What Big Fan teaches us about Fandom

Well it’s that time of year again. The beer is cold, the face paint is on, and emotions are roaring as we get ready for another football season. Plus it’s great to finally have something to watch on Sundays again. It’s clear that football is a staple in our society. The time, the effort, and the money that is put into this one activity is quite astounding when you sit back and look at it.

It becomes so encompassing in some people’s lives they lose grip on actual reality. Football develops into the one shining beacon in otherwise miserable lives. The film Big Fan analyses that fact and examines what it truly means to be a fanatic.

Big Fan stars Patton Oswalt as Paul Aufiero a 35-year-old parking-garage attendant from Staten Island. Paul, who still lives with his mother, considers himself the world’s largest New York Giants fan. He looks at his fandom, not of something of pure enjoyment, but as a duty he was gifted with. He carries out this duty with this false sense of pride. In fact his love of the Giants is the only place he is able to find any type of self-worth.

Almost daily he calls a local sports radio talk show to provide his most recent diatribe about the greatness of the Giants and the horridness that is the Philadelphia Eagles. He does become somewhat of an On-Air celebrity and begins feuding with his born rival Philadelphia Phil. They continue to go back and forth to prove whose team and fandom are superior.

Paul’s biggest and perhaps only fan is his best friend Sal, played by Kevin Corrigan. Sal is the only person in Paul’s life that shares his passion for the Giants. They spend the majority of their day talking, watching, and thinking about Giant’s football. The rest of Paul’s family considers him a loser that has done nothing with his life. They have no understanding of why Paul dedicates so much to this game.

One day through a random encounter Paul and Sal spot of one of the Giants’ star players. Seeing this as a chance to meet one of their idols they follow him to a local strip club. Through some misunderstanding, Paul ends up being assaulted by this football star and sent to the hospital. While there Paul is questioned by the police but is unwilling to give up the name of the person who assaulted him. His fandom is put to the ultimate test. Does he forsake the team that he loves knowing it will mean impending doom or given into the pressure of the police and his family?

Big Fan is a dark satirical look into a world that is so common yet still unknown. There’s a fine line between being a fan and living in a fantasy and this looks at what happens when that line is crossed. While Big Fan is categorized as a comedy it’s not full of laugh-out-loud moments. The comedy comes from the absurdity of their characters and their actions. Not absurdity in the way of over-the-topness, but absurdity in the pathetic realness that is put on display.

While the topic here is football it can easily be changed with a number of different subjects where passionate fans exist. Video games, comic books, sports, etc… all have a section of fandom they all like to pretend doesn’t really exist. They are the type of people who spend the majority of their day on social media spewing tasteless remakes in an attempt to verbal assault victims they don’t even know. It’s this underbelly of the world that only shows itself in its natural habitat of the internet.

Paul is the perfect example of where this line of thinking can take us. When people unknowingly and knowingly place something of no real value over their own well-being. I myself am I football fan, a Giants fan to be exact, and understand the grievance that occurs when my team loses. Luckily I have enough mental stability to eventually get over my team’s latest disappointment. (Though it can take some time) What this film does so well is show what happens when someone is unable to regain composure when their team fails. It allows us to see the effects of when someone, whose life is full of misery, puts all their hopes and desires into something you can’t control.

That is often what we see with fandom today. When people define their personalities based on their fandom it can leads down a treacherous path, especially if a property differs from what they expect and know. If a franchise like Star Wars attempts to detour or evolve away from what a fan has already defined it as it becomes a personal attack and they respond in kind. Someone may hate the current run on Spider-Man or Batman but will not stop because it is engrained in them as something they must do to sustain happiness even if it brings the opposite. Not all fans or fandom are like this but you do not need to look far to find those who have become delusional over nonsense.

Patton Oswalt is perfect for this role. He is completely absent of any narcissistic qualities and willing to emotionally humiliate himself. Though the world would consider his character a loser, Oswalt realizes the character would be numb to that fact. He places a large scale of importance on his actions, while the rest of the world has no care about the outcome.

Robert Siegel, who also wrote The Wrestler, constructed this screenplay. You can see a lot of similarities between the two stories. They are both simplistic and down to earth so we can focus on the characters. Each replaces the Hollywood style and polish with grit and despair. While The Wrestler focuses on someone who is attempting to return to former glory, Big Fan is about someone who achieves glory through the accomplishments of others.

Any fan of football or fan of anything would do themselves a service by watching this film, and couldn’t help but relate to the anguish and love the characters go through. It allows you to examine your own life, and how much importance you put on the game of football.

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Daniel Clark

A fan of all things comics. Growing up on a healthy diet of 90's Batman and X-Men cartoon series ignited a love for the medium that remains strong today.