Another factor may be that for controversial and polarizing works, fandoms are more necessary, because the fans need to band together.
In the case of works that are universally recognized as good, there is no need for fandom, because there is no need for solidarity of the fans in the face of criticism or being made fun of.
Your last phrase, “there is no need for solidarity of the fans in the face of criticism or being made fun of” really gets to what I think of as the core of fannishness.
It’s not about bad vs. good, it’s about ingroup vs. outgroup. The things that have fanatic fans have other people/society/social norm telling them one or more of a number of things designed to create an ingroup/outgroup dynamic. Bad in an artistic sense is one, but so are uninteresting, geeky, against the social norms, etc.
Under this theory, I would expect more fannishness now for Star Wars than for Indiana Jones: space is geeky. But I wouldn’t necessarily expect it back at the beginning, because in the 70s, space was cooler. And fannishness should have increased with time, as folks recognized that Star Wars has some significant artistic flaws.
This theory holds up, even in the face of Firefly, which is hugely fannish but doesn’t, as far as I know, have major artistic criticisms (but does have geeky, and also has FOX and the world at large saying that it’s not interesting enough to be worth keeping).
But this theory has a significant flaw: celebrity worship seems to be another side of the fan behavior, but fails to be explained by this. Sure, celebrities are high status, highly desirable people who, as primates, we would expect to worship—it’s not the worship itself that I think needs to be explained by group dynamics. But celebrity worship behavior and fan worship behavior seem to be very similar (and very different from other kinds of respect and worship), and I would hope there’d be an underlying unification of thinking to draw from that.
I think this makes sense...
Another factor may be that for controversial and polarizing works, fandoms are more necessary, because the fans need to band together.
In the case of works that are universally recognized as good, there is no need for fandom, because there is no need for solidarity of the fans in the face of criticism or being made fun of.
Your last phrase, “there is no need for solidarity of the fans in the face of criticism or being made fun of” really gets to what I think of as the core of fannishness.
It’s not about bad vs. good, it’s about ingroup vs. outgroup. The things that have fanatic fans have other people/society/social norm telling them one or more of a number of things designed to create an ingroup/outgroup dynamic. Bad in an artistic sense is one, but so are uninteresting, geeky, against the social norms, etc.
Under this theory, I would expect more fannishness now for Star Wars than for Indiana Jones: space is geeky. But I wouldn’t necessarily expect it back at the beginning, because in the 70s, space was cooler. And fannishness should have increased with time, as folks recognized that Star Wars has some significant artistic flaws.
This theory holds up, even in the face of Firefly, which is hugely fannish but doesn’t, as far as I know, have major artistic criticisms (but does have geeky, and also has FOX and the world at large saying that it’s not interesting enough to be worth keeping).
But this theory has a significant flaw: celebrity worship seems to be another side of the fan behavior, but fails to be explained by this. Sure, celebrities are high status, highly desirable people who, as primates, we would expect to worship—it’s not the worship itself that I think needs to be explained by group dynamics. But celebrity worship behavior and fan worship behavior seem to be very similar (and very different from other kinds of respect and worship), and I would hope there’d be an underlying unification of thinking to draw from that.