Episode 183: Fandom and Religion

 
 
Episode cover: photo of graffiti of Homer Simpson ringing a bell and wearing a sandwich board reading "THE END IS NEAR." White fan logo in the top corner.

In Episode 183, “Fandom and Religion,” (one year into seminary) Flourish and (goes to church to sing songs) Elizabeth take a look at the way religion and fandom are discussed together: the surfacey comparisons, the more nuanced parallels, and the modes of thinking that shape fandom discourse. Topics discussed include the glut of simplistic articles comparing fannish and religious activities, the Jewish tradition of midrash, the implicit (and sometimes explicit) Christian themes in much of American pop culture, and Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play.

 

Show Notes

[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.

[00:02:34] That’s Episode 156: “The Exit Interview.”

[00:14:40] Elizabeth rn:

[00:18:02] Fandom Forward, formerly known as the Harry Potter Alliance.

[00:20:50] Anna Wilson’s wonderful piece on Margery Kempe and fanfiction is “Full-body reading” in Aeon. (And, as a bonus, Anna also wrote some fic about Margery Kempe (in space!).) 

[00:21:31] Flourish is talking about (among other articles) “Fan fiction and midrash: Making Meaning” by Rachel Barenblat in Transformative Works and Cultures. 

[00:26:00] That was Episode 179: “Fan Labor, Fan Consumption.”

[00:32:40] The episode, which originally aired in 1993, is, in fact, called Cape Feare.

[00:47:43] Fact check: in 2020, 27% of self-identified American evangelical Christians said they rarely or never attend church. And from 2008 to now, the percentage of non-church-going evangelicals who identify as “conservative” has grown dramatically. 

[00:51:19]

Animated gif of Aslan from the BBC adaptation of the Narnia books

[00:58:22]

Animated gif of James McAvoy as Mr Tumnus playing a flute

[01:00:59] The 1994 academic article Flourish is referencing is “Star Trek Fandom as a Religious Phenomenon” by Michael Jindra.

[01:04:22] We have sent out the Tiny Zines to current Patrons, but we still have a few extras! If you pledge $10 a month (or up a lower pledge), you’ll receive a collection of very cute ficlets—by Flourish, Betts, and Britta Lundin—in the mail shortly! (And yes, Flourish did eventually recover enough to take some photographs.)

 
Photo of a page from the Tiny Zine. Text reads "Love Note by betts" followed by an illustration of a letter in an envelope. A few letters from the first line of the ficlet are visible at the bottom.
Photo of a page of the Tiny Zine. The words "lingered, watched a little longer, and wondered" followed by a line drawing of a sailing ship.
 

Transcript

[Intro music]

Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth!

Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish!

FK: And welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, and about fandom!

ELM: This is Episode #183, “Fandom and Religion.”

FK: Topics I find interesting and scary when put together. I’m excited to do it.

ELM: [laughs] OK. Before we talk about those two great topics, I think that we need to say…you had COVID.

FK: I did!

ELM: That’s why we were delayed, we really appreciate everyone’s patience. That’s why you sound a little…congested.

FK: Like a frog.

ELM: No. That’s not—you can’t even hear yourself clearly.

FK: I can’t! [ELM laughs] I was proposing the possibility. I need you to describe it to me.

ELM: No, it’s just—

FK: [overlapping] But also like, it’s like a month in now, so this is just how I sound as far as I’m concerned. [laughs]

ELM: Yeah, no, it…just sounds like you have a slightly like, blocked nose.

FK: All right, that’s fair.

ELM: It’s not—it’s fine, a little different, but I don’t think it’s distracting.

FK: OK.

ELM: And also even if it was, who cares? Sometimes people, uh…you know, have upper respiratory infections.

FK: Yeah. And in fact I think it’s worth noting, I had COVID, and then I was healing from COVID, and then I apparently got a cheeky follow-on sinus infection, and…I didn’t know that for a while because it didn’t occur to me that it could be, and then I got some symptoms that made clear that it was, and then my doctor was like, “Yeah, just like people get pneumonia as a follow-on thing from COVID, you can also get a sinus infection, and you were a lucky one.” So then they gave me big antibiotics and now I’m on the mend. And I’m glad to be here. [both laugh] Because it’s nice to be doing something moderately normal again, instead of just, like, lying in bed and thinking [in a dramatic voice] “Will I be sick forever??”

ELM: I was gonna say, “Well at least you get to sit up,” but you probably do a lot of sitting up.

FK: I did, I did, I had that terrible thing where you have to sit up because you can’t breathe otherwise.

ELM: Yep, all right. Well, anyway, congrats, I’m glad that you’re feeling better.

FK: [laughs] Thank you.

ELM: [laughs] OK. All right, so, let’s—on to the topic at hand. So, about a year ago when you were leaving your job in the entertainment industry, we did an exit interview episode, right, where I asked about your reflections, and we got this message on Patreon afterwards, and I suggested we put it aside until at least when you’d done a semester of seminary. Now you’ve done a full year.

FK: Yep.

ELM: And you’ve just begun year two, and it felt like a good time to talk about it.

FK: All right, should I read the message?

ELM: Yeah, do it!

FK: All right, this is from Rebecca:

“Looking forward, I really hope you will consider doing a religion and fandom episode. Between seminary and both your backgrounds (in religious studies and anthropology—if I remember correctly?) I feel like you would have some super interesting perspectives on patterns I’ve been noticing in fandom but don’t get talked about much. I’m realizing that religion (and it’s become super apparent as I’ve become part of a minority religion and stepped away from Western fandom’s culturally Christian perspective) is at play at many, many levels, from understanding character motivations, world building interpretations, story elements such as forgiveness and redemption, and purity culture. Just throwing that out there as something I would love to hear about.” 

ELM: OK. Rebecca, thank you so much for the message. Inspiring enough to do an episode. But I gotta say up front, I was not an anthropology major, and I’m so offended. [FK laughs] I’m not. I’m not offended, I don’t want to insult anthropology majors or anthropologists, but I was in fact an English major, that’s a humanity, not a social science. It’s very important to me.

FK: OK.

ELM: I did my Master’s in the digital humanities—very important, my commitment to the humanities. 

FK: Right, OK, thank you, duly, duly noted.

ELM: I think that perhaps though I did take, I took one anthropology class, and it was a religious anthropology class. So…

FK: This is probably where this confusion comes from, because I think you’ve talked about it on the podcast before.

ELM: [overlapping] Specifically the religion of South Asia. So even narrower. [laughs]

FK: Right, right. Which was related to some of your interest in, like, postcolonial literature and so forth, so…

ELM: [laughs] Are we talking about this right now? Yes, in college I focused [FK laughs] on the British Empire, and I studied it across different disciplines.

FK: Great, there we go. OK.

ELM: Yes.

FK: Wonderful. I was a religious studies major, for what it’s worth. [ELM laughs] And I think it’s, it is worth noting for anybody who doesn’t know, that religious studies is the non-religious side—so if you’re a religious studies person, you aren’t necessarily a religious person, you’re just studying religions. And that’s different from what I’m doing now in seminary, which is theology, which is sort of from an insider perspective of a person who’s a believer and who is studying religion from that perspective. I think that’s, you know, worth saying.

ELM: Do people study theology if they’re not intending to become a member of the clergy?

FK: I mean, people, people study theology because they are…generally speaking, because they are believers. But not necessarily because they’re gonna become a clergyperson. Some people just are interested in theology. Or like, are doing lay ministry or something like that.

ELM: OK. I was just curious.

FK: Yeah, there, there are definitely people, I would say there are people at my seminary who do not intend to be ordained. And I mean there’s also, like, Buddhists and Muslims at my seminary for whom ordination means something different. So.

ELM: OK. I like how that was a much more complicated answer than I thought, that’s great, that’s ideal.

FK: [laughs] Sorry!

ELM: No, it’s great, I’m complimenting your complications.

FK: Great.

ELM: OK. So, there’s a few different things here. One is, the framing of Rebecca’s question is really interesting and I think we should talk about it. But two, just straightforwardly when we say fandom and religion, the sort of nuances I guess, or the angle on her questions, I think are not what I think of when I think of the topic “Fandom and Religion.” And so I think that kind of disconnect is interesting, too, and I think we should talk about that.

FK: Yeah, because the normal way fandom and religion get discussed is, right, people use all of these metaphors for fans—sometimes they don’t even mean them as metaphors, they’re like, “It’s like a cult.” Right? 

ELM: Right.

FK: Like, there’s tons and tons—I mean, I was like, Googling this just sort of like, “Oh, let’s see. I remember some of these.” There’s just like, all the time people writing articles about how, “Guess what? Fandom is like religion!” or “Fandom is replacing religion!” sometimes [both laugh] or what have you, you know? 

ELM: OK, wait wait wait, take one pause. I think that it’s important to say up front that religion does not equal Christianity, and I think that we should clarify whenever we are talking about Christianity.

FK: Definitely.

ELM: I mean, well if we’re talking about any specific religion, but it’s going to probably wind up being Christianity. Not least because we’re talking—these articles that you’re talking about, for example, they’re not talking about—I mean, they’re talking about Christianity usually, right? When they start to go into the, I mean like, let’s dunk on them a little bit. [FK laughs] When they start to go into these details, you’re like, “Oh, all these things are specifically, not only just like from Christianity, but often from Catholicism.” Right, you know? They’ll be like, “They have ‘canon.’ [FK laughs] Canonical law in Catholicism, and then the fans also use the term ‘canon’? And they all think of it the same way?” And you’re just sitting there like, “God, how much did you get paid for this article? And why do you keep writing these articles?” [both laugh]

FK: Yeah, usually—you’re absolutely right, and it’s usually that they also don’t have a very nuanced or thoughtful idea of what religion is.

ELM: Or what fandom is, to be honest! 

FK: [laughs] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And actually some of the problems that people have when they approach this are similar. Like, their errors about what fandom is are similar to their errors about what religion is, or maybe they’re not thinking about—so for instance, right, it’s very easy from an unexamined point of view to be like, “Oh yeah, religion, we know what religion is, there’s like the world religions, Hinduism and Buddhism and Christianity and Islam and…” you know, maybe if someone’s really progressive they’ll talk about like, “African religions” under an umbrella or whatever.

ELM: [laughs] I don’t know if I, people couldn’t see your air quotes, so I don’t think they, just to make sure they got that—

FK: They’re not getting the full—[laughs]

ELM: That sarcasm, that big, big sarcasm there.

FK: Right, right. So, you know, they don’t stop to think about how like, well, are any of these things really a singular religion exactly? Because Christians don’t agree on much except that, like, Jesus was important. You know? And it’s definitely also the case with every other “religion,” there’s a vast amount of variety within them. And then also people can be engaged in more than one tradition at once, right? Like, they’re not hermetically sealed from each other.

ELM: No, so they’re like, multifannish.

FK: Right! [ELM laughs] But whenever people write these things, they also—I mean, I know that I don’t love drawing similarities between these always, and I don’t think this is a literal similarity, but it is funny because often people write these things and they’re acting as though people commit to one fandom and get obsessed with it only, which as we all know is not the way fandom usually works for people. 

ELM: Mmm hmmm. 

FK: Like, sometimes, sure, but not…a lot of people have multiple interests, at least over time if not at the same time. 

ELM: Mmm hmmm. 

FK: But then they also are missing the fact that there’s a vast variety of ways of engaging in any fandom.

ELM: Sure.

FK: It’s frustrating.

ELM: Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting because now I feel like these are more parallels, there’s also a lot of different ways to engage with a religion or be religious, right?

FK: Oh, absolutely.

ELM: Yeah. So I’m trying to think of some of the other, like, aside from canon/canon, the other ways they frame this, right. They’ll talk about like…the fandom framing of “The Word of God,” or “The Powers that Be,” this voice from on high, which I don’t know, is that supposed to be equivalent to priests and other clergy? Or is that the actual voice of a god? You know? I’m not sure where this comparison is. 

And then it’s just this kind of, it’s always a very specific kind of fandom that they’re talking about, where it’s, like, the super-affirmational. But also usually often a pretty unflattering picture of that, super uncritical, just the slavish devotee sort of version of that, where you just, I don’t know, it makes me think of the “religion is the opiate for the masses” kind of quote, and carry that over to the way that people are framing fandom in these pieces.

FK: Absolutely. I mean it’s, sometimes there is a Protestant framing in this, where it’s like, “It’s like their Bible. They can quote it chapter and verse.” [ELM laughs] You know? And to be clear, I do think that there are some comparisons that can be made. Obviously I just made some comparisons. But also you can say going to Disneyland is for some people like going on a pilgrimage in some ways, and yeah, there’s ways that you can compare those things. You can also just talk about being a tourist, and that has…that also relates to going on pilgrimage, right? [laughs]

ELM: Right.

FK: They’re not the same thing, but there are related things, and you can talk about them as being related, sure. But that’s one of the things that I find frustrating, is like, yeah, sure, I can find comparisons from religion to a lot of things.

ELM: Yeah. I mean that’s one of the things that trips me up on this, because a lot of it is like, you’re kinda just talking about culture. And the idea that—I mean, I did take that one religious anthropology class, so I know I’m pretty much an expert on this—but like, you know, they’re talking about what ritual is, right, and how ritual becomes kind of… is prescribed the word I want, or enshrined? How, how you have like—

FK: Reified.

ELM: Yeah, right, the kind of, that was a lot of what we wound up talking about, was the difference between a cultural practice, and when does that kind of tip over into ritual, and when is that a religious ritual? Because particularly, we weren’t studying Western religions also, so it’s not like, “Oh, when the priest decrees this is how this is going to be—” you know what I mean, there wasn’t that kind of top-down thing that you may get in some Western religions. 

FK: Right.

ELM: It’s more like, “Where are we drawing the lines between repeated shared cultural practices?” And things that feel quite worshipful.

FK: Right.

ELM: Like shrines, and saying various incantations or whatever, too. 

FK: Right.

ELM: And how do you define that. You know what I mean?

FK: Yeah, absolutely, and I think that it’s maybe sometimes easier for folks in the U.S. to see when you’re looking at that in the context of a religion that’s not as endemic as Christianity is here, but there’s tons of stuff like this within the U.S. culturally Christian context, right, like the Easter Bunny and so forth. “Well that’s not religious, but it is religious…”

ELM: It’s in the Bible. [FK laughs] Don’t you remember?

FK: Oh yeah, the bunny that hopped at the foot of the cross. 

ELM: Wait, in my church the bunny, yeah, we always sing a song to the bunny, right, and then he comes out, and he, like, chucks the eggs at you, and…you don’t do that at your church?

FK: Wow.

ELM: No. Sadly there’s no bunny. There’s no bunny.

FK: [overlapping] I know—I know for a fact that there’s no bunny at your church. [laughs]

ELM: [laughing throughout] You’re like…how much money would you have to pay the people at my church to provide a bunny? I don’t think they would do it.

FK: [overlapping] I can’t…I can’t imagine. But you know what I mean, this is a cultural thing but it’s also definitely associated with a religion, and like, let me tell you, you don’t, you’re not gonna force, or no one should force, a Jewish kid to interact with the Easter Bunny, although I imagine that probably they would like chocolate so you know. They have their own religious rituals with gelt and stuff that involve chocolate, everybody loves chocolate. But you know, so it’s not, it’s not just in religions that are not hierarchical in the same way.

ELM: Right, right.

FK: That’s a long story short. [ELM laughs] I got down a rabbit hole, as it were.

ELM: Wow.

FK: Aaahhh!

ELM: Did you, did you mean to say that?

FK: Yes I did, I made the full pun husky face, because I was waiting to get to the end of this long aside to get to say it.

ELM: Did you make it a rabbit hole just so you could make the rabbit hole joke?

FK: A little bit.

ELM: Stop it, get out, get out, hang up the phone right now. [FK laughs] Get out of here. OK. All right. OK. So we’ve got canon, we’ve got the, you know, Word of God or whatever… You know, I do find, I feel like with some of this stuff, I feel like people sometimes reach for religious comparisons because they’re confused as to the extremity? Extremeness? Extremity? Is that what I want?

FK: Sure.

ELM: Of the behavior of the fan.

FK: Mmmm.

ELM: And this is something I feel like maybe we’ve talked about before, but it always strikes me, why people find fandom—people outside of fandoms—find it so confusing. And in a way that they don’t with sports fandom, often, because I think they’re like, [doing a meathead sort of voice] “That is sports, sports is like getting drunk out of your mind and painting your chest blue, yeah! That’s what it is!” Right? [FK laughs] And you’re like, OK, but, people go to movies and they just see the movie at the normal time, and then they think about it for five minutes and then never again. 

FK: Right.

ELM: And then when they see people who are camping out overnight and dressing up and then quoting the lines endlessly, they’re like, “That’s weird, why don’t you just watch a movie and then never think about it again.” Right? That’s, you know what I mean?

FK: [overlapping] Right, this is how I feel about football games, I go to them, I watch them, I enjoy them, and I never think about them again. [both laugh]

ELM: Right, right. So it’s like, I feel like sometimes people go for the religious comparisons to kind of—and you know, to bring up that “opiate for the masses” line again—sometimes framed into a little bit of like, “Oh, they’ve been hoodwinked, they’ve been hypnotized by this, they’ve been drawn in and now they have to worship this thing, they have to perform these things.” Like people have no agency. And I think that is the way that, sometimes, non-religious people do talk about religion of any kind, right? Is, like, that there is a lack of choice there. Which, I mean obviously for a lot of people there isn’t a huge amount of choice, whether it’s a family thing or a cultural thing or whatever. But it also isn’t as black and white as that, usually. 

FK: Yeah, we also don’t have a lot of choice about a lot of things in our lives, so I am a little bit less, I’m a little skeptical of some of the ways that that’s framed, right? Like, I don’t know, did I choose to live in a place where people celebrate the Fourth of July? No, but I guess I’m gonna have a barbecue, you know what I mean?

ELM: Well, OK, you don’t have to have a barbecue.

FK: OK, yeah, you don’t have to do it, of course not. You know, it’s just, culturally…

ELM: [overlapping] I would, I would never have a barbecue. [both laugh]

FK: Anyway…you know what I’m trying to say about that.

ELM: Yeah.

FK: Yeah, I think that’s very true, and I think also it can be, on the other side, kind of used as a way to try and legitimize it. I definitely have seen fans talk about it in a way that’s like, “No, this is an important cultural thing, and the way I’m gonna try and convince you of it is that, like, it’s valuable.” So I think about sometimes, the way that people would talk about the Harry Potter Alliance and be like, “People need things to inspire them to do good things, and that’s why we’re going here, because they’re not getting it from the Bible or the Quran or whatever, because people are less and less religious in the U.S., so we need to inspire them to do good things through the stuff they care about, which is The Hunger Games.” [laughs] Like, all right, I guess. 

ELM: Wait, that’s interesting. So the HPA, if anyone doesn’t know them—I mean, like, they’ve changed their name now to Fandom Forward, to distance themselves from Harry Potter and J. K. Rowling, but they’re an advocacy group that trains teens and younger people to be organizers and activists, right? 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: But did they ever make those explicit parallels to religion?

FK: Yeah, I don’t know that that was an official, has ever been an official HPA stance, but I definitely had some conversations with Andrew Slack, who was the founder of the HPA, where he sort of was talking about that a little bit. And I definitely hear about it from other people talking about the HPA. Like, that’s definitely something that I’ve heard. This is something also that at least people in the Christian church have a lot of anxiety about, which I think is a little silly. But people definitely have anxiety about that idea.

ELM: About the idea that you would need a structure and an organization to externally motivate you to do good?

FK: No, about the idea that that structure is not going to be the Church, and that fandom might provide it.

ELM: OH! [both laugh] Yeah, OK. Real talk though, that’s what it made me think of, and I know we’ve talked about this before, you know, saying like… And I know a lot of people of different religious backgrounds say that they really lean on the, whether it’s the actual text of their, the actual writings of their religion or the structures, the community structures in it, to kind of motivate them to do good. Right? You know?

FK: Yeah.

ELM: You and I have talked about this before when talking about morality, this idea of like, whether you need to have some driving internal force, or does it really matter if it comes from something external, to still do the right thing or to do good, or to help people or whatever, you know what I mean?

FK: Right. And I think that the thing is that I find my religion valuable in helping me do the right thing more frequently, but I think also people forever have had heroes that they’ve like, looked to for inspiration, that were non-religious. Like, it’s not a new thing for people to say “I really love this fictional character, and I find them inspiring, and I try to do the right thing the way that they would do it.” That’s not new. People have done that forever. And real people, too, people have inspirational figures that they look to, and those people don’t have to be saints or Buddhas or,  you know, whatever, sometimes they’re just people. So I don’t find that to be necessarily a religious thing, do you see what I mean?

ELM: Yeah, no, absolutely.

FK: I do think, I mean I think we have been bagging on the comparisons a little bit, and I do think that there are some, sometimes those comparisons can be useful. People talk a lot about like, fanfiction as midrash, or you were sharing with me this article, I don’t remember—Margery Kempe? Maybe?

ELM: Yeah, this great piece by Anna Wilson from years ago that I’ve shared many many times on all my platforms, because, talking about Margery Kempe, who was a medieval mystic, who was basically writing self-insert Bible fanfiction, but the piece is wonderful because it’s like, it’s about kind of embodied reading, and this idea—it’s one of the few pieces about this kinda stuff that really makes, and even about contemporary fanfiction, that the embodied reader is like a big part of the piece, you know? And kind of like, putting your actual self in there, in the act of reading. We should definitely share it in the show notes. But yeah, I’ve seen the midrash thing, so explain midrash.

FK: Yeah, so…as always, you know, I am not Jewish, so please forgive me and correct me if I’m getting anything wrong about this, but one of the things that’s different about Jewish Bible interpretation to Christian interpretation is that in the Jewish tradition, you often have basically people writing stories and filling in the blanks about the stuff that’s actually in the Torah. 

So you’ll have, like one of my favorite ones is—and there’s like, these are rabbis who are writing it, and they’re very famous, some of them—and one of my favorite ones is like, a thing where Abraham…there’s a scene where Abraham jumps up and gives hospitality to these angels, and the midrash is like, “Oh yeah, well, you know, just a few verses earlier, Abraham got the order to circumcise himself and everybody else in his family, so actually the reason this is so important is that he was in pain.” And it sort of tells this story about how he was healing, and sitting under this tree and resting, and then these guests come, and it’s difficult for him, and this is why we should be, like, inspired by this. It’s not just that he was a sort of reasonable host, it’s that he was going above and beyond. 

And none of that…that interpretation itself is not in the Bible story. It’s, that’s something that got inserted into it, based on stuff that was in there, but it’s an expansion of it. And so this is really interesting and fruitful for thinking about fanfiction, I think. I think it’s a cool comparison.

ELM: Yeah, and it’s also like, I mean, as far as I know from reading a little bit of scholarship about it, often written by women, and somewhat communally shared and constructed, right? And I think that’s another reason why people draw comparisons. As opposed to like, when you think about a lot of the, the big books, the big works that people like to haul out when they say that fanfiction isn’t a modern invention and people always did it, you know, and they bring up Paradise Lost, or The Inferno, or all these important works. 

FK: Right.

ELM: To me that’s a little bit like, this was just the world that…this is, if you were an educated man in England [FK laughs] in 1650 or whatever, I don’t actually know what year [laughs] Paradise Lost was written, I’m a really bad English major. That was before my time so I don’t have to know that, and also…you know, you know…

FK: [overlapping] OOOK.

ELM: This was the world, this was the, the texture of their education. You know what I mean? So like, yeah, they are commenting on the Bible, obviously, they are talking about Christianity and the Bible. But it feels different to me than the way that I’ve, I understand the midrash to be.

FK: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean for one thing, midrash contradicts other midrash. There’s one story and it contradicts another interpretation of it, and you read them both, the way that you read different fanfic [laughs] interpretations of a story.

ELM: [overlapping] Different headcanons. Yeah, yeah. Right.

FK: Yeah! You know? I mean like—again, my understanding is that you sort of are navigating through which one you’re going to seize on today. Or, you know, and how that’s gonna go, and what is going to be the one that sort of sustains the community, and is most useful in that context. And that’s something that fanfiction does too, for sure.

ELM: Sure. OK, well, look, I think that maybe…I like all of this, I feel like we’re being more generous with this than we were about, I mean maybe than I was, about the dunking comparison examples, right? [FK laughs] And I have to wonder if some of my reticence around these comparisons is because…I mean sure, religious institutions and religions certainly collect lots of cash, and they’re not…you know, financially powerless, in fact they’re quite important and historically obviously have been wildly important money-wise. But there is this element to me of like…I mean, even your Disney World example or whatever, that’s going on a vacation, that’s being a tourist, paying money to a giant corporation, right? 

FK: Mmmm hmmm. 

ELM: There’s so much, there’s so much in it to me… I don’t know, I guess I struggle with this, because I don’t feel like there’s some sort of inherent purity about being a member of a religion or whatever. Like, oh, it’s so untouched from worldly concerns. [FK laughs] But the thing that I think a lot of fans often delude themselves into believing is like, their love of it kind of wipes out the fact that they are, you know, simping for the corporation, as we talked about a few episodes ago. 

FK: Yeah!

ELM: You know what I mean? These are structures that marketers and people like ex-Flourish, past life Flourish wanted you to do these behaviors. 

FK: [overlapping] Yep. Absolutely.

ELM: They don’t, you’re not going on a pilgrimage to see the Marvel movie the weekend it opens because you are, it’s some sort of spiritual practice. Maybe it feels ritualistic to you, maybe it is a ritual to you, but it’s also something that you’ve been like, heavily encouraged to do by the Russo brothers or whatever, so you don’t get spoiled on Twitter—you know what I mean? It just, and maybe this is like, too much cynicism here, but it’s kind of where I feel like some of this breaks down for me.

FK: Hmm. I mean, I think that there’s some people who are critics of religion who would say that it’s not enough cynicism, you know? And who would say that pilgrimages in religious contexts are also things that you’re being encouraged to do for particular reasons. And I’m not totally sure that I would disagree with them always, but I do agree with you that ultimately, many of the behaviors in fandom are primarily monetized.

ELM: Or related…to money.

FK: Right.

ELM: Yeah. Like, monetized in the sense of like, touchin’ money. You know? [laughs]

FK: [overlapping] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

ELM: I feel like when we say “monetized” it sounds like “Oh you’re selling your fanart” or whatever, and that’s not what you mean.

FK: [overlapping] Right right right, nononono no. No, no no.

ELM: [overlapping] You mean like, having to do with financial transactions of some kind.

FK: [overlapping] I mean having to do with— Exactly, exactly. And I think that most religions, many religions, it would be an ideal for that not to be the case. It doesn’t mean that that’s what happens, but I think that for many religions, it would…many religious perspectives, it would be like, “Yeah, no, ideally that’s not our primary goal.” [laughs]

ELM: Right, right.

FK: At least ideally, if not in practice, because you know, welcome to the world. Everything is tainted.

ELM: All right, OK, you didn't have to go right there.

FK: Everything is tainted! I don’t know.

ELM: [overlapping] Yeah. OK. Sure. And yeah, I’m not trying to give religions too much credit here—

FK: [laughs] But we should, we should definitely not give corporations that credit.

ELM: I, you know, yeah, I just feel like this kind of idea of…I mean maybe this is because of my own internal biases, where I think like, “Oh, if it’s a religious thing, then that is kind of heightened somehow, and that is—” Maybe I am internally thinking to some degree, “Oh, that’s beyond worldly matters.” Right? You know? 

FK: Mmmm.

ELM: And I think of the most idealistic version of it, where a person with no money can go into the house of worship and still have the same kind of participatory experience as the millionaire beside them or whatever, yadda yadda yadda. So like, maybe this is some of my own just kinda hangups, and maybe it’s my overwhelming cynicism about the entertainment industry and media corporations, that just makes me feel like nothing, the most pure love of fannish togetherness and engagement and participation…someone still owns that copyright.

FK: Yeah.

ELM: Someone’s still charging  you for those tickets. I don’t know. I mean, I’m also like, don’t have anyone in my life who’s a member of a for-profit megachurch. So maybe I would think about Christianity very differently if that was the texture of religion that was surrounding me.

FK: Yeah, I mean there’s also, it doesn’t even have to be a for-profit megachurch, right, there’s different attitudes towards wealth, and what wealth means, in many different religions. And what it is appropriate, how it is appropriate to think about wealth. So I don’t want to assume, necessarily, that everyone’s always gonna have the same experience in a religious setting or whatever, but I do agree. I think that there’s, there is fundamentally, you’re looking beyond something. It’s pretty rare that you have a copyrighted situation within religious contexts. Even if it is copyrighted, usually people are willing to share that text with you, whatever it is, you know? They’re like, well, maybe they’ve copyrighted it because they don’t want someone to misprint the words of Mary Baker Eddy or whatever, but they still wanna give it to you, so that you can read it.

ELM: Right, right.

FK: This is complicated. I think that that’s the thing I most want to sort of pull out of this, is that it is complicated and I think we see people talking about it in such a facile way a lot of the times, and it’s very frustrating. [laughs]

ELM: Yeah, it is complicated. I guess one of the reasons that, one of the things I’m thinking a lot about, is I saw this play recently, and I wanted to talk about it in the context of this, and this feels like a good time to bring it up.

FK: All right, sock it to us.

ELM: [overlapping] So, should we do it, should we do it? OK.

FK: Yeah!

ELM: All right. So, I saw this play, it was like, totally revelatory, it was recommended to me by an old coworker who, I heard him hard sell this play to like five different people, and I was just like, “All right, we get it, it sounds so good, when are they gonna perform it,” right? [FK laughs] And then the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival was performing it, and I actually only knew because on Instagram—which I only have to use for Fansplaining—there was an ad.

FK: Wow! Look at that.

ELM: That’s also how I learned that Akhnaten, my favorite thing I’ve seen in the last few years, the opera by Philip Glass, was back at the Met. So thank you, Instagram ads.

FK: Wonderful, good job, doin’ the right thing for once.

ELM: You know me!

FK: All right, tell me about this play.

ELM: OK, so the play is called Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, and it’s by Anne Washburn, and it was written a decade ago. Premiered in 2012.

FK: OK.

ELM: OK. So, are you ready? I’m gonna give you the brief setup. So there’s three acts, right?

FK: Mmm hmmm.

ELM: OK, and this is very weird to watch. Having had it hard sold to me, like five years ago by my coworker, and then I’m watching it like, after two years of the pandemic happening, was very weird. 

FK: OK.

ELM: But, so basically, the gist is that an event has happened. Some sort of apocalyptic event.

FK: Mmm hmmm.

ELM: You learn at some point in the play that there’s only like a million people left on the Earth, right, so.

FK: Whew!

ELM: Big event. And they’re very vague on the details, but the implication is, when they do talk about it, and they’re very cagey talking about it obviously, because we’re all traumatized in the post-apocalyptic landscape or whatever.

FK: Sure.

ELM: That something happened, and then all the nuclear reactors went down.

FK: Right.

ELM: And there’s this interesting kind of undercurrent, that’s like barely talked about but is always there, of like…you know, Homer Simpson, Mr. Burns, that’s a nuclear plant, right, you know what I mean? This cartoonish, whatever. 

FK: [overlapping] Yeah, yeah yeah. Yeah.

ELM: So anyway, that’s the backstory, and it’s a group of people who have come together in the first act, the event has happened recently, and they are collectively trying to remember and retell an episode of The Simpsons.

FK: OK.

ELM: And it’s the episode that’s a spoof of Cape Fear. [FK laughs] Have you seen this episode? Have you, how much Simpsons have you seen, do you know this one?

FK: No, I don’t know that one, I mean I’ve seen some Simpsons, like, everybody has seen some Simpsons, especially if you’re, you know, our age. But I’m not, like, one of those people who has an encyclopedic knowledge.

ELM: OK. So, it was a, it’s a, I think it’s a pretty well-known one, it’s an early one. So they’re just going back and forth trying to recall the details, the people who are telling the story, right, and this is kind of like, very very realistic, it’s things that I’ve done with my friends, tried to be like, we do it with Seinfeld all the time, we’re like, “Wait is that the episode where this happens?” “Oh yeah, and then George puts an ad in The Daily Worker?”

FK: Of course!

ELM: When Elaine dates a communist, and then Kramer becomes a communist and he tries to unionize the elves at the department store, you remember that one? Don’t worry about it.

FK: Good. You know that I don’t remember that one, [ELM laughs] you know it for a fact. But I do know this impulse. It is an impulse that I also have with…

ELM: Right, and then you just, you’re going back and forth and you’re like, “Oh yeah, then, then that happened,” so that’s what they’re doing, right. And it feels, it feels so relatable but also feels very sad, because it’s like, clearly, you know, this…

FK: Yeah, because they’re never gonna see The Simpsons ever again.

ELM: Right, but that’s not something they’re willing to admit to each other, right.

FK: Of course.

ELM: [overlapping] So they’re collectively retelling this story, and it makes you think about like, you know, this is the pop culture text that, like, enough of the people here know so well, because this is this kind of universal thing, right? These are, these characters, this story, etc. Right, OK. Second act, seven years later, they’re now a traveling—[laughs] the same people—are now a traveling Simpsons troupe, right?

FK: Like a theater troupe.

ELM: Yeah, so they recreate Simpsons episodes from memory, from their, like, faulty memories. Even in the first act they get some details wrong, which is interesting. I rewatched the episode before I saw it [FK laughs] so it could be very fresh in my mind. And the second act is so fascinating, because there are other Simpsons troupes, there’s, like rival Simpsons troupes, right, and they basically have recreated the copyright system.

FK: What! [laughs]

ELM: So they like, own, they’re like “Well we own this episode, we own ‘A Streetcar Named Marge’” or whatever, [FK laughs] you know, like, “We own ‘Lisa the Vegetarian’.” “No one likes that one, they want this one,” or whatever, and they’re arguing about what they should have the rights to. 

FK: Oh my God.

ELM: And it’s not just episodes, it’s also like, lines. So they’re talking about where they bought a line from a guy, and they’re like, “We need to buy the best lines,” right? 

FK: Oh my God.

ELM: And it’s just an absolutely fascinating proposal of the re-creation of pop culture. There’s also—they don’t just do the episodes, they also do ads. But the ads, the ad they do in this is so depressing, because it’s basically just like, a woman gets home from work and her husband’s there, and she’s, like, complaining about the office and the traffic, and then making a bath, and it’s like…you know, it’s just supposed to be the things that they’ll never experience that they’re nostalgic for. It’s just really depressing, right? You know? [laughs]

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And so that part is super interesting, it’s like, an interesting proposal of pop culture. OK—

FK: [overlapping] That, that makes—yeah. Keep, keep telling and then I’m gonna say what I think after.

ELM: [overlapping] I’ll tell you the end. OK, this isn’t really a play that—who cares if it’s spoiled, everyone should see it if they can. The third act [laughs] is seventy-five years later. So all those people are dead. 

FK: Mmhmm.

ELM: And it’s a performance that’s basically elevated the four Simpsons—sorry to, sorry to Maggie—to like, kinda pseudo-quasi-religious icons? Right? [FK laughs] Very like…kinda…

FK: [overlapping, laughing] Sorry to Maggie.

ELM: [laughs] I mean she’s got little cameos, but you know, she’s not one of the core four.

FK: No, yeah.

ELM: So they’re kind of these iconic figures, right, and the staging is very like, classical, you know, togas, and they’re kind of…it’s supposed to be like—

FK: [overlapping] Wooow.

ELM: [overlapping] —they’ve got an ancient ritual sort of thing going on. And then they perform the episode, but it’s just twisted completely out of recognition. So now—the antagonist in the original episode is Sideshow Bob, voiced by Frasier, Kelsey Grammer—and so now the antagonist is Mr. Burns, who’s like…the ultimate comic evil, right? 

FK: Uh huh.

ELM: And every trace of irony from The Simpsons is utterly stripped out, there’s no more…and like, in an episode that was already so ironic and referential, and it’s all a big joke, that’s all completely gone and it’s just this very earnest good versus evil kinda parable.

FK: Huh.

ELM: And then there’s a lightsaber battle. [both laugh] So it’s like, these bits of pop culture that kinda seeped through and got twisted around and got distilled down to this very basic form. But it feels, it feels like this, it feels like a religious ritual of a, you know, staging a parable or whatever. Right?

FK: Right, yeah.

ELM: And that’s it, that’s the end. So it’s this idea of like, what is the most ironic, postmodern, kinda nihilistic comedy, cartoon comedy, that’s what would happen to pop culture if there was an apocalypse. 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And so it’s obviously just a very thinky kinda play, but I think it was very interesting, and this sort of idea of…the steps that it has to take to get to the end, you know? Like, everything kind of has to be stripped away, has to be retold and retold and retold, but so distanced from the corporation, from, you know, from that moment of pop culture, to kinda get distilled down to what it is. And it made me think about this topic, this fandom and religion kind of…intersection, right, to say like, once you get to that distance—and also to compare it to this land where they’re kind of recreating their own ownership of characters in what had once been like a kind of collective…you know, in the very beginning it’s just a fond thing they’re sharing together, pop culture fandom, right, and then it gets kinda weaponized at each other, you know what I mean?

FK: I mean, I have to say that like, that, you telling me about that, I just, all I can think of is like, LiveJournal RPGs, or whatever, where people are like claiming characters, and like, you know? 

ELM: Yeah.

FK: That feels so real, because it feels like I’ve seen people doing it. Obviously not in a post-apocalyptic context, but like, yeah! You know? I believe that.

ELM: Right, even in a space in an RPG or whatever, where it really doesn’t matter, no one’s gonna get any money from it, and you still feel like you need to have some sort of ownership over it, right?

FK: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, or control. I mean, this is also interesting because that is an element of…you know, I mean one thing is that that feels really engaged with specifically the way that the Gospels were written, and the way that it doesn’t relate necessarily to the way that the Quran was written, or the Torah or something like that. Or, you know, Buddhist sacred texts, or the Bhagavad Gita, it’s very specific, and so I find that interesting. Although—

ELM: [overlapping] Wait, can you tell me more about this?

FK: Sure! I mean, uh…the Letters of Paul are the first thing in the Bible and that’s in like, AD 50, and yes I’m using AD intentionally, this is a Christian discussion about this thing. So that’s fifty years after Jesus died.

ELM: Wait, so like, the whole Bible, the Christian Bible, the New Testament, is all after the fact and in fact often very after the fact, right?

FK: Yeah, the earliest thing is like 30 years—sorry, I misspoke earlier—is like 30 years after Jesus died, is the earliest part of the Christian Bible. 

ELM: Yeah.

FK: And then, like, the Gospels, some of them are maybe as late as 120 AD, so like 100 years after Jesus died, no way are these people people who actually were there. They’re the students of people who were there or whatever, right? So Paul definitely knew people who had been there, and so forth, you know. He’s close enough that there’s actual interaction. [laughs]

ELM: Yeah.

FK: But it’s still pretty, it’s still kind of a long time ago, right? So I see the relationship between that, which is different than, like, the Quran, which was written while, like Mohammed—I mean he didn’t write it, he was probably illiterate—but he dictated it to someone. You know? It’s a direct word.

ELM: Right. Right, right.

FK: Or it’s also different to the Torah, which is this concatenation of different texts over hundreds and hundreds of years. And I don’t know enough about the Bhagavad Gita but I feel pretty certain that that’s also a different, you know, method of this. So it’s like, it’s specific to one religion, is what I’m trying to say.

ELM: That’s interesting. I wonder if she was doing that consciously. Probably, she seems like [laughs] someone who’d be very, you know, up on these ideas.

FK: [overlapping] Yeahhh.

ELM: I think that one thing that’s really interesting about the play, that you probably would never be able to get with something like an ancient religious text, is like…we know the source, right? 

FK: Yeah!

ELM: [overlapping] And you can see all the ways that it got twisted. I mean even the fact that it’s now Mr. Burns, you know, and it’s like, how did this happen? [laughs] How did—

FK: [overlapping] Yeah, exactly!

ELM: [overlapping] Like, you muddled up the original story so much, and turned it into what you needed it to be.

FK: Right.

ELM: I mean, if you’re comparing that to, it’s making a clear statement about religion, too, and saying that humans will, like, create these texts, because inherently they’re human-created, they’ll make them into what they need to be.

FK: Yeah, I mean you can take lots of viewpoints on that, and I, to be clear, I don’t think less of my holy texts for knowing that they were written down later and that they probably are not like…a one-to-one thing. Again, this is my personal opinion, so if any Christians are listening to this who disagree with me on this, more power to you. But like, you can still have something that has been altered that is what it’s needed to be, right? It’s not inherently bad for these people to be reinterpreting The Simpsons into this thing that they need. 

ELM: [laughs] In fact it seemed like they were liking it a lot, you know, it’s, it’s…

FK: [overlapping, laughing] Yeah!

ELM: [overlapping] It’s a very, like, you know… It was weird, too, like, “Oh my God, this is kinda moving, I’m worried, is Bart gonna die in this battle with Mr.—this lightsaber battle with Mr. Burns?” [FK laughs] You know, it’s not something that, that kind of basic, the basicness of it is not something that I usually find moving, because I, you know. I’m a…a deeply ironic 20…21st century person who just wants a normal Simpsons episode or whatever.

FK: Right.

ELM: In fact I don’t want that, I want a Frasier episode, but you know what I mean.

FK: I do know what you mean. [ELM laughs] I do.

ELM: But yeah, it’s really interesting. And I’m glad you found it interesting too, I wish you could’ve come with me. But it was just like, it goes back to what I was saying earlier about the kind of idea of…I mean, The Simpsons is not a, it’s a television show made by Fox, and a deeply commercialized show, it’s like one of the few shows that has truly, you know, first of all, extremely long, and long-standing global reach, the fact that this was written ten years ago and no one finds The Simpsons less culturally relevant now, somehow, you know what I mean?

FK: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

ELM: It's a foundational sort of pop-culture text, right?

FK: Yeah.

ELM: Made by Fox. And now owned by Disney, it’s on Disney + now, that’s where you can watch this episode, right? So like, this kind of idea of a deeply commercial pop culture text… There’s no, there’s no pop culture thing that’s not deeply commercial, right, that’s what pop culture is.

FK: Yeah, that’s the definition.

ELM: Right. So to see what kind of happens when that remains mass culture, but is removed from the idea of “pop” because there are no more corporations.

FK: Right, right, and that’s the thing, right to some extent fan culture…some fan cultures do pull things further away from that corporate end, but you can never really, you can never really get out of that context unless the whole world is dead, you know? [laughs]

ELM: Yeah, I don’t think at scale anyone can do that. You know, you can say “Oh over here in this corner this is what we’re doing with it, we’re so far removed from it, etc etc.” 

FK: Of course.

ELM: But it’s gonna be an inherently small group. And when you trace it back, everyone is gonna go back to the thing. And yeah, you can be in a fandom of something that’s hundreds of years old and in the public domain or whatever, but it probably still was authored by a person that we know, and they got paid for it, and they held some sort of rights to it for some period, you know what I mean? I don’t know, it just feels, it feels very different. It’s like the intentions, fans do things with it that maybe try to elevate it beyond the kind of commercial, the deep down in the…the earthliness of it, the commercial element of it, you know what I mean?

FK: Yeah. I do know what you mean. So, one of the things that this is reminding me of, I guess because I’m really interested in this play, but one of the things that Rebecca was asking about, which I think has, is reflected in our conversation about this stuff, as two Christians talking about this, is sort of the cultural Christianity of fandom.

ELM: I can’t believe you just called—you just called me a Christian.

FK: You go to Episcopal church all the time, are you not a Christian?

ELM: I just love singing the songs.

FK: OK, we have one Christian and one person who loves to go to Episcopal church because she loves singing the songs but is not a Christian. 

ELM: [laughs] Does this offend you?

FK: I’m just surprised, I guess I thought that you, uh…I guess I thought that you identified that way. Um…I’m not offended by it, I’m just like, “Oh, I didn’t know.” Anyway, certainly two people who are culturally Christian.

ELM: Oh yeah, sure.

FK: At a minimum. Yeah, it makes me think about sort of that, that as the basis for Western fandom, and a lot of thought, even beyond stuff that is obvious.

ELM: Well—

FK: In Western fandom.

ELM: I think even a, you know, we’re transitioning away from talking about this play, you’re describing the way the play felt in conversation with—you know what I mean? It’s about American pop culture, right, coming from this kind of long-standing, broad-strokes cultural Christianity, and then recreating the actual, so it’s like, absolutely. And we could say Anglo-American, or Western, or whatever. But I think just for the hell of it, let’s just say American, for right now.

FK: Sure.

ELM: Because that is the source of a huge portion of the fan culture that we talk about, right? Like, the actual source material.

FK: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

ELM: So yeah, I think that’s what Rebecca was getting at, and it’s funny, I knew we would have to lead back to it but I think we’ve already been there. The way that—Rebecca gave some examples, the one that I see the most often discussed in fandom is about purity culture, and often when people are making these comparisons, they’re not even talking about Christianity to me, they’re talking about American evangelical—which isn’t, to me, a religion, that’s a culture. Obviously there’s a religious component, but like, you know, there’s that famous article or study done a few years ago saying that, it was some large percentage of evangelicals don’t even go to church.

FK: [overlapping] Yep, absolutely.

ELM: [overlapping] It’s the political alignment, and it’s cultural, it’s a worldview. But it’s not necessarily anything about actually having a religious practice.

FK: Mmhmm, absolutely. And that also…yeah. That brings up all sorts of stuff, but yes! That’s, I’m gonna leave that stuff to the side [ELM laughs] because it’s not that important, go on.

ELM: Right. So that one I think is pretty clear and I think has been well-articulated across Tumblr in particular. The stuff about redemption is stuff that I see that doesn’t seem to be as popular, and I get why people get defensive about this, right? Because you have, whether they are religious or not, people coming from American kind of, I keep saying broad-strokes cultural Christianity, that is like, our pop culture, our mass culture is steeped in that. These are the, [laughs] these are the, you’re just nodding so, so rigorously right now, you’re like, “Ohhh, yeah!!”

FK: Ohhh, yeah!! [both laughing]

ELM: Yeahhh! [laughs] Right? And I think stuff from half a century ago, much more explicitly, they would just say that. And now it’s like, unsaid but also still…still very much there.

FK: Incredibly much. And I mean, it’s even down to like, basic orientations of like, well what should we be concerned about? Like, what should we be worried about, in the way that we’re living our life? And the Christian idea of, like, sin and forgiveness and redemption is so much at the heart of so many of these stories.

ELM: Right.

FK: And that is not really a coherent way of approaching it if you’re coming from, like, a Buddhist culture, for instance.

ELM: Right, right.

FK: I mean just as, just pulling something out of the air…

ELM: [overlapping] Just pick a religion… You know, the stuff I see a lot is pushback from Jews.

FK: Oh yeah.

ELM: You know, saying, “I’m sorry, this is, the way you’re talking about redemption and sinning and stuff like that is like, it has nothing to do with us, and you’re pulling me into this.” Especially like, I’m in a ship where one character is Jewish, right?

FK: [overlapping] Ohhhh, yeah, yeah, that must really come into play.

ELM: I mean, I don’t think that most—there’s some interesting meta from Jews talking about some of this stuff, but I also think that most people have, like, no conception that…they’re just doing it unthinkingly, right? 

FK: [overlapping] Yeah! And it’s, and it’s—

ELM: [overlapping] It’s, it’s interesting to read fic that’s written by Jews, that approaches these characters in, like, a different way, I would say.

FK: Yeah. And I think it’s really really hard to see, when you’re sort of just swimming in that all the time. I mean, I think about like… I don’t know if your friends had this, but when I was a kid there was this period of time where like, people figured out that C. S. Lewis was like, “I will shoot myself if anybody doesn’t know the lion is Jesus?”

ELM: You know what, I feel like no one I knew talked about those books in any way.

FK: That’s funny, I had a lot of friends who were of different religious backgrounds who read those books, and when the penny dropped that it was like, [ELM laughs] so culturally Christian, there was this moment when we were like, maybe eight or nine, and read them and loved them, and then looked back at them after a couple of months or whatever, and people got so betrayed.

ELM: I definitely—

FK: [overlapping] That they didn’t notice the first time, because it was just the, it was just the water that they were swimming in, you know?

ELM: Yeah, he’s just a big lion. I loved him.

FK: I mean I, I love C. S. Lewis, so, I’m not complaining about it.

ELM: [overlapping] I loved, I loved him because he was a lion, actually. Because I love cats. So. [FK laughs] And because he seemed like the most middle-aged man figure there, you know, and that’s important to me to relate to, so.

FK: [overlapping] Right. That’s, that's all right.

ELM: I do feel like I see when people talk about this moment, because I’ve seen people discuss it after the fact, sounding like they’ve been tricked. Right, and mad. 

FK: Oh yeah, yeah.

ELM: And in a similar way, talking about discovering Philip Pullman’s books, and acting like, “Oh yeah, I got validated then, I knew it was all a lie,” you know, that kinda thing. 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: Is there sometimes a bit of childishness in the way people talk about both of those books? Because I think when they had those moments of realization, about those books’ relationship to religion, they were at a very formative age and it often feels also tied up with like, rebelliousness against their parents, right, there’s an attitude around the Lewis books of like, [laughs] “C. S. Lewis forced me to go to church,” you know? [FK laughs] “But he didn’t tell me.”

FK: But I think the funny thing is that a lot of those, a lot of the same people who have those reactions to these books which are not…you know, they ain’t hidin’ anything—

ELM: No, they’re not subtle.

FK: [overlapping] —like guess what, C. S. Lewis is gonna shoot himself if anybody doesn’t know the lion is Jesus, but…there’s still a lot of cultural Christianity in the way that people are writing and reading and thinking about life. You know? Even when people have repudiated it. And you just don’t notice it on a day-to-day basis, and I’m sure that this is also the case if you’re living in a different dominant religious context, that people are having like, culturally Islamic or culturally Buddhist or whatever thoughts, and are not realizing it, not recognizing the way that they approach things being really shaped by that.

ELM: But like, what we’re talking about right now is, like, all of culture. Right? So I don’t think those are fandom-specific. I mean that’s gonna inform fandom, just the way that like, you know, our culture being inherently white supremacist, and you know, subtle, subtly racist in works that are not outwardly racist, right, and then you bring those stories, you bring those patterns, you bring those biases into fandom. And I guess yeah, with all this stuff it gets heightened because fandom is a heightened cultural activity, you know what I mean? 

FK: Right.

ELM: And so you might wanna seek out, what is like a…crypto-Christian narrative, or not that crypto, right, some sort of redemption arc or whatever, that is clearly influenced by Christian themes. 

FK: Right.

ELM: Maybe you like, enjoy that in your media passively, but then when you’re in fandom, because it’s so heightened and so active, then you’re like, “The only way these stories can conclude is if this is what happens to my baby boy! Maybe he’s a sinner now—” you know what I mean? 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And then it turns into like, your—not to, I was gonna say “crusade,” and then I was like maybe I shouldn’t just use that word in passing—

FK: [overlapping] Maybe that’s not the right word in this context… [laughs]

ELM: But like, it can feel like that, right, so it’s taking the biases and the structures of our general media landscape and just dialing them up to 11. 

FK: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s complicated too, because it’s [laughs] I’m gonna, I’m gonna defend it, I’m gonna say, this is not like racism where there should be no racism ever and nobody should be doing racism at people, you know…it’s OK for some people to intentionally write narratives with Christian themes, [ELM laughs] that’s fine, but, but it is hard when it’s like, unacknowledged. 

ELM: Yes.

FK: Or when it’s, you know, when it’s not something that is…framed up in a way, when it’s just assumed, and I can imagine that that feels really alienating if you, if that’s not the context you’re in and you’ve sort of, the scales have fallen from your eyes and you’re seeing it everywhere. I mean I know that’s alienating in culture in general, and I imagine it’s equally or more alienating in fandom.

ELM: Yeah. Absolutely. These are certainly the… I encounter these posts pretty regularly, of people talking about this who feel alienated, who are from other religious backgrounds that are not Christian. But it’s hard, too, because I feel like, you know, I was talking about Milton or whatever earlier, they were so close to the source then. You know what I mean?

FK: Yeah.

ELM: No educated person in whatever year Milton happened to live in, not sure which one that was, [FK laughs] if you were educated, which, if you could read, you’d be in a small minority, and you would read the Bible. Right? That would be the foundation of your education, still.

FK: Well, and for Milton particularly, because he was like a…wasn’t he like a…yeah, he was like a… [ELM laughs] yeah. Nevermind.

ELM: [overlapping] I’m talking—I’m talking about, I’m talking about just, like, his readers. You know what I mean?

FK: Yeah yeah yeah, them too, yeah yeah yeah.

ELM: They would all know the Bible backwards and forwards. And so they were very close and they could understand, these allusions would be very straightforward to them.

FK: Yeah.

ELM: You know, this is something I even found, as an English major who, with an a-religious upbringing and only kind of a passing knowledge of certain stories or references, right, there were so many times when I would be like, learn—

FK: ¿Qué? [laughs]

ELM: —that I’d missed a biblical allusion, especially when I was reading texts from a few hundred years ago, right? To the point where, you know, it made me feel like I had to do some sort of catch-up. I was like, “Should I just read the Bible? If I just read the Bible cover to cover, would I then like…you know?” And then I was like, “Who cares. Whatever.” [laughs]

FK: The answer is also probably no, because there’s so—just like, I mean I imagine this is the case with every religion’s text, those religions that have texts, which is not every religion—but that there’s particular ones that are more important and some that are less, depending on when, and there’s too much in there for you to remember all of it. So.

ELM: This is fair. And isn’t it just easier if the professor then mentions it? You know? 

FK: It sure makes it easier for you.

ELM: Or you read some analysis of it and they tell you about it? That just seems ideal actually, so.

FK: There is a lot of, there is a lot of crazy stuff in the Bible, I will give it that, but go on.

ELM: OK, maybe someday. But you know, basically what I’m saying is, I feel like it’s so—I’m describing this as something that we’re steeped in, with, say American pop culture media, or literature in English, or whatever, Anglo-American literature, right, and historically, and because so many people are actually quite distant, even if you are of Christian descent, like me, I couldn’t spot those things, probably before you started studying these things you might not have spotted them either, right?

FK: Oh definitely not, are you kidding? I was raised atheist, I would not have known shit about shit.

ELM: [laughs] Yeah, but you knew he was a Jesus lion, whereas I just thought he was this beautiful middle-aged man-lion.

FK: I mean I figured that out eventually, after people started complaining about it, took me a while, don’t you worry. [ELM laughs]

ELM: Oh man, and I watched the, did you watch the BBC adaptation?

FK: Oh, yes I did!

ELM: And he was such a magical, he was such a big, big lion, you know?

FK: [laughs] I do know!

ELM: Oh, and Lucy, her little face, that Lucy, remember?

FK: I remember.

ELM: [laughs] OK, anyway.

FK: [overlapping] I loved those. Great. Anyway, anyway anyway anyway…

ELM: Didn’t have James McAvoy though, so really, really…

FK: Oh my God. [ELM laughs] All right. [laughs] So, C. S. Lewis aside—

ELM: James McAvoy aside—

FK: Thank you, thank you.

ELM: [overlapping] James McAvoy as Mr. Tumnus aside.

FK: Elizabeth. I’m gonna reach through this computer and just whack you. What are our takeaways from all of this?

ELM: Um, I think that one of the things that’s really striking me is how…tangled up culture and religion—this isn’t, I’m not breaking any news here to myself or to anybody else [FK laughs]—I feel like sometimes people in fandom try to like, hash some of this stuff out, and you know, I definitely think I see people kinda defaulting to their own religious experiences. Like I said, when they’re making purity culture arguments, almost exclusively talking about a very specific kind of like, cultural and religious belief within the United States, but it’s not even a majority one. I mean sure, maybe this is, it’s a majority in the legislatures of certain states, right, but I don’t think that’s our national dominant cultural and religious stance.

FK: No.

ELM: And I definitely see those parallels, and I think those are often well-made arguments, but I also think that it’s very easy for people to like, talk about fandom and religion together and…kind of…do exactly the thing you’re talking about, kind of—what’s the term for saying that one thing is representative of the whole?

FK: Eliding? Not eliding. Um…

ELM: Not Schenectady…uh… [both laugh]

FK: Synecdoche.

ELM: Syne—no, I’m from near Schenectady, so that’s what it is to me. You know what I mean?

FK: Great. Yeah, I know what you mean.

ELM: Like yeah, absolutely facile, is the word you used earlier, but it often feels like really really flattening and misrepresenting the kind of complicated breadth of both of these things.

FK: Yeah, yeah. I think so, and I think that one of the things that really is striking to me about this, is how important it is to know why you’re making a comparison before you make it. Right? 

ELM: Sure.

FK: There are good reasons to make some kinds of comparisons, and other times it’s like, I don’t know, what are we, what are we gaining from this, what are we learning from this, what is useful? And I think that I would put the majority of people writing about fandom and religion in that, like, “Well what is useful about it?” I will give the person who wrote about this in 1994 in a way that suggested that they had just discovered that Star Trek fandom ever existed, I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they were genuinely asking this question, as like a religious studies person—I found this article as I was researching it—but like at a certain point you have to be like, “No, guys. No. There has to be a better reason than that.”

ELM: Right. Yeah.

FK: We’ve done it before. It’s been mentioned. [laughs]

ELM: Yeah, well I definitely feel like articles written within the last few years, I truly don’t understand why…

FK: The broad-strokes “This is like religion” kind of thing.

ELM: Yeah. But they feel like that too, they’re like, “I just realized!” [laughs]

FK: Yeah.

ELM: Like, yeah, it’s always like, yeah, “They say canon and they say canon!” and you’re like, “OK…” 

FK: Yeah, yeah.

ELM: You know? I absolutely agree, it’s like, to what end? 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: I’m also thinking about you saying, drawing a comparison or a difference between my example about racism in society or racism in art and culture and media versus racism in fandom. I, you know, I agree with you that the difference there is, like, a redemption arc…that’s a good storyline. [FK laughs] It’s not the only storyline, like if you start saying that’s the only way a story can resolve, you’re just like, not very good at stories, also, because that’s clearly false. 

And I do think, I’ve seen critiques from people from other religious backgrounds, too, saying like, “This kind of need for closure, this need for the ends to be tied up,” whereas, like, I’ve seen it from Jews in particular talking about being able to sit with ambiguity and mystery, because that’s a big part of Jewish belief, whereas Christians need some nice tidy answers, you know? [FK laughs] 

And I understand why those will be the sources of, those worldviews clashing can be the source of fandom disagreement. So yeah, I absolutely would encourage people, I think even a-religious people will argue, will wind up arguing for, [laughs] even people who are avowed atheists who really hate Christianity will sometimes wind up arguing for Christian themes as the only way to resolve a story, and it’s like, “All right, well maybe interrogate that one for three seconds.”

FK: Yeah, totally.

ELM: But that is to say, like I said, it’s also not a reason to throw those storylines out. This is, these are fundamental parts of our cultural history.

FK: Yeah. All right, well, I think that’s pretty good work for an hour’s podcast! [both laugh]

ELM: Do you, can you get some credit for this, like class credit?

FK: No.

ELM: Can you do an independent study?

FK: I possibly could, but…

ELM: Here, I got it, I got it. Tell them, OK. So, say that fandom is like religion. And so you’re gonna do an independent study where you do a biweekly podcast about fandom, which is like religion.

FK: Elizabeth…you know how earlier I was saying I was gonna reach through the computer and slap you? [ELM laughs] We have to stop this podcast right now or else I’m actually gonna do it.

ELM: Well we can’t stop it right now, because we need to talk about Patreon.

FK: Ughhh! [ELM laughs] All right. Patreon.com/Fansplaining—

ELM: [overlapping, laughing, Al Pacino voice] Just when you thought you were out…

FK: —is how we fund this podcast. Give us some money please. [laughs]

ELM: Oh my God, Flourish, is your DayQuil wearing off? [laughs]

FK: [laughs] Maybe!

ELM: It lasts for four hours, so that’s not right. OK, so…we were hoping to send out our Tiny Zine, which features ficlets by Flourish, on The X-Files; Betts, former guest Betts, doing a Star Wars modern AU; and Britta Lundin, also former guest, doing an Our Flag Means Death ficlet. So we have those three cute little ficlets. And we were hoping to send it out while I was traveling in September. And…I’m gonna give you a little behind-the-scenes thing. So I was like, “Flourish. [FK laughs] Here’s the PDF. Can you print one out, and fold it up, and then take a photo?” and Flourish was like “Yeah, I can totally do that.” And then I logged onto Slack the next morning, 8:00am German time, radio silence. And I was like, “Fuck, Flourish just completely blew me off, all I asked for was one photograph,” and then you were like, “After I spoke to you I laid down and I did not get up.” [both laugh]

FK: And that was 100% true. [both still laughing] That was the day when I felt like, I think that the only way you could describe it was that it felt like the hand of God was pushing me into the couch, and I couldn’t get up. 

ELM: Are you sure it wasn’t the Powers That Be, the people who make like, Supernatural or something?

FK: Oh yeah, it was them. [both laugh] Sitting on my chest. I’m glad that you can forgive me for that, and I am truly sorry to everybody for how long that took.

ELM: [overlapping, laughing] Oh my God, no, I, I felt bad for just, for being so dismiss—I was like, “No, Flourish totally blew me off, are you fucking kidding me,” and then I was like, “Now I feel bad for her, she’s still sick apparently, so.”

FK: [overlapping] I was really, really…I was, in context, I was very in denial about how sick I was, for like the first week and a half or whatever.

ELM: [overlapping] OK, I’m forgiven for misunderstanding your level of sickness.

FK: Oh, you’re very forgiven, because I was like, “I’m putting on a brave face, everything’s fine, it’s a mild case, we’re all OK,” and it was only after I hit like, week two that I was like, “This is not OK.” [both laugh] “I’m not OK. I wasn’t OK to begin with.” So anyway, all that to say, you can still get in on the Tiny Zine. Now that I’m feeling better, we’re sending them out this weekend.

ELM: We are going to print them out this weekend when Flourish is physically able to stand, and we can walk to a printer together, and print them.

FK: Yes. I am, I am capable, we’re gonna do it.

ELM: So that’s, uh…Patreon.com/Fansplaining, that’s for $10/month patrons. We also have other rewards, like little pins for $5, special episodes for $3…we gotta do another special episode soon, I’m not sure what, but we’ll figure something out.

FK: We’ll figure something out, it’s gonna be great, whatever it is!

ELM: OK, that’s a big sell, but all right, I’m ready.

FK: They’re always great, Elizabeth.

ELM: Well, you need to actually watch some TV that’s not The X-Files so we can talk about literally any other show.

FK: The Rings of Power?

ELM: Literally any other show.

FK: [laughs] I am intending to watch Interview With a Vampire.

ELM: [gasps] I was too! Why don’t we do that.

FK: Great. Let’s do it.

ELM: Great. All right.

FK: Solved.

ELM: We should see a few episodes, so, we can’t just do it.

FK: Yeah, we’ll, we’ll get there.

ELM: OK, cool. So, or even all the way down to $1/month, you get access to our, one of our special episodes we did with our friend Javier Grillo-Marxuach. So, that’s all on Patreon. But, if you don’t have cash to spare, if you don’t want all these incredible rewards, there’s a few ways to support the podcast non-monetarily. You can subscribe on the podcatcher of your choice, do we still say podcatcher? [FK laughs] I don’t know.

FK: [laughs] Well we do, maybe no one else does.

ELM: [overlapping] OK, yep, or you can share the episodes, especially the transcripts, every single episode has audio, show notes, and a transcript all on one page on Fansplaining.com, and we’d love to get more audience members who are not listeners. ‘Cause you know, we have transcripts right on the day when the audio comes out. Or, you can send us a question or comment. The various places you could do that: fansplaining@gmail.com; Fansplaining.com, our website, there’s an ask box; on Tumblr, we have our ask box open, anon is on; or you can call us and leave a voicemail: 1-401-526-FANS. You can remain anonymous or pseudonymous at all these places. And finally you can follow us on Twitter or Instagram, or like Rebecca, become a Patron, you can leave us questions and comments right there on Patreon!

FK: Amazing, you, you just, you went through that so smoothly, every question is answered, thank you Elizabeth.

ELM: [laughs] Well, you’re welcome, what praise.

FK: All right. I do think I need to get off, because this is like the longest I’ve talked in a month.

ELM: I can’t believe—you and Nick don’t just have, you know, 90-minute jam sessions about various cultural topics?

FK: Sometimes Nick has 90-minute jam sessions [FK laughs] about cultural topics. But if I’m not feeling… [laughs] If I’m not feeling well, I am not joining in.

ELM: OK, I’m sorry, that’s a perfect description of a, like a, what’s, I was gonna say “Is he an English professor.” He is technically an English professor, right?

FK: Yeah, yeah. Yep.

ELM: Yeah, it’s like, yes, just, just he has 90-minute jam sessions [both laughing] on cultural topics.

FK: I love you honey. [both still laughing]

ELM: That’s great, that’s his job description, jammin’ away.

FK: All right.

ELM: OK, you go lie down, drink some fluids.

FK: Will do.

ELM: Text me if you need anything.

FK: Oh my God, I’m fine.

ELM: OK, well, I hope you feel super great the next time we talk, Flourish.

FK: Thank you, I’ll talk to you later, Elizabeth.

ELM: K, bye.

FK: Bye.

[Outro music]

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