Last week, I went to see The Kills at the Enmore Theatre.
The last time I’d seen them was five years earlier at the Metro. That show was the fifth time I’d attended one of their gigs in the space of four months, and I’d basically been listening to their four albums on repeat for about a year.
I was a fan, a hardcore fan. Absolutely obsessed. But a lot has changed for me in five years. Five years ago, at the height of my Kills fandom, I was living overseas without my close support network and coming to terms with my sexuality. With no-one to lean on, I turned to music, and invented relationships with people I didn’t know.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. We’ve seen these kinds of screaming, hysterical fans since the days of The Beatles, and before. Academic research tells us that fans create ‘parasocial’ relationships with those they idolise – they create relationships despite no personal interaction.
It seems that the people who often do this are those who are prevented from creating their own everyday social or sexual relationships and expressing the emotions that come with them. Teenage girls in the ’60s (as it is now) aren’t able to express sexual desire because of the way society expects young women to behave. Similarly, repressed queers such as my 21-year-old self aren’t able to express the sexuality we want to, and so we turn to invented relationships as an outlet.
Since the time in my life that was soundtracked by The Kills, I have come home, found my queer community, and found myself. I no longer need my invented relationships, because I have real ones. So watching them perform last week, dancing up the back instead of obsessively craning my neck to see and take pictures, was a very surreal experience. It was like looking fondly on an old ex and realising I never really knew them. Which is kind of exactly what it was. I was grateful for what the band had given me, but more grateful that I no longer needed it. As I watched the show, dancing with one of my queer mates, saying hello to another queer I know only by recognising their face from other events, I realised that my intense fandom has passed, and community has taken its place.
It’s interesting again, then, to consider the ways fandom interacts with community. I know that queer subcultural artists, like Mykki Blanco and Le1f, often meet fans on Grindr, or use their shows as a chance to interact with the queer community in cities they visit. I also have a friend who enjoys having sex to the tunes of Cash Savage – the musician who happens to be my boss’ wife, a good mate of mine, an excellent dog trainer and an even better Xbox partner.
My Kills fan status was in lieu of community, but others’ survives alongside it, and others’ exists within it. How we create parasocial relationships within the communities we inhabit in our daily lives is a fascinating thing, particularly when those invented relationships intersect with our day-to-day life (my Savage-obsessed friend, for example, is likely to meet Savage at some point in the very near future – this Saturday, even).
We often belittle ‘screaming’, ‘hysterical’ fans as people who need to get a life, as people who don’t have functioning social relationships. But we forget the societal circumstances that lead people to become fans in the first place, that force them to seek invented relationships because society itself mocks their right and ability to form real ones.
We often cast these super fans to the margins of society, and that causes them to stay there. We exile queer people to the margins of society, imposing nationwide votes on their rights, and thereby ensure they too, remain on the margins. It’s little wonder that fandom and queerness intersect in particular ways, but more than that, it’s probably about time we stop critiquing people’s individual choices in how and who they form relationships with. Whether they know them personally or not.
This Week:
This Wednesday August 3 at Newtown Hotel, HomoLoco is hosting a doggy pageant for all of Newtown’s best pups and their queers. There’ll be drink specials, prizes and a cake raffle to raise funds for the Duke of Stanmore (a cute local doggie who’s been through the mill lately – the cake is made by his owner).
On Saturday August 6, my friend is likely to meet Cash Savage and The Last Drinks [above]at Newtown Social Club when she launches her new album, One Of Us. It’ll be an interesting meeting, but the gig itself will be even better, as the new album is incredible.
Then on Sunday August 7, head to Young Henrys for some readings from the current issue of Archer Magazine. There’ll be appearances from authors Alison Whittaker and Carly Lorente.
[The Kills photo by Ashley Mar]
