Research On Chinese Fan Culture From The Perspective Of Mass Culture

As the main object of study from the perspective of fans culture in the mass culture, combined with the case of contemporary Chinese society in a variety of fans behavior, analyzing its behavior law, clarifying its social significance generally existed respectively from the text production of fans, psychological motivation and consumption behavior and etc., and based on this, the paper investigates the feasibility and path that fans culture in the mass culture obtains normative development in the social system of less order and lost order.While looking at the process of Chinese fan cultural development, restoring it into the three-stage field of the evolution of fan culture, and trying to backtrack the social process since the Reform and Open Door policy has been carried out in China for more than 30 years, we find that despite the absence of theoretical construction, the developing modality and path of Chinese fan culture is complete, continuous and clearly visible. Therefore, although the historical precipitation has somewhat imperfection in the theoretical research, it will be possible for Chinese fan culture to achieve synchronization with the world at the period when new media make media ecology move to digitalization after both external environment has experienced improvement and production mode has changed.Fan culture is the prominent representative of mass culture, fan’s textual productivity is also an important part of it. The process that fans interpret cultural industrial products not only highlights individual values but also obtains the means of aesthetic pleasure and discourse power. Fan culture’s participation brings its possession of the textual knowledge and life experience to the textual production, and thus it effectively shortens the distance and communicating process between the cultural industrial products and the fans. We cannot make simple summary and classification merely through one paradigm since fans’ textual production has been showing multiple features due to the particularity of Chinese fan culture resulting from the social environment and the development process. As the incorporation and counter of cultural discourse power exists constantly, and fans’ talent performance will not stop, the behavior of poaching mass cultural products will continue. In this cultural environment, fans textual production behavior will have further attention, and thus it will have a more profound impact on cultural trend.For a long period of time, fans have been regarded as a pathological group by the public or a social community with the trait of teenagers’ resistance on subculture. Fan’s psychological analysis on the basis of cognition always has the meaning of pathological diagnosis as well. The fact is that fan’s behavior from the perspective of contemporary mass culture is no longer a sort of niche practice, but it is a kind of common behavior in a free society. Therefore it is obviously inappropriate to use the way of pathological analysis to interpret fan’s psychological motivation. The human emotional desires and identity demands provide appropriate perspective on fan’s psychological motivation, instead. At first, it is the fan’s lust and fantasy for idol’s sex appeal under the action of libido. Too much promotion and exhibition by both cultural industry and mass media has objectively stimulated fans’ pursuit of idol’s sex appeal, and it eventually resulted in the multi-way communication of the sex appeal link formed by fans, idol and media. From another perspective, fans practice make them have completed their self-identity through emotional projection, strengthened self-recognition by interacting exchange and onstage/backstage unification, resolved the " who I am " issue, and thus acquired getting close to the sense of achievement of “the Idealistic Me”. Additionally, when they are in the course of intergroup communication, the group fan’s individuals will be filled with group sense of belonging and honor, and hence completing group identity of fandom. It is the third level of fan’s psychological mechanism analysis. In the process of obtaining group identity, fans preliminarily divide the group boundary through the organization and system inside the group, strengthen the boundary through comparison outside the group, achieve positive differentiation to consolidate the boundary by action. The above three levels of analyses have approximately depicted the psychological motivation of fan practice behavior, helping us understand in depth the occurrence and operating mechanism of fan culture.Fan consumption under the background of social relations is substantially a kind of two-way communication between fans and idols. Both complete the worshipper and the worshipped role play to form one cyclic flow relationship. In this closed loop, idols complete fans fantasy of their desires and aspirations on the spiritual level through the output of the abstract labor or symbolic value. And for the idol and the management team, there exists dual economic significance for fans: on the one hand, they are the most real and direct consumers, and on the other hand, they are the indirect marketing tools as the source power of interpersonal communication at the same time. It is the economic significance that causes the fans to have passively become the constraint force of idol behavior with the fans consumption having dramatically played indirect part in maintaining social moral norms. For its part, fans consumption behavior with natural ambivalence: is unable to get rid of the individual demand of self differentiation but desires for homogenization of "collective consciousness". In the group context, fans individual demands are excited, released, and the fans group boundaries get highlighted and strengthened in the personal consumption process. All should be consuming objects from idol text to literature works, from commercial brands to the way of life, from "people" to "things". With the evolution of social environment and the iteration of technological civilization, the fans consuming scope will continue to infiltrate the other fields, and it is influencing the fine adjustment of social economic structure and the developing trajectory of mass culture in a bottom-up way. And fans achieve satisfaction of spiritual appeal and identity in the consuming process.The development of things always has two sides. There exists irrationality and loss of control and other issues while fan culture presents its identification and creation. However, the cause of issues formed and intensified is complicated, and the solutions should also be multi-level. It is necessary for us to enhance media literacy for both the public and especially the adolescent so as to correct fan culture development disorder caused by fans language violence, the dislocation of the social moral norms arising from fans blind worship, fans group polarization and the other issues. However, in the process of the monsterization of fans individual, fans image defined as the other and the materialization of idol group, the fact is that mass media on one hand has replaced the positive guidance by presumption of guilt, and on the other hand added fuel to the enthusiasm for abused amusement for chasing economic interests. There are issues of the journalistic ethic construction exposed by media’s responsibility needed strengthening urgently. Fan culture appears as a subculture, indicating that society is being restructured. The effective guidance of fans and fans culture can promote the integration of social groups effectively. This not only will not let the social lack of position, invalidate, but help to avoid reducing and losing order for the society to strengthen the stability of the social system. In the case that contemporary criticism and the relevant department fails to effectively assist the public in understanding and accepting the fan culture, we have no right to condemn and criticize the vulgar or vulgar taste of the fan culture. We not only need to reflect on the fan cultural phenomenon but what we have done before.In the process of socialization, different groups have been formed in the way of accepting mutually and establishing interpersonal relationship. Fan culture as an alien of subculture appears in the public controversy, and fandom is often characterized as subjectivity deletion, difficult to take the initiative to control the individual collection of psychology and behavior. In fact, it is exactly an unconscious highlight of the group subjectivity behind this seemingly crazy nuptial tubercle behavior and pure perceptual fetishism. The awakening of self-consciousness makes its subjectivity embodied in the object relations with the object. For the fans individual, its activity and guidance of the dialectical unity has decided that the specific direction of the worship object is accidental, and the worship behavior is inevitable. In this sense, how is subjectivity of the fans not distinctive? How is the psychological motivation irregular? How is the behavior direction not clear? The progress of social civilization has offered external environment of fans cultural germination. In the process of its growth and spread, we should not overshadow the issues, and should not only be limited to criticism. In the process of reflection, we should provide positive regulations and publicly uphold values of liberty on the road of cognition.