I. Name of collector-- Misty Thompson
II. Type of folklore: The type of folklore I have been documenting is folk groups. There are many traditions passed through these fandoms, and aren't as superficial as many people would like to believe. Within these fandoms, all three main categories of folklore are present: oral, customary, and material. Oral folklore, such as syntactical variations ("heard in the speech of nonnative-speaker groups" in Brunvard, p. 75) of speech is widely used in many genres of entertainment and makes its way into mainstream conversation of fans. Customary folklore includes the fan conventions that fans meet at and put together annually, along with well wishes of pseduo-holidays such as May the 4th or Harry Potter Day (May 2nd). They also include annual celebrations at places like Disney World, which hosts Star Wars weekends usually throughout the month of may.
Material folklore may be one of the most important aspects of fandoms, as many fans put serious consideration in what they were when they get together to celebrate the things they love. About costumes, Brunvand says "We tend to assume that the United States really has no distinctive costume raditions, recognizing, perhaps, only a comical American tourist stereotype of a man in shorts, a loud sport shirt, sandals or tennis shoes, and a baseball cap, with a camera dangling around his neck; or an Indian chief with beaded buckskins and full headdress." Although this may be true of ethnic customs, most people would instantly recognize a Storm Trooper costume, or Harry Potter's glasses and lightning bolt scar, or the long green robes of a Hobbit.
III. Informant, place and date of collection: Because no fan conventions were happening at the time of this project (or throughout the course), I had to get a bit creative. In Living Folklore, Martha Sims states that many fan groups find themselves most at home online, in chat rooms and message boards, so I started there. Fortunately, most of the people I choose to call friends are what other people would call "nerds," so I called a meeting. I promised pizza and beer and at least one Star Wars movie in exchange for stories about their favorite fandoms, photos, and anything else they could offer.
On Saturday, July 13, a few friends met at my house and rose nobly to my cause. Their names are Ed Linihan, 41, his brother John Linihan, 43, my husband Danny, 43, Paul Walls, 29, and Karen Smith, 30. We ordered a few pizzas, had a few beers, and popped in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. As I started to ask questions, I was surprised at how naturally the conversation flowed between everyone. We've all hung out together before, but it was easy to see how Star Wars (and other fandoms) have made their way through each of their childhoods, linking them and drawing a common bond.
Ed: "Yeah, but remember how shitty those costumes were? Also we were about two of eighty kids dressed like Star Wars characters."
John: "The force was with us all."
IV. The exact text, custom or object: Ed and John Linihan both began by talking about how their parents let them stay home from school on May 25, 1977, when Star Wars was released. Ed was six and John was eight, and they both talked about how they couldn't sleep the night before from excitement. My husband Danny didn't get to stay home from school, but he clearly remembered his dad taking him and two of his cousins to the theater that weekend. I didn't have anything to record, but I took as many notes as I could, and can paraphrase as much as possible.
John: "Remember we dressed up like Luke and Han for Halloween?"
Ed started talking, then, about how excited he was once he and his wife found out that they were having their first boy. He said, "Seriously one of the first things I thought about was getting to do this shit all over again." Danny chimed in and said of our one year old: "I know, I can't wait to be able to experience all this again through Benjamin's eyes."
We got on the subject of conventions, and though Ed, John, and Danny have never been, Karen and Paul have been multiple times. Karen cosplays as different characters from an online comic called Homestuck, but Paul regularly travels to conventions within Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. He's met several of his favorite celebrities, but his favorite memory is when he went to a special screening of the movie Fanboys, a movie about three friends breaking all odds to see the fourth installment of the Star Wars franchise.
"I just remember the dedication that oozed from these people going to a movie. There were easily 200 or more people in costume just to watch a movie about Star Wars. There were the 501st, which you know about, there were Mandalorian bounty hunters, there was even a group of people with, I swear to God, functioning droids. My favorite, though, was how people love it so much they share it with their kids. There was a random couple dressed as sand people and they had their 3 or 4 year old kid dressed as a Jawa. They really aren't just movies, it completely changes and influences people's lives."
V. Context: As I said, we had a low-key Star Wars watching party. Pizza, beer, and a few friends gathering and slinging around memories and making new ones in the process. I didn't give my opinion much; mostly, I sat on the corner of the couch and typed as furiously as I could to make sure I took down quotes as accurately as possible. We were having such a good time that we got through Episodes IV and V before we decided to call it a night; with the exception of Paul, we all have kids that get up at the crack of dawn.
The function of these folk groups are celebration. As fans of a huge powerhouse of entertainment, we love to talk about it with like-minded people, both online and face-to-face. We love to dress up in costumes to feel as though we are closer to the movies, books, comics, or television shows we idolize, and we enjoy bringing those things to life. Many of the people who celebrate in fandoms are not easy with conversation or meeting new people, and having a common ground of something we love makes it so much easier to break the ice. Fandoms tend to clash - Star Wars fans and Star Trek fans, for example, have a friendly rivalry - but in the end, it's all about bringing life and celebration to something you love.
The folklore doesn't necessarily reveal anything about any particular group. Fans can come from all walks of life, and can go from casual to downright hardcore, can watch movies or read books once a year, or can quote entire scenes or chapters from memory. It's easy for other people to write off fans of something, to call them nerds or geeks or social dwarfs, and while that may be true, people who truly feel these things with their whole hearts know it's not an insult to be labeled as such. People can be told to grow up, to get your head out of movies, to live in the real world, but most fans are already happily doing so. It's hard to understand for some people, but a person is quite capable of having two feet firmly on the ground while their hearts hold dear something that helped them through troubling times. People use music, movies, and books all the time to escape from the pressures of real life, and in this respect, celebration of fandom is no different.
VI. Analysis: To analyze the creation of such a folklore group is to live it. It's hard to analyze a movie or a book or a television show or game in the context of how it affects a person's life and what hold it has over their conscience. Easier to analyze is how it affects individual people, and without question, it does. From buying babies Star Wars onesies before they're even born to getting your favorite character tattooed on your body, fandoms are far and away one of the greatest pasttimes people claim.
VII. Works Cited: Please feel free to use the "Resources" tab on this website, in addition to the works cited here.
Brunvand, Jan Harold The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction. 4th Ed., W.W. Norton & Company, New York, New York, 1998
Sims, Martha C. Living Folklore: An Introduction to the Study of People and Their Traditions. Utah State University Press, Logan, Utah, 2005
Lucas, George, dir. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Twentieth Century Fox, 1977. Film.
Lucas, George, dir. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Twentieth Century Fox, 1980. Film.
