Fans and Fanatics

The Difference between ‘fan’ and ‘fanatic’ is not just ‘atic’.  The pathology of the fanatic is in line with psychopaths and compulsive/obsessives, where the ‘Star’ is just the focus of their aberration.

The fan will ‘adore’  the ’star’, see all his movies, buy his records, read everything written about him, go to appearances, want his photo, autograph, some other souvenir.  He or she may be somewhat fixated  somewhat obsessive, but never does the fan lose the fact that there is no personal between himself and the star.

The fanatic is compulsively obsessed with the star.  The fanatic will not merely view his movies but memorise them, own all his records, read everything written about him, make attending appearances a religious pilgrimage.  The line between him as a person and stage persona is blurred. The Fanatic sees the ‘image’ not the person. The fanatic casts him or herself into the star’s life.  Fact is overwritten by fiction. Signs are read in the slightest gesture or line of dialoge and translated into ’secret’ communication.

The fan may read something about the Star s/he doesn’t like but has to accept, because s/he doesn’t know him (or her).  The fan is only aware of the ‘public’ pronouncements. The fanatic has created a full fantasy world in which that star resides and anything that disagrees with the fantasy is to be violently attacked.

Many years ago, there was a weekly drama called ‘Man From U.N.C.L.E.‘   Robert Vaugn starred as a kind of James Bond type.  David McCallum,   a Scottish actor, was cast as Illya Kuryakin, a role which was to have been peripheral.

The public went insane over Illya, and McCallum was soon moved to co-star status. But that was not all that McCallum faced; he was pursued by frenzied fans, overwhelmed with fan mail, more fan mail than ever in MGMs history.

Here was a man, unknown to most people, who had an insane fan base for the four years the show aired.
Some called him ‘The Blond Beatle’ because his fame, among that narrow strand of fans, was as intense
as that reserved for the Beatles.

Yet, beyond that narrow strand, David McCallum was unknown.   Not everyone watched that program, not everyone was enamoured of David McCallum,  yet to this day, over forty years since the show ended, there are females still insane about Illya.

Keith Hamilton Cobb   appeared for four seasons on ‘Andromeda’. His character, Tyr Anasazi, was a genetically enhanced human being of the sub-species; Nietzchean.  The show was not that widely watched, but those who were fans became enamored of this character, and so obsessive about this actor that they created complex fantasies about him in which reality was not permitted to intervene.

Eight years since appearing on that show, there still exists a cadre of fanatics who have invented a life for this man which bears no resemblance to reality.

David McCallum, now appearing on NCSI has been able to ‘weather’ the fanatic storm.  Appearing on British television in various productions, he never regained the same level of insanity so could live a fairly normal life after the first feeding frenzy.

Keith Hamilton Cobb has never had that luxury.  Despite cutting his hair, despite admitting orientation, his fanatics continue to pursue him so that his career, unlike McCallums which continued unabated since 1968, Cobb’s is virtually over.