I don't.
I can imagine this feeling as being akin to the kind I get at Comicon. The feeling of homecoming I get in a tournament of Magic the Gathering players. The feeling of instant comeraderie I have with people on the street in humorous Star Trek shirts.
I am a Sci-fi Nerd-- with capital letters. As such, I have always sort of viewed sports fans as uncultured, different, seperate. If not The Enemy, then at least The Other.
Fun fact about me, in addition to having a useless degree in Japanese literature, I also have a useless degree in Anthropology.
My field was fandom studies-- looking at how people interract with the media and the cultures that form around that interraction. Like a good fandom studies ethnographer, I did the bulk of my research on sci-fi and comic book fans, drawing many of my illustrative comparisons to sports fans.
It is a sort of unspoken rule in fan studies that sports fans are the known constant. In the same way that gender studies focuses exclusively on women and paints men as the societal baseline, fandom studies tends to focus on fan subcultures and paints sports fan culture as the baseline. In many ways, that is accurate, but it is also the attitude of a group that sees themselves as victims. Women are the focus of gender studies to the exclusion of men because most gender academics are women who see themselves as oppressed. This percieved (and don't get me wrong, frequently very real) oppression provides a framework which can be used to illustrate various theoretical points about what it means to be a woman. Nerds are the focus of fandom studies because most fan ethnographers are themselves fans. And we all know that nerds of all social strati tend to percive themselves as paraiahs, the oppressed creative minority. To properly examine the nerd experience, they need an oppressor-- a generally socially accepted non-nerd fan group. Sports fans.
Everyone knows sports fans are just as crazy as sci-fi fans-- usually in many of the same ways. Yet it is percieved (by nerds at least) to be more socially acceptable to be a hardcore sports fan than it is to be a hardcore science fiction fan. These days that is hardly true, with geek-chic and nerd culture becoming very en vogue, but this is not really my point.
The point is that as a nerd and as a fan ethnographer, sports fans have always been portrayed to me as the Other.
Once again I'll draw a comparison to gender studies where the new hip, progressive thing is "men's studies"-- trying to look at the male experience as an entity in and of itself rather than as a societal baseline. In fan studies, more and more work is being done to look into sports fandom. Much like how men's studies is primarily comprised of women trying to understand the male experience and male academics trying to reclaim their masculinity, this new focus on sports fans tends to be either by nerds who are trying to find common ground (often so they can go "Haha, you are just as lame as we are!") and nerdy sports fans who are trying to assert a dual identity.
This is not to say that there aren't a significant number of male academics who focus on gender. Or nerdy sports fans. I simply mean that those facts are often presented as being in contrast to each other: Professor So-and-so teaches Women's Studies, but he's a guy. He's a huge football fan, but a total nerd.
It is because of my academic background, I think, that I felt very uncomfortable last night.
I'm a new hockey fan and a new Bostonian.
Skippy and I decided that, in the interest of expanding our social circle, we'd go watch game 5 at Sports Grille by the Garden with some girls I met on ontd_pucking. After getting there in our Bruins shirts and our black-and-gold manicures, and wading our way throught he sea of pre-gaming fans, we met a group of really awesome people. There was a palpable sense of community at the bar that night, but I couldn't help feeling, in my Bruins gear, like a participant observer.
Maybe if they'd been Flyers fans, I wouldn't have felt as much like an outsider, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the problem. It wasn't that the crowd wasn't cheering for my team, it's that they were cheering for a sports team at all. Sports fans ::dramatic shudder::-- the Other.
Hopefully, this is an attitude that changes with time. Hopefully, I am one of those who reconciles their dual identity within both a subcultural and a mainstream fan culture. Hopefully those girls didn't think I was a total creepy loser when I grabbed Skippy and peaced before the game even started.
But, I'm realizing now that I'm in a transitional period-- I am bridging a huge gap (only to find, of couse, that it's just a tiny crack). Maybe it's better if I just watch the games at the Red Hat or Sevens' with my housemates for now... at least until next season.
I'll be properly acculturated by then.
 |
| "Hmm... Jenkins' Textual Poachers is by far the best work on participatory fan culture, but Prof. Schadenfreude wants me to write my paper on Kirk/Spock slashzines and 70's masculinity." |
That was a huge and boring rant. Have some more haiku:
I was in the loo,
but I heard screaming drunk guys
did we score a goal?
You should probably
not wear that Canada shirt--
to avoid shanking.
Oh, this nail polish wasn't lucky.
Spirit fingers were no help
fuck you Vancouver.
Only one Sedin
is real. All the rest is just
clever mirror tricks
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