It is true that the media, both “mainstream” and bloke-in-the-pub, are in cahoots with fandoms that have gone beyond toxic and veered into murder-cult terrain. It takes only one viral tweet from one Nebraskan teenager to kick off hand-wringing about the borderline-derangement of today’s young morons.
We hardly need gesture towards the fanatical online support for Johnny Depp during his recent legal tangles with Amber Heard
That said, the much-circulated “Chris Evans letter” from a recently created, low-follower Twitter account does neatly encapsulate much of what is weird about the current state of celebrity worship. (For a few days at least, we can use the same construction employed when discussing the “Zinoviev letter”.)
It seems that Evans, sometime Captain America, has followed in the footsteps of Bradley Cooper, David Beckham and, um, Blake Shelton to be anointed as People Magazine’s sexiest man alive. Celebrations in the Evans fandom were not unqualified. One imagines @TeamEvans13 (for it is they) striding out before their own version of the GPO and unrolling a missive written on imitation vellum. “Chris Evans. As a 30 year old, I’ve basically grown up with your work ...” it begins before blathering on about Evans’s humility, his sense of responsibility and his love for his dog. Then we get to the rotten meat. Mr Evans’s “Fandom [their capitalisation] is not upset because you’re in a relationship.” Perish the thought. When has that ever happened? “It was the reveal of the relationship that made us feel betrayed.”
Blah, blah, blah. Apparently, on the press tour for Netflix’s The Gray Man he “sure did imply” he was single. We now know he’s not. Evans has been dating the Portuguese actor Alba Baptista for close to a year. Blah, blah, blah. Oh this is revealing. “An average 41 year man looking to settle down ... will probably not do so with a 25 year old woman,” we read in what feels like the closing chapter of a treatise.
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Anyway, the letter chimes with an increasingly unavoidable strain of possessive fandom. Consider the recent online discourse around Harry Styles’s relationship with Olivia Wilde. As long ago as last May, the admirably patient culture writer Kayleigh Donaldson laid out details of the supposed outrage in an article for the Daily Beast titled “Why Do Harry Styles Fans Hate Olivia Wilde?” Age is again a factor. Ms Wilde, actor and director, was accused of “grooming” the pop star, then shooting Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling, despite the fact, as Donaldson puts it, that “Styles isn’t a child and is now pushing 30″. The mad chatter lasted all the way to the premiere of Don’t Worry Darling at the Venice Film Festival in September.
We hardly need gesture towards the fanatical online support for Johnny Depp during his recent legal tangles with Amber Heard. The millions weeping out their love for Depp and their hatred of Heard gave the impression they were in the room during every alleged fracas.
This madness has been around forever
There are consistent linguistic conventions here. Most notably, the fans will invariably refer to their beloved by only his or her forename. Indeed, anyone directly associated with the object of affection will also be addressed in – as the French might have it – “tu” rather than “vous” language. Not only is Ms Swift always “Taylor” to her greatest fans, but Jack Antonoff, her current producer, is usually “Jack” on the social. “They’re just blatantly biased against Jack,” a fan said of Pitchfork Media days after that website gave what was then her most recent LP “only” 85 out of 100.
None of this is new. Few fandoms in pop history have been quite so deranged as that which gathered around The Bay City Rollers in the early 1970s. And, then as now, the most unhinged responses came when the beloved artist dared to hint at a romantic relationship. Alan Longmuir, the band’s bassist, later explained that Tam Paton, their notoriously terrifying manager, told the band they “were not to have girlfriends”. A few years earlier, Cynthia Lennon, wife to a Beatle, was also strategically edged into the shadows.
It is fascinating how closely the conversations between Robert De Niro and Sandra Bernhard, playing obsessive fans of Jerry Lewis’s oily chatshow host in Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, echo those between contemporary devotees of Taylor Swift, Harry Styles and Lady Gaga. They refer to their hero as “Jerry”. They speak as if they’ve been friends for years. That film was released in 1982. This madness has been around forever. The only significant difference now is that the maniacs have access to the online equivalent of a foghorn.
The celebrities will be fine. Just make sure to never marry. Never have a girlfriend. Never go on a date. If you’re lonely, get a dog. Just be sure the beast is no more than five years older or younger than you. The fandom doesn’t like that age differences.
