“Stan,” a word that comes from Eminem’s seminal 2000 song about obsessive, sometimes violent superfans, has become a focus of celebrity anxiety in recent years. Popular fanbases can be catty in defense of their idols: check out Taylor’s Swifties, Nicki’s Barbz, and Beyoncé’s BeyHive. (Selena Gomez recently had to call out fans of hers for sending Hailey Bieber death threats over a messy rivalry abetted in part by eyebrow lamination.) . And while obsessive fans have been around for as long as celebrities have existed, the Internet, which leads to acts of anonymous virulence, has made fan rage particularly potent. It was only a matter of time before scripted television took up this issue.
On the FX comedy “Dave,” Lil Dicky (Dave Burd), the annoying or (depending on your tolerance for eager white rappers) endearing MC at the center of the series, has several awkward run-ins with fans at the premiere of season 3… As he tries to destroy a concrete bust of his head that a fan gives him after a show, he meets a young woman named Campbell (Jocelyn Hudon) and they strike up a conversation. “Sorry, I don’t know you,” she says. Relieved, Lil Dicky confesses that he prefers that anonymity. She invites him to a house party, during which one of her friends inadvertently reveals that Campbell is actually a huge Lil Dicky fan and that it was her mission to have sex with him.
Later, the party guests ask to see Lil Dicky’s penis; he refuses. They surround him, yelling and screaming. They rip off his clothes. He finally runs away. The escape is mostly played for laughs, but an undercurrent of unease and even violence lurks on the scene.
“Dave” has always had a meta synergistic relationship with fame. Burd, who is also the show’s creator, essentially plays an exaggerated version of himself; he became popular thanks to his catchy and childish raps under the same moniker he shares with his alter ego. His hypeman, GaTa, is also his real-life hypeman. Travis (Taco) Bennett, who plays Elz, Lil Dicky’s producer, was part of the rap collective Odd Future. Celebrities like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Justin Bieber, Kourtney Kardashian, and Doja Cat have played themselves. Throughout the first season, Lil Dicky desperately wants the spotlight, and the show, as if expressing its bona fides, features a constant parade of famous people to add to its verisimilitude. But what’s notable about the second and third seasons (at least based on the first three episodes) is their focus on the darker side of fame, how it distorts the ego and emboldens enthusiastic and even aggressive fans.
The cult of Stan is taken to its most extreme conclusion in “Swarm,” a new Amazon Prime Video limited series created by Janine Nabers and Donald Glover. The show’s leading lady, Dre (Dominique Fishback), kills anyone who badmouths her pop idol, Ni’Jah (Nirine S. Brown), a clear stand-in for Beyoncé, whose fan base is notoriously overprotective, to say the least. diplomatically. After Dre loses her adoptive sister, Marissa (played by R&B singer Chloe Bailey), to suicide, she becomes obsessed with people who tweeted something bad about Marissa or Ni’Jah.
But Dre’s uncontrollable urges extend to Ni’Jah herself. After some clever maneuvering, Dre shows up at an after party he knows Ni’Jah will be attending and, in a nod to a Tiffany Haddish’s story about an actress who bit Beyoncé in 2017 — bites his idol on the chin. In the final episode, Dre, after killing a ticket tout to get in, makes his way to the front row at a Ni’Jah show.
The series ends on a deliberately surreal note, which questions the logic of the entire series. But takeout remains unclear. Ambiguity seeps into the show’s framework, which, as compelling and scathingly funny as it is, can’t seem to figure out what exactly it’s trying to say about stan culture. Is dre really a stan? Or a deeply disturbed young woman who becomes obsessed with a pop star as a way of coping with her grief? Or both? The premiere of “Dave” ends in a similarly ambiguous place, though that show’s embrace of sophomore sexual humor undermines its more salient points about the terrifying consequences of standom.
Both “Dave” and “Swarm” opt for dark humor, to better highlight the absurdity of the stan’s toxic behavior, an affection so passionate it turns vicious. And both shows seem ultimately ambivalent and unsure about this state of affairs, pointing out the dangers of such fandom before retreating into fantasy. There’s a strange uncertainty at its core, a sense that even the writers don’t quite know where to land in the fierce relationships people have with celebrities.
The phrase “parasocial relationship” has been all the rage lately, defining the distorted one-sided dynamic some fans have with their favorite celebrities. But perhaps part of the confusion that “Dave” and “Swarm” seem to convey lies in the fact that the criticism is coming from inside the house. Its creators, Burd and Glover, are famous. Both shows question the excessive adoration some fans have of pop stars, but rely in part on ensuring that public figures appear on them. (In addition to Bailey, who is signed to Beyoncé’s label, Billie Eilish and Michael’s daughter Paris Jackson guest-starred on “Swarm.” And Malia Obama wrote for the series.)
As bizarre as Dre and Campbell’s actions are, the corrosive force of fame goes both ways. Nicki Minaj, for example, has been known to annoy her most rabid fans with people who dare to tweet criticism. Other celebrities (including, notably, Beyoncé) don’t always interact with her followers enough to tell them to calm down when their devotion becomes threatening. Criticizing such a passion while benefiting from and sometimes even exploiting the influence of celebrities is an inherently untenable position.
“Dave” seems to understand this tension to a degree; there are plenty of episodes that make fun of Lil Dicky’s growing self-centeredness. “Swarm” doesn’t really interact with the Ni’Jah celebrity from his point of view. She’s still a figure, another nod to Beyoncé’s real-life inscrutability, but her decision to characterize her that way further blunts the show’s critique of stan culture.
Even the “Swarm” think tank seems to acknowledge its uneasy proximity to the show’s theme song. In a recent interview with Vulture, Nabers said he wrote Beyoncé a letter about the show to explain your intention. At another point in the conversation, she mentioned that Glover and Beyoncé are friends. In a different interview, Fishback politely declines to name the BeyHive as the inspiration behind the Ni’Jah acolytes. “She’s an amalgamation of different celebrities and our current climate is a bit intense about our love for celebrities.” His deference to Beyoncé is revealing. Even they seem to fear the poison of their fans.
Source photographs: Byron Cohen/FX.
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