Sezín Koehler
The once innocuous phrase “I’m your number one fan” took a sharp turn toward the menacing after Kathy Bates uttered it in Rob Reiner’s 1990 adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery. Said by Annie Wilkes after rescuing her favorite romance novelist Paul Sheldon (James Caan), who almost died in a snowstorm car accident, the phrase initially explains why Annie happened to be in the right place at just the moment her beloved author’s car crashed. But once it is clear that Annie has no intention of ever letting Paul go from her isolated Colorado farm, even after his broken legs and collarbone have healed, the next question is: how far will this uberfan go to keep him in her mercurial graces? The answer is pretty damn far down the road of extreme violence and mutilation.
When Misery first hit cinemas in 1990, incidents of major fan-based violence were outlier behavior, exemplified by John Hinckley Jr.’s attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan[1] in order to get the attention of Jodie Foster, or Mark David Chapman’s murder of John Lennon[2] in front of his Chelsea Hotel home. Kathy Bates’ Oscar-winning turn as Annie Wilkes embodied one of the first psycho stalkers on-screen to target a celebrity, her favorite author Paul Sheldon. The downward spiral in Misery properly begins after Annie kidnaps Paul and reads his new novel, a gritty departure from the romance genre and a book he hopes will bring him some real literary credibility. When Annie forces him to burn his manuscript, already knowing that Paul’s writing ritual involves keeping only one copy of his final draft, the audience realizes that Annie is a bit too invested in Paul’s work.
Things continue to escalate when Annie finally reads the newest installment of the Misery Chastain romance books and discovers that Paul has killed Annie’s beloved heroine. In a rage, Annie terrorizes Paul into writing a new Misery novel that brings back her imaginary best friend. And whenever Paul makes any steps towards healing, Annie thwarts his recovery by reinjuring him in brutal ways, including hobbling both of his feet with a mallet once she learns he has been sneaking out of the bedroom that serves as his de-facto prison.
This year is Misery’s 30th birthday, and it is truly remarkable how the movie (and the book) essentially predicted toxic fan culture, except in gender-flipped form, long before we had the internet and social media. The real-life Annie Wilkeses, who stalk, threaten, and assault tend to be men, and it is often female creatives who are their targets. Sandra Bullock’s number one fan[3] regularly and secretly broke into her home, watching while she and her kids were there, and eventually killing himself in a police standoff. Selena Gomez’s number one fan[4] tried to get a restraining order against himself because voices were telling him to mutilate and kill her. These incidents are telling, as are some of the more extreme cases, including The Voice’s Christina Grimmie,[5] who was murdered in public by a male fan who then died by suicide. While cases do exist of fan violence perpetuated by women, such as when Chicana singer Selena was killed by the president of her fan club,[6] these incidents are rare.
In the three decades since Misery, and no doubt thanks to the internet and social media giving fans more access to the celebrities they love, incidents of violence, stalking, and even sexual assault have increased in frequency. Iggy Azalea talked about having to wear several pairs of underwear to crowd surf in a skirt because fans would try to sexually assault and penetrate her without her consent.[7] She eventually stopped jumping into the crowd because even the multiple-underwear hack didn’t solve the problem. Amanda Palmer, who often does after-show signings and meet-and-greets in very little clothing as a signal of trust, tells a story in her memoir, The Art of Asking, about two superfans who sexually assaulted her as their photo was being taken.[8]
In yet another page out of Annie Wilkes’ cracked playbook, we are even at a point where super fans start petitions for creators to completely redo a movie or television show season that did not meet their expectations, such as in the final season of Game of Thrones [9] and in new installments of the more inclusive Star Wars.[10] This incredible sense of fan entitlement in response to creators’ outputs leads right back to the original “number one fan” Annie Wilkes and often thinly-veiled misogyny and intersections to other forms of bigotry like racism.
Extending Misery’s narrative base, Castle Rock’s second season[11] returns to find Annie Wilkes in a slightly altered state and offers us more about her history and compelling backstory. We learn the reason she loves reading so much is that she struggled to read for years, and conquering that problem was a huge point of pride for Annie. But in Castle Rock, we also see the various psychoses that live in Annie emerge one by one and we recognize the origins of isolation and delusion that will define her in Misery.
However, when King wrote Misery, it was meant to be a parable about addiction, with the story’s celebrity obsession serving as a metaphor for King’s cocaine habit. “Misery is a book about cocaine. Annie Wilkes is cocaine. She was my number-one fan,” King told Rolling Stone.[12] And in many ways, this still tracks today. Why else would people become so enamored of a famous person they might never meet or, if they have, likely only had at most a superficial encounter? In another reversal of King’s addiction metaphor, celebrities and the characters they inhabit become the drug and fans become the users. We relate to them from a distance because we feel they would understand us if they had a chance to get to know us. And in the case of many of the terrifying celebrity stalker men, this obsession has often turned sexual coupled with a misplaced sense of entitlement to the person. I’ve seen your movie a hundred times. I’ve memorized your book. Your television show changed my life. Your album saved me.
As fan culture has gotten more and more toxic over the years, we can now actually take Misery at face value as a substance abuse parable wrapped in a horror story. Watching Misery back in the 1990s, it felt like such a far-fetched scenario that someone, anyone at all, would go to such lengths and depths of depravity just to be close to a celebrity they love. Watching Misery in 2020 encapsulates the kind of toxic fan culture we see every day playing out on social media, as followers demand celebrities’ attention. It’s disappointing that thirty years later, the norm of fan culture is the borderline psychotic behavior of real-life Annie Wilkeses, who often make fandoms dangerous places, rather than the spaces of silly distraction they ought to be.
But with the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and its shelter-in-place requirements, the dynamic between fan and celebrity is being redefined yet again. Thanks to social media, we have new glimpses into our favorite celebrities’ lavish lives, some of which are showing precisely the enormous gap between the rich and beautiful and the rest of us regular folks. While a few celebrities like American Horror Story co-star Leslie Jordan[13] are making weird little videos poking fun at themselves, the majority of famous folks sharing their quarantine experience online have produced messaging that is beyond inappropriate during a global crisis–for example, the embarrassing “Imagine” video[14] featuring privileged celebrities singing verses of John Lennon’s socialist anthem from their mansions as if this was supposed to comfort those of us stuck in rented apartments we might not be able to pay for in a month. While Ellen DeGeneres has been problematic for a while now, her horrific comments about her lavish home being like a prison, including the fact it’s “filled with gays”[15] were unconscionable. Madonna musing in her enormous bathtub and bathroom the size of an average person’s apartment about how COVID-19 will be the great social equalizer was the very pinnacle of irony.[16]
Which makes me wonder: Will the pandemic create new number one fans obsessed with stars now that they’ve virtually been inside their homes? Or will our new disenchantment with our heroes and favorite artists end up dousing some of the celebrity infatuations? In Annie’s case, she isn’t actually interested in authentically knowing Paul. Instead, he is merely the space onto which she projects her hopes and dreams for companionship. But for us, in the real world, will glimpses into the real lives of our celebrity favorites make it harder to project our own desires onto them?
Thirty years later, if Misery predicted the toxic fan culture we live in now, then maybe the pandemic and its gaze into the lives of the super-wealthy celebs might help dismantle this toxic dynamic and maybe even politicize wealth the way it should be politicized given the vast disparities we’ve seen online. Even America’s dad Tom Hanks quipped on the first socially distanced episode of Saturday Night Live about how much nicer his apartment is than those of the SNL cast[17]—and these kinds of remarks are just not funny anymore. Not when regular folks can’t get tested for the coronavirus even if they have symptoms. Not when families are getting landed with huge medical bills they cannot pay now that so many are out of work. Not when folks are getting evicted thanks to the current economic depression. These dynamics get even worse when you consider the fact that the entire reason so many celebrities are rich and famous in the first place is because the vast majority already had a privileged upbringing that gave them the safety net to break into creative fields, including a family that paved their way into their own millions.[18]
In Misery, Annie Wilkes adored Paul Sheldon because she felt lesser than those around her. Hero worship was an escape from her reality, and thanks to her compassionate portrayal in Castle Rock, we learn that Annie’s low self-esteem reaches back to her father’s death and the emotional abandonment she endured long before it. As a result, Annie believed herself to be unworthy of kindness and decency, let alone love. A wall went up between her and the world, distancing and isolating her from her peers thanks to a mental illness (or many) that were never properly diagnosed. So, she did what any lonely person does. She latched on to a safe place that was always constant: Paul Sheldon and his novels.
It is incredibly likely that the root of the toxic fan culture embodied by the fictional Annie Wilkes and her real life counterparts is also a result of social isolation and a feeling that the only people who might understand us are those who are only accessible through our imagination and our screens. If Misery foreshadowed the kind of toxic fan culture and celebrity cult worship we have come to take as expected, even when it turns violent, then maybe it’s time to stop being scared of who we might be without the deflection of a celebrity to distract us from looking into a mirror and coming to terms with what might be reflected there. If Misery predicted these thirty years of peak toxic fandom, then maybe now is finally the right moment to end it.
Notes:
[1] Wilbur.
[2] Grow.
[3] Puente.
[4] Associated Press.
[5] McLaughlin.
[6] Nicolaou.
[7] Sevilla.
[8] Palmer, 272-275.
[9] Deerwester.
[10] Miller.
[11] Castle Rock Season 2.
[12] Greene.
[13] Respers France.
[14] Schwedel.
[15] Lee.
[16] Owoseje.
[17] Romero.
[18] Salmon.
Works cited:
Associated Press. “Selena Gomez Stalker Sentenced to Treatment.” Billboard, 21 June, 2014, https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop-shop/6128691/selena-gomez-stalker-sentenced-to-treatment.
Castle Rock Season 2. Created by Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason. Bad Robot Productions, 2019.
Deerwester, Jayme. “’Game of Thrones’ star weighs in on petition to redo final season: ‘That sucks.’” USA Today, 16 May, 2019, https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2019/05/16/game-thrones-fans-sign-petition-remake-season-8/3691075002/.
Greene, Andy. “Stephen King: The Rolling Stone Interview.” Rolling Stone Magazine, 31 October, 2014, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/stephen-king-the-rolling-stone-interview-191529/.
Grow, Kory. “John Lennon’s Killer: ‘I Know What Shame Is Now.’” Rolling Stone Magazine, 15 November, 2018, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/john-lennons-killer-mark-david-chapman-shame-757134/.
Lee, Alicia. “Ellen DeGeneres sparks backlash after joking that self-quarantine is like ‘being in jail.’” CNN, 9 April, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/entertainment/ellen-degeneres-quarantine-jail-trnd/index.html.
McLaughlin, Elliot C. “Christina Grimmie’s killer was obsessed with her, police say.” CNN, 22 June, 2016, https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/22/us/christina-grimmie-the-voice-orlando-police-end-investigation/index.html.
Miller, Matt. “The Year Star Wars Fans Finally Ruined Star Wars.” Esquire, 13 December, 2018, https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a25560063/how-fans-ruined-star-wars-the-last-jedi-2018/.
Nicolaou, Elena. “Whatever Happened to Yolanda Saldívar, Selena Quintanilla’s Killer?” Oprah Magazine, 30 March, 2020, https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/a31881895/yolanda-saldivar-now/.
Owoseje, Towin. “‘Coronavirus is ‘the great equalizer,’ Madonna tells fans from her bathtub.” CNN, 23 March, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/23/entertainment/madonna-coronavirus-video-intl-scli/index.html.
Palmer, Amanda. The Art of Asking. Grand Central Publishing, 2014.
Puente, Maria. “Sandra Bullock’s convicted stalker kills self after a standoff with police.” USA Today, 3 May, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2018/05/03/sandra-bullocks-convicted-stalker-kills-self-after-standoff-cops/577013002/.
Respers France, Lisa. “Quarantine and Instagram are making Leslie Jordan the star he’s always been.” CNN, 11 April, 2020,https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/entertainment/leslie-jordan-instagram/index.html.
Romero, Dennis. “’SNL’ airs first show since coronavirus shutdowns with Tom Hanks as host.” NBC News, 12 April, 2020. https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/live-their-bedrooms-it-s-snl-n1182046
Salmon, Colin. “Nepotism in the movies: it’s time to call out the acting school of mum and dad.” The Guardian, 24 July, 2019, “https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jul/24/nepotism-in-the-movies-its-time-to-call-out-the-acting-school-of-mum-and-dad.
Schwedel, Heather. “A Video of Celebrities Singing ‘Imagine’ So Bad It Can Bring Us All Together in Hatred.” Slate, 19 March, 2020, https://slate.com/culture/2020/03/celebrities-singing-imagine-video-explained.html.
Sevilla, Kate. “Iggy Azalea Had To Stop Crowd Surfing Because People Kept Touching Her Vagina.” Buzzfeed, 24 April, 2014, https://www.buzzfeed.com/catesevilla/iggy-azalea-had-to-stop-crowd-surfing-because-people-kept-to.
Wilbur, Del Quentin. “He once tried to kill President Reagan. Now John Hinckley says he’s ‘happy as a clam.’” LA Times, 26 March, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-hinckley-living-in-freedom-20190326-story.html.
