Fan·dom /ˈfandəm/ Noun:

the fans of a particular person, team, fictional series, etc. regarded collectively as a community or subculture.

 TRIGGER WARNING:

Racism, Fetisization of the LGBTQ+ community, and Nazism.

Fandoms are by far one of the most common aspects of pop-culture. It only makes sense- as humans we crave to be around people who have the same ideals as ourselves. If you were to look at your friends, for example, you would see that you two would have some of the same ideals, and likely would also enjoy certain aspects of the same fandom. But the thing is, everyone eventually leaves a fandom. They move on to others, and continue to grow into better interests. However, what would happen if those fandoms you enjoyed in the past turned out to be toxic? If it happened to still be going strong, despite being forgotten by just about everyone? In this article series we will be exploring such fandoms. For this week’s topic, we will be discussing the CountryHumans fandom- a fandom laced with racism, forced representation, fetishizing P.O.C. ‘s and the LGBTQ+ community, and blatant cultural appropriation to determine: ‘Is this Fandom Okay?’

The World of CountryHumans

CountryHumans is a fandom based upon humanizing countries, with its main “characters” being the United States, Canada, The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, Poland, Japan, China, The USSR, The Third Reich, and South Korea. The fandom itself is mainly focussed on the countries and their “personalities”, along with shipping the countries with each other. Already, there are multiple issues with condensing an entire country into just one singular “person”, but it also raises issues with the main characters- they are predominantly white countries, with the very few non-white main characters being from East Asia, along with being extremely stereotyped (as seen with Japan- shown left).

Representation in CountryHumans

To begin, we will be talking about the lack of non-white countries represented in the community. Before the fandom itself was banned from the website FANDOM ( a website that keeps a database full of nearly every fandom in the world), there was an itinerary of all the countries present in the fandom, but when it came to African Countries, there were very few represented. Despite the countries being present in the fandom, there is very little information available on them, compared to extremely white countries, such as Great Britain or Russia. When their FANDOM site was still active, despite there being over fifty African Countries, about half of the African countries didn’t have a page at all. 

The Characters

Along with the obvious lack of non-white countries, there are also issues with the character descriptions. When looking at Saudi Arabia’s wiki page there’s multiple issues, such as, “Iran is a stupid heretic Shiite. Shiism is wrong Islam! You are no better than terrorists!”. While there are extreme issues going on with Saudi Arabia and Iran, there is still no right for someone to sit down and write a religiously derogatory sentence as a way to humanize both racism and religious intolerance and try to make it funny. For a bit more context as to why this is not okay, there are two main sects of Islam: Sunni and Shia. Iran is largely Shia Muslim, whereas Saudi Arabia views itself as the leading Sunni Muslim power. Due to the contrasting sects of Islam, this has lead to religious sectarianism between the two countries- which led to war and bitter relations; not something to humanize and try to make it funny and cute.

Shipping?

Now we move on to one of the issues that occur in every fandom; shipping. Shipping is basically rooting for two or more characters to be involved with each other romantically. It’s commonly accepted among people that shipping real people is not okay (such issues occur in the Hamilton and MineCraft Youtuber fandoms)- but what about shipping real countries? One of the main issues that have been found in the CountryHumans fandom is the characters’ relationships with each other. For instance, due to international relations between countries, and the fandom itself being based around the revolving relations, there’s bound to be extremely weird stuff. However, it’s the art itself that many people have issues with. The fandom itself has been accused of fetishizing the LGBTQ+, through their various ships (Russia and America, Nazi Germany and USSR, Britain and France, etc), which are all predominantly same-sex couples. The fetisization of the LGBTQ+ comes from the erotic media produced from the fandom, many of them not depicting same-sex relationships accurately. The fetish art, as dubbed by members of the LGBTQ+, has brought on more negative stereotypes against same-sex couples (as explained here in greater detail).

Questionable History

Unfortunately, we now have to talk about what is perhaps the worst issue with the fandom, which prompted the creation of this article. When you have a character based on an actual country, you cannot ignore the history that happened there; and this is specifically shown in the case of Germany and Russia. The fandom is not adverse to bringing to light the darker parts of world history- in all the wrong ways. Seeing a humanized version of Nazi Germany and USSR is not uncommon to see when browsing fandom art- and for obvious reasons this is not okay. Nazi Germany is responsible for the death of over six million people, and to make “cute”, “funny”, or fetish art about it humiliates the victims of WW2. Then there is the issue with the USSR; the regime that killed millions of people, being made into a “cutesy” character- one that glorifies the major issues that were present in that society. Adding such trash to the fandoms, along with humanizing it, is belittling worldwide tragedies.

So… Is this fandom okay?

From racist characters, fetishizing P.O.C’s and the LGBTQ+, to making literal Nazi fetish art, its safe to say that this fandom is not doing okay. But that’s not to say that everything about the fandom is all bad- though you have to try extremely hard to find any positives. 

While one would be able to argue that one could use CountryHumans to teach history, or that it’s just some people making art- and therefore is not anything to take seriously, it’s the hyper-sexualized art and extreme racism has made it impossible to be taken lightly In all, this fandom is not doing okay, and it has earned its place as one of the most un-okay of them all.

Sources:

       Images belong to their respective owners.

• “Saudi Arabia- Countryhumans.” Countryhumans Wiki, 26 Aug. 2021,     countryhumans.miraheze.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia. Accessed 10 Feb. 2022.
• “Iran-Saudi Arabia proxy conflict.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Iran%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_proxy_conflict#:~:text=The%20rivalry%20today%20is%20primarily,the%20leading%20Sunni%20Muslim%20power. Accessed 10 Feb. 2022.