Vilified and Fixed: Fandom Colonisation

Vilification in scholarly works and the media may have significantly lessened in recent years. Still, misunderstandings, applied exoticism, and imbalances of power between scholars and journalists on one side, and fans on the other are not rare occurrences.
An analysis of a number of recent news articles, scholarly works, and websites, shows how the attempt of fixing fandom still prevails. Like Said's view on how the Orient is treated, fandom is similarly exotisised, incorporated, and fixed. Scholars explain how to become better fans, attempting authority over fandom by applying rules to a culture, which already has their own.
This, the notion of the 'better fan', devalues the existing discourses, rules, and traditions within fandom. The expert validates a line of thinking which reiterates the idea of a fandom in need of fixing. When self-professed experts represent fandom and fans, they do not represent emotions and the presence of fans, but tend to make generalisations of a very diverse group.
In these problematic publications fans are seen as a homogenous mass, overlooking the individualities of fans and fandom.
In this paper, we regard fandom as a nation. As scholars, we have to acknowledge the inherent and existing discourses, traditions, and rules already present in the Fandom Nation,