Is Chappell Roan right to call out fans for their behaviour?

Chappell Roan is the latest celebrity to call out fans for crossing the line, such as getting too personal in the comment section and invading her privacy in public. But many onlookers believe this is just the price of fame.

Today on Commotion, culture critics Niko Stratis and Tyler Foggatt join musician Eliza McLamb to talk to host Elamin Abdelmahmoud about the norms of fan behaviour today, and if anything can be done to change them.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: A few weeks ago, Halsey wrote this piece where they said, "fans have been meaner than anyone else on the planet." It's interesting to me that Halsey and Chappell Roan are both artists who have made a very conscious choice to say, "I'm going to separate my persona on-stage from my persona off-stage," in an attempt to say, "I want to protect myself from what might happen if the fame goes too far."

Tyler, would you expect that intentional separation would give them any protection in real life? Or have we kind of gone past that, you think?

Tyler: I think we're a little past that. After Chappell posted that video explaining how uncomfortable she was with what's been happening, I saw someone tweet that she should dye her hair and start wearing a wig when she performs, essentially advocating for a Hannah Montana-type thing, because maybe that would actually help separate the stage persona from her private self. I think it probably would take something like that, where she's not so recognizable on the street, for people to actually take the separation seriously. I just don't think that people buy that anymore.

Elamin: I appreciate the Hannah Montana reference, because I often sing The Best Of Both Worlds, and I kind of go, this doesn't sound like a realistic thing, Miley. Sorry to say, that doesn't exist — this division between Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana.

Some artists do the thing where the promise is all-the-time availability…. The job is to increase the reach. But then sometimes when you're increasing the reach, that also increases the amount of entitlement that some people might have. How do you reconcile the idea that you are trying to reach more people, Eliza, but you're also trying to say, "That's not the thing that I'm promising you."?

Eliza: I think we're at a really interesting time in history and time to be famous, because I think some of it is just built into how we make people famous and how famous people have to interact in the world. The famous person used to be on your television screen, and there is an innate separation when you see someone like that, being like, "Oh, they're in a different world. They're not like me." Totally different when we think of Chappell Roan. She was on TikTok making silly videos like the rest of us in 2020. That kind of integration, I think, makes everything kind of collapse when that's true.

For me as an artist, I actually find it much more respectful to be honest with people about the fact that I am not their friend and I am not their employee. I am an artist, and I would prefer that they interact more directly with my work rather than the projection of the person I am that they are receiving on their end. I think parasocial relationships are certainly incredibly lucrative, and are a lot of people's ticket to this exploding fame. I think of Taylor Swift, who somehow makes friendship bracelets feel at home in a stadium. But also, she's written several albums about how horrible it is to be a person who everyone wants to take a photo with and who people feel that kind of intimacy with. So, it's a balance.

Elamin: The Taylor Swift example, I think, is an interesting one…. She seems to still want to hold on to the attention and the energy and the people who are like, "Yeah, we can still ask a lot of you," but some people just know when to not go too far. What's your read on this, Niko?

Niko: She has this remarkable ability to make every single person feel like they're the special one who's she's not talking about, right? If a fan's acting in a way that she doesn't like, they don't feel like they're that person, that's somebody else. But if she's talking about somebody that she has a connection to, it's easy to see yourself in that because you want to be reflected in her light. It sounds like I'm describing a demigod, and I promise I'm not.

Elamin: You kind of are.

Niko: I kind of am, to a certain degree. But this is part of what makes her so successful, right? Everybody feels like they belong to her. It's why I always describe myself as "Taylor agnostic," because it is so church-like, in that there's a community around it. And that community is very supportive, and it sort of allows itself to either keep itself in check or use its power for whatever force they determine, whether it's running journalists off the internet or fighting Ticketmaster.

This has been a hard thing for other people to manage and maintain. It's why nobody hears from Mitski anymore. She left the internet and music once she attained this level of fame of:"This doesn't make me feel like a real person. I'm going to back out."

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jess Low.