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Prof. KindaMuzik: The Ballad Of Mark Chapman

Can one find a structural logic in the way fans behave? Does being a fan automatically create circumstances in which one could cross a moral line? How does murder connect with the 'crazed fan' trope?

Tekst: Mark Duffett

Publicatiedatum: 02 februari 1999

In recent years, extreme fans have been stereotyped as stalkers. Common sense suggests that fandom raises desires that cannot be consummated – desires eventually inflected into feelings of impotence and rage. To many, this seems self-evident. The ‘crazed fan’ trope is based on an emotional pathway held together by logical connections. It resonates with famous cases of criminal behaviour. Nevertheless, it deserves to be questioned. This piece will return to a reference point frequently used to ‘prove’ that fandom itself (rather than any particular individual) has a dark side waiting to emerge under the right circumstances: Mark David Chapman’s shooting of John Lennon.

To what extent did the mental journey of Mark David Chapman fit into the ‘crazed fan’ trope? Jack Jones’s 1992 book Let Me Take You Down is based on more than two hundred hours of interviews conducted with Chapman from prison over a five-year period. It shows that the story of Lennon’s killer bares some similarities to the ‘crazed fan’ idea. Chapman had been a Beatles fan and did resent Lennon (albeit for betraying his image rather than being too remote). Eliminating John Lennon was a way for Chapman to avenge the star’s phoniness and to regain a sense of identity and self worth, because he saw himself as a ‘nobody’ suffering the effects of a howling mental tornado. To observe such similarities with the ‘crazed fan’ idea, though, says little about Chapman’s own fandom.

Although Chapman was an adolescent fan of the Beatles, his interest did not trigger his murderous desire. More than a decade passed between Chapman’s spell as a Beatles enthusiast and his fateful trip to New York. During that time he developed various cultural identifications. He became a dedicated follower of Todd Rundgren, who hated Lennon. “I left The Ballad of Todd Rundgren in the hotel room in New York City,” said Chapman, “I can’t describe what it meant, it was so poignant. I was always trying to get people to listen to him.” On the surface, then, it would therefore appear that Mark Chapman was a ‘crazed fan’ of Rundgren, not Lennon. Equally, he began to identify with Holden Caulfield, the fictional hero in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Neither his fandom for Rungren nor identification with Caulfield caused him to kill John Lennon, however. Chapman’s periodic mental instability created his urge.

Mark David Chapman did not begin as a sane fan that turned psychotic. He was a figure with a lifelong history of mental illness. He heard voices inside his head and took counsel from an internal committee of imagined figures that he called the ‘Little People.’ He dabbled heavily in psychedelics and other drugs, flirted with alcoholism and went through phases of intense desperation. By the time he began to think about killing John Lennon he had been put into a psychiatric hospital, prayed to Satan in the nude, tormented his wife and engaged in other eccentric activities. At his trial, the first mental-health professional to meet Chapman said he had suffered from confusion and agitation about himself, depression, mood fluctuations, paranoid tendencies, suicidal thinking and rage.

Unstable people do not create their mental realms from scratch. They live in the same culture as the rest of society and build their own eccentric rationalizations within it. Chapman’s adulation for the Beatles, his admiration of Todd Rundgren, his identification with Holden Caulfield and even his view of Lennon as hypocrite were not particularly eccentric. What was unusual was the way that he assembled them to solve his inner problems. His fandom for the Beatles did not cause his murderous hatred; although he thought Lennon betrayed the Beatles, he did not kill him for their sake. Equally, he only posed as a fan at the Dakota building to close in on his target. In fact, Chapman the impostor made a poor fan. He acted and dressed more ‘normal’ than Lennon’s real fans, and seemed more talkative and outgoing.

The killing of John Lennon did not prove that a dedicated fan could become frustrated enough to entertain violent impulses, yet it remains a touchstone because it fits the stereotype that fans cannot separate fantasy from reality. Fred Vermorel, for instance, claimed in his influential 1985 fan mail compilation, Starlust, that, “It is hardly surprising, when stars offer themselves so lavishly for ‘consumption’, that some fans will take the invitation literally… Lennon’s killing (and its publicity aftermath) appears less an aberration than the following through of a cultural logic implicit in showbiz itself.” The questionable assumption here is that Chapman followed the script of the industry by becoming a fan that ‘consumed’ his idol by killing him. Vermorel implies that regardless of mental illness, the killer was not fully responsible for his mission. His motive was already supplied by the illusion of ‘mass-produced intimacy’ created by a hypocritical entertainment industry. In an explanation that made stalking the logical extremity of fandom and fandom the mistaken belief that the industry should be taken at face value, Mark Chapman’s personality disorder was ignored.

There are meaningful differences between consuming and killing a celebrity. Fans are as likely as other sane people to recognize where the lines are drawn. If some are resourceful and devious in their efforts to get closer to their stars, it does not mean that they have unrealistic expectations and will eventually start harassing their idols. Cases like the killing of John Lennon fall apart on close examination for a simple reason: there is no inexorable logic of fandom that can lead an otherwise sane person into stalking behaviour. The stereotypes persist because they normalize non-fans and reflect the anxieties of contemporary culture. Back in the 1960s obsessive fans were portrayed as groupies because society feared female promiscuity. The stalker has become a central archetype because we lament the ubiquity of celebrity, the easiness of stardom, and the growing significance of the media in controlling our view of the world.

Mark Duffett (m.duffett@chester.ac.uk) is a senior lecturer in media and cultural studies at University College Chester. [His PhD thesis deals with the relationship between Elvis and his fans. He has previously worked for Sony Music, the Discovery Channel and the BBC World Service.] His interests include popular music studies and fan culture.

http://www.kindamuzik.net/achtergrond/709/prof-kindamuzik-the-ballad-of-mark-chapman-8099/8099/
Meer op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/709