Things That Resonate (Or, The Very, Very, Very Long Post)

I feel like I may be taking a huge risk by posting this. I probably should not, especially not at 1:16am on any night at all. But I was never one for hiding what I feel and apparently life is nothing without a little risk. I guess.

So here it goes.

For as much as I talk, I don’t actually say things simply to hear myself talk. It may seem that way, but mostly I talk as often and as much as I do because the only way to make sense of whatever mess is currently circulating in my brain is to work it out verbally. That being said, visiting artist critiques are often the most challenging things I ever experience, because in two minutes I have to spew out everything I have been mulling over for months as concisely as possible, which for me, is never as concise as I would like. There always seem to be too many things happening in my head and I never the right words. During my critique with Amanda Small there was clearly some miscommunication, and the misunderstanding picked at some things that I would rather not have had brought to the surface. 

There seems to be, in my limited experience, a stigma surrounding pop culture and fandoms and fanfiction and fan art and anything having the slightest association with the word fan. At least, it seems to exist if you come at it from the context of fictional work. Being a sports fan seems to be just fine. I have had to deal with this ignominy of being a fan ever since the first time someone asked me if I wanted to watch something other than The Lion King. It is not viewed, in our society, as a positive thing if you are a Trekkie or a Whovian or a Potterhead or a Sherlockian or a person who identifies strongly with any fan base that operates in fiction. And as a life long “fan of things,” this is a huge problem for me.

When I tell people that I am a fan of things, the response isn’t exactly negative, but it’s not positive, either. Mostly, my statements are met with something like contempt. From that point onward, the person I am speaking to doesn’t seem to take me seriously. Maybe that’s because there is this stereotype of “crazed fan” that seems to permeate representations of nerds and obsessive types in the media (for example, I could write a short essay on why the Big Bang Theory is completely and utterly demeaning to the group of people that it claims to embrace). Regardless, I am usually taken much less seriously if I say to people that my work deals with specific artifacts of pop culture, especially if I don’t have enough time to explain that I work with these things because I am interested in them not only as a fan, but because of the socio-cultural implications of the artifact and because of what being a fan of a specific television show or film or book series actually means.  

It seems that I was unable to communicate this to Amanda tonight, because for me, it felt like she reacted in the same way that people usually do. After I told her that I was interested in working with pop culture and the media, it felt a little like she took me and my work much less seriously.  She brought up a lot of things that I react against. Asking me at one point, “well, aren’t you just a massive fangirl?” and telling me that it seems like my interest in these things is primarily escapist and that perhaps it comes from this feeling of being labeled an “outsider.” To an extent I think the outsider comment was true, but it was the comment about escapism that I reacted against. Internally, I reacted to it with all I had, even though I didn’t say anything to Amanda because I wanted to know what she had to say. But I reacted negatively to that word with everything I had. There was a definite and resounding “no” that reverberated through every part of me, because I don’t feel that my interest in any of these things is escapist. Though maybe such a strong reaction to this comment just means that what she said is true. Maybe I’m just victimizing myself.

For me, it’s as though I actively mine the important bits of advice or wisdom from a source and then apply it to the world around me. But it seems like I didn’t communicate that all that well. I understand, and have understood for a long time, that different words mean different things to different people. I have watched my grandmother and mother get upset about specific words too often not to recognize this as some sort of small truth. So when I was speaking to Amanda about fiction somehow mirroring reality, what I really meant was “fiction presents its viewers with basic human truths that are sometimes difficult to remember or understand when we are bombarded with negative news media and silly, every day problems that seem huge when we experience them. Sometimes it can help people recognize what is really important in a way that is more positive than some of the things we are exposed to on a daily basis.” What Amanda seemed to hear when I said “mirror” was “Wizards are real and Hogwarts exists.”

As far as my artwork goes, Amanda basically told me the same things that I’ve known all quarter. I need to find a tether, something that I get excited about and just make it. I need to find what is important to me and hone in on it. Basically, she didn’t think my work very strong at this point, and that the things that I was doing seemed arbitrary and that she wasn’t convinced that the meant anything to me. I have known this all along, and so of course I took no offence to that because that criticism is 100% accurate. I keep bouncing from place to place and I absolutely need something to tie me to the ground. Metaphorically speaking. 

But in response to the “find what is important to you” advice, I don’t know what is important to me anymore. It seems that I am constantly told, from society or otherwise, that the things I find important are not important at all, that these things are vapid and useless. I am confronted with this seemingly everywhere, and if I’m getting it from that many places, it becomes extremely difficult to ignore. And then when you are told that it is okay to make art about this, it seems like a trick.

Anyway, Amanda suggested that I create a visual language using symbols either from pop culture or ones that resonate with me, telling me that maps use visual cues that mean something just because someone said so, and that I need to make a code system that means something just because I say so. But it really felt like she was telling me not to make art about pop culture. I don’t think this is what she was telling me. I think I heard that because I always have. Or maybe she was. I’m not very good at reading people much of the time.

But in retrospect, she did seem to react the same way that everyone does when I say that I love Doctor Who or Harry Potter or the Chronicles of Narnia or anything else. I get an eye roll, or a “you’ll grow out of that in a few years” or an “are you making Doctor Who art in my class?!” or an “oh Mikaela, still prattling on about that one thing again are you?” And as much as I am usually okay with that (because at this point that reaction seems normal), it also really hurts. It hurts because even though many of the people in my life have accepted that no, I am not going to stop talking about these things, nor am I going to stop loving them, they don’t seem to take me seriously for it, or believe that I could be interested in these things because they reveal human truths or because they talk about issues of abandonment or prejudice or provide socio-political commentary. They also don’t seem to understand that literally millions of people could be interested in these things for the exact same reasons that I am.

And of course, the people that are important to me always accept this weird, obsessive personality I possess. The amount of time it takes for them to accept it is the most difficult thing to grapple with.

Amanda also asked me why it is important that people initially dismiss pop culture, that they treat it as blasé. I think part of that is because I tend to take things way way too personally. By dismissing these things, by not taking a person’s interest in pop culture seriously, it feels very much like they are disregarding a vital part of my own identity. It invalidates me, to an extent. Logically, I know that is not the case, and that my worth as a person should not be based around other peoples opinions, particularly not their opinions on the things that I like. But when people suddenly stigmatize me because I am open about the fact that I like Adventure Time and Avatar: The Last Airbender, and don’t treat me as though these are not legitimate interests, that’s when I get upset. Because it is a very human thing to want to be loved and accepted and essentially to know that it is okay to like what you like and think what you think and feel what you feel, simply because you like, think, and feel those things.

Everyone wants and needs love and affection and validation. And you know what solidified that in my brain? What made it stick there when the world around me hadn’t taught me that yet? Doctor Fucking Who.

And just for the record, none of this hostility or not hostility but… negativity….that I am spewing out is in anyway directed at Amanda. She was incredibly helpful in ways that she probably couldn’t have realized, because this one conversation forced me to confront things that I haven’t thought about in a while. I know why I can’t make art about these things now. Now I know why I have to keep things secret, at least in my artwork, even if I have no qualms talking to my family or friends or the faculty about any of my nerdy interests. Because in general, people’s reactions to my confessions have not changed.

I hope that all made sense.