Fandom, Feminism, and One Direction

As feminist critics, we get very frustrated by the constant cultural devaluing of media aimed primarily at girls. It goes farther than just a lot of people saying, “Twilight sucks,” because Twilight does suck, but it’s not always clear if people are making a legitimate critique. Are they saying, “Twilight is poorly written and full of problematic assumptions and messages,” or are they saying, “Ew, it has a female creator, a female protagonist, and a predominantly female fanbase”?

Even the former can contribute to the cultural devaluing of girl stuff. I’ve read literally dozens of feminist critiques of Twilight, some of them very detailed and very thoughtful; but I just don’t see an equivalent barrage of critique leveled at, say, Transformers (which could be considered the masculine-coded equivalent of Twilight). Of course the reason for this is that Twilight, being “for girls,” is more interesting from a feminist standpoint than Transformers and offers a richer vein of potential for feminist analysis; but the upshot is a net contribution to the vastly greater cultural scrutiny of products for girls than of products for boys.

One solution is to quit scrutinizing stuff for girls so closely, but if we do that we lose valuable feminist analysis. Another is to start scrutinizing stuff for boys with the same critical eye, but Jesus Christ, have you seen a Michael Bay Transformers movie? Nobody should be subjected to that. Perhaps the correct counterbalance to feminist critique of bad stuff for girls is the feminist championing of good stuff for girls.

Caveat: when I say “for girls” or “for boys,” I am not being prescriptive. I’m a 24-year-old man writing publicly about my love of One Direction. I do not believe that any book, movie, music, TV show, article of clothing, color, website, philosophy, job, hobby, interest, or anything else is inherently “for girls” or “for boys.” I use the terms advisedly, to refer to the demographic towards which a product is primarily marketed and the demographic that comprises the majority of its consumers (which are not always the same demographic).

Let’s get the unavoidable critiques out the way first. One Direction is the product of a cynical capitalist empire and when you buy your 1D concert tickets (assuming you can – they’re way outside the grad student price range) you are lining the pockets of Simon Cowell and perpetuating the manufacturing of lowest-common-denominator entertainment where artistic merit is firmly subjugated to the concern of profit margins. The band is designed as a hegemonic artifact servicing the production of heteropatriarchal capitalist values: five cute but non-threatening boys for barely-adolescent girls to swoon over and spend their (parents’) money on.

One Direction is, first and foremost, a product. And yet I think the consumption of 1D by fans demonstrates that young women are not completely manipulable by corporatocracy, but rather comprise a powerful grassroots movement capable of taking what they are fed and reappropriating it on their own terms, often in ways that defy the design of the corporate media producers.

Fan participation is key to how 1D is consumed by its fans. Fanfiction platforms are abuzz with works about 1D, some of it even officially endorsed, and there’s even an iPhone app specifically for 1D fanfiction. Even the lead animator for Archer has gotten in on the action. Of course, it would be remiss of me to talk about 1D fandom without mentioning the Larry shippers – the people who want Louis and Harry to be in a relationship. Obsessive shipping of real people is damn creepy, and when the shippers try to bend reality to their will it gets a little horrifying. But I think for the most part, barring the tinhat fringe, it’s not the “real people” that many shippers are interested in. It’s “Harry” and “Louis,” the public personae, who are by design not real people. The artifice is part of the point. The fantasy of fan participation is the way in which fans, mostly young women, can reclaim agency by writing themselves and their desire into the corporate product they are fed.

The movie One Direction: This Is Us is just one part of the 1D package. It’s a bit of fluff comprising ninety minutes of concert footage and squeaky-clean depictions of the 1D lads being Nice Boys. As an official production, it naturally doesn’t address fan reappropriations, but there’s the kernel of something interesting there. The boys repeatedly thank their fans, claim to have the best fans in the world, say they would be nowhere without the fans. On the one hand this is kind of true, but on the other hand they are a manufactured group who started on a reality TV show and are in the pocket of the most powerful mogul in pop music. The fans may have made the band, but the media empire made the fans.

This is why I think it’s so important to see the fans reacting in ways the media empire couldn’t predict or endorse. These fans are an extremely powerful force, sometimes for ill, sometimes for good, and that cannot be ignored.

Of course, all the focus on the behavior of the fandom can obscure the basic fact that 1D are feelgood and fluffy. Even taking them at face value, they don’t on the whole have a bad message. In a pop milieu that elevates Robin Thicke, 1D are noticeable for their deference to female agency. Every song on their first album, and most of the songs on the subsequent two, are addressed to a non-specific (but usually female) “you.” They are all expressions of blisteringly sincere emotion within the completely artificial framework of the manufactured boy band talking to the generic listener, but the emotions are always gentle. There are the Sad Songs, where the singer (who is, it must be noted, never singular: the five lads divide up lines in all the songs) laments his deep, sincere, unrequited feelings for You; and there are the Happy Songs, where he/they rejoices in deep, sincere, requited love. The subtext of many of these Happy Songs is pretty explicitly sexual, but it’s always entirely reliant on Your – the implied young female listener’s – consent. Take one of my favorites, “Kiss You”:

 [youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/T4cdfRohhcg” title=”One%20Direction,%20%22Kiss%20You%22″]

Tell me girl if every time we touch
You get this kind of rush
Baby say yeah, yeah, yeah

If you don’t wanna take it slow
And you just wanna take me home
Baby say yeah, yeah, yeah

And let me kiss you

You’ll never convince me that this song is actually about kissing. Not only do the opening lines talk about “turn[ing] your love on,” that stuff about not taking it slow and taking the singer(s) home is language more usually associated with sex. Even if you accept the naivety of “kiss” at face value, though, rather than reading it as coy metonymy for sex, the song is explicitly about consent and communication. From the opening verse’s “Tell me how to turn your love on” to the chorus’ exhortation to “say yeah, yeah, yeah,” this whole song is about talking about what you want and making sure your partner is enthusiastically consenting before anything happens. Almost all of the songs, Happy or Sad, grant the (female) listener agency. The narrator lays his feelings bare, and You can prolong or end his misery or joy by reciprocating or not; but the decision is always Yours, and You are never coerced or ill-treated. “Blurred Lines” this is absolutely not.

Let’s get back to the gay shipping though. This Is Us doesn’t address it directly, but it takes care to show the lads’ uniquely close relationship with one another, in a way that’s surely grist to the shippers’ mill. There’s a certain queerness inherent to the homosocial structure of the boy band, noticeably in the collectivity: 1D don’t harmonize all the time, nor do they take turns on songs, but they share lines within the songs. Their songs seem to have a clear, singular narrator, but the five boys take turns being that narrator. The 1D collective addresses the (collectively-singular) listener. In some ways you’re being invited into a relationship with all five of these fellas, even though it is the done thing to have a favorite.

I’m not saying that One Direction is a feminist triumph. It’s still a manufactured boy band, and as such it’s not reinventing the wheel, and the fandom can be absolutely vicious. But I think it’s about time we started giving young girls a little more credit for the way they consume the things they like.

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax. He’s not afraid of all the attention, he’s not afraid of running wild.