ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the insight forwarded—seemingly unwittingly—by Best Worst Movie. While all fan engagement is ambivalent at this most basic structural level, certain forms of fan engagement are ambivalent at the content level as well. Fan studies scholars focused on positive affect, that is to say on like and love, have also acknowledged and thoughtfully explored tensions between and within particular fandoms. Ambivalent fan engagement isn't ineffable, of course. While the usual suspects in English—camp, irony, anti-fan—fall short, there are plenty of ways to express appreciation for "glorious failure." The layers upon layers of ambivalence undergirding "My Immortal" exemplify how difficult ambivalent fan engagement can be to engage—providing further context for why so few academics have engaged with this type of content. Scholars writing about anti-fan engagement have focused on the complex shadings of dislike, derision, and outright disdain.
