[1] In A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy: The Construction of Authorship in Transmedia Franchises, Anastasia Salter and Mel Stanfill map the shape and boundaries of the industrial authorial figure of the fanboy auteur in the late 2010s. In doing so, they demonstrate both the central tension between fan identity and auteur status and how the legitimacy and authority of the role is differently accessible to creators based on identity factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, and class. Following Suzanne Scott (2013), Salter and Stanfill understand the fanboy auteur as a discursive authorial figure who both functions as an industrial guarantee of quality—the writer, director, producer, or showrunner can be trusted by fans because they themselves are fans—and as an organizing figure through whom interpretation of the franchise can be guided. Media industries, and Hollywood in particular, increasingly rely on transmedial franchising as a less risky industrial strategy that taps into a guaranteed audience base. In this landscape, the fanboy auteur figure has gained increasing prominence and importance. The focus on the fanboy auteur builds on Stanfill's 2019 work on industrial management of fans (Exploiting Fandom: How the Media Industry Seeks to Manipulate Fans) and Salter's 2017 work with Bridgett Blodgett on toxic geek masculinity (Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media: Sexism, Trolling, and Identity Policing).
[2] The role of the fanboy auteur has overwhelmingly been the province of white men. A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy introduces a taxonomy for categorizing creators that productively expands the concept to include many more instantiations of this kind of authorial positioning. Salter and Stanfill categorize author-figures along two axes: whether they are more affirmational or transformational in their fandom (obsession_inc 2009) and whether they are known for being fans of the franchises they create in. While the affirmational/transformational divide has been productively challenged as overly rigid and reductively gendered (see, for example, Hills 2014; Cherry 2016), here the authors deploy it to provide a useful framework through which to understand the discursive construction of authorship and authority in an industry where access to power and authority is still problematically gendered. The concept of the fanboy auteur was always specifically gendered (as indicated by the term fanboy) and implicitly raced, and it remains disproportionately available to white men. However, by examining a variety of creators through this taxonomy, the authors reveal the role to be somewhat flexible, potentially opening up aspects of authority and legitimation to more marginalized creators over time.
[3] The text consists of a series of case studies in which Salter and Stanfill perform discursive analysis on a corpus of press coverage, supplemented by internet sources, tweets, and the occasional textual analysis of the auteurs' work. It is organized into seven main chapters, with the first six chapters focusing on a single fan auteur figure, while chapter seven and the conclusion offer briefer comparative readings of more marginalized auteur figures. The case studies address well-known figures who should be accessible to readers both familiar and unfamiliar with the field of fan studies, with each chosen figure occupying a different point along Salter and Stanfill's proposed fan and auteur axes. These relatively short but robust and readable case studies can easily be read separately, which makes the text particularly useful for upper-level undergraduate teaching. When taken together, however, the case studies form a fuller, interconnected picture of the ways that the fan auteur is discursively created and the limited way that many are allowed or able to access its legitimacy and authority.
[4] The introduction outlines the current franchise-heavy media landscape, establishes the fanboy auteur as a function of the rise of the fan (implicitly white, male, affirmational) as the ideal audience, and introduces Salter and Stanfill's fan/auteur taxonomy. Chapter one jumps right into the first case study, focused on an almost quintessential fanboy auteur, Steven Moffat. Known best for his work on British television series Doctor Who (2005–2017) and Sherlock (2010–2017), Moffat has a distinctive authorial style, and his authorial legitimacy comes from his oft-proclaimed deep fannish knowledge of these franchises. Though the series he works on can be highly transformative in many ways, his fanboy positioning is particularly affirmational. He demands a similarly deep knowledge base and celebratory response from fans of his work and is abrasive and dismissive of fans when their modes of fandom, interpretations, opinions, or expectations do not align with his own. Moffat thus claims to create for the fans while dismissing the opinions of actual fans, demonstrating the tension between imagined and real fans that undergirds the media industry's perception of fans today.
[5] E. L. James, known for turning her Twilight fan fiction into the enormously popular yet derided Shades of Grey novels, provides a contrast in chapter two. This case study ably reveals the gendered nature of the fanboy auteur figure: whereas fanboy auteurs are able to use their fan identities to support their positions, James's fangirl identity (her association with fandom through fan fiction) is leveraged against her authority and legitimacy. Her work, which exists at the already-maligned crossroads of romance, erotica, and fan fiction, is seen as negatively derivative and she is thus denied authorship; paradoxically, however, she is also seen as overly controlling (especially in the adaptation of her novels to film) and is blamed for every unsatisfactory decision or outcome. James may be the "purest example of the fangirl auteur" (38), and as an inverse example of the fanboy auteur strikingly reveals who is and is not allowed to access the legitimating function of the fan auteur identity.
[6] Considering her continued place as the lone authorial figure in the Harry Potter franchise, J. K. Rowling is a clear example of a transmedia auteur figure. Unlike the others examined in the book, Rowling is not a fan of her own franchise, nor does she claim a fan identity more broadly. Nevertheless, Salter and Stanfill read her interactions with fans on the internet as modeling "proper" (41) fan engagement, continually centering herself as the locus of meaning and interpretation of her texts. Kevin Smith, in contrast, is both highly defined by his fandom and highly affirmative in his approach and has crafted a distinct authorial style through his fannishly inflected work. However, he lacks a "necessary reverence" for his objects of fandom, and as a result has not been granted authority over blockbuster franchises in the way that Joss Whedon and Zack Snyder, the next two case studies, have.
[7] The fifth chapter examines Joss Whedon's combination of a feminist auteurist persona with a fanboy identity. The first section interrogates Whedon's feminist persona in light of long present but recently growing evidence suggesting such an identity is "more style than substance" (88). Since publication, even more testimony has come to light, including Whedon's alleged treatment of actors (especially Ray Fisher) on the set of Justice League (2017), which augments the reading here. Nevertheless, Whedon's ostensibly feminist work on shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1996–2003) amassed him an army of dedicated fans. Since then, Whedon has combined a casual style with a seemingly accessible online presence to leverage that army of fan labor into supporting and promoting more fanboy-based projects, from parodies of the superhero and horror genres (Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog in 2008 and Cabin in the Woods in 2011) to his involvement with Marvel's Avengers and DC's Justice League franchises. Salter and Stanfill argue, however, that Whedon's feminist-inflected auteur status sits in constant tension with his fan identity.
[8] In the sixth chapter, Salter and Stanfill explore Zack Snyder's fanboy auteur persona. Snyder has a distinct (if one-note), dark, violent, and misogynistic authorial style, and his directorial career has consisted of remakes, adaptations, and blockbuster superhero franchise entries considered faithful by many. His fanbase deems him "a pure fanboy anointed" (118) and his fans reject criticism of his work as stridently as he himself does. Salter and Stanfill wrote this chapter during the campaign to release the Snyder cut of 2017's Justice League but before HBO's 2021 release of Snyder's version. As a result, this chapter might be particularly useful in the classroom, as a starting point for discussion or as the basis of an exercise examining more recent coverage of the campaign and discussions of fan(boy) entitlement.
[9] The final chapter examines three directors recently added to Marvel and DC's Hollywood superhero franchises, all distinguished by their outsider status—whether as a woman (Patty Jenkins) or person of color (Ryan Coogler and Taika Waititi). While these directors stress their long-term fandom of or emotional connection to the superhero franchises they adapt, this claim to fan identity does not afford them the same level of legitimacy as other figures examined in this text. Further, they tend to be considered exceptional and are made to represent minority categories. The conclusion similarly considers outlier cases of fangirl auteur figures Ava DuVernay and the Wachowskis, who have moved from traditionally auteur positions into more fannish projects. Salter and Stanfill conclude that while these examples seem to indicate that the role of the fan auteur might be opening up to more diverse creators, change is slow. The legitimacy and authority ostensibly provided by the fanboy auteur construct is still far less accessible to creators like Coogler and Jenkins.
[10] The final chapter and conclusion are likely the most interesting to fan-studies scholars. While the rest of the examples cover fairly well-trodden ground in fan studies, the creators in the last two sections push the boundaries of who can be considered a fan auteur and how, in productive and intriguing ways. The text overwhelmingly focuses on the loudest, most influential examples of fan auteur figures, mostly drawn from the ranks of big-name directors, producers, and writers of Hollywood geek-driven "tentpole media" (160)—though even within this bubble, readers will likely note the absence of the Star Wars (2015–2022) universe (as recognized by the authors themselves, 161) and Star Trek (2009–2016) franchise. As the first book-length examination of the concept, and in terms of the authors' goal to map out a discursive construct, the choice to focus on these figures makes sense. However, it also runs the risk of reifying the role as the province of the mostly white, mostly male creators who are granted the status at this level. Nonetheless, this is still important groundwork to lay. As Salter and Stanfill point out, all creators must reckon with the patterns set by fanboy auteur figures at this largest scale (160–61). There may currently be more diversity both representationally and authorially in smaller scale productions (such as television shows or streaming platform content). However, celebrating these spaces as better for diversity can also serve to take pressure off Hollywood and relegate diversity to more peripheral spaces (161). The authors' choice to focus on the most overt instances of fanboy auteurs therefore refuses to shy away from the unequal state of the industry. The book's limited focus on Hollywood and UK-based figures primarily working in film (and secondarily television and literature) also leaves a wide field for future work to explore; not only are there likely to be interesting examples of creators expanding and complicating the fanboy auteur figure at smaller scales of film and television production, but also other fields entirely (for example, independent and internet media production, or video games—itself a somewhat surprising omission in this text, considering Salter's wealth of work in game studies). Examinations of transnational and transcultural figures would also be particularly illuminating.
[11] A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy provides a snapshot of the fanboy auteur figure at a specific moment in the late 2010s. Since its writing, new information has and continues to come to light about many of the figures examined here, further complicating their standing as fan(boy) auteur figures. Nevertheless, the text remains valuable as a mapping of the discursive field at this moment and as a jumping-off point for future work examining the role. Reflecting the current landscape, the text reveals how, in Hollywood geek-driven franchises, the fanboy auteur role is still mostly the province of white men. Ultimately, however, the fan and auteur axes that Salter and Stanfill introduce as a taxonomic strategy will prove a useful tool for understanding and analyzing how elements of the role might be used by a variety of author-figures as legitimating strategies.