Day 12: The Fan (1982)

Day 12 of Calloween Movie Month

Content warnings: stalking, blood and gore, attempted sexual assault, cannibalism, implied necrophilia

Recommended?: Yes

Spoilers and discussion of many of the mentioned topics below. You have been warned.

Don't meat your heroes.



The Fan (also known by its German title Der Fan as well as Trance) follows teenager Simone and the places her obsession with the pop sensation R takes her.

While the language of parasocial relationships and fandom-star boundaries have only come into the mainstream in the past few years, the behaviors and concepts it describes have been around as long as fame has.

There are countless stories of popular musicians, actors, models and artists being stalked and harassed by fans and admirers. Some even taking it as far as to actually lay their hands on them. You might think of parasocial relationships as throwing a tantrum when your fave says they don't love you because they don't know you, but it's often more sinister than that. When someone exists to you not as a person, but as an idea or a symbol, then your natural response is to treat them as such. You don't care if you break an object. Your grandma's nice vase can be glued together or replaced. It's not a big deal. Humans though, not so much.

This is exactly how Simone views R. R is not a person or an artist just trying to share his ideas and talent with the world, but as an object. And moreover, as her possession. It doesn't matter if he has a girlfriend or sleeps with other girls or signs countless autographs from adoring fans everyday. She's his. Little is made of his understanding of her "you don't know me but I know you" but Simone gushes over the made up version of R in her head. She knows him more than anyone. She knows he's a very nice person, that he loves her, that he'll write her back as soon as possible. Because he exists for her, after all.

The film takes great lengths to put you in her head and her head alone. As if it's the audiovisual equivalent of a book with first person narration. From the literal first person narration, to the shots framed as if you were looking through her eyes, to much of the music being diegetic and becoming muffled when she takes off her headphones. It focuses so carefully on the things she would feel and notice. When her and R have sex, there's long, static closeups of his hands as they gently remove her headphones and slowly unbutton her shirt. When she cuts him up, it only shows her face and her hands. It never shows us a wide shot of the surely grizzly scene, because what's important is Simone. She is the center of the film's universe as much as she is the center of her own.
It puts you in the mind and the body of a completely obsessive teenager who's slowly but surely edging herself off the cliff and into the deep end. But the movie isn't frantic in a way that you could imagine this all being caused by a manic episode.

Simone rejects the authoritarian influences in her life. Parents, teachers, media. But she hasn't rejected the authoritarian all together. It's being sold to her in a prettier package where she can obsess over the bow on top. Despite being a smart kid, this completely pulls her in. It is all consuming to her body and mind.

The film is a slow burn. Holding on lots of long shots and pauses between speech, the entire movie feels like the slow climb on a roller coaster that never drops.. Slowly but surely racketing up the tension only to slowly take you down to the bottom without a pay off. Chaos will come, you can hear it but it's all built and programmed after all. There's a method to her madness and her mind he's already hers. Why bother?

When she finally gets what she wants, what she thinks she deserves, he leaves. He has sex with her, and then says he suddenly needs to leave for more than a few months for his work. She can't deal with the rejection of somebody who was supposedly in love with her wanting to leave so soon. So she kills him, cuts him up, and eats all of his remains. Now he can't run away from her, she's apart of

She was consumed by him entirely, and now he was consumed by her.

There is an inherently cannibalistic relationship between fan and artist. They need each other, constantly feeding off each other until there's nothing left for either of them and they both wither away. Neither owe the other anything, but also they both owe they other everything.

The way her body is portrayed is interesting. During the sex scene, as intentionally off putting and overlong as it is, her body is portrayed as small, sweet, sensual. Then, as she's trying to convince R to stay, vulnerable and sad. After she kills R, though, the lights are off and she can't hold anything back. In the dark, her ribs stick up like vulture wings, threatening to tear themselves out of her skin. She screams and shambles around, utterly monstrous. This is all she allows herself, though. Her killing and consumption of her love are as slow and methodical as ever. She only allows her monster to claw itself out of her in brief stints, otherwise stoic and calm. And it's always him that brings it out of her.

She spreads the ashes of what was left of him across the street and watches it flow in the wind. You would think that she's able to let go now, but no. She looks like him, takes his clothes and steals a look of his from one of his performances. She still writes him letters, telling him he got her pregnant. She believes that her child will be a reincarnation of him, and that she'll finally be happy. He sits in her stomach, feeding off everything she consumes like a rotten parasite squirming in her gut.

Pop culture will eat itself, and if you aren't careful, you'll fall into it's gaping maw too.

It'll crush you to death with steel teeth and regurgitate a cheap copy of your entire life and soul in the time it takes for you to read this sentence.

Kill all your heroes, or they'll kill all of you.