FanPost

On Fandom and Paradoxes

Either/or. Often, in argument, a scenario is painted as either one thing or another. The choices for what's at stake, from the mundanity of the merits of a scone versus a donut to the vastly higher-stakes game of political campaigns, presenting the available options to remedy a given problem as being boiled down to flattened, easily digestible dichotomies are common.

Unfortunately, they're also rarely accurate.

Nuance is not a concept that is readily utilized or appreciated in public debate forums. On Twitter or on message boards (even the best ones), taking nuanced stances are often not looked upon kindly. It's understandable - communicating two diametrically opposed points of view is much easier to communicate than the diaspora of potential points of compromise and concession in between. More, it's easier to unpack these arguments than it is to bore yourself into minutiae. Great for creating controversy, driving clicks/page views/raising visibility, but poor for creating honest and accurate discussion.

Yesterday, following the shocking capitulation at Anfield, we saw this play out right here - one of the great spots on the Internet for discussion. Immediately after the result, a troubling narrative began to take shape that truly struck a nerve: if you are not for the fan-protests, and are a foreigner to boot, then you are not a real fan.

The words that hung in the air, taunting me as it were, were the ones that called to question my fandom. I'm not a real fan, it cajoles, if I don't plant myself firmly on the side of those that walked out on the team. I'm not a real fan, it declared, if I did not immediately accept the anger of fans that are blessed enough to live within the same time zone as Anfield as being sacrosanct and beyond reproach. I'm not a real fan, it insinuated, because my hard won dollars to pay for extra shipping to California for kits and jackets bought from the official store are worth less than those spent on Merseyside or that my time waking before the sun even rises, attempting not to wake my sleeping wife while I watch early morning games is worth less than those people in the stands.

My fandom, then, is not pure or real because I had not the virtue of being born in England or for my family to have immigrated there instead of Los Angeles. I am not a real fan and my voice does not belong in this discussion.

Identity politics (classifying who is or isn't part of a group) is something I detest greatly largely because it's something I've had to deal with my entire life. As an immigrant from the Philippines to America, I had to deal with it in many ways: I'm not an American because of the way I look - regardless of how absent my Filipino accent is or that I've spent more time in America than in the Philippines; I'm not Filipino because my up-bringing is not typical of those that grew up on the island and separates me from my countrymen when I go home to visit. (Funny enough, I also wasn't Filipino because, growing up, many people had no idea what that even was and so everyone tried to call me Chinese and one person called me a "Jap" which is offensive in two separate ways and also darkly humorous if you think of how those two ways relates to each other.)

Identity politics exist everywhere - I'm not naive to that. But one of the great draws and treasures of being a Liverpool fan is that when I put on my Red shirt, people don't see the Asian me or the American me, they see the version of me that's a Liverpool fan. There's no telling you the joy of having random strangers on a trip to San Francisco, spot my LFC jacket in a crowded marketplace and stop me to say hello and discuss the team. There's no describing the look of astonishment and admiration when a friend of mine witnesses a fellow Red stop me at special event in Los Angeles to commiserate over a poor result from that morning (take your pick, this could have happened at any point over the last few years). There's no describing my wife's constant amusement when a young boy yells at me, "You'll never walk alone!" as we stroll through Disneyland.

In fact, one of my treasured moments was going across the street from the pub I'd just watched an LFC match (with a 5:00am kickoff, to boot), set myself up with a cup of coffee and my laptop, and had a man, from Liverpool, pull up a chair and chat about the club. Identifying myself as a Liverpool fan was often the safest and most glorious things I could choose to identify myself - we were a global family and prided ourselves greatly on that cosmopolitan recognition.

In fact, when I wrote the pieces on Red or Dead, it was clear that the concept of LFC dominating Europe while the rest of the lower teams busied themselves with "lesser glories" is one that points to a global reach: Liverpool Football Club branded itself as a club for everyone.

Which is what troubled me most about some of the discussion here yesterday. It's not to say that some of the concerns weren't right - I understand that the idea of having tickets be reasonably prices and accessible to the local community is very important and well worth raising concerns over. I don't think many of us far-flung fans would begrudge our Scouse counterparts that. I do believe that we may have questions, however, with some of the finer points of contention (i.e. 77£ figure that's taken center stage or that all tickets have to be lowered). I think raising these questions doesn't make us in opposition to those fans in Liverpool; it's just people trying to get a handle on exactly what's happening.

Moreover, we very much understand the fears and concerns that are at the heart of this: I grew up near Inglewood, home of the Great Western Forum that played host to the great Los Angeles Lakers teams in the 80's. My friends and I were able to get to attend a game in 1997 thanks to one of us winning tickets through a local initiative hoping to get more youth attendance. It's a great memory but even then - before they moved to Staples Center and had their resurgence - Lakers tickets were pretty firmly out of our grasp as local, working-class fans. The accusations of fan support at games, especially as the team's on-court product dipped, hit close to home because we knew that those that couldn't afford tickets would have done their best to show up to every game and wouldn't leave early to beat traffic. It stung to get lumped into that group of supporters that didn't know how good they had it - it was just a way to impress their business clients.

But as I've grown older, I recognize that even that's a false dichotomy - that there may have been good reason for some of those people to either show up late or leave early (y'all have no clue what traffic is like till you ride any of the LA-area freeways during rush hour). Moreover, fans of the game, real ones, always manage to make it in anyway as I'll never forget the scenes at the end of regulation when Robert Horry dropped the game-winning shot over the Sacramento Kings. Hell, my block went berzerk. We fans find a way to support and cheer because that's what we do.

At the end of it all, I just want to see honest discussion that doesn't look to point the finger or raise suspicion. We all support Liverpool - we all bleed Red. We all walk together.

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