Symposium

Rainbow Direction and fan-based citizenship performance

Bri Mattia

DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, United States

[0.1] Abstract—The success of the activist group Rainbow Direction, created by fans of the UK boy band One Direction, helped change the dominant ideology of One Direction's concerts and chip away at the long-held assertions of who fangirls are. Social media can be used to enact social change, combating the erasure of LGBT+ fans from the fangirl narrative.

[0.2] Keywords—Boy band; Fan studies; LGBT+; One Direction

Mattia, Bri. 2018. "Rainbow Direction and Fan-Based Citizenship Performance." In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1414.

1. Introduction

[1.1] For many fans, the sight of Harry Styles running around the stage at various stops on One Direction's 2015 tour with a rainbow flag draped over his shoulders wasn't just a sign of solidarity—it was like a victory lap. Two years after its founding, Rainbow Direction, a project started by LGBT+ fans of the ubiquitous UK boy band, achieved a new level of visibility when the band members themselves started acknowledging their efforts. Rainbow Direction used social media to organize a global effort to end intrafandom bullying, create a safe and welcoming space, and gain visibility for young women marginalized by the denigrating social construction of a fangirl. In doing so, it created a model for fan-based citizenship performance in the age of social media, and changed not just the dominant ideology of One Direction's concerts but also the perception of a fangirl.

2. LGBT+ fangirl erasure

[2.1] Fan-based citizenship performances, such as fan-created activist groups like Rainbow Direction, "grow out of fan experiences with popular culture" (Hinck 2015, 7). For Rainbow Direction, it was not just the experience of One Direction's music but years of exclusion that LGBT+ fans felt from the boy band narrative that culminated in its founding. The assertion held by many, ever since there were boys in bands to fangirl over, is that fangirls are young women who are hysterical (a loaded misogynistic descriptor), and too wrapped up in their obsession to care about anything that is deemed to have actual importance. "In its derogatory sense, fangirl pathologises the fan, their passion(s), and the performativity of their fannishness" (Dare-Edwards 2015). Mockery of fangirls for activities like screaming, crying, camping out for hours or sometimes days in order to see the object of their passion—the most visible and visceral ways in which boy band fangirls perform—becomes equated with sexual hysteria, not genuine interest. This presumption began with Beatlemania: perhaps not the first, but the most memorable example of fangirling, and one frequently evoked when large groups of young women convene over something or someone they love. "For the girls who participated in Beatlemania sex was an obvious part of the excitement…It was rebellious (especially for the very young fans) to lay claim to sexual feelings. It was even more rebellious to lay claim to the active, desiring of sexual attraction" (Ehrenreich, Hess, and Jacobs 1992, 90). Prior to women's sexual liberation in the late 1960s and 1970s, Beatlemania "was a way to express sexual yearnings that would normally be pressed into the service of popularity or simply repressed" (Ehrenreich, Hess, and Jacobs 1992, 97).

[2.2] While attraction to the members of boy bands remains a facet of many fangirls' experiences, this blanket assumption disregards the reality that not all fangirls are heterosexual: "The assumed demographic of the typical pop fan is heteronormative, ageist and off-base…by automatically equating boyband fans with young girls falling in love with their favourites, there's a misogynistic tendency to make pop appreciation seem like an immature, gendered practice which erases legions of LGBTQ+ fans in the process" (Roach 2017). In 1964, the height of Beatlemania helped to push back on the repression of young women's sexual autonomy; and in 2014, in the midst of One Direction's meteoric rise, Rainbow Direction pushed back on the repression of young women who did not identify as heterosexual.

[2.3] The erasure of LGBT+ fans is not simply a result of how mainstream media defines fangirls, but also a result of how record labels market male pop artists and bands. One Direction is no different. One example of One Direction's marketing strategy is its first concert tour. The tour shows featured a series of video vignettes that were meant to give the boys time for costume changes but, more importantly, would make the audience feel as if they were dating the band. The final video that played before the show's encore asked the audience if they would like to go on a romantic dinner date with One Direction, assuming that that would be every fan's ultimate dream. It of course was not, and the final video was both alienating to LGBT+ fans and mocked by the fan base as a whole.

3. Rainbow Direction's founding and mission statement

[3.1] Because LGBT+ fans of the band did not see themselves in the dominant One Direction narrative, they sought refuge in fan fiction, "one of the few outlets that an increasingly frustrated queer audience has to engage with material that refuses to engage with them" (Binstock 2016). However, following a Twitter exchange in April 2013 between band member Louis Tomlinson and Thomas Parker (member of the now defunct boy band The Wanted) in which Parker mentioned rumors he had heard that Tomlinson was gay and used the hashtag "#itgetsbetter" in a sarcastic manner, even the safe space of fan fiction was threatened for LGBT+ fans. Debate over Parker's tweet caused heated debate and intense bullying within the fandom. Some fans began accusing LGBT+ fan fiction writers of being the source of rumors about Tomlinson's sexuality, due to Larry Stylinson (the name given to the pairing of Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson, the fandom's most popular ship) slash fan fiction written by them. This inciting incident inspired three fans to create Rainbow Direction.

[3.2] Rainbow Direction's initial purpose was "to help educate people that gay rumors aren't something to defend themselves against (especially in a mean fashion), because being gay isn't shameful" (Marusic 2015). After receiving input from hundreds of other LGBT+ fans on Tumblr, Rainbow Direction created its mission statement, gained visibility, and added fostering a safe space for fans at concerts to its list of goals, alongside combating homophobic bullying within the fandom. "We want to speak out to show support, and stand up proudly to make ourselves known. Because we aren't just one in a million! We want to show who we are and how much support there is for the LGBTQIA+ members of our community, all around the globe" (http://takemehomefromnarnia.tumblr.com/post/97918944291/the-ultimate-rainbow-direction-masterpost).

[3.3] Rainbow Direction's mission statement is what Hinck would identify as an ethical framework, "a worldview or a frame of understanding based on an ethic that is theoretical and all encompassing" (8). The actions that Rainbow Direction took to gain visibility and acceptance of LGBT+ fans is the group's ethical modality or "way of meeting an ethical obligation" (Hinck 2015, 8). An ethical framework is ideology, and an ethical modality is the way in which that ideology is expressed and enacted. Starting with One Direction's Where We Are (WWA) Tour, which began in August 2014, Rainbow Direction organized a peaceful protest at every concert. Led by team captains assigned for each city the band visited, the group created signs, printed paper rainbow hearts, and brought rainbow flags to be held up when One Direction sang the song "Strong" (figure 1).

[3.4] Following its success with the WWA Tour, Rainbow Direction continued and increased its efforts for the band's On the Road Again (OTRA) Tour in 2015—this time making a modification to its demonstration that would prove even more successful than its initial idea. In her article, Hinck addresses the barriers of entry to fandom: "Being a fan often requires some minimum degree of leisure time and money to access popular culture artifacts and participate in fan communities" (Hinck 2015, 15). Besides the obvious barrier of affording a ticket to a One Direction concert in order to participate in Rainbow Direction's biggest effort, there was one other significant obstacle. Many fans who wanted to participate in Rainbow Direction had come out to the fandom community, but not to their families. Reasons ranged from them just not feeling ready to come out publicly yet to the unfortunate reality that if they did come out they would no longer be safe in their own homes. Bringing a rainbow flag or sign to a concert wasn't an option for these fans, so Rainbow Direction came up with a new idea. For the band's OTRA tour, team captains assigned a different color of the rainbow to each section of the venue. Fans saved an image of the color their section was assigned onto their phones, and would hold their phones up when the band sang "Little Things," creating a rainbow wave of light around the venue (video 1). Thousands more fans participated in this action than any of Rainbow Direction's previous efforts, and it ultimately was what got them noticed, not only by mainstream media outlets but also the band.