"...There must be someone with intelligence in the party."
These girls though…they were generally older for a start, more akin to the 1D lads’ age, so maybe that changes thing. They were more of a sexualised age than I was in my Boyzone heyday. Plus the obvious elephant of social media – if you feel you are directly linked to your hero I would imagine that sharpens the obsession. I suppose it’s that link that leads on to the “stalking” - waiting outside hotel rooms, accosting anyone with a security badge, threatening to hurt yourself for their attention, bombarding them with twoots…you know the like. They know the band can see their message and that personal link could be established, but there are too many messages for theirs to stand out; they have to take it to the next level.
I discussed the fandom with my housemate, who pointed out that many people were obsessive in their youth, just not always about a pop band. “Interesting point” I thought, “was I obsessed with anything at 14?” And then it hit me.
My One Direction was Lord of the Rings. How utterly pathetic.
My obsession started when the first film came out. A quick Google tells me that was in 2001 so I would have been about 13. I don’t know what it was that hooked me to be honest; I had read and enjoyed The Hobbit, sure, but not fanatically. After seeing FotR for the first time I pretty much swallowed the books whole and vomited up stacks of posters - a mixture of artistic illustrations based on the books, really big movie posters, and collages of faces I had printed from the internet. I named all my friends after the characters - I was Pippin, my sister Merry. Two of my closest friends were Frodo and Sam despite the two of them not being close. In fact looking back a lot of the names given didn’t really make sense… Some people refused to be named, others asked eagerly to be included, and one person was thrilled just to be given the name of one of the horses after all the good names had run out. I created scrapbooks of film tickets, interviews from magazine, clippings, toys, any paraphernalia I could cram into my lever arch files (I had three).
But it wasn’t just Tolkien’s lore that had me; I was besotted with the actors too. I knew all their names, not just for the main 9 but all the named characters (I don’t know who played the Witch King however). My friend (Frodo) and I found chat room records of a conversation including Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan (Pippin and Merry) and would quote them at each other. Things that made no sense: “Who are you and why do you have the power to cancel the internet?” “ Dom, cause I am God”. We would use a very scientific method (MASH) to calculate the percentage of our love match with each actor, varying the spelling of our names and theirs in order to get a bigger score. I plastered my school planner in pictures and quotes and random runes and Elvish script. I wrote out every poem in the FotR by hand into a customised notebook; I would have continued but thankfully my sister bought me a properly published version and saved me the hassle.
And although I never tried to find where the actors lived, never felt any strong emotions regarding their wives and girlfriends, never wrote to them or tried to contact them, maybe this would have been different if I had been able to tweet them. I definitely would have ‘followed’ them and sent tweets. If I had known they were doing any signings in London I would have attended. I believed I would be very good friends with Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan and Elijah Wood, if I just had the opportunity to get to know them. But I never presumed to orchestrate a meeting. I dreamt of it happening by fortuitous accident, yes, but I understood it was just a dream and I think part of me didn’t want to shatter the fantasy by confronting it. I knew I didn’t really know them, and I think I must have known deep down that a 14 year old school girl wouldn’t really have much in common with a fully grown movie star. I liked rock bands at that age too, I think I saw Biffy Clyro about 9 times, but again despite fancying them and thinking they were the coolest guys ever, I was too wrapped up in my own life to think about infiltrating theirs.
Why aren’t these teenagers more involved with their own social life than a pop band? How has an online social life replaced a real one? If you speak to half your friends online more than you do in person, is it any wonder people feel they could be friends with celebrities?
More importantly, how old do I feel right now? Urgh.
*Quote from JRR Tolkien
No comments:
Post a Comment