Fandom

The Anti-Fan within the Fan

Awe and Envy in Sport Fandom

Vivi Theodoropoulou

Anti-fans are people with clear dislikes.1 They are people who, for a variety of reasons, hate or intensely dislike and have strong negative views or feelings about a certain text, genre, or personality (Gray 2003). This chapter looks at a particular category of anti-fans: those whose status as such is defined by the fact that they are fans. It looks at the anti-fan within the fan. It aims to demonstrate cases where fandom is a precondition of anti-fandom and to illuminate instances when for a fan anti-fandom is given and set. These are cases where two fan objects are clear-cut or traditional rivals, thus inviting fans to become anti-fans of the “rival” object of admiration. It suggests that under such circumstances, a fan becomes an anti-fan of the object that “threatens” his/her own, and of that object’s fans. Thus, when A and B are the opposing fandom objects, fans of A are anti-fans of B and of B’s fans, and vice versa.

The chapter argues that such anti-fans emerge whenever binary oppositions are established between two fan objects. It proposes that this kind of anti-fandom is fostered particularly in the realm of spectator sports and is embedded in the nature of such sports that promote incessant competition and ranking. Inspired by Thucydides (1920 [431 BC]), it applies the term “αντπαλον δοζ” (“antipalon deos”) to argue that it is a series of emotions such as fear, admiration, respect, and envy for the opposing threat that cause hatred and anti-fandom of this kind. More importantly, it demonstrates how fans participate in such bipolar structures.

The focus of the chapter is on football. It explores fans of the two most popular and famously rival clubs in Greece, Olympiakos and Panathinaikos. The two clubs have shared a deep rivalry since their founding. Olympiakos is the opposing threat and counterforce to Panathinaikos and vice versa. This rivalry is one of the classic and most acknowledged bipolar structures in European football,2 with the two teams being considered mutually exclusive and antagonistic fan objects. Based on a series of interviews and group discussions with fans of the two teams that took place in spring 2005,³ the chapter exemplifies the conditions and provides a definition of such anti-fandom. It suggests that the emotional investment in anti-fandom is significant to the construction of fan identity. It concludes that bipolar oppositions act as the definitive mechanism of distinction to the outsider and enable identification with the team. In this sense, and by emphasizing the importance of identification against the rival, the chapter suggests that anti-fandom may also work as a form of language, structured, like language, through binary oppositions.

The Concept of the Anti-Fan

Even though popular culture and fandom literature have been looking at instances when audiences feel uncomfortable with or ambivalent about given genres or texts (see Alters 2003; Barker & Brooks 1998; Barker, Arthurs, & Harindranath 2001), Jonathan Gray (2003) was the first to categorize the practice of (actively) disliking genres, texts, or personalities as “anti-fandom.” Anti-fans do not dislike popular texts for nothing. On the contrary, they are often familiar with their objects of dispassion and aware of the reasons for their dislike. According to Gray, “anti-fans must find cause for their dislike in something. This something may vary from having previously watched the show and having found it intolerable, to having a dislike for its genre, director or stars; to having seen previews or ads, or seen or heard unfavorable reviews” (2003: 71). The discussion of anti-fandom has thus far outlined moral and ethical objections, and textual and class considerations, as the most essential underlying principles of opposition to texts and personalities. Be the text Television without Pity postings (Gray 2005), The Simpsons (Alters 2003), or David Cronenberg’s film Crash (Barker, Arthurs, & Harindranath 2001), it is predominantly the moral value of the text as interpreted and received by the reader that triggers anti-fandom.

However, there is another anti-fandom cluster that, so far, has not been discussed or examined in fan culture studies in much detail: anti-fandom caused and triggered by fandom. This type of anti-fandom encloses cases where the dislike of object A results from liking object B; where the hatred for something is dictated by the love for something else and the need to protect the “loved one.”

In this sense, the anti-fan is the person who hates the fan object of another fan for the simple reason that this object is in direct, straightforward, or historical competition with her/his own object of admiration. This way, an anti-fan is always a fan. I would like to suggest that binary oppositions between fan objects are a precondition for such cases of anti-fandom. The two competing objects have to be in an outright rivalry with each other. Often, this means that the competence and skills of the two objects, which are in direct competition, are near equivalent (or perceived to be near equivalent), and it is this equivalence that makes the opposing fan object a threat to the fan’s object and makes her/him an anti-fan.

Sport genres are the perfect place for anti-fans to be “produced,” because one of the central meanings of sports is competition. TV and music genres perhaps do not provide such anti-fans with the same ease. On TV and music, the competition is not direct, and the competing objects are less frequently mutually exclusive. However, in cases of textual proximity, binary oppositions that invite anti-fandom may be established. Star Wars fans’ dislike of Star Trek is a recorded case (Brooker 2002).

This concept of the anti-fan emerged in my early study on fandom and everyday life. All participating sports fans expressed their hatred for the opponent of their object of affection that they considered the biggest threat. Whatever bipolar oppositions were constructed (Manchester United vs. Arsenal, Manchester United vs. Liverpool, Olympiakos vs. Panathinaikos), the underlying principal was a feeling of awe for the “rival” (Theodoropoulou 1999).

“Antipalon deos” is the notion behind the conceptual framework of this anti-fan definition.4 Thucydides (1920: 3.11.2) used the term to signify the state of reciprocity of apprehension between the members of the Athenian alliance. According to him, an alliance depends upon balanced fear that is rooted in a stable balance of power among its members (see Crane 1998: ch. 7). The use of the term has been extended in modern Greek to also express the mutual fear between opponents, enemies, or adversaries that ensures unity and cohesion in the interior of the rival camps, and a state of balance between them (Babiniotis 1998). It is the “counterforce,” “counter-awe,” or “opposing threat” to something that guarantees the balance of power.⁵ Prior to Thucydides, Homer (1999) used the word “deos” (awe) in his writings to denote the (physical) fear during a fight,6 while, after Thucydides, the ancient Greek lexicographer Hesychios summed up the meaning of the term as undying “fear and respect” (Chantraine 1964).

The notion of anti-fandom I propose entails a similar sense of fear and respect for the object that acts as counterforce to an object of admiration. The fact that something is good enough to be a counterforce to a fan object is what creates a balance of fear and makes an anti-fan. The conditions that make Olympiakos the counterforce to Panathinaikos are historically specific and long lasting. A brief overview of the formation and evolution of Greek football will provide the context within which such bipolar oppositions have been created.

A Brief Socio-Historical Overview of Loathing

Sandvoss (2003) argues that cultural practices such as football fandom cannot be examined in isolation from their historical context, or the socio-historical and economic framing of football itself. As elsewhere, football in Greece follows and reflects the historical and sociopolitical circumstances of the country.⁷ Overall, both football and football fandom have been organized and developed since the first decade of the twentieth century on the basis of socio-historical characteristics such as social class, descent, origin, cultural traditions, neighborhood, district organization, and composition of towns (Bogiopoulos & Milakas 2005).

In the period between the two world wars and because of imbalanced growth, a “parochial rivalry” between city and periphery started to manifest throughout Greece. The bipolar oppositions Athens-Piraeus and north-south are indicative of a phenomenon that was encountered throughout the country: the geographical rivalry between the bourgeois cities and towns and the periphery. It is anchored in the fact that the bourgeois centers gathered the economic, political, and administrative powers of the country and people from higher socioeconomic strata, while the rural areas and the periphery of towns were populated by the working class and refugees, isolated from the action and the “center.” Such bipolar rivalries were gradually transfused into football. In this class rivalry, whose essence is refracted through geographical and “land-planning” reflections, rests the primary reason for the rivalry between the eternal bipolar opposition of Olympiakos-Panathinaikos⁸ (Bogiopoulos & Milakas 2005).

Panathinaikos was formed in 1908 when its ancestor team POA (Athens Football Club) was founded. The club acquired its current name PAO (Panathinaikos Athletic Group) in 1924. The Group is based in Athens and, as the name indicates, represents the whole of Athens municipality (pan-Athena). It has green as its color and the trefoil as its emblem, and alternative name. Even though the group’s athletic activities go beyond football to other sports, it is the football team that is the group’s pride and joy. Olympiakos Fun Club of Piraeus (OSFP) was established as an athletic association in 1925 out of the merger of two sports clubs based in the port of Attica, Piraeus, situated only a few miles away from the Athens center. It is the team of the wider area of Piraeus. As with Panathinaikos, despite Olympiakos athletic association having expanded into many sports, it is football that dominates. The team’s color is red and its emblem is the laurel-wreathed head of an athlete, to correspond with the Olympic idea denoted in its name. The alternative to the team’s name is “Thrylos,” the Greek word for “legend.”

Both clubs display an impressive hall of national trophies. The sweeping majority of Greek championships and cups in the history of the Greek football league have been won by either of the two teams. Olympiakos has overall performed better in pan-Hellenic tournaments and won more national championships and cups, while Panathinaikos has a more impressive course in Europe, with participation in more European tournaments such as the European Champions Cup, the UEFA Cup, and European Champions League.

Since the beginning of their history, the two teams have been constructed as opposing threats to one another. Panathinaikos was founded first. The class rivalry between the capital city of Athens and the labor neighborhood of the port of Piraeus, as well as the geographical proximity of the two areas, which was always inviting comparisons between the two, and perhaps magnifying the differences, made the middle-class circles of Piraeus feel disconnected from the capital. In particular, Olympiakos was not only founded so that the Piraeus working-class people and harbor workers could find outlets to sports and leisure but also so that its upper-middle-class founders could have the satisfaction of creating a principal antithesis to Panathinaikos of the urban center, of gaining prestige, and of measuring up to the Athenian middle-class society. It was the Piraeus middle class, their aspiration of upward social mobility and success, that led them to the creation of Olympiakos, as the foil to Panathinaikos. The historical backdrop to the rivalry is a class division and a sense of parochialism between the teams’ fans, along with the fact that both teams have traditionally been the major contenders of the Greek league, always constituting a threat to one another.

Since its professionalization in the 1970s, Greek football has gradually become more commercialized and commodified. The competition and antagonism between the two teams has been strengthened. However, some of the distinctions between what could in older times have been considered “preconditions” of fandom for the two teams, such as residential proximity, or social and economic stratification, have, by all means, weakened. You do not have to be a resident of Athens or middle class to support Panathinaikos; you do not need to be working class or living in Piraeus to be a fan of Olympiakos. Both teams currently enjoy a pan-Hellenic fan base and aficionados from any walk of life.

Negatively Constructed Difference as a Means of Identity Construction

However, even though bonds of socioeconomic background and locality are not as relevant as they used to be, current fans of both teams essentially reproduce and preserve stereotypes and distinctive marks rooted in the original social class difference of the earliest fan base of Panathinaikos and Olympiakos. Thus the fan identity is socially and culturally constructed in the sense that a fan and her/his fan identity is defined in relation to her/his anti-fan and all the socio-historical baggage the counterforce carries. Despite the changes in particular conditions, the history of both teams and of their fan groups is still imposing identity positions. Fans are well aware of these, take them up, and incorporate them—albeit in a more modern frame of thinking—in their forming and defending of their fan identity. On top of that, the “antipalon deos” ethos is preserved and intensified by the strong antagonism and lasting good performance of the two clubs and by the efforts of the management to sustain the binary opposition. Thus, the contemporary identity of the one club and its fan base is still defined in relation to the other.

Currently, then, and as my interviews confirmed, Panathinaikos’s fans frame themselves as of upscale aesthetics and quality of behavior, critical and demanding of their team and its management, and confident. Olympiakos’s fans in their self-representation, on the other hand, give more value to commitment and sentiment, are more passionate, and support their team actively by going to the football matches. They are the blue-collar fans. These characteristics are ridiculed when taken up by the anti-fans. Olympiakos fans paint Panathinaikos fans, their anti-fans, as being lazy and spoiled, not going to the field when their team is going through a bad season, as pretentiously intellectual, and as not being “masculine” enough. Meanwhile, according to Panathinaikos, Olympiakos’s fans are sexist chauvinists, hot-blooded thugs, and hooligans. The following abstract of a focus group is indicative of the barriers fans set to distinguish themselves from “rival” fans. The dialogue between Tom, a fan of Panathinaikos, and Aspa, a fan of Olympiakos, highlights and magnifies the perceived difference between the two teams’ fans:

Tom: Well, Panathinaikos’ fans, we are different. We are fans. Olympiakos’ are fanatics. I mean, we’ve got humor, we can take a joke, we’re not as aggressive as they are. How can I say it? We’re classy.

Aspa: You’re fags!

Tom: Because we’re demanding and picky? Because we’re not a herd like you are? Because we can reason and argue and don’t resort to beating people up?

Aspa: You’re not committed. We’d never leave empty seats when Olympiakos plays. We’ll go and shout our hearts out for our team!

Tom: That’s because you’re hungry! I understand. You’re starved for success. You didn’t have that satisfaction as many times as we did. We’re well fed darling, with victories and European participation. Aspa: You’re not a true fan! You don’t know how to support your team. Come on! Everybody knows you’re “couch fans.” As long as you have a TV set!

Tom: At least we can be critical of our team and administration. We can say no to the manager, we don’t follow orders, we don’t get paid by the owner to be religious supporters, we’re not employed by our team! We love it unconditionally!

Aspa: Surely your team pays for your doctors and shrinks!

What both Tom and Aspa try to do with this fast exchange of words full of irony and clever remarks is to make clear what they are like mainly by implying what they are not. They are making statements about their fan identities. As Woodward explains, identities are formed “in relation to other identities, to the ‘outsider’ or in terms of the other: that is, in relation to what they are not. The most common form in which this construction appears is in binary oppositions. Saussurean linguistic theory maintains that binary oppositions—the most extreme form of marking difference—are essential to the production of meaning” (Woodward 1997: 35). And clearly, within the binary opposition between Olympiakos and Panathinaikos, fan identities are constructed “through a hostile opposition of ‘us’ and ‘them’”(Woodward 1997: 30). Through this bipolar structure, fans conceptualize their fan identity and make sense of their fandom. They do so in a negative fashion as they discriminate themselves from the anti-fans through stereotypes about themselves and negatively constructed and exaggerated difference about the rivals. In a way, then, just as binary oppositions are for de Saussure (1974) part of the logic of language and thought, so they are for anti-fans the structure through which they make identity statements and communicate what they are and, crucially, what they are not.

Defending and Protecting Fan Identity

It is important to note that dialogues and discussions like the above are frequent among fans of the two “eternals,” and most of the time take place in an antagonistic but also playful and teasing fashion. Sports fans, in fact, take great pleasure in talking and arguing with anti-fans. They enjoy participating in a “game,” as they call it, of exchanging witty lines with their “rivals” and take up a contest of who will defend and prove that her/his fan object is better. Be this a contradiction or not (Hills 2002), they become particularly emotional when talking about the object that they are anti-fans of or when talking about the anti-fans of their fan object. They do not want to participate in such teasing games when their team loses, and they express their hatred for the “opponent” of their object of affection, while doing their best to “belittle” anti-fans and consequently “uplift” and reaffirm their own fan identity. This is their ultimate aim.

Alec, a fan of Panathinaikos, explains his pattern of calling up his best friend, who is an Olympiakos supporter, when Olympiakos loses a match. “Of course I will make him suffer. Of course I’ll call the little bastard up and make sure he confesses and admits how horribly they played. And, yeah, I know he won’t. But I’ll be going on and on and explain in every technical detail all their mistakes and he’s bound to feel like shit after that.” It is interesting that fans of the two teams perform their fandom differently among fellow fans and among anti-fans. They are honest with each other and critical of their team as a group of fellow fans. When anti-fans are present, the situation is different. They would do their utmost to defend their team and fan object choice and refute the critics. Alec explains that he would never admit in front of an anti-fan that Panathinaikos did not play well, even if it was a friend of his. He would just say that “the team played as good as it could, but due to unexpected factors it lost the game.” When asked why, he responded that the anti-fan has bad intentions: “It’s one thing to make good intentioned critique and another to give your opponent the opportunity to exterminate and make fun of you. They just wait for you to make a mistake and then hit you. So I would not give them the satisfaction.” The discussion goes on:

Interviewer: But this is what you say you do to your friend, who’s Olympiakos, no?

Alec: Yes. But the point is, I am right. He is wrong!

Interviewer: And again this is what he or any rival fan of yours would also say when criticizing Panathinaikos.

Alec: Well, that’s the name of the game!

It is becoming clear, with respect to protecting and defending their identity and fan object, that fans as anti-fans know they are “performing,” that they have knowledge of what their role is, and that it changes depending upon the “context of performance.” It is also clear that fans of both teams employ the same practices and are not so different in enacting their fandom after all. They play a game that offers them psychological unbending and relaxation, aiming to impose their superiority by belittling the rival.

Fans of both teams also perform emotionally charged behavior of this kind in the field as spectators of matches between them. They do not attend the match only so that they can support their team but also so that they can humiliate the rival. They have intense reactions, shout obscenities, get extremely upset and passionate, and sometimes become aggressive. Their chants against each other are legendary for their vulgar language full of sexual connotations, and heavy swearing. The most classic but also humiliating chants, according to fans’ testimonies, are the parodies of the teams’ anthems. These are sung by anti-fans in the rhythm of the original team anthems but with different lyrics. The new composition of Panathinaikos’s chant goes, “Panathinaikos, queer, fanatic queer, Panathinaikos, eternal champion of transvestites.” It causes a chain reaction of “Olympiakos, your great team, fuck your Piraeus and your mother’s pussy.” It should be mentioned that swearing is a culturally constructed habit of Greek fans. They tend to escape through swearing rather than beating and violence. Such behavior and the use of sexist language is not unexpected, within a crowd. The “machismo” phraseology embedded in their chanting is a Greek particularity of precapitalist values of sexism and subordination to the powerful male. Both teams’ fans in their game of chants adopt a traditional and outdated rhetoric and claim superiority by competing as to who will assert their masculine identity.

Overall, either through everyday talk and socializing or through in-field interaction as spectators, anti-fans employ the practice of belittling the rival as an “identity boost”–seeking mechanism, and so as to protect their fan object. Social identity theorists argue that people want to protect and maintain a positive social identity (Tajfel & Turner 1979, in Wann & Thomas 1994). Thompson argues that the stigmatization associated with some fan activities and the feelings of self-doubt it might evoke urge fans to formulate special groups and communities where they can find reassurance (Thompson 1995) and safeguard their identity. Sport fandom, and practices of football anti-fandom in particular, one could argue, provide not only mechanisms to safeguard one’s fan identity but also ways to gain a great deal of “identity boost” and self-esteem. This is the purpose that the process of belittling or humiliating the rival fan serves for the opposing teams’ fans.

Conclusion

This chapter proposes a new way of looking at the concept of anti-fan-dom. The anti-fan is first and foremost a fan, and resorts to anti-fandom so as to protect her/his fan object from the threat its “counterforce” poses. It suggests that in cases of extreme antagonism between two fan objects when binary oppositions occur, fans love to hate the “opposing threat,” and use their anti-fandom as a form of communication and language.

The case study discussed reflects a condition of our times, where football fandom, because of the commercialization and commodification of the sport, increasingly adopts a populist expression of the antagonism ethos of late capitalism. Largely this ethos is about ridiculing the rival, about winning, being powerful, being the best. Fans take up and reproduce the values of antagonism in their construction and expression of fan identity. A worthy rival arouses fear, awe, respect, and envy. It intensifies the antagonism. It intensifies fans’ urge to feel superior.

In the particular case study of Olympiakos and Panathinaikos anti-fan-dom, this modern socio-cultural condition coexists with two Greek particularities of older times: the conflict of the urban bourgeoisie and the working classes of early capitalist Greece, and the premodern Greek development of a “macho” masculine identity that goes back in time, but is still adopted in football. Both these elements are still affecting the way anti-fandom is expressed and experienced. It is suggested that it is the mixture of such elements with the long-lasting and ever-growing antagonistic ethos that makes such an explosive and vibrant opposition and case of anti-fandom as that of Olympiakos-Panathinaikos.

Concerning anti-fandom in particular, it needs to be said overall that thinking about anti-fans in the way proposed here opens up further questions. For instance, we might ask, By which mechanisms are binary oppositions between two fan objects constructed, and why? Under what circumstances may such a concept apply to other fields of popular culture, like TV and music genres? And, with sports, could a further elaboration and enrichment of this concept and of the elements that condition its appearance help to draw insights in cases of excessive sports-fans behavior or hooliganism? A further elaboration of such a notion of the anti-fan is certainly needed, so that we might better contextualize and theorize it. Pursuing such a task can lead to a better understanding not only of the role of anti-fandom to the identity positions of the fan, but more generally of fandom’s expression and appropriation.

In memory of my supervisor, Professor Roger Silverstone

NOTES

1. I would like to thank my interviewees for their thoughts and time. Heartfelt thanks go to Giota Alevizou, whose contribution at various stages of this chapter has been immense, and immensely appreciated. Many thanks also go to Yiorgos Chouliaras and Yiorgos Lellis for sharing their expertise on the meaning of ancient Greek texts and terms with me. I am grateful to the editors for their comments and feedback.

2. Along with rival couples of Barcelona and Real Madrid in the Spanish league, AC Milan and Inter Milan in the Italian, FC Celtic and Glasgow Rangers in the Scottish, and others.

3. Interviewees were recruited through acquaintances and snowball sampling. Two focus groups and four informal, semistructured interviews with fans of Olympiakos and Panathinaikos were conducted. Fans of both clubs were present in the group discussions and asked to talk about their love and hate, so that the interaction between anti-fans could be assessed. The playful nature of group talk among anti-fans and the aggressive/defensive mode adopted was an indicator that the context of fandom and anti-fandom talk and behavior affects what is disclosed and how. This assumption was confirmed by individual interviews with participants in the first group conducted at a later date, where fans presented a more solemn and candid face regarding their anti-fandom. In total, twelve fans were interviewed.

5. For instance, USSR was the counterforce to the USA during the Cold War.

6. See Homer (1999), book 7, line 479, on “chloron deos.”

7. The first seeds of football development are to be found in the formation of urban centers like Athens, where Panathinaikos was formed in 1908. After World War I, financial growth and urban center development began. The forming of city centers and the composition of towns were crucial factors in football growth, with Olympiakos being established in 1925 as the team of the Piraeus port and the prime rival of the capital city’s team. Key to football growth was also the influx of Greek refugees from Asia Minor who looked for ways of getting incorporated into their old homeland. They played a crucial role by forming teams like the Athletic Union of Constantinople (AEK) and the Panthessalonikian Athletic Club of Constantinople (PAOK).

8. But also of Aris-PAOK in Thessalonica.