Swarm: Bop or Flop?
- Emelah the Blogger
- Mar 26, 2023
- 6 min read
Is this an accurate critique of stan culture?
Thriller, 7 episodes, TV MA
Released: March 17, 2023
Starring: Dominque Fishback, Chloe Bailey, Damson Idris, Billie Eilish
Created by: Janine Nabers, Donald Glover
What’s it about? An obsessed, Houston-based fan goes to increasingly violent lengths for her favorite R&B singer.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85% | IMDb Score: 7.3/10
Bop or Flop? Initially, I had mixed feelings about this show. It definitely misses the mark, but I think it makes way for conversations on Black female representation and stan culture, though not in the way it intended.
The limited series follows Dre, who is obsessed with pop superstar Ni'Jah (obviously modeled after Beyoncé) and kills damn near anyone who disrespects her. Deeper into the show, there are little connections made between her being a Ni'Jah stan and her being a serial killer. We don't really understand why she feels drawn to Ni'Jah in particular, or why she feels the need to kill for her.
If anything, Dre seems more obsessed with her foster sister Marissa, who dies by suicide in the first episode - though there are theories that Dre is actually the one who killed her. By the end of the series, it's established that Dre is an unreliable narrator and that everything we've seen from her perspective might not have been the truth.
Though it was not intended by the writers, some of Dre's behaviors read as autistic, which still doesn't explain her sociopathic murders, but rather her lack of social cues and awkward social life.
Further, Dre is a victim of the foster system, which we see through the lens of a mockumentary in the second to last episode. Though, as her case worker points out, her growing up in the system is also not an excuse for her being a serial killer.
While I found her caseworker's rebuke of the foster child to sociopath trope valid, after reading the creator's intentions behind the show, I am left confused and disappointed.
Donald Glover, who has previously been criticized for his remarks on Black women, stated in a Vulture article:
“I kept telling her, ‘You’re not regular people. You don’t have to find the humanity in your character. That’s the audience’s job...think of it more like an animal and less like a person.’”
“Actors in general, they want to get layered performances. And I don’t think Dre is that layered… I wanted her performance to be brutal. It’s a raw thing. It reminds me of how I have a fear with dogs because of how I have a fear with dogs because I’m like, ‘You’re not looking at me in the eye, I don’t know what you’re capable of.’”
Clearly, his mindset has not evolved. He can't even pronounce Beyhive correctly. And co-creator Janine Nabers is not off the hook, either, though her idea of Dre starkly differs from that of Glover's. This is the way she described Dre:
She is deeply misunderstood. She feels connected to two things in her life, her sister Marissa and the artist Ni’Jah, and they go hand in hand. The pilot tells a story of that very clearly: She is a little bit of an alien, a fly on a wall in her own universe, and she is a little mute at times. We don’t exactly know how she’s processing reality or emotion, but we do know that she feels for the music and she feels for her sister, and that is her humanity.
Nabers also mentioned the show being a "love letter" to Black women, and that she loves Beyoncé. Creating a poorly executed show about a Black woman serial killer stan was a weird way of showing love and representing Black women. There were lots of real instances from Beyoncé's real life parodied in the show, and even a part about Dre stripteasing to a song about Ni'Jah's miscarriage. (I understand that was supposed to speak more to Dre's obsession rather than be a diss to Beyoncé, but many argue that joke didn't have to be included).
Additionally, every episode of the show with the exception of one, had "a true foundation for its murder." This intermixing of truth and fiction was not only confusing, but unethical. The real life murders that inspired Dre's murders weren't all related to stan culture.
What was the point of the caseworker scene defending her if there was intentionally no humanity developed for Dre's character? What was the point of that scene if there are still harmful tropes within the show that correlate trauma, sexuality and mental disorders with harmfully obsessive and violent behavior?
Tropes aside, stan culture is so dangerous, we can tell the truth about it without going to allegorical extremes. Though the Hive has had a few notorious moments, there are fanbases who are worse than the Beyhive, and take their harassment further than Twitter (Cough, cough Barbz... Selenators... Beliebers).
But since this is obviously about Beyoncé, it should have at least acknowledged the reason why the hive goes so hard for her.
Because I am in the Beyhive, I know how crazy we can get. I also will argue that the Bey stans have the most valid reason to stan in comparison to any other fanbase - Beyoncé is arguably the greatest artist to grace this earth, which I explain in in a different blog, Bow Down Bitches!
Beyond her talent, she has created space for Black women to be their fully confident, excellent selves. Her most recent album, Renaissance, was a tribute to Black gay and trans people, who are also some of her biggest fans. What she represents can easily make one emotional, and feel the need to protect, at times even sting. She is mother, Queen Bey and while everyone is entitled to their opinion, there are many instances where criticism against her feels unwarranted or rooted in misogynoir.
Of course, there are levels to being a stan. This is not to say sometimes the hive doesn't take it too far. There are a few instances that come to mind:
Beyoncé's publicist had to step in after the Hive came for Nicole Curran after talking to Jay Z at a basketball game
Some Hive members mistook Rachel Ray for Rachel Roy and attacked her for being an alleged homewrecker
The hive tanked ratings of Trick Daddy's restaurant because he said Beyoncé couldn't sing
Honestly, I'm surprised some of these moments didn't make it onto the show. But stan culture is much bigger than Beyoncé and her fanbase, which this show fails to explore. In the last few years, we've seen it become big enough to enter the courtroom. Take the way Johnny Depp stans and Tiktoks seemingly had influence on his defamation trial against Amber Heard.
Other than these real life impacts of stan culture, Swarm, I would have also liked to see more of how lonely stans can be in real life. There are times no one understands your affection for the artist like your online peers but it's not always a real community. You don't necessarily know these people for real, but you can feel like you're a part of something. Stan culture is nuanced and vast, and there are instances where you can make real friends and throw real events, such as album listening parties, or watching videos together, etc.
For the sake of this show, though, I think the lonely stan narrative makes sense. Dre was written with a lack of humanity, without any redeemable qualities, and without real motive. Every character needs a backstory. Every character needs a motive, an explanation, fictional or not, justified or not.
In the last episode, Dre has completely transformed - physically and mentally - now named Tony and presents as a trans man. With this evolution, there is hope. Tony is in a relationship with Rashida - a smart Black graduate student with a loving, accepting family. Can Tony live a normal life? Not for long. Rashida doesn't like Ni'Jah, which she reveals upfront but lives through the night. And through the week. Months even. Though Tony is more patient than Dre, Rashida shares the same dark fate as naysayers who came before her, when Tony strangles her after she rejects tickets to a Ni'Jah concert.
The show ends with Tony burning Rashida's body, killing again to get tickets into the concert (as the one's he spent rent money on burned with Rashida), and bombarding Ni'Jah onstage. Ni'jah calls off her guards and Tony ends up in the limo with Ni'Jah and sees Marissa's face.
Because of the episode that comes before it, we know that Tony was actually arrested for rushing onstage and linked back to all the murders committed over the course of the show.
I think a more effective plot would have consisted of Dre having more redeemable qualities, starting as a relatable stan and ending as a dangerous one. Take us on the journey of how she got to be so deep in the swarm to the point of no return. Bonus points to further depict how other swarm members enabled or encouraged the sociopathic behavior.
Ultimately, the plot was a flop for me as it didn't prove its own thesis, or understand it fully. However, the visual elements and acting performances were positive takeaways. Dominique Fishback is an incredible actor who gave us a feast off of bread crumbs.
All episodes of Swarm are streaming on Amazon Prime.
Emelah's Score: 🎥 🎥
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