Add Category
A few years ago, author and journalist Tabitha Carvan became obsessed with British actor Benedict Cumberbatch.
Fuelled by the worldwide success of the TV show Sherlock, she joined the ranks of the "Cumberbitches", a community of women of all ages who, quite simply, adored Benedict Cumberbatch.
At the height of her "Cumbermania", she would seek out Cumberbatch in films and TV, watch online interviews with him and print out photos of him to adorn her desk.
"It coincided with a personal time of my life which was being at home with my young kids and not having much of an outlet," she says.
"It was about finding something that was just for me, that lit me up for no reason other than it just fired up all the synapses that bridge pleasure and happiness and joy and connection."
But the more joy her obsession brought her, the more suspicion it elicited.
Friends and strangers alike would interrogate her: Why was she acting like a starstruck teenager? Shouldn't she be spending her time more productively? And what on earth did her husband think?
It prompted her to write a book about her and others' journeys into Cumbermania, titled This Is Not A Book About Benedict Cumberbatch.
What she discovered was not a desperate coven of delusional women, as they were often portrayed, but a radical expression of female joy — and the fight to keep it alive.
The psychology of fandom
Carvan is well aware that Benedict Cumberbatch likely has no idea who she is.
In 1956, sociologist R. Richard Wohl and anthropologist Donald Horton coined the term "parasocial relationship" to describe a one-sided relationship with a public figure that springs out of exposure to mass media.
"The definition of parasocial is non-reciprocated: I know the person, they don't know me back," explains Gayle S Stever, a professor of social and behavioural studies at Empire State University of New York.
"Parasocial interaction happens while you're consuming media. [The person] is talking to you from the screen and you're listening, and it feels like they're talking to you … We refer to that as the illusion of intimacy."
While public figures have always attracted admirers, Dr Stever says parasocial relationships as we now know them can be traced back to the popularisation of network television.
"In the 70s, soaps were on every day, so if you were interacting daily with your favourite celebrity, there was a tremendous potential to develop an affinity for that person," she tells ABC RN's All In The Mind.
This was furthered by the rise of talk shows, in which hosts would address the audience directly, and later, by social media.
"It feels personal, it feels intimate, and so the parasocial relationship grows from that mediated interaction. You walk away from the TV and you're still mentally interacting with the character, or the actor or both," Dr Stever says.
That sense of comfort and connection drives us to "seek proximity" to that person or character.
"If it's a singer, you go to one of their concerts. If it's an actor and they're going to appear at a convention, you go meet them," Dr Stever says.
Carvan says this dynamic is often misunderstood.
"People think … that the relationship is a kind of delusion and that if you have a parasocial relationship, you don't have a grasp on reality," Carvan says.
"But if you have ever read a novel and thought about a character in that novel, you understand that you can have a connection and an investment in a person you don't know or a person who's not even real.
"It's a very human instinct."
And while female fans are often depicted as obsessive, creepy or downright dangerous — think sadistic superfan Annie Wilkes in Stephen King's cult classic, Misery, for example — Carvan says the vast majority are enacting a safe, enjoyable fantasy.
"I think most fans are aware that the person they love or are interested in is the public projection of that person, as represented by the movies they're in or the songs they make, and it's not real," she says.
Experts vs fangirls
Experts have long identified that male and female fans are viewed very differently in the popular imagination.
"When women get obsessed with or passionate about a musician or an actor or a celebrity, they're represented as having this kind of maniacal, hysterical interest in it which overtakes their entire life … but men have been doing this for a very long time," Carvan says.
She gives the example of "Dylanologists", a subset of the largely male fanbase of musician Bob Dylan, who define themselves as music critics.
"The detail with which Bob Dylan has been documented by these fans is unprecedented and unsurpassed by any other fan group and it's regarded as the height of music criticism," she says.
"They might like to say that they have an objective appreciation of his art — and I'm sure they do as well — but they love him. Of course they love him; they couldn't invest that much time in the project if they didn't love him."
While male fans are seen as taste-makers and aficionados, female fans are often described as mindless hordes — despite driving massive economic and cultural change (hello, Swifteconomics).
In an infamous 1964 essay, English journalist Paul Johnson described Beatles fans "who scream themselves into hysteria" as "the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures".
Skip to 2012, and experts described the mostly female Justin Bieber fandom as "a group response set off by emotions and hormones", which young men don't experience because they are "wired differently".
Sascha Samlal, a PhD candidate in cultural studies at the University of Melbourne, says female fans are shamed both by mainstream culture and within their own communities.
"The top-down shaming … is this idea that any sort of feminine cultural product is seen as less than," she says.
"A lot of our ideas about what constitutes good taste really centres around what is masculine, what is intellectual, and what should be taken seriously."
Not just teenage hormones
Despite the prevailing idea that fandom is the domain of teenagers, Dr Stever says research shows that parasocial relationships are part of life across all age groups.
"One of the misconceptions about this is that this is an adolescent thing," she says.
"Developing a crush on a celebrity is a common lifelong thing, and for most people, it's just a fun thing."
Carvan says that for women particularly, there's pressure to grow out of fandom as they age.
"You're supposed to become more well-rounded; you like things in a balanced way, [you have] productive hobbies and you become a professional and maybe a partner or a mother or caregiver," she says.
"And as a result, you don't see many women holding on to those patterns … They feel like to hold on to that is juvenile, it's immature, and it's embarrassing."
That's particularly true when time becomes a precious resource. In Australia, Treasury statistics show women have an average of 31 minutes less free time per day, with that gap widening to an hour and 17 minutes for women aged 15 to 24.
"It is difficult for women to maintain that culture of leisure, full stop, and then to maintain a culture of leisure around something that society deems should be left behind in adolescence, that's doubly hard," Carvan says.
Embracing joy
Yet there's a certain power in finding kinship and community with other fans, whether Swifties, Harries [fans of Harry Styles] or members of the BTS ARMY or BeyHive, Ms Samlal says.
"One of my participants in my research described the intensity of the relationship as having sisters — and she's talking about people she's never even met," she says.
"That sense of belonging often results in a sort of effectual power, so often fans can be the impetus for social change."
That's particularly true of K-Pop fans, whose political activism has been widely documented.
Ms Samlal says creative practices like writing fan fiction can be another form of political power, by "mapping onto a celebrity what you want to see in the world".
She gives the example of "Larries" in the 2010s, the fans who imagined a romantic relationship between former One Direction bandmates Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson.
"I view that as … a lot of people mapping a queer future onto a mainstream media star, something that at the time was not often seen and not accepted," she says.
For Carvan, devoting time to loving Benedict Cumberbatch was radical in a more personal way.
"It reignited in me that ability to love something that much — and now I love many things."
Her advice is to welcome that joy with open arms.
"If you're surprised by how good it feels or how much fun it is … let it happen," she says.
"That's what makes it transgressive, to keep it alive and say, 'No matter what age I am, no matter how I look, no matter where I live, I can actually just feel feelings that are good for me'."
RN in your inbox
Get more stories that go beyond the news cycle with our weekly newsletter.