How celebrity and fans reshape our world

Last month, so many excited Taylor Swift fans pre-ordered a book that it shot to the top of the Barnes & Noble and Amazon bestseller lists. Based on the publisher’s announcement, Swifties were convinced that the title was the iconic star’s memoir. Plot twist: it turned out to be the oral history of another global phenomenon, the K-pop group BTS.

Such is the power of fans in our time. Secular deities and devotees aren’t new, of course. A few have always been put on pedestals by the many. The icons range from Greek heroes to sports stars, from Elvis to the Beatles, from Rajesh Khanna to Shah Rukh Khan. The personalities don’t even have to be real: consider the disciples of a certain boy wizard or Baker Street consulting detective, for instance.

The difference between then and now is the power of the Internet to bring communities together and drive emotion and action. Two new books explore this phenomenon from opposite poles: Landon Jones’s Celebrity Nation looks at the cult of celebrity, and Michael Bond’s Fans sets out to be a social history of fandom. Both take a Western worldview but given human nature and global celebrity appeal, many inferences are universal.

Book covers of Landon Jones’s Celebrity Nation, and Michael Bond’s Fans

Jones was a former editor of People magazine and knows a thing or two about the world of celebrities. He peppers his book with anecdotes about those he has met over the years. Malcolm X surprises him “with his gentleness and responsiveness,” and Princess Diana impresses “with her approachability”. Quite.

He argues that the notion of celebrity has splintered into a million social media-fuelled pieces. Gone are the days of clear boundaries between fame and notoriety, and heroes and celebrities. Nowadays, everyone and their pet can become a micro-celebrity or an influencer. In the words of TV news anchor Chris Hayes: “Never before in history have so many people been under the gaze of so many strangers.”

What has remained constant is the loss of privacy. Jones notes that in his time, Charles Lindbergh was one of the most famous people alive, obsessively followed wherever he went – and he hated it. Others like Greta Garbo who wanted to be left alone broke what was already an unwritten rule of celebrity: “You had to accept it.”

He underlines that there is now a thriving international marketplace for celebrities. “Demand is high, and so is the supply, thanks to social media.” Celebrities are created and served up for consumption, endorsing more products and lifestyles than you can shake a selfie stick at.

Jones shows how this celebrity-driven industry has birthed an ecosystem connecting social media, entertainment, fashion, publishing, and more. It's a spiderweb, trapping us all in its sticky threads. As the caustic narrator of Sheena Patel's novel I'm A Fan says, our digital age dictates the stories we consume, market-approved narratives spun from our identities.

While some celebrities undeniably promote positive social change, Jones contends that a fixation on them undermines social capital — the collective values and resources that unite communities. Instead of purposeful connections, we create an unhealthy, networked dependence on larger-than-life personalities.

This can be taken to extremes: “People who lack meaningful relationships or a strong sense of personal identity may become overly absorbed in their attachment to celebrities.” There are cautionary tales aplenty of parasocial relationships teetering off the rails, including those in novels (Stephen King’s Misery) and films (Shah Rukh Khan’s Fan).

On the other side of the coin, Michael Bond’s Fans delves into the dynamics of community. He uses social identity theory as a starting point to understand why people tend to prefer those in their own groups. Bond explores the importance of belonging, how it shapes identity, and the impact on individuals. Along the way, he interviews fans of all stripes, those devoted to sports teams, musicians, Jane Austen, and more.

The impulse to be a fan, writes Bond, springs from the same source that makes people join religions, support political parties, or serve in the army. Fandoms offer the pleasures of tribalism with less of the harm: “a feeling of belonging and shared culture, a sense of significance and purpose, improved mental wellbeing.” At times, even “reassurance that your most outlandish convictions will be taken seriously”.

Like Jones, Bond stresses that the internet has profoundly changed how communities act, giving them extraordinary levels of power. They are quick to mobilise and “too consequential and too numerous to ignore,” for better or for worse.

Among the tribes that Bond speaks to are the “furries”, fervent fans of anthropomorphic characters such as Mickey Mouse and the Lion King. He also turns to “therians”, not fans in a strict sense, but those who believe “from a young age that they are an animal trapped inside a human body”.

At the very least, such communities are a relief from estrangement. They’re certainly more acceptable than “dark fandoms”, where people come together in a shared fascination for serial killers and mass murderers.

Both Jones and Bond’s books are readable and illuminating, but favour breadth over depth. Some issues could have done with a more extensive exploration. For instance, both touch upon how the relationship between political leaders and supporters increasingly resembles those between celebrities and fans. The obvious example is that of Trump, but there are clear echoes worldwide.

For Bond, this leads to politicians emphasising personality over policies. Jones elaborates that celebrity-politicians are attuned to their base but less sensitive to “the opinions and needs of voices in the back of the room and the ideas from the historical margins that need and deserve a hearing”. Charisma and propaganda overshadows real issues and blind devotion overlooks pesky ethical concerns.

At one point, Bond compares fan groups to dynamite. They can be used to construct, but also have the potential to destroy. Being a fan can be a joyful source of self-affirmation, but it can also turn into toxic acceptance. Keep your celebrity crushes in check and don’t join any fanatical cults along the way.