A man walks into a bar and asks “So who is Bib Fortuna?”
It’s an oft asked (in certain circles) question - no, no not who or what is a Bib Fortuna - but the question of whether the high-brow of the cinephile and low-brow of the fanboy are still part of the same face.
As the internet has given a voice to everyone and their dog - check out hismastersvoice.com - and the popularity of that which we call film shows no sign of waning, the question arises when does one stop being a mere film buff or fanboy and transcends to the lofty echelons of cinephile (der-der-der, here comes Cineman and Silverscreen Boy!)
Is there anything wrong with being a bit of a film-buff? Does cinephilia suddenly make you irresistible to the opposite sex? All these questions and more will NOT be answered but feel free to make your own assumptions (you know you will)
Well if you would, could you please get down from your high horse (it’s not a high horse, it’s a CG Pegasus and it took ILM almost two years to render the hair for the mane…LOOK AT THE MANE IT’S ALMOST LIKE ITS REAL!) Mister Film Man and take a seat: not the premium seats you find at the local Showcase or Cineworld, the ones with cup holders decorated with gold leaf, and not on your Ikea-purchased sofa in front of you bigger than God-o-Vision HD Television, with a home cinema 7.1 sound system that’s louder than war (and twice as costly) no, no, no. Come, make yourself comfortable, sit quietly by my side and listen.
So, when looking at the subjects of cinephilia and fandom, it soon becomes apparent that each term could be simply described as the flip sides of the same coin.
The very term “cinephilia” conjures more than just the love of cinema, it encompasses almost an entire attitude towards life. Since the 1960s and Andrew Sarris’ “importing” of the Andre Bazin politics du auteur, the term has come in and out of fashion. The term has its detractors which comes from the almost cosmopolitan snobbery that the it implies (see the scene outside of Waverly Cinema in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, 1977) but at the same time it’s a term that can is also seen by many as a badge of honour; a statement of one’s love and appreciation for the finer points of film and cinema…which leads us to the other side of the coin…fandom.
Whilst cinephilia deals with, what could be said to be, the more “high culture idea” of the film world, the term fandom - used originally to describe fans of sport or celebrity) is seen to represent the lower end of the spectrum. It’s a word that has had as many ups-and-downs as cinephilia, but that has really come into the forefront in the past decade.
With the boom of the internet, fandom has reached almost biblical proportions. Those who stand under the banner of fandom have found the perfect outlet for freely discussing their obsessions; one only has to look at the millions of forums and fan sites devoted to even the most obscure films, and the popularity of fan sites such as Aintitcool.com - a site said to have so much influence on the box-office performance of films in recent years, that it has been said to have sunk some of the biggest of Hollywood’s offerings and boosted some of the smallest films into the realm of sleeper-hit.
Yet, in the immortal words of Ben Afleck (he was rather good in Phantoms, apparently…): “Fuck Jay and Silent Bob. Fuck them up their stupid asses.”
...to be continued!
- Andy
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