Babygirlification and Media Illiteracy
not everything has to have a moral lesson
The dark and mysterious Twitter algorithm noticed me hovering over a Tweet about Succession for just a moment too long, and now I almost exclusively get show-related content on my ‘for you’ feed. While this generally only posed an issue when I hadn’t yet caught up with the latest episode (and subsequently had to ban myself from the platform until the situation had been resolved), it has given me an extensive insight into the ecosystem that is the Succession fandom.
Turn to your left and you’ll see a fancam set to a Megan Thee Stallion song; to your right, an edited screenshot complete with sparkles, hearts and probably also Hello Kitty. There’s absolutely a self-awareness to (at least the majority) of these posts, which are so far removed from the original tone and context of the show that they’re almost unrecognisable.
The abstraction is entertaining, and contrasts neatly with the Shakespearian tragedy and intense business drama of the show itself. The internet-conscious nature of the writing (“you’re too online! You’ve lost context!”) only enhances the joke. Not only does this brand of humour exist in the world of Succession, but the characters are aware of it. They’re so online, so obsessed with their images, that they’d be familiar with Twitterspeak even if it wasn’t a part of their regular vocabulary.
At the other end of the spectrum, I just saw a LinkedIn post in which someone listed the business lessons they’d learned from Succession—entirely unironically. I would say that this is far more deranged behaviour than giving Roman cat ears. The Roys may know about fan edits, but there’s no chance they’re using LinkedIn.
There have been a lot of critiques of the Succession fandom and how it engages with the show in recent weeks, with a GQ article facing quite a bit of backlash. The argument is that fans online are unable to separate fact from fiction, and are at once taking the show far too seriously while also ignoring the repulsiveness of characters’ actions. While there’s an interesting point to be explored and valid criticism to be made here, the article manages to avoid most of these in favour of dismissing an entire form of pop culture engagement as unintelligent and vapid.
The tweets cited in the article are poor examples of what the author is trying to prove. “succession writers please let shiv win ONCE” is not an actual critique of the writers or an indictment of the narrative, and reading it as such shows a lack of understanding as to how many people speak about media online—it’s a misinterpretation of a perceived misinterpretation.
The article ends by explaining that the characters are complex and flawed, and that the show won’t deliver justice or redemption to any of the characters (it was published pre-finale). It’s phrased as if this should be a revelation to the poor fools who are so engrossed in the show that they have, indeed, lost context.
For the most part, though, the people livetweeting episodes, vehemently taking sides in the Tom/Shiv divorce and rooting for a certain character to ‘win’ aren’t delusional. Viewers may get somewhat over-involved with and over-attached to characters, but there’s a separation between what happens on screen and the edits circulating Twitter the next day.
A broader criticism of fan culture, and something facing a significant level of media attention, is the babygirlification of characters. ‘Babygirl’ is generally used as an adjective to describe a male character who has a certain quality, a certain babygirlishness to him, that can’t be expressed in any other way. Despite my frequent use of the term (like many things in life, it’s gradually integrated itself into my vocabulary), it’s hard to define it. Sometimes, someone is just so babygirl.
Although generally harmless, decreeing someone ‘babygirl’ can become a form of moral sanitation. There’s always some celebrity or another being heralded for being, depending on the era you’re in, a smol bean, babygirl, or some other diminutive phrase that frames them as innocent, harmless and infallible. While I think that the use of babygirl is more self-aware than its predecessors*, it’s a new word for an old sentiment and still points, to some degree, to the purity ideals that have snuck their way into so much of fan culture and online media criticism.
For the most part, the majority who are engaging with entertainment in this way are just having fun. That being said, it’s true that some reactions to plot points demonstrate a complete lack of media literacy and a detachment from the content people are purportedly fans of. There was genuine shock after the final few episodes of Succession, where viewers were reminded that these are pretty horrible people who have few qualms crossing moral, ethical or legal boundaries.
Succession takes making horrible people engaging and sympathetic to extremes. The characters you find yourself hoping to (literally) succeed commit heinous acts, and have no consideration for anyone outside of their tiny bubble. Yet despite their selfishness, their deplorable actions, their irrevocable words, you find yourself feeling sorry for them. A son breaks down at his father’s funeral; a wife discovers her husband has betrayed her; the world is pulled out from under a man’s feet, again and again. Being given an insight into these characters at their best and worst, offered hints as to why they act the way they do, makes it difficult to view them from an objective lens. We care, because they’re well written.
Trying to reduce characters to simply ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is not only a terrible way to consume media, it’s an insult to actors and writers alike. Characters are constructed to be complex, multifaceted—human. Wanting and choosing to read all stories as fables that need to have highlighted and underlined moral messages and characters who remain firmly within the camps of good and evil makes it impossible to enjoy any narrative designed for a child over three. Entirely removing moral ambiguity or intricacies from plots or characters would leave most forms of entertainment drab and dull, yet it seems to be what certain groups yearn for.
Some of the earnest, outraged critiques I’ve read suggest that people have begun to ignore the source material itself in favour of seeing it exclusively through the lens of fan-produced, babygirlified content. It’s common to see people desperately try to justify a (fictional) character’s misdeeds so that they feel secure in their love of the (not real) character without corrupting their ethics. It may be difficult to believe, but you can root for a (made-up) character and still think that their (fictitious) actions are awful. Any attempt at a hyperbolic example would fall flat here—think of one, and someone’s probably said it.
When it became impossible to avoid the fact that Roman was gunning for a fascist presidential candidate in the last few episodes of Succession, the illusion that some viewers had of his character was shattered. They weren’t able to justify his actions or reconcile their babygirlified version of him with what they were seeing on screen. Instead of acknowledging their own misreadings of the show, many turned on the writers and claimed a lack of character consistency or faulty plotting—ignoring the context and buildup of the four seasons they’d watched, gifed and edited over the years.
This form of engagement, where fan interpretation and moral purity is valued above the creative team’s work, is not limited to the babygirl phenomenon. Shiv’s ending was decried as sexist, the writing of her character misogynistic and inconsistent, purely because she didn’t fulfil the girlbossing ideals that viewers had imprinted onto her. No matter the fact that she was more of a girlfailure than a girlboss, the narrative not giving a woman a happy ending and showing some warped, simplified form of ‘justice’ marked it as morally corrupt and, therefore, bad TV.
I don’t think that there isn’t a ‘wrong’ way to engage with and criticise fiction—there is, and it’s growing in popularity. That being said, it’s unfair to tar an entire form of engagement with the same brush; enjoying a glittery Kendall Roy edit doesn’t mean you can’t separate fact from fiction. Implying that this form of modern media interaction, primarily engaged in by younger female audiences, is inferior to others is a somewhat pretentious and non-fun-loving view to take. It’s also unsustainable, given that social media is such a driver of viewing ratings and popularity.
An inability to see source material and fan interpretation as two distinct, often incompatible entities and the push for moral purity in fiction could be a genuine threat to the entertainment industry and how media is criticised, but dismissing swathes of contemporary fan culture isn’t going to fix that problem. Morally complex characters and babygirlification can, and should, exist in tandem. Reaching a point where audiences can hold both perspectives in their mind at once? That’s where the challenge lies.
*A side note—typing out the words ‘smol bean’ was cringe-inducing on a borderline physical level, which makes me wonder whether ‘babygirl’ will also fall into the pits of abandoned internet-speak within the next decade. Perhaps as it’s a repurposed rather than specifically-created phrase it will ride out the storm of overuse and remain in circulation.
I believe in Tom Wambsgans-Princess Di fancam edit supremacy