Fandom as We Get Older

By

Scott D. Parker

 

Being a fan of something is different when you’re younger.

A fellow Gen-Xer and I have discussion about fandom: what it was like as a kid or a young adult and what it’s like as we continue to get older. Recently he sent me a text and I’ve been reflecting on it.

I think my new take is that something has to touch my life in reality for my mind to naturally lock onto it the way it did before. For example, a TV show doesn't actually touch my life. I'm not part of the creation of it, distribution, marketing, etc. My role is the very last step, and it's simply consuming it. So, I just can't get into that when I naturally think much harder and longer about my career, family health, financial concerns.

I think we dismiss those as boring adult things, but they're real. As a teen, the happenings of my favorite band felt real. As an adult, I know I'm just their customer.

I think my friend’s point of view has some merit. When we’re teenagers, our lives center on fewer things: school, trying to get girls or guys to notice us, and all the stuff we consume. Our parents paid the bills, kept the lights on, and made sure we had food. Health care? Mom took us to the doctor. Oil bust threatening dad’s job? In my house, those conversations happened beyond my ears. All I had to do was do kid things.

And content filled those mental gaps.

The Beauty of Fewer Choices

Part of it is discovery. When I watched Star Wars, a whole new world opened up. My mind expanded in ways my young brain could barely comprehend. I needed to know EVERYthing about Star Wars and I consumed it all. This avid and active fandom kept going, to music, movies, TV shows, comic books, and books. Point of fact: I can still recite the trash compactor number from the first Star Wars movie. Every new discovery—from a new-to-be band to a new movie or TV show—meant I dove in deep and learned all I could about them.

Another part is volume. As a young lad, from 1977-1980, there was only one Star Wars movie. Yes, I didn’t have a VHS copy of it, but I saw every re-release, read the book and comics, and listened to the soundtrack and The Story of Star Wars LP endlessly. Plus, without all those adult things to worry about, all I did was consume. With Star Trek, only the 79 episodes existed. Novels came out annually from your favorite authors. You had time to read them, especially with only three network channels, PBS, and your local UHF station. 

The Volume Ramps Up

Yet in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the volume increased. More TV networks. Cable TV. More Star Trek and, after Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire proved there was an appetite for Star Wars, dozens of books, often multiple books published per year. Very soon, the volume began to be overwhelming. You just couldn’t keep up.

And we’re growing up. For me, that meant grad school and all that I needed to do to earn that degree. New book by Stephen King and it’s about 700 pages? Eeesh. Well, I’ll get to it after I finish my paper. New TV show on Thursdays? Well, since that’s when I have to work to cover rent, I’ll just have to tape it and hope I don’t forget. 

Now, one thing I’ve always done is make the time for movie premieres. If there’s a movie I want to see, I’ll be there opening day. I’ve always done that, but often, as soon as it’s over, I’m heading back home to sleep, study (grad school days), or take care of the kid (parenthood).

Streaming (and Real Life) Increases the Volume

After Netflix showed the world the future of television, the content became a tidal wave. In these past fifteen or so years, there’s just so much content. I’ve often had discussions with folks where I ask if they’ve seen TV Show A. They say no and then ask if I’ve seen TV Show B. I say no and then we proceed to explain why our show is good. Granted, I’ve been introduced to some good shows this way, but wasn’t it always nice when everyone tuned in on Thursdays to see what the friends were up to this week?

Oh, and now that we’re in our thirties, forties, and fifties, all those “boring adult things” take the pole position. Keep your job. Raise your kids. Tend to your house. Take care of relatives. Go to church. Ferry the kids to their myriads of activities. Watch their programming over and over while you miss the stuff you really want to watch. 

It can be overwhelming.

Remember how I mentioned I could still recite the trash compactor number from a movie I first saw in 1977? Well, when it came time to prepare for Andor season 2, I had to watch a few recaps to remind myself what happened in season 1. And try hard to remember character names (other than Andor and Mon Mothma), many of which I didn’t. 

It’s different being a fan when you get older, isn’t it? At least at the same level of intensity. Yes, there are tons of fans who retain their youthlike zeal for various franchises and sporting teams and other things we use to fill out time. For those fans, I applaud you. Bravo for making time to maintain that level of fandom. Sometimes I actually envy y’all.

But for me, to circle back to what my friend wrote, I don’t mind being a consumer. I enjoy all the things I consume when I consume them. And some are quite good and make me thing about them long afterwards. 

I’m really happy that all this content is out there and available for me to enjoy. I get to pick and choose what I want, enjoy it for a time, and then put it back on the shelf and replace it with the next thing. I often wonder what it would be like for my middle-aged self to go back in time and tell my younger self “There’s going to be so much Star Wars content out there that not only will you not be able to keep up with it all, you also won’t mind that you miss stuff.”

It would blow his young mind. But then again, he’s young, and has all the time in the world.

More Reading (and Watching) into the Dark

By

Scott D. Parker

(This is a rerun from 2023, but I still do this. Granted, this month's "reading into the dark" book is Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee. I pushed play on the audio on a morning commute to work and it took me less than ten minutes for me to stop the audio and read the description. By the time I got to the office, I had to jump on the internet to try and get a handle on what's going on. 

So reading into the dark does have its drawbacks. It applies to movies and TV as well, like I mentioned a few weeks ago with how I came to the new Daredevil TV series. I didn't want to do the background "homework" of watching multiple seasons of TV. I just wanted to watch the new thing. I did it again yesterday when I watched Thunderbolts. I had a vague idea of the characters (other than The Winter Soldier) and let the movie filled in the gaps. It did, but the themes of Thunderbolts are universal. I enjoyed the new Marvel movie, the first one I've seen since...Spider-Man: No Way Home. I went in to watch the movie...in the dark.)

At least nine times a year, I start a book with zero knowledge about it. And it’s wonderful

We’re all readers here, right? How do you usually pick that next book to read? If we’re in a brick-and-mortar store, we look at the cover, we note the author, read that all-so-important description, and then maybe a few pages of chapter one. If we’re online, all of that is still present, but we get the added bonus of that preview. We can actually read the entire preview before we make that purchase decision. Oh, and then there are the reviews—from professionals as well as amateurs.

In every step of this process, we constantly build on what we think the book is going to be about, especially if you’ve got a good book description.

When’s the last time you started a book without any of that? Okay, you can throw in the author, title, and book cover because you actually have to pick it up or download it, but nothing else.

For me, three out of every four months, I get to do that.

I’m in a four-guy science fiction book club that has lasted now over twelve years. We take turns picking the book, we read it during the month, and then gather on the first Tuesday of the next month to discuss. It is at the meeting where we offer our grade and then the Picker gets to explain why he picked the book. When it’s my turn to assign a book, I’ve already gone through every step mentioned above.

Sometime in 2021 (or maybe 2020), I started going into the books picked by the other guys cold. Nearly every selection is on audio so the day the new book is picked, I download it (via Libby and my local library or Audible) and start playing. In this manner, I experience pure story. Sure, I’ve seen the cover and read the title and author, but that’s it.

I love it. With so much of our lives dictated by a myriad of decisions—including the books we read—it’s great to have that choice offload three out of every four months.

What I really love is when there’s a book by an author I don’t know. It happened with this month’s selection: Dead Silence by S. A. Barnes. Knew nothing about it and it is the book to beat for 2023. It’s a rare trick when a book’s spooky nature and a narrator’s excellent performance literally gives me chills and compels me to turn around on my nightly walks to make sure I’m alone.

I find having a book picked for me quite fun. It also happens every month with my cozy mystery subscription through Houston’s Murder by the Book. I do read those book descriptions because I think they are among the best, pun-filled descriptions out there.

With the monthly SF book and the cozy book already picked for me, it frees me up to make my own selection with more care. After all, even with audiobooks, there is only so many story hours in a month.

Note: since there are so many hours in a month to read or listen to stories, if the book is bad or isn’t capturing me, I pull the rip cord and stop. I do not feel compelled to finish. The other guys in the club used to question me and my response remained constant: Life’s too short to read bad books or books you don’t enjoy. Thus, when I give it a grade—officially an I for Incomplete—I’ll explain why the book failed me.

So, have you ever read a book without even reading the book description or reviews or anything? You should try it sometime. Get into a book club, but if that’s not an option, have a spouse or friend select your next book and just read.

Photo: Mo Eid via Pexels.com

Poker Face and the Spiritual Reboot

by

Scott D. Parker

(With the upcoming debut of season 2 of Poker Face, I thought I'd repost what I thought about season 1 back in 2023).

Poker Face had me at Rian Johnson. But had I not known it was his brainchild, the show would have had me at the title font.

That yellow font on the title card, the year represented by Roman numerals. What decade are we in? Well, the headspace of creator Rian Johnson was the 1970s and 1980s with shows like Columbo and The Rockford Files. I suspect he gets nostalgically triggered when he sees the title cards of those shows and others and wanted to bring sensibility forward to the 2020s.

What sensibility is that? A traditional crime-of-the-week series. But not just that: a new crime every week with a whole new cast. Which brings me to another 1970s TV it reminds me of: The Incredible Hulk. Both feature a lead who is being chased across the country, meeting new people every week.

Now I know what you’re thinking: there are plenty of crime-of-the-week shows from Law and Order to Castle to all those shows on CBS I don’t watch. That’s not new. No, it’s not, but the laid-back aesthetic is a refreshing return to a modern TV landscape full of season-long streaming shows to modernized takes on old tropes.

Both of those things are fine, and I enjoy them, but I also appreciate the slower paced TV shows that used to dominate networks with stakes that are not really that high. And I very much applaud Johnson for channeling that vibe into something new rather than a modern reboot of an old franchise.

He could just have acquired the rights to, say, Columbo (the obvious ancestor to Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie Cale) and created a story around Columbo’s grandkid who is a rumpled detective just like Peter Faulk. I’d watch that and chances are, you would, too. But we’d constantly be comparing the new actor/actress to Faulk, much to the detriment of the new show. Also, we’d probably have the admittedly fun “sequel” to some random episode that no one remembers save the dedicate Columbo fans.

No, what Johnson did was take all those elements and, crucially, made something new, unique, and his own. That last bit is probably the key factor for Johnson. Given the opportunity, he’d probably make a Columbo sequel or adapt some Agatha Christie novel in to a movie, but with Poker Face and Knives Out and Glass Onion, he gets to revel in all the stuff he loves while playing in his own sandbox.