the category “otherness” meant studying white, heterosexual male Star Wars fans, leaving race generally, and blackness specifically, to feed off the scraps it has left in its wake. This study centers, signal boosts and builds upon the pioneering scholarship on race, fandom and audiences. Rebecca Wanzo’s (2015) work forcefully argues that white fandom studies have ignored some of the work by/on African Americans that predates the “start” of fandom studies. Wanzo’s “new genealogy of fan studies,” like this article, works to re-center blackness within a discipline that tends to most often ignore or offer excuses around its disengagement with race. I also build on black audience/reception studies to highlight how black people’s fandoms and media reception closely mirror each other across three disparate black media texts/personalities. Robin Means Coleman (2002: 2) argues that studies of black audiences and fandoms “reveal the manner in which African Americans, as members of a media culture, engage with dominant cultural forms [and] work to make sense of their own conditions.” Additionally, Jacqueline Bobo (1995: 2) argues that reception studies’ inattentiveness to black female audiences is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding and misreading of such audiences, ultimately Martin 739 discarding blackness as unimportant within hegemonic white worlds and meaning-making processes. Together, Means Coleman and Bobo highlight the importance of examining black subject positions within audience studies, and fandom studies by extension. I marry Means Coleman and Bobo’s assertions with Matt Hills’ theorization of “discursive mantras.” Hills (2003: 67) defines such mantras as collections of fan discourses about a fan object activated in order to circumvent fandom’s connection with irrationality. Black fans’ discursive mantras are not necessarily about warding off claims of irrationality but are rooted in a desire for more visual blackness across film and media culture and within ballet. In this way, the economic language of the culture industries becomes a discursive mantra for black fandoms. At the same time, I argue that black fandom is evangelistic. Black fans are typically not just concerned with loving their fan object but are also interested in sharing that love with others while paying attention to blackness’s space within the media industries. In this way, black fans use their fan engagement to not only maintain and cultivate close social ties with friends and family members but also to get others interested in their fan object choice (Edgar and Rudrow, 2018: 656; Martin Jr, 2019: 176). While audience/ reception studies and fandom studies are different disciplines, when blackness is factored in, their differences become less pronounced, particularly because of the collision between black consumption, must-see blackness, the culture industries and evangelism. Using 50 interviews with US-based black people about their fandoms (and anti- fandoms) of black media texts/personalities, this article works to fill in some of the gaps left unattended by studies of white fandoms. In labeling my interviewees as “fans,” I am referring to people who have an “active, enthusiastic, partisan, participatory engagement” with Perry’s media output, the film Black Panther (dir. R. Coogler, 2018) and the African American ballerina Misty Copeland (Fiske, 1989: 146–7). To be sure, as Jonathan Gray (2003: 77) claims, “the very nature of fandom suggests willing informants: they feel strongly about the text(s) in question and have considerable interest in them.” As such, I recognize that the people I interviewed are specially interested in discussions about these fan objects and differ from Gray’s (2003: 74) theorization of non-fans who “view or read a text, but not with any intense involvement.” In addition, some of my interviewees are anti-fans of Perry’s work and “strongly dislike” his films but neverthe- less possess great knowledge of them (Gray, 2003: 70; 72). The black people I interviewed were 60% women and 40% men, and mostly heterosexual (with two lesbians, one gay man and two people who identify as pansexual). They reside in major US met- ropolitan areas and smaller towns across the Northeastern, Midwestern, Southern and Western regions, and range in age from 23 to 66 years old. Some interviewees have completed high school while others hold advanced degrees, although the majority of interviewees have earned a Bachelor’s degree. Their incomes ranged from less than $25,000 to more than $200,000 per year, although roughly 60% of interviewees earn between $100,000 and $149,000 per year.

Studying high, low, and middle (brow) black fandoms In this article, I illuminate the contours of black fandoms across a set of texts that can be reductively (and problematically) construed as representing low, middle/middlebrow 740 International Journal of Cultural Studies 22(6) and high culture. Contrary to Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984: 488–9) assertion that “one of the most radical differences between popular entertainments […] and bourgeois entertainments is found in audience participation,” I demonstrate how black fandoms – across highbrow, lowbrow and middlebrow demarcations – make the boundaries between such classifications more porous because black audience participation and fandom operates similarly. Because these low/middle/high distinctions are fraught, I wish to underscore what I mean when I refer to cultural forms using these descriptors. Representing “low culture,” prolific media producer, writer, and actor Tyler Perry is a polarizing figure in black media production. While the term “low culture” is typically deployed in pejorative ways, I deploy the term as a descriptor. I extend Herbert Gans’ (1999: 116) theorization of low culture which “emphasizes the morality play [and] limits itself primarily to the familial and individual problems [… and] depicts how traditional working-class values win out over the temptation to give in to conflicting impulses and behavior patterns.” Perry’s beginnings in live theater productions rooted in black Christianity, many of which were adapted for film and television, situate his output firmly within Gans’ definition. Perry is concomitantly heralded and demonized for his contributions to black image production. To some, Perry creates employment opportuni- ties for black culture industry workers who might otherwise be overlooked or underem- ployed. To others, Perry is a union-busting peddler of “negative” black imagery whose films cultural critic Touré (Rivas, 2011) described as “cinematic malt liquor.” This ten- sion between good/bad makes Perry a fascinating case study through which to explore black fandoms and anti-fandoms. Black Panther represents “middlebrow culture” which I deploy, as Macy Halford (2011) does, to describe “how ideas are circulated in our culture among different strata of society (specifically, among groups with varying levels of wealth, education, and access to ‘high’ or ‘avant-garde’ culture).” Black Panther was a big-budget, wide-release blockbuster. Thus, not only did Black Panther have to appeal to black viewers, ultimately creating what Renee White (2018) calls a “seismic reaction from black audiences around the globe,” it had to appeal to white viewers as well, thus making it, in my view, a middlebrow film because of appeal to/for different demographic segments. At the same time, as a big-budget black-cast film, Black Panther became a(nother) flashpoint for the hopes and dreams of big-budget black representation. As I (Martin Jr, forthcoming) have argued elsewhere, “industrial understandings of black-cast film production is monologic: any black-cast film must be a financial success, or it can vanquish the idea of making others like it.” Given Black Panther’s $1.34 billion worldwide box office haul, which gestures toward its broad appeal, I situate the film within the middlebrow. Copeland represents “highbrow culture.” Having risen through the ranks of American Ballet Theatre (ABT), Copeland became the first African American female principal dancer since the company’s 1939 inception. I situate Copeland’s black fandom as “highbrow” because it “tends to be associated with specific social contexts, those that are relatively inaccessible to the average person” (Crane, 1993: 64). Copeland joined ABT in 2001 and was promoted to the company’s highest rank, principal dancer, in 2015. Importantly, Copeland is not the first person of color to become principal dancer at ABT – the company has historically employed Asian and Latinx dancers, although rarely African Americans. To be sure, Copeland is not the first African American, male or Martin 741 female, to rise to the ranks of principal dancer in a “white” ballet company.1 Arthur Mitchell was promoted to principal dancer at New York City Ballet (NYCB) in 1956. Debra Austin joined Pennsylvania Ballet in 1982 as a principal dancer. Lauren Anderson became principal dancer with Houston Ballet in 1990. Albert Evans achieved the rank of principal dancer at NYCB in 1995. These are but a few of the black dancers who have achieved excellence within the white world of ballet, but I mention these dancers to pre- view the operation of Copeland’s black fandom. In order for Copeland’s prominence and importance among her black fans to be as potent as possible, it relies on an ahistoricity that is rooted in black fandom for Copeland, not necessarily a black fandom for ballet. Together, these three problematic and reductive categories help to investigate black fandom’s and anti-fandom’s engagement with their fan object choices. While Copeland, Black Panther, or Perry’s media could be examined on their own, examining them together helps to more holistically understand black fandoms across three disparate types of black fandoms and fan objects. Throughout this article, I illuminate black fandom’s four interlocking discourses. First, must-see blackness describes black fans’ “civic duty” to see blackness in all of its forms. Second, economic consumption drives must-see blackness in the sense that black fans are cognizant of the precariousness of blackness’s existence in spaces that are either historically white and/or have been hostile to the presence of blackness. Third, black fandoms (and anti-fandoms) are driven by their pedagogical properties: how fit are fan objects for learning and role modeling? Finally, the pedagogical fitness of fan objects intersects with economic consumption and must-see blackness, which, in turn, illuminates black fans’ attentiveness to the machinations of the culture industries. After a discussion of methodology, the sections that follow more clearly articulate how black fandom functions within these interconnected discursive formations.

Looking for/finding black fans Fiske (1992: 32) famously lamented that he regretted “being unable to devote the attention to race which it deserves, but [he had] not found studies of non-white fandom.” I want to focus on Fiske’s notion of finding “studies of non-white fandoms” briefly here because it informs the methodology for this article. While this study is fairly standard in its use of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 50 black adults, my method for recruiting interviewees is less standard. The interviewees invited to discuss Perry and his work were recruited through my own personal networks. For Black Panther interviews I used public posts on Facebook and Twitter to recruit interviewees around the opening weekend of the film. Recruiting Copeland fans proved more difficult. As such I employed a three-pronged approach to recruit participants. The methods used to recruit Tyler Perry and Black Panther fans yielded few interviewees, which led me to more creative methods of recruitment for Copeland fans. First, I attended performances in Washington, DC, New York and Vail, CO at which Copeland was dancing and spoke with black attendees about their fandom, requesting a follow-up phone interview. In this way, studying Copeland’s black fandom is also methodologically rooted in participant-observation. My discussion of her black fandom is augmented by observations of black spectators at performances at which Copeland danced. Second, I combed Copeland’s public Facebook 742 International Journal of Cultural Studies 22(6) fan page and contacted users with a black person in their profile picture and asked if they would consent to being interviewed about their Copeland fandom. Third, I encouraged snowball sampling in order to get a broader sample of interviewees. I briefly explain my methodology here to underscore that I could have offered “regrets” for being unable to engage with black Copeland fans, perhaps instead choosing to focus on white Copeland fans because it might be easier to reach them (indeed several white Copeland fans reached out wanting to participate in this study). However, studying black fandoms generally, but in particular with respect to Copeland, was far too important to rest on regret. Detailing my methodology is informed by my attendance at the 2018 Fan Studies – North America conference. At the final plenary of that conference many attendees resisted the urge to tether fan studies to a set of methods that would guide the subdiscipline. The resistance was, in part, rooted in imagining fandom as a rogue subdiscipline. In detailing my methodology, I want to also call for fan studies (and audience studies by extension) to be rogue (within the boundaries of ethics and Institutional Review Boards) in the ways we recruit participants. It is relatively easy for us to rely on convenience samples because we know fans (and anti-fans) of a particular fan object. However, as the Copeland sample demonstrates, by using unorthodox methods, and attempting to find fans where they are versus where we are, we might be able to draw different conclusions when the fans being studied do not share our social formation.

Must-see blackness: black fandom as representational duty The lights dimmed signaling the start of the second act of ABT’s performance of the evening- length ballet Whipped Cream at Washington DC’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. A hush fell over the crowd in anticipation of the coming balletic attraction and a black woman leaned over to her black male companion and said, “Here come Misty.”

This observation centers a connection between black fandom, must-see blackness and the convergences between low culture and high culture. On one hand, the phrase “Here come Misty” epitomizes a black vernacular construction where the subject and verb do not “agree” within “standard” English. With this utterance, the expectations of fandom (or at least patronage) and ballet are upended, particularly given that the imagined con- sumer for ballet is white and upper class. On the other hand, Gans (1999: 117) theorizes that within “low culture, the performer is not only paramount but is often enjoyed as a ‘star’ [… there is no discernment] between performers and the characters they play.” In other words, at this performance of Whipped Cream, there is no Praline Princess, there is only Copeland, the black ballerina who currently represents black representational pos- sibilities for some black fans. “Here come Misty” also elucidates black fans’ and audiences’ hunger for self-representation resulting in any image making them feel seen within media discourse (Warner, 2015: 37). But more than that, it signals a kind of evangelism. The presumption is that this woman told her companion about Copeland and, as such, he would be specially interested in the announcement that Copeland’s dancing was forthcoming. Contrary to what I have theorized elsewhere with respect to black anti- fandom, black fans are not quiet – they are loud in sharing and evangelizing their fandoms with community (Martin Jr, 2019: 178). Reggie, 44, discovered Copeland and Martin 743 then, he says, “I tend to tell everyone I know about her, especially when she’s coming to Detroit.” Reggie demonstrates must-see blackness’s evangelistic and public components. Black fans are not necessarily consuming their fan objects in the comforts of their home; they are going to movie theaters and the ballet to demonstrate their fandoms. For example, almost all of the Black Panther interviewees reported having gone to see the movie more than once, with different people, and they were all interviewed within two weeks of the film’s opening, most Perry fans report seeing his films in theaters, and three- quarters of Copeland’s fans have seen her perform live – each time convincing others who may not be fans of their fan objects to share in their fandom. Yolanda, 51, typically sees Perry’s films on opening weekend in movie theaters because she likes being in community with other black filmgoers. She says:

There’s something about seeing [Perry’s films] in a theater full of black people. We laugh together and cry together. His movies feel like they are made for us, with jokes that appeal to us. It feels like his movies are for us and by us. White people can certainly come see them, but his movies are kind of ours […] Movies like 12 Years a Slave or The Help felt like we were in them, but they were for everybody. Tyler Perry makes stuff that is for us. And that’s why I love [his movies].

Yolanda signals how black fandom is often situated within must-see blackness because it is not necessarily about trying to help his films achieve a particular kind of box office centric success but is instead understood within notions of a black community sharing media content that speaks to their communal notions of taste. Similarly, Black Panther’s black fandoms demonstrate the gravitational pull of black communal taste cultures and of enjoying them in public spaces. As Yamanaane, 43, explains:

I don’t always feel comfortable in the crowd of a traditional Marvel movie because the traditional Marvel fan doesn’t look like me at all. […] And a lot of times I feel out of place. So, [Black Panther] was probably the first Marvel film that I saw during opening weekend. And I felt comfortable because I knew that there were going to be people who looked like me. […] I went [to see Black Panther on opening weekend] because I felt like this was the epitome of a black girl comic book nerd.

Yamanaane illuminates the infrequently discussed racialization of fandoms. While she identifies as a “comic book nerd,” she articulates how her black body within films based on Marvel comics feels strange. For her, part of the must-see blackness of Black Panther was rooted in her feeling that the film would not only epitomize black comic book nerdi- ness, but also because that contingent of fans would be interspersed with other people who looked like her. Put another way, Yamanaane’s fandom of/for Black Panther could be public which could simultaneously reaffirm her blackness. Concomitantly, must-see blackness is bound within a politics of visibility that in some ways demands that black folks see/support blackness. Channon, 43, says she and a group her black friends, “feel kind of like obligated to […] see Tyler Perry’s films; the brother is doing his thing. You gotta support him.” Channon’s support of Perry’s work is particularly fascinating because she reports not necessarily enjoying his films. The pull of must- see blackness is so strong that Channon’s consumption is not necessarily built around 744 International Journal of Cultural Studies 22(6) love for the/an object, but love for mediated blackness, similar to the way Yolanda discussed communal consumption of Perry’s films. Darrell, 47, further nuances must-see blackness in his recollection of how he became a fan of Perry’s work:

I remember hearing about his early films and how he was making them on his own and fighting against Hollywood to get them into movie theaters. And nobody really wanted to help him. But he kept pushing and his films kept making money and they made Hollywood stand up and have to take notice of him. Whether I always like his movies or not, what I like about him is that he forced his way into Hollywood when they didn’t want to make a place for him.

Darrell’s Perry fandom is unifocal. He understands Perry as a self-made man within a Hollywood system that was unwelcoming to his output. Perry’s finding success in spite of industrial barriers strengthens Darrell’s fandom, regardless of whether or not he likes/ agrees with the content of Perry’s films. Whether it is Channon’s assertion that Perry “is doing his thing” or Darrell’s suggestion that Perry forced his way into the culture industries system, black fans are keenly aware of how their fan objects move within broader systems. In this way, then, Perry’s work is “must-see” because black fans understand blackness’s fraught relationship to the culture industries, a topic to which I return later in this article. Copeland’s fandom is similarly rooted in seeing blackness. Reggie, 43, says, “I hon- estly don’t have the background to rattle off certain iconic [ballet] performers […] She makes me want to know more about ballet.” For Reggie, Copeland is his entry and exit point for ballet. My goal is not to downplay or belittle his prior knowledge of ballet; rather, I want to center how Copeland’s black fandom is tangled within must-see blackness. Reggie is admittedly not fluent in the language of ballet, but he is fluent in Copeland. With few exceptions, fandom for ballet dancers typically develops after attending the ballet regularly and becoming a fan of a particular dancer. Reggie’s Copeland fandom was “inverted”: he first loved Copeland and then followed that love to the ballet. LeAnne, 41, is similarly interested in Copeland’s blackness within a white ballet world. She says, “I first liked her fan page out of support some years ago […] I remember hearing something about how difficult it was for her to become accepted and established in the world of ballet.” LeAnne’s stance complements Reggie’s discussion of Copeland as a gateway into ballet. Copeland’s black fandom is rooted in not only her black body in a principally white space, but the struggles she highlights in her star text to, in some ways, force whiteness to make space for blackness. Thus, Copeland’s “struggle,” like Perry’s struggle, becomes part of the discursive mantra attached to black fandom. In other words, her struggle to achieve the rank of principal dancer with ABT is enough for LeAnne and Reggie, and black fans by extension, to champion her and hope that she opens the door for other black ballerinas. At the same time, for many black Copeland fans, such fandom partly relies on an ahistoricity that centers Copeland as the first black ballerina rather than the first African American ballerina with American Ballet Theatre. Priscilla, 53, suggests that Copeland, “being black and dancing for a ballet company and [as a] lead dancer was something not heard of … she broke that stigma. I loved the fact that she made it to the top as the first Martin 745 black principal dancer.” Because many of Copeland’s black fans come to their fandom not through ballet, but through other avenues, like her Under Armor campaigns or her stint as a dancer for music icon Prince, the lack of knowledge of ballet and ballet history makes Copeland’s fandom ahistorical by erasing other black ballerinas. However, demonstrating the discursive mantras surrounding Copeland’s fandom, her black fans have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of her biography and can retell key points her of her struggle using almost identical language. The incongruity of blackness in spaces where it has not been welcomed historically, or observed, can be excavated via Copeland. Several Copeland fans stressed her importance within ABT versus a company that has historically welcomed African American dancers like NYCB, Houston Ballet or Dance Theatre of Harlem. For Stephanie, 43, who knows “a decent amount about ballet,” Copeland’s position within ABT is important because “when [people] hear American Ballet Theatre they’re like, ‘Oh, that's a pretty decent sized company, and she’s a principal, that’s great.’” She continues:

If she were a principal at Wichita Ballet Theater, I would be like, “Oh, well good for her.” It would mean a lot less in terms of notoriety […] I think when you talk about ABT versus like Dance Theatre of Harlem or even Alvin Ailey, I think you’re talking about her pushing her way into a white space where they have not traditionally [accepted dancers of color].

Stephanie signals knowledge of black and brown people’s historical exclusion from ballet companies – a historical segregation that partially led Arthur Mitchell to found Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1968. Some black fans’ reaction to Copeland as a black principal dancer in a ballet company is akin to the jubilation some black people have recounted with respect to seeing black people on television in the 1950s and 1960s. Means Coleman (2012: 1) writes that: “Back then, black appearances on television were so precious that African American neighbors would chat over porch railings, meet on sidewalks, or place urgent notifying telephone calls.” More recently, White (2018) suggests that being represented in ways removed from the stereotypic can result in expressions of “mass psychic relief.” Keisha, 35, emphasizes such a contemporary politics around Copeland:

I was not into ballet or anything […] And [I heard] a lot of news around Misty and how magnificent she was as a ballerina and she was a woman of color and that’s something you don’t hear about every day, and any time that you hear about anyone of color rising to the pinnacle of their craft, a lot of people put their eye on it. And I was one of those people.

Two things are important to note about Keisha’s fandom of Copeland. First, Keisha, like Reggie, clearly articulates that Copeland is her entrée into ballet. While this is not problematic per se, it reveals that her fandom is about Copeland and not necessarily ballet. Second, it reveals the ways Copeland, and her fandom by extension, has blurred the lines between high/low culture/art. The presumption is that in order to enjoy high art, like ballet, one has to have specialized training/high cultural capital (Gans: 1999: 9). For Keisha, her enjoyment is principally about seeing Copeland’s black body in a space that has historically been presumed to be white. In this way, Perry’s, Black Panther’s and 746 International Journal of Cultural Studies 22(6)

Copeland’s black fandoms are similarly bound within must-see blackness and a politics of representation.

Role models and pedagogies of black fandom One of the most forceful ways black fandom and audiences collide is through their focus on the importance of role models. This black fandom stance builds upon and extends Warner’s (2017: 253–4) theorization of a dual fandom that intertwines love for the fan object and hunger for visibility. For black fans, images cease to necessarily “just” be reduced to their “positive” or “negative” attributes; rather, fan objects are chosen based upon their fitness as a role model. Arienne, 26, says her excitement about Black Panther was mostly because of what she envisioned the film meant for her 6-year-old nephew. She says, “I’m just so excited for him to get to see [Black Panther] because he loves superheroes. […] And before, it was always like, Spider-Man. […] but this is going to be the first time there’s a superhero who actually looks like him.” Arienne, points to the importance of visibility politics while also implicitly suggesting that the Black Panther is fit as a role model for her nephew. Similarly, Copeland’s fandom engenders role modeling among her fan base. The Mattel doll based on her likeness includes marketing copy that specifically gestures toward her position as a suitable role model. It reads, in part, “Glowing from the inside out, Misty Copeland is truly a bright shining star, paving the way for future dancers all over the world!” (Mattel, 2016). The copy makes its post-racial intentions clear: it gestures toward how Copeland’s career and likeness should be read within discourses of universality. In the popular vernacular of “post-” discourses, Copeland is not an African American ballerina, she is a ballerina who happens to be black. But for black fans, Copeland is not part of such discourses, regardless of the ways she is positioned. As David, 29, says, “So I did figure that out that she was bi-racial from reading her story. But in her interviews, she oftentimes refers to herself as a black woman […] I definitely see her as a black woman.” Jordan, 23, echoes this sentiment by suggesting that Copeland is not just a role model, but a black role model. For her, Copeland is an example:

for black women even if you’re not a dancer. […] I’m a fan because I love her. I love what she represents and […] just for her to be a young black woman who happens to be really, really talented and skilled in her style of dance.

Jordan inverts post-racial language in that rather than Copeland “just happening to be black” she is imagined as an unapologetically black women who “just happens to be good” at ballet. Concurrently, Jordan demonstrates that for black fans their fan objects must be able to be described as (reductively) positive. Similarly, Keisha says:

When I went to go see [Copeland] during the ballet […] it was great to see [all the] black people there, especially the young black girls. That’s what really touched me, and it was actually kind of the spirit of giving them hope that you know what? I can be just like Misty.

Keisha, like Arienne and Jordan, centers the ways black fandom and its attendant role models are configured as providing hope for future generations with respect to the number and kinds of professions they can imagine. Martin 747

Brandon, 33, configures Perry’s films as suitable role models because of the importance:

he puts on God and religion in films. I don’t always agree with his messages, but I love that they always have a lesson about being and doing good. That’s part of why I am a fan of his movies. They’re uplifting.

Like Allyson Field’s (2015: 3) configuration of early 20th-century “uplift films,” Brandon sees Perry’s films as focusing on “individual initiative, mutual assistance [and] social respectability.” These components drive his Perry fandom. Likewise, Rodney, 54, con- siders Perry a suitable role model not only because of the injection of religiosity into his media output but also because he:

started off making movies because he believed there were people who wanted something different. And initially Hollywood was not trying to hear what he was saying [in his films]. But then, they came calling when they saw how successful his films were. He believed in his dream and in his message, and success followed. Now, he’s not only creating movies people want to see, but he’s giving black people jobs. I have nothing but respect for that brother for that. We should all strive to keep God in our lives and follow our dreams like he has.

Rodney’s configuration of Perry as a role model is largely rooted in bootstrapping ideology. He suggests that part of what makes Perry an example for others is his tenacity in the face of the obstacles black entertainers/entertainment face in the culture industries. In addition, Rodney suggests that Perry “lifts as he climbs” by providing jobs for other black folks in an industry that has historically been inhospitable thus making Perry role model-worthy. Danielle’s (43) inability to recognize Perry as a role model is not necessarily driven by his work industrially, but rather by the pedagogical ways she reads his media output. She says:

He always tries to wrap [his films up] with a moral […] In Diary of a Mad Black Woman, she got beat up her whole life and her husband kicked her out and she was living with Madea. At the end, her abusive husband is shot, and all of a sudden, “Oh look! She’s loved by a good black man, now her life is great.” Do you really want to teach generations of women that your only self-worth is tied to a black man? If you have something wrong with life it only gets fixed if you find a good black man?

Danielle, Brandon and Rodney demonstrate how black fandoms are often tied to the pedagogical: what can be learned from a particular fan object. Black Panther, according to some black fans, teaches that black folks can be superheroes; Copeland teaches that black women can achieve historic heights; and Perry’s oeuvre similarly teaches lessons that are read in negotiated ways by black people who remain fans of his work whether the lesson is read as “bad” or “good.”

Black fandom, consumption and the culture industries Black fandoms, like many other fandoms, are rooted in distinction. In discussing Copeland as a role model, Jordan casually mentions: “When I got a chance to meet her, I just thanked her for [her inspiration] because I wanted her to know how important it 748 International Journal of Cultural Studies 22(6) was for me to just meet her.” I highlight Jordan’s comments because of how she centers having met Copeland, while discussing Copeland’s representational import. This personal connection to Copeland begins to expose how black fandoms are hierarchical; those fans who have met her and/or seen her perform live represent a “higher order” of Copeland fans because they have the economic, social and/or cultural capital to engage in such fannish practices. Courtenay, 48, exposes the ways economic capital can prevent some fans from engaging with their desired fan object. She says she has not seen Copeland perform live but “I mean if somebody was like ‘Here’s some tickets, Misty Copeland’s here,’ I wouldn’t be like […] ‘Oh my God, let’s go see her!’ It’s just the abil- ity to spend the money that keeps me from seeing her.” However, not having seen Copeland perform live does not diminish Courtenay’s fandom. She still consumes films, books and magazine articles in order to know more about Copeland. Part of the hierarchy for black fans with respect to their fan objects is rooted in FOMO: fear of missing out. While some black fans certainly saw Black Panther as a way to ensure its strong opening weekend figures, others simply wanted to be among the first to see the film. Ashley, 33, said:

Something in me did not wanna be someone who saw it later […] I’m somebody who’s competitive, so I had to be among the first to see it, I really wanted to go Thursday night […] I wanted to be like the very first person in the world, in my mind, to see it.”

Marquita, 44, tends to see Perry’s films on opening weekend, not necessarily because she wants to avoid being left out, but also “so they get box office credit.” This is a way for her to support a black artist in Hollywood. Danielle adds:

To my understanding, part of the reason projects are not greenlit is because Hollywood is determined that we don’t support our films. So, if I just show up with my dollars, I fly in the face of that, ya know what I mean?

Channon consumes Perry’s films because such consumption “has a lot to do with the business side end.” Marquita, Danielle and Channon underscore how black fandoms are centrally rooted within consumption and a keen understanding of the importance of black dollars to the culture industries. A Nielsen Company (2017) report found that black people possessed a collective $1.2 trillion in spending power, a number the report esti- mated would reach $1.5 trillion by 2021. Buoyed by commentary like that reported by Nielsen’s, and widely reported in black media, black fans have developed a consumption-based understanding of the culture industries, which structures their relationships with/to fandoms. More substantively, Wanzo (2015) suggests that black fandoms are partly tethered to “a show of economic force and ideological combat.” In this way, Marquita’s assertion that her support of Perry’s films “flies in the face” of a media industry that infrequently courts black fans and audiences, is prescient. Similar imperatives can be observed around Black Panther. Anson, 43, says that one of the primary reasons he chose to see Black Panther on its opening weekend was:

to be a part of that massive showing of support. I don’t know a lot about the film industry, but my understanding that opening weekend [is] a great indicator of how the film is going to do, Martin 749

how much money it’s going to make. It stirs up buzz and discussion and gets more people to see it later on. I definitely wanted to be a part of that.

Anson’s discussion complements Danielle’s, Marquita’s and Channon’s in the ways it reveals how African American fandoms are rooted in tethering consumptive practices to production practices. While black fan consumption is broadly important to black fandoms, there is also a semblance of early adoption that drives such fandom – if films are consumed during opening weekend, or if the performances at which Misty Copeland is dancing sell out, it will signal the ongoing importance of these cultural products. Arienne explicitly connects industrial questions about blackness to conversations around her fandom of Black Panther and the future of black-cast film projects. She says:

We ask, “Can an all-black-cast superhero movie succeed?” And by all accounts, absolutely. So, those outdated questions have clearly been answered. When you have a good cast, when you have good characters […] these movies can do really well. And so, I hope that Hollywood will start pushing the envelope and giving us more of these movies to where it's not a once-in-a- lifetime thing.

Arienne underscores the machinations of black fandoms and their interconnectivity with “showing Hollywood” that African American consumers will consume black content in hopes that additional content like it will be produced. At the same time, and somewhat related to consumption of Black Panther, many black fans felt that they needed to wear something special for the film, similar to a red carpet occasion, which often meant purchasing attire for the film. Felix, 33, Miami, encapsulates the discourse around dressing up for seeing Black Panther. He says, “It started out as a joke, but, then, it became a thing, which was, ‘Hey, what you guys wear- ing to Black Panther?’” Yamanaane declares:

I had to see [Black Panther] on opening weekend because I created a character for myself within Wakanda […] I knew that if I waited until the third week it was in theaters, and I show up in my high priestess of Wakanda costume and my face paint, people might look at me like I’m crazy. But if I get in on the first wave of the hype, I can sort of enjoy my moment as a black cosplayer and not feel that ridicule that I often get from people within my [black] community.

While Yamanaane is adept at sewing and creative skills, in order to fully realize her idea for a Wakandan high priestess, she had to purchase materials and invest time in the creation of her character. Aditionally, Eric, 45, encapsulates the pride and Afrocentrism that many black people felt around the film. While he did not necessarily dress up for the occasion, he consciously wore “a red, gold, and green tam” to represent the colors of the African flag. Black fandoms are also concerned with collectibles associated with their fan object. Several black fans noted they purchased the soundtrack recording and t-shirts associated with Black Panther with Kina, 47, admitting that she purchased “some comic books” and will eventually buy some Black Panther art for her home. Additionally, some Copeland fans expressed interest in owning her doll likeness. For example, at the Washington, DC, performance of Whipped Cream where Copeland was set to perform the lead ballerina 750 International Journal of Cultural Studies 22(6) role of Praline Princess, I observed a 7-year-old black girl siting in her seat awaiting the start the performance. She clutched her Copeland doll, still in its box, which signaled not only her fandom, but that she (or at least her parents) believe this doll is/will be a collector’s item. When I asked if they planned to have Copeland sign the box, her mother told me “no,” and looked at me quizzically as if the idea never occurred to her and said, “I wouldn’t even know how to do that.” Her daughter simply wanted to bring the doll to the performance where she would see Copeland dance. In this way, then, in addition to col- lecting the doll for the sake of collection, it helped the daughter (or at least as recounted by her mother that evening) feel closer to Copeland’s star image. Avi Santo (2017: 330) argues that while merchandise redefines fandom in “consumerist terms,” it “can materi- ally encapsulate [the] acquirer’s memories of a particular event or experience.” For this girl and her mother, the Copeland doll was a collector’s item, but also a means to connect the experience of seeing Copeland dance live for the first time with the doll. Similarly, a few fans of Perry’s work expressed pride in owning DVD copies of some of his earlier work before their stage-to-screen adaptations. Karen, 54, said:

I have all of the stage versions of his plays. Not only do I enjoy watching them, because I love the messages in them, but I like also hearing the black people in the audience enjoying and reacting to what is going on. But I also like seeing the plays more naturally […] I mean, before they have been polished up by the Hollywood machine.

Karen’s fandom is partly about possessing rarer, less “Hollywood” versions of Perry’s media output. She imagines the acquisition of these items as a form of currency that situ- ates her fandom as a “higher order” similar to those fans who have either seen Copeland perform live or, even better, have met her.

Black fandoms in living color Black fandoms are undoubtedly complex and varied. However, as I demonstrated throughout this essay the interplay of must-see-blackness, economic consumption, knowledge of the culture industries and fan evangelism shapes and re-shapes black fandoms. Many of the black fans interviewed for this project are younger than those who were engaged in the fight for black Civil Rights in the early to mid-20th century, however, many of those ideologies structure their audience and fannish engagement. The desire for visibility, particularly in spaces that have typically been inhospitable to racialized bodies, drives many black people’s fandom, particularly with respect to Copeland and her space within a “white” ballet company. When blackness is granted tenure within white ballet companies or within a film industry that does not tend to invest big budgets in black-cast content uncoupled from slave narratives and biopics, black fans and audiences feel obligated to consume the content, whether they like it or not. For black fans, there is little discernment between Perry’s “lowbrow” cultural output, Black Panther’s “middlebrowness” or Copeland’s “highbrow” job as a principal ballerina with respect to the senses of “civic duty” they feel to patronize black content and personalities. Black fans and audiences largely consume any black content because they are aware that, as I have argued elsewhere (Martin Jr, forthcoming), Martin 751 the media industries make a singular black failure stand in for a monolithic understanding of blackness. In other words, black fans’ and audiences’ consumption of black-cast media and celebrity is not necessarily only rooted in a desire to consume but also in demonstrating the economic viability of black consumers within the fundamentally racist American culture industry. Simultaneously, those objects black fans take up are measured against their fitness as role models that represent the greatness of blackness within a politics of visibility. In some ways, then, the black fandoms detailed in this article are a form of activism that uses the language of the culture industries (money) to fight for (political) visibility. In this article, I engaged in one of the few studies that center the voices and fandoms of black people. I deliberately did not center white fandoms or juxtapose white fandoms against what black fans do. My hope is that the blackness of this study does not result in white fandoms ignoring it, as if race alone disqualifies this research from having any applicability to its (white) research agenda while otherwise Columbusing the language of “otherness” (Salinas, 2014). In addition to its findings, this article asks the same question artist Arthur Jafa (in Sargent, 2017) asked: “How come we can’t be as black as we are and still be universal?” (White) fandom studies might find it useful to examine fandom not only through the rubric of love, or even hate, as anti-fandom studies do, but to also examine the ways white fandoms might also be rooted in visibility politics, whether through a yearning for more representations of “geeks,” white LGBTQ people, white women, and people with different abilities. Additionally, rather than focusing on a singular text or a set of similar texts, fandom studies might find it useful to examine several disparate fandoms together, as this study does, to more broadly theorize what fans do with their fan objects. In the final analysis, we need to decolonize fandom studies. Scholars working within white fandom studies are never challenged for the ways they willfully ignore and disengage from work outside of white fandom, while those studying the fandoms of people of color are not granted such leeway. In other words: black fandoms matter.

Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Note 1. I use “white” ballet company here to differentiate between Dance Theatre of Harlem, a ballet company founded in the post-Civil Rights era to give black ballet dancers an opportunity to perform classical and contemporary ballet repertory as ballet companies continued to be unwelcoming spaces for black dancers.

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Author Biography Alfred L. Martin, Jr, is an assistant professor of media studies jointly appointed to the departments of Communication Studies and African American Studies at the University of Iowa. He is author of The Queer Politics of Black-cast Sitcoms (forthcoming, Indiana University Press) and his work has appeared in a wide range of academic journals including Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Communication, Culture & Critique and Television & New Media.