How to Love an Actor Without Becoming Deranged
Our parasocial relationships are a treasure, but we don't always know what to do with them.
My friend A. and I harass each other all day with the worst photos of our favorite actors that we can find. The best ones earn a thumbs-down react or simply “No.” The criteria are pretty simple: whether it’s a pouting portrait, a still from behind the scenes, a cringey ad or a genuinely awe-inspiring spread, into the chat it goes. I think we’re entering our third or fourth year of this.
Even though we’re in different time zones, A. and I also watch shows together. We’ve just finished The Story of Kunning Palace, a time-travel palace drama with the flimsiest of gestures toward not being about time travel. I suggested it because these days, I’m inhaling everything I can find with my new favorite fella, 6'3" STEM nerd Zhang Linghe. Up to now, he’s mostly played upright young gentlemen constrained by their own unimpeachable reputations. Not so in Kunning Palace — he’s living it up as a terrifying, scheming and jealous court official who is also… deeply horny.
It’s lovely to forget that actors are people entirely outside their characters. The distance and the tension between a portrayal and a person is really interesting to me, not least because there is no knowing famous performers. The carefully curated persona presented in profiles, interviews and even paparazzi snaps is no closer to an authentic relational partner than the fictional person we love onscreen. When they’re in public, actors are also bite-sized for our convenience. This is the cost of admission.
It is strange, though, to watch how we consume actors. I’m an expert fangirl; I’ve collected a string of future husbands since high school. I have spent so much time chasing down every interview and photoshoot and fun fact about my English-language favorites. Venturing into Chinese-language fan spaces was like landing in Oz — so many more colors, so many more memes, so many more wild moments that are actually super normal.
America: We are cowards.
My gateway cdrama was The Untamed, which is perhaps unfair. Not every series gets multi-country concert tours or the most chaotic spinoff boy band you’ve ever seen. Even so, once I figured out character and then actor names (greatly juiced along by the subtitles), I was ready to cannonball into the fandom. Collectively obsessing over a story or a performer is deeply fun, and it’s a great way to make friends. When I finally identified my ADHD a few years ago, my lifetime of chasing emotional intensity through latching onto media made so much more sense.
Maybe I’m old — I’ve been doing this online since Yahoo! Groups and LiveJournal. But even with my stimulus-seeking brain, I was not ready for the basic language of video and social media in c-ent!
There is always background music. If there’s empty air, be worried: someone’s about to get jump-scared or ambushed.
There is almost always something animated going on in the frame. It’s almost always lovingly teasing the subject.
Especially funny or surprising moments will be repeated three times in a row. There will be sound effects layered in (expect a lot of “Eh?” and “What!”).
There is no mundane fancam moment that can’t be stretched into a 30-second slow-motion video with a pop song underneath it.
I don’t know who’s endlessly remixing these scraps of actors’ workdays, whether it’s fans of their own accord or studios (publicity teams) for the actors themselves. But you’ll find these rules hold for interviews and variety shows too — and that’s where Anglophone entertainment media really falls down in comparison.
If boundless charm could power clean energy, actors would have stopped climate change decades ago. In the U.S., we have not harnessed that charisma for its next-best purpose: making professionally beautiful people endure bewildering team-building exercises on camera. Most of the time, variety shows throw together a jumble of celebrities, making them travel through foreign countries, work on a farm, go undercover, participate in childcare or compete in ridiculous costumes. They can get high-concept too: my favorite Korean variety show teams up five celebrity introverts and five famous extroverts to see how they handle personality-driven challenges (absurd obstacle courses, exquisite corpse-style cooking, crying competitions, surprise camping with high-stakes trivia).
Most of the young cast of The Story of Kunning Palace dropped into a resort in Hainan for a six-episode special called As You Wish, sponsored by a blueberry yogurt drink, which they obligingly endorsed between hijinks. Fans could submit tasks or asks for the actors; obviously, by the end of one installment, every guy has shown off his abs or lack thereof. This is where we learn that my fella Zhang Linghe, so intimidating and conniving as Junior Preceptor Xie Wei, is actually kind of a dingus (affectionate). It’s an excellent venue for carefully contextualized vulnerability, the kind that makes you feel fond, like you’re friends with such-and-such an idol. These shows are a product, but they’re so engaging, and they prolong the drama’s relevance.
Okay, but…
There’s a honeymoon period with any hyperfixation where you chase down every new bit of information and media you can find. You watch a lot of interviews and press gaggles. You realize how absolutely amazing fans around the world are: the artists, responsible for weekly digital masterpieces, group projects like tarot decks and even limited runs of stuffed toys and plastic standees; the collectors, who archive and pass along updates and photos from Weibo; the translators, who help us across language and culture barriers in their free time, unpaid.
It’s thanks to these communities that I can inhale all this content — and much of it is content, with a specific marketing aim. Actors and their management companies diversify their risk with product endorsements. Celebrities have social incentives for only promoting high-quality products, as significent subsets of consumers rely on celebrity credibility to differentiate between commodities. Brand ambassadorships can stack up for the most successful actors: last year, Xiao Zhan topped the industry with 31 luxury sponsors. One 2019 survey found that nearly three-quarters of Chinese fans are willing to support their idols through shopping. This can become tricky for both actors and consumers; scandal can strike down an entire career in a matter of hours, including if an idol’s fans are behaving badly, totally separate from the actor’s own conduct.
Fans feelings ownership over their idols is universal. When I was younger, I used to be so disappointed when I found out my favorite singer or actor smoked cigarettes, because didn’t they realize it would ruin their skin/lungs/voice/etc? It’s way more demoralizing when you find out someone is an asshole or worse. I never freaked out or demanded explanations if that celebrity was found to be dating someone, though. It’s possible this makes me terribly old.
I don’t know if tying admiration for a celebrity so closely to consumption makes audiences objectify that celebrity more. A fanbase can be tens or even hundreds of millions of individuals just within China, which makes it statistically more likely that stalkers, grifters, casual cruelty or just plain poor behavior can float to prominence. I do, however, remember a moment during one press event for The Untamed, in which journalists shouted questions at the entire cast of young men, almost all in their early 20s. “What is your waist measurement?” one called out.
Oh, I thought. They’re treating these boys like women.
Touch grass… or maybe roll around in it
One of my first jobs after college was calling collections for a web hosting company. It was wretched, as you can imagine, but it taught me the first step in digging up contacts for customers with out-of-date or incomplete profiles. The first time I looked into the WHOIS data for my favorite band’s website, I found the drummer’s home address, email addresss and phone number, just hanging out in public. It didn’t feel good. I definitely resolved then and there not to use my powers for evil.
Loving a celebrity is loving a story. Stories are networked, communal and personal. For me, the healthiest way to satisfy my instinct toward enthrallment is recognizing what’s really tickling my brain. First: yes, I love it when they’re hot. Topline actors are gorgeous for a living, and I’m so glad to know about and celebrate all my future husbands. But also: Zhang Linghe keeps making shows about identity shenanigans (dual personalities, competing twins, hiding your motives, concealing your origins, coming of age). Lee Soo-hyuk, who came to acting from modeling and fashion, likes to explore monstrosity (as a vampire, as a grim reaper, as a chaebol, as an ambitious prince). Bai Lu plays prickly, brilliant women wrestling with whether the ends justify the means. Shin Hye-sun loves forceful, unconventional troublemakers who come to realize who and what they actually want.
We care about the same narratives! yells some part of my brain. We’re not peers except in the grand scheme of things, but I am inspired. When my novels come out, ask me then who I’ve cast in which roles through the process. It is beyond acceptable to just wallow in how good a show or a celebrity makes you feel — you don’t have to produce anything to make it valid or worthwhile. But transforming that feeling is the most fun for me. Doing it with other people makes it even better.
Even though I’ve met celebrities I admire before, the thought of being perceived in return now sends me running for the hills. When I find out a foreign-language-to-me actor speaks English well, I’m immediately convinced they’re going to find all my thirst tweets and misunderstand me. Maybe we’ll run into each other when they’re touring or I’m on vacation and They’ll Know I Have Thoughts About Them. Celebrities really are built different. To me, the desire or even just the willingness to be famous, to take on being so visible and such a vessel for other people, is about as inconceivable as wanting to be president. We are not the same! But we are, a little. I can take it from there. ✶
Important boilerplate for the people
Thanks for reading Excited Mark! I’d love to hear from you about this essay and this project overall. If you’d like to support my work, please share, toss a few bucks at my Ko-Fi or become a paid subscriber. I’m also available for hire as a fact-checker, editor and journalist — visit my RealName.com for clips, services and more. Most appreciated!
As a person who doesn’t ever do fandoms, I find this fascinating! Your writing is lovely, and now I’m going to go watch some trailers for the shows you mentioned.