Fan culture is a tricky thing. If you’re a fan of something, you love it, you find meaning in it. That’s how I feel about a lot of movies and books and TV shows, from The Lord of The Rings to Game of Thrones to Parks and Recreation and beyond. Being a fan can be a hobby, and a lot of people can find enjoyment and community in it.
But it can get taken too far. Just in my experience, people can invest too much of their identities in this or that franchise, and when the story takes a turn, it can result in some bad behavior, whether that’s piling on the creators for taking things in an unexpectedly direction, harassing other fans for taking up positions you disagree with, and more.
The whole phenomenon is very interesting. Harry Potter star Evanna Lynch, who got cast as Luna Lovegood in the movies at the age of 14, has a unique perspective on it. As she laid out in the Talking Tastebuds podcast, she went from being a huge fan to starring the very franchise she was a fan of.
“It was so weird to go from being a fan that used to stalk Daniel Radcliffe to being someone people send fan mail to,” she said. “I was a really obsessive Harry Potter fan. I started reading when I was about eight, and that was just my whole identity for a while…It’s quite embarrassing. I did everything, I queued up for the books, I wrote fan mail to Daniel Radcliffe and got his autograph and I wrote fan mail to JK Rowling and we became friends.”
Just for the record, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with any of the stuff Lynch did, at least not on their own and in moderation, but looking back, she thinks that the “whole fan culture is not healthy”.
"When I met Daniel, Rupert [Grint] and Emma [Watson], I knew everything about them: their pets’ names, birthdays, I knew their parents’ names. I had to pretend I didn’t. It also meant I had nothing to say to them, I just adored them. I was suddenly confronted with, ‘Who am I?’ and when they asked me what I was interested in, I realised I didn’t even know myself, I didn’t know what to say."
Overall, she thinks being an obsessive fan is “disempowering” and said it’s common for teenagers to think of celebrities as “godly.”
I think this is a really interesting take on the whole subject. Can people find meaning, community, and fulfillment through stories? Yes; I think that’s what they’re there for. But can people also go to extremes and let these stories take up their whole world? Also yes. There’s no easy answer here and I appreciate Lynch lending her insight.
Of course, Lynch’s comments on fandom are far from the only controversy swirling around the Harry Potter world of late. A couple weeks ago, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling made some transphobic comments on Twitter, and followed it up with an essay that confirmed her commitment to an exclusionary, regressive ideology. Fans were quick to condemn her comments, in part because I think they clashed so brazenly with the book series’ message of inclusion, love and friendship.
Cast members of the Harry Potter movies also pushed back, including Daniel Radcliffe and Lynch herself, who said on Twitter that “trans women are woman” and that she disagrees with Rowling’s “opinion that cis-women are the most vulnerable minority in this situation and I think she’s on the wrong side of this debate.”
Lynch has since deleted her Twitter account.
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h/t Independent, Vanity Fair