Description
Book SynopsisThe convergence of the politics of representation and Black fan culturesBoldly going where few fandom scholars have gone before, Fandom for Us, by Us breaks from our focus on white fandom to center Black fandoms. Alfred L. Martin, Jr., engages these fandoms through what he calls the four C's: class, clout, canon, and comfort. Class is a key component of how Black fandom is contingent on distinctions between white, nationally recognized cultural productions and multicultural and/or regional cultural productions, as demonstrated by Misty Copeland's ascension in American Ballet Theatre. Clout refers to Black fans' realization of their own consumer spending power as an agent for industrial change, reducing the precarity of Blackness within historically white cultural apparatuses and facilitating the production of Black blockbusters like 2018's Black Panther. Canon entails a communal fannish practice of sharing media objects, like the 1978 film The Wiz, which lead them to take on meanings
