words, like dakimakura, were made to lie with

Yes. Obviously. He characterizes these fans as self-absorbed, socially deficient, intellectually incurious, emotionally dependent on formula, and “excruciatingly boring.” That is not neutral description. It is a negative judgment about their character and the way they live.

2. Does Ebert imply that a depth of knowledge about a fannish subject is inherently bad on its own?

Not quite. His stated objection is to people using expertise as a display of devotion, a source of status, or a substitute for broader interests and spontaneous social interaction.

I would argue that the rest of the review makes his position a little more clear, though.

3. Does Ebert state that this pattern of behavior is a quality of all fans?

No. He says “a lot of fans,” “extreme fandom,” and “such people.” He is identifying a type of fan, not making a literal universal claim.

4. Did the reader see a mildly critical opinion containing the word ‘fandom’ and immediately succumb to an emotional reaction rather than fully read and engage with the passage?

Calling people socially inept, intellectually empty, self-absorbed, and excruciatingly boring is not “mildly critical.” It is openly contemptuous.

A person can understand the passage perfectly well and still object to it. Disagreement is not evidence of failed reading comprehension, no matter how many condescending bullet points one wraps around the accusation.

5. Did the reader see the words ‘socially inept’ and immediately assume this refers solely to autistic people? Why or why not?

“Socially inept” does not mean “autistic,” and Ebert does not explicitly mention autism.

But the behaviors he associates with social deficiency overlap heavily with stereotypes about autistic people: intense specialist interests, encyclopedic knowledge, reliance on predictable conversational scripts, and difficulty improvising socially.

The word “solely” is doing dishonest work here. The relevant question is not whether the description refers exclusively to autistic people. It is whether Ebert treats traits commonly associated with autistic people as evidence that someone is socially or intellectually defective.

6. Is the job of a cultural critic to ‘let people enjoy things?’

No. Critics are allowed to criticize fandom, fan culture, consumer identity, nostalgia, and the social uses people make of art.

Readers are equally allowed to criticize the critic’s assumptions, generalizations, and contempt. “A critic’s job is not to let people enjoy things” does not mean every hostile remark made by a critic is therefore insightful.

There is also a rather important contextual omission here. Ebert did not write this as a general essay about fandom in the age of twitter, harassment campaigns, shipping discourse, or whatever present-day fandom behavior the quotation is now being aimed at.

He wrote it in his February 4, 2009 review of Fanboys, a road comedy set in 1998. So this is a late-2000s review discussing a particular stereotype of 1990s fandom. The film follows a group of friends who plan to break into Skywalker Ranch so that their terminally ill friend can see The Phantom Menace before he dies. Ebert’s argument is that the movie identifies too closely with its heroes and should have mocked them more. The rest of the review makes his position much less ambiguous. He calls their fandom “an idiotic lifestyle,” describes them as “tragically hurtling into a cultural dead end,” dismisses their knowledge as having “no purpose other than being mastered,” and ends with a joke about their mothers cleaning up after them.

Two little girls playing gently with a daddy long legs.

Girl 1: can it die?

I’ve been patient X for all of C’s healing. She gave me mushrooms when I was 15 and put me into wheel pose and then we went skinny dipping. She’s released my trauma in a waterfall. She’s bathed me in loving energy with oils and crystals. I’ve gone to her psytrance full moon nights. I’ve made ceremonial chai with all her friends. I’ve watered her ayuhuasca. She’s read my tarot. We’ve done yoga. We’ve meditated and prayed. I’ve written down my manifestations for her. We’ve spent entire nights discussing the future of her child, how she can be the best mother possible, how she could support them unconditionally and protect them from all evil. She’s taught me to abseil and we’ve burrowed through sea caves then got stuck in rips kilometres from the shore and too early for lifeguards. I’ve carried 15kg of ice barefoot from the servo through the rainforest in torrential downpour so we could brew our potions. Every speaker at her wedding crowed over this adventure princess winning the heart of the macho career man and dragging him to freedom and spontaneity.

Dad and I visited C and D today. Nobody was meant to: C wanted to follow the TCM tradition of forty days in bed after (home) birth, and thirty of those days alone with her husband. Well, one of the two grandmothers has been sleeping over every night, and C was stir-crazy going on walks by day five. They are struggling. From the moment I entered I was folding laundry, holding the baby, doing more laundry, trying desperately to clear a patch of floor among these hundred loads of wet or clean or dirty laundry laying around, and C started talking about some mould somewhere, more and more urgently, but I guess we didn’t really get it until it became apparent that she wouldn’t have anywhere to sleep tonight if the black mould hadn’t been cleaned out of her bedroom or bathroom. So her and I spent all day up a ladder in the heat, scrubbing off the mould, and also cleaned out some cupboards and sort of co-mothered the baby— she took me outside and asked if I could burp him, and was it okay for me to put a cloth down on my shoulder, because he was going to throw up on me. Basically I was very, very, very in the middle of things. My dad was sitting down, annoyed because he’d wanted to go to the beach. C kept calling D over in this pleading tone, but she was wearing this giant gas mask (because of the mould), so he kept not hearing or yelling WHAT? If she asked him to do something he’d sigh loudly, or not do it, and none of us had eaten, and he wasn’t like, for example, let me at least get some water or electrolytes or FRY A COUPLE EGGS for my psychotically sleep-deprived, depressed, two-weeks-postpartum wife who’s up a ladder right now and who’s been doing everything while I’ve been riding my motorbike to the gym. (In the end I set out some drinks and food.) But like, how do you let mould get that bad? Why hadn’t they at least given the walls a wipe down before the (HOME) birth, when this godawful tumour hadn’t metastasised quite so Stage 4ly? Their ensuite walls and their spa bath in their integrated open-plan bedroom-bathroom set in a sea of dark bare floor where they’ve been sleeping with the humidifier on and it’s too deep into the bush to pay to call a cleaner out. And then C and D started arguing in front of me, C saying, all the laundry is contaminated and we need to wash it all again, D saying, what are you talking about, you’re losing control, you’re going too far. C crying, I’m not losing control. C thinking for a while and then going to him and demanding, why are you working against me? At one point D told us through a gritted-teeth smile: see, C has all these big plans and ideas, which are one thing, but then reality is another thing, isn’t it C? Isn’t it! And the baby hasn’t had it easy: weight loss and lots of reflux.

I visited A and B at about the two-weeks-postpartum mark too, and I remember them offering me tea, then sitting outside with me for about twenty minutes, letting me play with the baby a little, asking me about my life, then saying bye bye, it’s our nap time, thanks for visiting. Baby is totally copacetic, always has a blast in her playroom full of carcinogenic pink plastic bullshit. (C and D have banned toys, TV, radio, advertisements, school.) A had a smooth hospital birth. No extra care needed, and she was pretty quickly back to her runs and drinks with the girls. B has never spoken to me about his inner life, I don’t imagine he’s in the business of it, I’m on the outside. With C (and D) I am always deeepppp on the inside. Too deep, it’s a bad trip, I’ve taken just a smidge too much, the big dark empty house is full of mould, the nontoxic cleaning products are inoffensive and useless, a smile turns sour, the baby vomits, the ritual reopens a cesspool of images, the raw flesh is turned out, forty days in bed, eighteen years in homeschool, the one you love calls you paranoid, tension erupts from a stretched-taut platitude.