Semi-Social Interaction: Understanding Face-To-Face Fan-Celebrity

Interactions

Georgia Carroll
Data collected as part of a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) (First Class) at the University of
Sydney, 2017

Introduction:

Parasocial interactions and relationships are the first stepping stone for a fan who wants to meet
a celebrity. Parasocial relationships develop when - due to repeated media exposure - we feel
as if we know a celebrity, and an imagined intimacy is developed. These relationships and
interactions are one sided, as the celebrity is unaware of our existence. Parasocial interactions
have been well studied within fan studies literature, both from a complementary and also from a
pathological perspective. But an interaction is only parasocial when you’re not interacting with
them in person.

So what happens when you meet a celebrity face-to-face?

One of the only academics who has spent significant time examining the phenomenon of
fan-celebrity interaction is Kerry Ferris, and she divided the concept into three categories:
1. fan-staged, such as when fans wait at airports or hotels
2. pre-staged, such as when a fan meets a celebrity in a situation specifically organised for
that interaction to occur
3. unstaged, such as where the fan bumps into the celebrity in a random place such as at
the shops or on a plane.
While all three of these categories are interesting and deserve academic attention, my research
focused on the second type - the pre-staged encounter.

Ellis Cashmore describes “an industry geared to selling proximity to celebrities”, and this is quite
literally what spaces such as fan conventions do. In these spaces fans are able to purchase
photographs with and autographs from their favourite celebrities, and through the purchase of
more exclusive tickets, attend special events such as dinners and cocktail parties.

Methods:

My research for this project took place in May 2017 at an event called All Hell Breaks Loose 8 in
Melbourne Australia. This was a fan convention held for the television show ​Supernatural​ and
eight actors were in attendance. I interviewed seven fans who had purchased the most
expensive ticket to the event. Each interview lasted between half an hour and an hour and a
half, and half were undertaken at the event, and due to time constraints the other half were
conducted via skype and email in the weeks following the event. While at the event, I also
conducted participant observation, including meeting the celebrity guests myself.

Results:

We’ve established that fans are able to pay to meet celebrities, however these interactions are
not exactly straight forward. While physically meeting the celebrity moves the interaction from
the parasocial into the social, there are a number of significant roadblocks in place which
prevent the interactions from ever truly becoming social in the way we usually understand
“meeting someone” or “social interaction” to be. I observed four key constraints in effect at All
Hell Breaks Loose, and we can apply them to fan-celebrity interactions more generally as well.

Roadblock 1: Price
For-profit conventions such as All Hell Breaks Loose are spaces designed to make money for
the convention organisation but also for the celebrities themselves. My friends call me extremely
cynical for this, but my favourite refrain is “celebrities are not meeting you because they want to,
they just want your money”.

​In contrast to my cynicism, three weeks ago Matty Healey from the band the 1975 tweeted:

What he seems to be indicating here is that he believes celebrities should meet their fans out of
the goodness of their own hearts, which is ignoring a lot of things including the very basic issue
of supply and demand. But even ignoring such issues, I truly believe that most celebrities would
not want to spend hours and hours meeting fans without compensation for the simple fact
of...why should they? The celebrity is commodifying their body, turning the act of saying “hello,
how are you” alongside a hug into a way of padding their paycheck.

So despite Matty Healey’s optimism, fan-celebrity interactions are constrained by their price. All
Hell Breaks Loose was not a cheap event.

Day Ticket: $190 AUD

Ultimate Ticket: $2750 AUD
Autographs: $30-$90AUD
Photographs: $40-$100AUD
Group Photos: $150-$420 (Jared and Jensen Double - $250)

Returning to Matty Healey:

What Matty is referring to here is the awkwardness of paying somebody to talk to you. It would
be pretty uncomfortable to hand the $250 it cost to get a pic with Jared and Jensen directly to
them before they’d be willing to say hello to you, wouldn’t it? So to minimise this awkwardness
and make the interaction appear more authentic to the fans, the convention goes to great
lengths to render the monetary exchange invisible.

At All Hell Breaks Loose, fans were required to purchase their photograph and autograph
tokens on a separate floor to where the photographs and autographs took place. They also had
to purchase the tokens in the morning, while the encounters took place in the afternoon. Upon
reaching the room at the allotted time, the token was handed to a staff member who then
directed them to the correct line, where they were eventually able to meet the celebrity. This
temporal and spatial distance between the moment of payment and the actual interaction exists
so that fans can maintain the illusion that they are not paying for the interaction. Fans are aware
they’ve paid for the interaction but they don’t want it to be at the front of their mind. They want it
to be real. They want the celebrity to want to meet ​them.

Roadblock 2: Time

Interactions between fans and celebrities are also limited through temporal means. For
example, the average photo opportunity lasts less than ten seconds, and it is extremely rare for
any autograph moment to last longer than thirty seconds. Even fans who have paid the
additional money to attend the extra meet and greet events such as cocktail parties do not
receive significantly more face-time with the celebrity guests, and that they do get is often
shared with other fans.
 Roadblock 3: Rules

Pricing and time constraints may be considered “invisible” restrictions, however there are also
the very literal constraints which exist in the form of official rules. The rules for All Hell Breaks
Loose were published in the fan groups for the event multiple times in the weeks leading up to
the event, as well as in prominent place on the event’s website. Throughout the weekend, the
convention MC frequently reminded fans of the rules they must abide by. These rules included:

● No questions about shipping

● No bringing up your own struggles in panels or in conversation
● No asking for hugs
● No asking for sexualised poses
● No signs in photos with Jared and Jensen
● No posing with Jared or Jensen
● All gifts and letters to be vetted by staff and passed on at their discretion

Roadblock 4: Surveillance

In order to ensure these rules were being followed, fans are constantly under observation while
in attendance at fan conventions, especially in spaces with the celebrities. This surveillance
comes in a number of forms. Firstly, every celebrity guest has a staff member as their handler to
accompany them in all public spaces. There were also a number of security guards throughout
the event, with extra security present for Jared and Jensen, including their own personal
security guard from America. Staff members were also in attendance during question and
answer panels monitoring crowd behaviour and vetting all questions before they were able to be
asked to the celebrity guests. If a fan was observed to be breaking these rules, they could be
issued with a warning, asked to leave the event, or permanently banned from all future events.

A key motivator for fans to follow the rules was so as not to be humiliated in front of the
celebrities. In regular social interactions there are no actual rules or consequences outside of
general social ettiquicies and the risk of offending the specific individual or group you’re
speaking to. For most fans, the thought of being reprimanded in front of a beloved celebrity is a
worst case scenario, and therefore a strong motivator to follow the rules.

...and then: Reciprocation

Balances of knowledge and power are extremely unequal in fan-celebrity interactions, and are
unequal in a way we almost never see in regular social interactions. Just like in a parasocial
interaction, when fans and celebrities interact in person the fan knows a significant amount
about the celebrity but the celebrity knows nothing about the fan. This will never change. The
celebrity also does not reciprocate the desire for interaction and future friendship, and their
kindness is tied to the fact they are being paid to behave in that way; their reputation is at stake
in every interaction.
Interview Data:

At this point, everything around these interactions is sounding pretty dire. And it’s easy for an
outsider to look in and think that there’s nothing real in these interactions at all. But what I found
through speaking to my participants is that they each engaged in a significant process of
interpretation and reimagining the interaction to create narratives of belonging and meaning.

What’s the actual moment of interaction like?

“Every single one of the actors has looked me in the eye [during photo sessions] and said “hi,
how are you going?”, *take the photo*, and I’ll go “thank you”, and they’ll say “you’re welcome”,
and you know, there’s that connection, it’s not like “yep, smile, okay next person””
- Mary

“Even though it’s so fleeting, there is still enough time to say, “hi, how are you? It’s really nice to
have you here”, *photo*, “thank you so much”, and then leave. There’s still that connection, it’s
so fleeting, but it’s enough to go “yeah, I want it each time””
- Donna

Were fans nervous in the lead up to the interaction?

“My first time, I was shaking like a leaf, I had tears streaming down my face and I went up to the
boys and just said, “oh my gosh, I am so nervous” and I just remember Jared taking my hand
and just holding my hand and going “it’s okay, don’t be nervous””
- Donna

Did fans feel as if they were meeting the celebrities themselves, or the characters they
portray?
“The first time I went to a convention, I saw them as their characters, but now I see they’re
people”
- Charlie

“When you’re meeting them in person you become a bigger fan because you get to meet them
outside of that character. So you get to see them as people and there’s so much more to them
then”
- Donna

Why do fans purchase - and continue to purchase - the most expensive tickets?
“The primary reason I continue to purchase [expensive tickets] is that they provide an
opportunity to interact with the celebrity guests...in quieter, smaller, relaxed settings”
- Jody

“I like having the extra photos, but it’s the meet and greets that I love, that one on one time with
the small table of friends, like we’re all sort of sitting together to have that, even if it is just ten
minutes. When you have your photos it’s a quick “hi, thanks” and you’re off, but it’s that
conversation that you can have with them, so I like that high end”
- Mary

How do fans picture their relationships with the celebrity guests?

“They’re not celebrities in my head”
- Ellen

“I just think they’d be a great bunch of people to hang around with”

- Mary

“I think I could become friends with a celebrity. I see them as people and can put aside their
celebrity status and have a conversation with them about something completely unrelated to
their work or the reason I became a fan of theirs”
- Jody

Conclusions:

When we look at the entire picture painted by these interactions between fans and celebrities,
considering both the constraints faced by fans and the ways they choose to reinterpret the texts,
we can see three key findings:

1. Fan conventions are organised to render invisible the economic exchange that takes
place, allowing fans to imagine an authentic social interaction
2. Direct face-to-face celebrity interaction takes place, marking the move from the
para-social to social for the fan. However, these interactions remain temporally
restrained and restricted by the rules of the convention, preventing a traditional form of
social interaction from taking place
3. The fan participates in a process of imagining and re-assigning meaning to the
interaction, creating discussions of connections and friendship from the brief encounters
that occur

Based on these findings, I propose the term “semi-social interaction” to describe this form of
interaction located in between para-social interaction and the truly social interactions we
participate in in our everyday life. Of course, this is just one exploratory study and further work
needs to be done in the area. What these findings do give us, however, is a reminder that we
cannot dismiss these interactions based on the constraints we are able to observe, but instead
must listen to the voices of the fans and the ways that they interpret the interactions they have
with celebrities.