“I believe that fandom is a wonderful and vital organ of contemporary culture, without which that culture ultimately stagnates, atrophies and dies.”
These words come from Alan Moore, at the start of the second paragraph of his recent Guardian op-ed about the perils of toxic fandom. The op-ed gained a lot of traction worldwide, and with good reason. Despite attempts to dismiss him as the grouchy weird grandpa of comics, Moore remains one of the most clear-eyed observers of the worst (and, yes, best) parts of superheroes and comics history.
As is so often the case, Moore’s critique comes from a place of love and affirmation, even if most commentators overlook it. His fandom essay is no different. Part of the reason that Moore can recognize fandom as, sometimes, “a grotesque blight that poisons the society surrounding it with its mean-spirited obsessions and ridiculous, unearned sense of entitlement” is that fandom is, at other times, that wonderful and vital organ of contemporary culture he so lovingly describes.
Moore draws a direct connection between fandom and the increased visibility of fascism in Europe and the States, a point made all the more salient by the lead-up to and outcome of the recent presidential election. But I think it’s important to point out that 2024 also featured two important examples of fandom’s healing, welcoming abilities. The films The People’s Joker and I Saw the TV Glow both feature trans and non-binary people who find their identity via their chosen pop culture fandom and the community it provides.
The People See the TV Glow
Outside of the fact that both films share these two key elements, The People’s Joker and I Saw the TV Glow could not be more different.
Directed by Vera Drew, who also stars and co-wrote the script with Bri LeRose, The People’s Joker embraces a punk attitude that respects no borders or canon. The People’s Joker begins with hints of familiarity, including a smirking Joker (Drew, dressed like Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Dent at the climax of the 2019 movie Joker) listening to authoritarian news commentary while Gotham City burns. But it blends the familiar with a strange, remixed quality: Lois Lane appears at a news desk alongside a beefy non-binary Clark Kent, Daily Planet editor-in-chief Perry White (voiced by Tim Heidecker) barks hate speech in the style of Alex Jones, and commercials advertise Smylex (created here by psychiatrist Jonathan Crane) as an antidepressant administered via inhaler.
The film presents this world with a visual style that exaggerates its artifice. Several characters, including Saturday Night Live founder Lorne Michaels (Maria Bamford) or a non-binary Poison Ivy (Ruin Carroll), appear as aggressively cheap CGI models, the type you would find in an early PlayStation or Nintendo 64 game. Real people stand in front of an obvious green screen, often wearing artificial-looking makeup and costumes.
Yet the film’s overt disregard for canon or taste works to create empathy instead of offense. As much as The People’s Joker takes place in an unreal world, in which only outsider alternative comedians such as Joker and Penguin (Nathan Faustyn) stand against the authoritarian Bruce Wayne, it’s driven by Drew’s very personal story. Raised as a boy by a fretting mother and an absent father in the Midwest, Drew’s character eventually finds herself after moving to the big city and establishing her own underground comedy troupe.
Conversely, I Saw the TV Glow director and writer Jane Schoenbrun takes a gentle, meditative approach to her story, breaking the calm with moments of sublime dread. I Saw the TV Glow stars Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine as Owen and Maddy, two lonely suburban kids who bonded in the mid-’90s over their love of a television series called The Pink Opaque. An adventure series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Pink Opaque features two teen girls called Isabel and Tara (Helena Howard and Lindsey Jordan, respectively) who use their psychic bond to battle a malevolent force called Mr. Melancholy. Owen (played as a middle-schooler by Ian Foreman) regularly sneaks away from his controlling father and distracted mother to watch the show with Maddy—at least until she runs away to escape her abusive stepfather.
Eight years later, Maddy returns and claims that she has been living in the show. In fact, she insists that she and Owen are in fact Isabel and Tara, trapped in a pocked dimension by Mr. Melancholy. Although he senses that he’s in the wrong body, Owen struggles to accept her message and dismisses her as delusional.
Although it contains moments of pure horror and knowing winks, such as cameos by Amber Benson of Buffy fame and neighbors played by The Adventures of Pete & Pete stars Michael C. Maronna and Danny Tamberelli, I Saw the TV Glow operates in a milieu of rich, ineffable sadness. Throughout the movie, Schoenbrun lets their camera follow Owen from behind, highlighting the loneliness he feels, even when around other people. A beautiful early sequence catches the young Owen appreciating a momentary glimpse of beauty as he walks underneath a parachute in his gym class.
That sense of solitude only enhances the warmth when Owen and Maddy watch The Pink Opaque together, the blue of the screen providing at least artificial illumination during these shared moments.
Despite their difference in tone, both The People’s Joker and I Saw the TV Glow understand the power that comes from loving pop culture and the affirmation that fandom provides. However, both projects also feature a very specific type of fandom, one that’s unlike the many versions that exist today.
Rewriting as Welcome
In the first half of his op-ed, Moore recalls (with some nostalgia) the first comic book convention he attended, as a teen in the 1960s. Although age no doubt plays some role in his happy image of the fandom, and he notes the lack of corporate presence, Moore mostly credits the attendees’ attitudes and intentions. He and other attendees, which included future creators Kevin O’Neill and Steve Parkhouse, wanted “to elevate the medium that they loved, rather than passively complain about whichever title or creator had particularly let them down that month.”
Much later, Moore returned to conventions and found the experience far less inclusive, filled with middle-class men in their 40s who “gentrified a previously bustling and lively cultural slum neighbourhood.” These privileged men tend to “carp and cavil rather than contribute or create,” belligerent behavior that Moore, in his essay, links to the dangerous and exclusionary rhetoric and ideas embraced by the architects of Brexit and the Trump campaign.
Moore contrasts those with “utterly benign” fandoms, “networks of cooperative individuals who quite like the same thing, can chat with others sharing the same pastime and, importantly, provide support for one another in difficult times.”
That’s exactly the type of fandom on display in I Saw the TV Glow. Maddy and Owen support one another based on their love of The Pink Opaque. Although it’s not really present in the text of The People’s Joker, the entire project is rooted in a deep love of all things Batman, illustrated by Drew’s profound and affectionate understanding of the DC Comics and movie lore she reworks and in the close attention to movie detail. Heck, she goes so far as to even get Robert Wuhl from 1989’s Batman to make a cameo (via Cameo) as Alexander Knox.
The jokes in The People’s Joker only work for those who know enough about Batman or, in the case of the film’s comedy subplot, the alt-comedy world built up around the Upright Citizens Brigade. Like the sorts of winking references in Star Trek: Lower Decks or even Deadpool & Wolverine, these references reward people who know the source material.
References and in-jokes are common to every type of fandom, whether healing or toxic. The latter treats them as a type of catechism, a way for one person to assert superiority over others by demonstrating the outsider’s insufficient knowledge or understanding. The former treats them as a means of welcome, an affirmation that acknowledges the reference but also points toward new possibilities and ways of revision.
Anyone who gripes that Vera Drew turns Clark Kent’s boss Perry White, most often portrayed as a benevolent journalist, into a right-wing hatemonger misses the power of the world she’s creating. Anyone too focused on the fact that Joker’s abusive boyfriend Mr. J (Kane Distler) is modeled on Jared Leto’s irritating Joker from Suicide Squad won’t catch the powerful depiction of abuse when he deadnames the main character.
The connection between Owen and Maddy begins when the latter sees the former reading the official episode guide for the show. Despite having never seen The Pink Opaque, Owen approaches Maddy and strikes up a conversation, which she rewards by inviting him to come over and watch. She has more knowledge of the show than him, but Maddy uses it as a way to connect instead of exclude, even if she’s initially the source of understanding about the show.
All of these instances showcase the power of fandom to appeal to others and to grow in the process, becoming richer along the way. While it’s easy to see why such a welcoming, communal aspect would appeal to those who are often excluded or marginalized, such as the trans and non-binary folks behind both films, it also matters to those who have never been rejected from the communities in the same way, including cishet white men like myself. Long-running franchises thrive through change, or at least the appearance of change, to use the phrase attributed to Stan Lee. While my fellow cishet white men are certainly capable of making compelling, new stories about established characters, limiting a character to just one type of perspective makes the process of change more difficult and, often, too thin and unsatisfying.
As others step up and approach the characters from new angles and perspectives, the characters have an opportunity to live and breathe beyond what even their creators intended, as demonstrated again and again by fans who refuse to let creators like Joss Whedon or J.K. Rowling ruin stories that mean so much to so many people.
A Fandom of Healing
Part of the reason that commenters reacting to Moore’s op-ed tend to focus on the negative might stem from the fact that he doesn’t seem to hold healthy fandoms in particularly high regard, at least in terms of their ability to effect change. Non-toxic subcultures, writes Moore, “are less likely to impact on society in the same way that the more strident and presumptuous fandoms have managed.”
Given the election and the current state of the world more generally, it’s hard to say that Moore’s wrong. But these toxic fan subcultures only work by closing things off and keeping things stagnant, preserving whatever version of Batman or Spider-Man was popular when these fans first encountered them as children. They operate according to rigid dogma, clinging to a definition so limiting that it ultimately constricts and destroys all opportunities for change and growth.
In other words, such fandoms cannot live. They may thrive for a time, especially when operating in a system designed to reward exclusion and oppression. But they will die out.
The healthy fandoms that allow characters to grow and breathe and change, the fandoms that welcome and heal and reassure, can only live and only grow. The People’s Joker and I Saw the TV Glow help point the way, and they couldn’t come at a better time.
