Bibliography

• Fiske, J., 1987, Television Culture, USA: Methuen & Co. Ltd.

• Moran, C., 2012, Moranthology, UK: Ebury Press. 

• N/A, 2011, The Philosophy Book, Great Britain: Dorling Kindersley Limited. 

• Furnham, A., 2008, 50 Psychology Ideas You Really Need To Know, London: Quercus Editions Ltd.

• Greer, G., 1970, The Female Eunuch, Great Britain: MacGibbon and Kee Ltd.

• Aaron, M., 2007, Spectatorship: The Power of Looking on, Great Britain: Wallflower Press. 

• Bennett, P., Slater, J., 2010, A2 Communication and Culture: The Essential Introduction, 2009 Specification, USA, Canada, UK: Routledge. 

• James Surowiecki, 2005, The power and the danger of online crowds, [Online], [Last accessed 1st May 2014], Available from: http://www.ted.com/talks/james_surowiecki_on_the_turning_point_for_social_media

• N/A, 2014, The dark side of fandom, 2/01/14, Observation Deck, [Online], [Last accessed 30th April 2014], Available from: http://observationdeck.io9.com/the-dark-side-of-fandom-1514042157

• Mulvey, L., Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975), Screen (vol.) 16.3, Autumn 1975, pp. 6-18, http://imlportfolio.usc.edu/ctcs505/mulveyVisualPleasureNarrativeCinema.pdf, [Accessed on 26th April 2014]

• Burton, G., 1999, Media and Popular Culture, Great Britain: Hodder and Stoughton.

Keyword Cloud

How are we to get into a post-feminist world when we actively allow ourselves to be repressed by men?

Overall, it seems that despite the derogatory nickname, ‘Hiddlestoners’ are gender equal given that they use the ‘role’ as a chance to do whatever they like in relation to their passion for Tom. However, the female members of the fandom still encourage gender inequality by allowing themselves to be ‘dominated’ by Hiddleston’s character ‘Loki’. Due to the nature of the character it is unlikely that it will change in the near future.

The following is an example of how easily the fandom will be controlled by the subject of their adoration.

The ‘Hiddlestoner’ look

One of the most prominent ways for fans to present their identities as ‘Hiddlestoners’ is through what they adorn their bodies with. Be it a t-shirt that says ‘I love Tom Hiddleston’ or a pendant with a silhouette of Loki on it, these are all indicators of a fan’s devotion to their fandom. Another example of showing this is cosplay. A famous ‘Loki’ cosplayer is a woman called Fahr Sindram. She goes by the alias ‘Farhlight’ and has won awards for how close to Tom she looks. This means that she is sometimes mistaken for him, or at least for a man, but she complains when people don’t know her gender. She seems to compensate for this by looking overly feminine in pastel pinks and lolita dresses.

She seems to be following Wolf’s idea of the Beauty Myth - she cares too much about what others will think, and whether they call her beautiful, when beauty is a social construct controlled by the media anyway. Feminists believe that women are constantly having to live up to what men find ‘beautiful’, which is the easiest way for men to dominate/control us. However, Beauvoir might argue that imposing the beauty myth onto females is a feature of being ‘exhorted to be women, remain women, become women’ and she argues that ‘every female human is not necessarily a woman’.¹ This means that despite the biology of a female, fans such as ‘Fahrlight’ can masquerade as ‘men’ if they want to. With this idea in mind, fandoms are gender neutral as they allow for fans to be who they want to be regardless of gender. The reason for this is that it is an internet-based culture and people use the internet as an alternate reality where anything is possible. 

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1 N/A, 2011, The Philosophy Book, Great Britain: Dorling Kindersley Limited. ^↩

‘Tom Hiddleston Frustration’ - it’s our therapy apparently

Fandoms are well known for creating fanfiction to express their wants and desires as well as the creator’s identity. Each ‘fic’, or piece of artwork, gives another point of view, adding up to give us a bigger picture of the ‘hiddlestoners’ fandom. Fanfiction is a postmodern creation - fans want to play around with what producers have given them, they want to mess with reality. These intertextual pieces of fiction allow for fans to talk about characters as though they are real. In this state of hyper-reality, the creators take on the role of ‘God’ in deciding exactly what happens within the narrative. It’s quite a powerful role to take on. There’s no point in working out whether fanfiction is made/read by males or females because that’s not why it’s made. A better approach to fanfiction is to look at what is produced when fans have the power to control characters. One product that is relevant to feminism, is the ‘marmite’ genre of ‘slash’ fiction. This is a genre that forces two characters of the same sex into a relationship. This appears to be targeted at both heterosexual women and homosexual men. One theory that can be applied to this is ‘Queer Theory’ - an approach favoured by post-feminists. Considering ‘Queer Theory offers the view that the ideas of ‘male’ or ‘female’ are just as much the product of representation, as masculinity and femininity’, ‘slash’ fiction could be a way for fans to express that they are not bound by their gender or sexuality.¹ Morley stresses the ‘importance of culture (including gender) shaping audience use of media, and making sense of media’, which means that ‘slash’ fiction is another way fans make sense of the media texts given to them in relation to gender and sexuality.² In contrast, it could just be a way for fans to show that they don’t care what the producers think, they’re going to prove that they can control characters just as much at them.

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1 Bennett, P., Slater, J., 2010, A2 Communication and Culture: The Essential Introduction, 2009 Specification, USA, Canada, UK: Routledge. ^↩
2 Burton, G., 1999, Media and Popular Culture, Great Britain: Hodder and Stoughton.^↩

The classic ‘gentleman’ trope

There are feminists, such as Greer, who believe that women have to live up to the expectations imposed on them by a ‘Eternal Feminine’ stereotype. She suggests that women must be 'the sexual object sought by all men'.¹ This suggests that men are obsessed with sex and that this is all they think about when interacting/looking at women. It also gives women more to live up to by creating the impression that there are no more ‘gentlemen’ left in the world - it’s a dying trope. Considering the elements of the ‘gentleman’ stereotype - opening doors for a women, standing as they approach the dining table and giving a woman his coat if she’s cold - Hiddleston could be called a contemporary gentleman. The following pictures are examples of how the media represent him as this.

The problem is that today’s society doesn’t accept this as common practice any more and thus it loses value. Caitlin Moran suggests that some men and women think that ‘all chivalry was essentially men patronising women, and implying they were weak and helpless’.² In contrast, we see members of Hiddleston’s fandom calling for these traditions to come back as they are attractive traits to them. Despite the idea that this behaviour patronises women, it also makes them feel valued and respected.

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1 Greer, G., 1970, The Female Eunuch, Great Britain: MacGibbon and Kee Ltd.^↩
2 Moran, C., 2012, Moranthology, UK: Ebury Press. ^↩

It’s all his fault, he’s a man

Fandoms are made up of many spectators, male and female, but media texts are criticised for creating gendered content. Mulvey defines the criteria of the Male Gaze by suggesting that

‘the presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation’.¹

This leads to the idea of the female spectacle. However, this is ignorant of the possibility of a ‘male spectacle’, which Hiddleston could be classed as. Richard Dyer looked into the subject using male pin-ups who attempted to avoid the conventions of a ‘passive’ female spectacle. We can apply this theory to the photo-shoots Tom Hiddleston takes part in. Dyer found that

‘ a female model typically averts her eyes, out of modesty, patience, but certainly submission, [whereas] the male model [...] when he looks straight on, it is with the strong powerful stare of an equal or with a piercing gaze right through viewer.’²

Therefore, we see that men can also be objects of the female voyeuristic pleasure, and they do so in a way that aims to remain dominant or to distance themselves from the female spectacle. From this, we can assume that Hiddleston, in certain roles, would rather refrain from following the actions of the female spectacle, in order to keep the patriarchal impression of dominance. In contrast, the picture below shows that in contemporary media, men still display features of the ‘female spectacle’.

This suggests that we could be moving into a post-feminist era of spectatorship - where genders are not limited to acting a specific way to appeal to the opposing gender. However, it is likely that females will only appreciate this ‘submissive’ pose, as it implies that he is kind and caring - attributes that are ‘attractive’ in today’s society.

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1 Mulvey, L., Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975), Screen (vol.) 16.3, Autumn 1975, pp. 6-18, http://imlportfolio.usc.edu/ctcs505/mulveyVisualPleasureNarrativeCinema.pdf, [Accessed on 26th April 2014]^↩
2 Aaron, M., 2007, Spectatorship: The Power of Looking on, Great Britain: Wallflower Press. ^↩