What does being a “fan” mean in the age of hyper-accessibility and hyper-visibility? Who is a fan and what qualifies as fan behaviour has changed considerably in the last ten years – sure, social media has been around for longer, but one cannot remember a time when a “regular” person had constant access to those many degrees removed from them in terms of social, economic, and professional identities.
While until some years you’d wait for the paparazzi to provide photos of your favourite celebrities or fish for gossip on Page 3, social media sites such as Instagram give us a direct view into our favourite celebrity’s home and a quick browse through their follower/following list is often enough to indicate who their most recent romantic partner might be. This blurring of boundaries is certainly jarring and has in turn given rise to a crop of quasi or pseudo-celebrities. Think about social media influencers and how they stand in for celebrities who still remain largely out of reach (Bollywood and Hollywood stars, for example) by trying to “influence” what to eat, how to dress up, travel, and present yourselves.
While it is debatable whether social media influencers have any significant or long-term influence on the masses, the wastefulness and extravagance of this micro-culture are not lost on us. And yet, we are all guilty of “consuming” such “content” and being influenced by it, even if for a moment. While some are lucky enough to snap out of the daze and realise how removed from reality these curated lives are, there are also some who get sucked into the rabbit hole of unattainable (and unachievable) desires and wants that are often projected as necessary to live a better, more productive and fulfilling, and, most importantly, a more aesthetically pleasing life.
From the window to the world
Sheena Patel’s debut novel I’m a Fan is a searing, scathing portrayal of such an obsession. The nameless protagonist’s world is hinged on “the man I want to be with” and the “woman I am obsessed with” – a middle-aged married man who is also a compulsive cheater and a white American social media lifestyle influencer whose father is a famous poet and who lives a life cocooned in her whiteness and wealth. Very sparse information is spared about the protagonist but what we gather is she is about to turn 30 and is of Indian origin. The middle-aged man is her “whatevership” whom she sleeps with when he pleases and the white woman is one of his many sexual partners. It is a vitriolic mix.
While the white woman’s life is unattainable to her – she cannot buy a $1,200 lamp or be the daughter of an award-winning poet – the man she desires does not particularly like her and withholds sex as a punishment for her demanding clarity or some semblance of loyalty. While the woman is a “confident display of whiteness”, the protagonist acknowledges that she must “empty herself out in order to appear as his ideal”. She is no match for the refined upbringing and justified demands of the white woman. While she remains obsessed with the Instagram influencer – whom she does not even follow – the white woman is oblivious that she has a sexual competitor among the commoners.
The protagonist might seem like a sorry case but I cannot say confidently that I have not done the same. The degree of desperation might be different but I cannot claim to have never “stalked” an influencer online who has nothing to do with my life or my reality, even if it is to get a good laugh or be astounded by the self-importance the community envelopes itself in. Patel points this out through her protagonist who can see through her subject’s performative “wokeness” and how she appropriates cultures that are not hers.
Despite the clear display of a more realistic understanding of the world, the protagonist dissolves the boundaries between the screen and reality by turning up in the physical spaces where the influencer might be and by contacting her family. What is a mission of passion for her is actually humiliating to read – you want her to stop but like witnessing a car crash, you don’t exactly want to avert your eyes either. This is a lesson in what happens when you let yourself go over the edge.
Similarly, the protagonist is also aware of the toxic power disbalance in (what she calls) her “relationship-in-waiting”. She admits to not being in love with him but his “cock is so beautiful” and his scant attention to her is so mystifying to her that she cannot entirely let go of him either. In the periods when she is away from him, these realisations burst forth and she takes stock of how wholly unfeminist he renders her. She points to how the women in his life should “unionise” but instead they “splinter” , and since he is incapable of seeing them as people, that is also how they end up treating each other.
This is not an unusual dynamic, especially in the present day when sex is easily available, as is a glimpse into your sexual competitors’ lives. It is an exhausting way to find love, and yet this is the norm in the modern dating culture. While most of us would be desperate to check out of such competitions, the protagonist admits she is held in the “eroticism of her triggers.”
Dangerous liaisons
It is difficult, even for the reader, to clearly compartmentalise the association between the protagonist and “the man she wants to be with” – the sex is irregular and on whim, the communication channels are e-mails and burner phones, and it is not even as capricious as a “situationship”. On the other hand, it has gone on for years, both of them are seeking sex outside of their “monogamous” relationships, and each is incapable of fully letting the other one go.
In a bizarre admission, the protagonist says that her middle-aged lover takes pride in her as he would in his daughter and this is, quite understandably, not something for her to be happy about – she instantly wonders if he’d say something like this to his social media influencer lover and why she has been discarded from the realm of the family.
The scales constantly tip dangerously close to the edge and not for a moment the reader is allowed to sit back and think about what the implications, and consequences, of such messy associations might be. Patel is not treading on uncharted territory – it is not unusual to be taken in by someone who is not formally “available” to you.
Age gaps, marital status, workplace relationships are the top ingredients of formidable romances and the thrill of it can be heady. While one partner might get completely swept away in the currents of sex and desire, the other partner might remain firmly rooted in their reality without giving away their alternate existence. Patel’s protagonist says it best when she quietly reflects on how “he fills her entire life and she is only a sliver of his.”
These crazed reactions to her sex life – which also includes physical and online stalking of her lover’s other partners – are interrupted by comments on race, colonialism, and men’s inherent sexism. While the white woman influencer’s empty activism helps her feel better about her supposed better understanding of politics and history (she leaves hate comments and instantly deletes them), the forced celibacy (when the man is withholding sex) enlightens her on how men have become the perfect capitalist machines that can reproduce all their lives, thus making women automatically inferior as biological vessels and individual persons.
It is in these moments she realises that even unhappy marriages are worth coveting and perhaps her way of seeking love is not sustainable after all. In an interesting dichotomy, Patel presents men as Daddy (in the workplace) and Baby (in intimate relationships), and ultimately, as dependents instead of partners in heterosexual relationships. These observations are sharp and unsympathetic and put the protagonist’s highly troubling relationships (with women and men) into some sort of psychological perspective.
It is foolish to expect happy endings in such stories. An association built on lies, deception, and disrespect can rarely make a turn for the better. The humiliation of the protagonist reaches its peak when she states she’s jealous of the dog her lover shows affection for and you know you can no longer be privy to her thoughts. It has gone on for too long and you want out.
Patel shuts the door at just the right moment and you are deflated in knowing that the protagonist will stew in self-hate and shame for the rest of her life. She knows she is a fan – not in the yesteryears but in the era of online hyper-accessibility. She adds no value to the life of the people she is a fan of and they are completely unaware of her existence. She says without any self-pity, though the reader knows how pathetic her life is, “I’m a fan and because of this I can be cut out.” You close the book and you pray and you pray, that come what may, may you never turn into a “fan”.
I’m a Fan, Sheena Patel, Granta Books.