Pop Culture Fandoms

This single-volume encyclopedia analyzes a variety of fan cultures, from anime to Star Wars to professional wrestling, and the devoted individuals who participate in them. * Presents a diverse perspective on pop culture fandom * Includes Inside Perspectives essays written by devoted fans to show first-person, behind-the-scenes details * Highlight facts and figures within each entry, giving additional, valuable context to readers * Offers images and illustrations to serve as visual references for anyone curious about how specific groups may appear to the world

Split into four sections, Seeing Fans analyzes the representations of fans in the mass media through a diverse range of perspectives. This collection opens with a preface by noted actor and fan Orlando Jones (Sleepy Hollow), whose recent work on fandom (appearing with Henry Jenkins at Comic Con and speaking at the Fan Studies Network symposium) bridges the worlds of academia and the media industry. Section one focuses on the representations of fans in documentaries and news reports and includes an interview with Roger Nygard, director of Trekkies and Trekkies 2. The second section then examines fictional representations of fans through analyses of television and film, featuring interviews with Emily Perkins of Supernatural, Robert Burnett, director of the film Free Enterprise, and Luminosity, a fan who has been interviewed in the New York Magazine for her exemplary work in fandom. Section three explores cultural perspectives on fan representations, and includes an interview with Laurent Malaquais, director of Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony. Lastly, the final section looks at global perspectives on the ways fans have been represented and finishes with an interview with Jeanie Finlay, director of the music documentary Sound it Out. The collection then closes with an afterword by fan studies scholar Professor Matt Hills.

Being a fan helps people to discover their identities, find friends, develop a sense of belonging, express themselves creatively, and act as powerful creators and participants in a capitalistic system. At times, however, being a fan becomes problematic, especially when clashes with other fans occur both inside and outside of their fandoms and fan communities. As their communication becomes contentious, power imbalances destabilize collectives and fans experience fear, sadness, pain, and harassment. Such problematic situations can become “fractured fandoms.” Fractured Fandoms: Contentious Communication in Fan Communities observes the problems or fractures that occur within and between fandoms as fans and fan communities experience differences in interpretation, opinion, expectation, and behavior regarding the object at the center of their fandom. The book demonstrates the fractures through an examination of self-interviews, collected news stories, and previous research regarding these problems, ultimately providing an assessment of the causes and effects of such fractures and the larger social and cultural issues they reflect.

This book explores popular music fandom from a cultural studies perspective that incorporates popular music studies, audience research, and media fandom. The essays draw together recent work on fandom in popular music studies and begin a dialogue with the wider field of media fan research, raising questions about how popular music fandom can be understood as a cultural phenomenon and how much it has changed in light of recent developments. Exploring the topic in this way broaches questions on how to define, theorize, and empirically research popular music fan culture, and how music fandom relates to other roles, practices, and forms of social identity. Fandom itself has been brought center stage by the rise of the internet and an industrial structure aiming to incorporate, systematize, and legitimate dimensions of it as an emotionally-engaged form of consumerism. Once perceived as the pariah practice of an overly attached audience, media fandom has become a standardized industrial subject-position called upon to sell box sets, concert tickets, new television series, and special editions. Meanwhile, recent scholarship has escaped the legacy of interpretations that framed fans as passive, pathological, or defiantly empowered, taking its object seriously as a complex formation of identities, roles, and practices. While popular music studies has examined some forms of identity and audience practice, such as the way that people use music in daily life and listener participation in subcultures, scenes and, tribes, this volume is the first to examine music fans as a specific object of study.

This book offers a media ethnography of the digital culture, conventions, and urban spaces associated with fandoms, arguing that fandom is an area of productive, creative, and subversive value.

This is the first book to apply the concept of ‘contents tourism’ in a global context and to establish an international and interdisciplinary framework for contents tourism research. The term ‘contents tourism’ gained official recognition in Japan when it was defined by the Japanese government in 2005, and it has been characterised as ‘travel behaviour motivated fully or partially by narratives, characters, locations, and other creative elements of popular culture forms including film, television dramas, manga, anime, novels and computer games’. The book builds on previous research from Japan and explores three main themes of contents tourism: ‘the Contentsization of Literary Worlds’, ‘Tourist Behaviours at “Sacred Sites” of Contents Tourism’ and ‘Contents Tourism as Pilgrimage’ and draws together these key themes to propose a set of policy implications for achieving successful and sustainable contents tourism in the 21st century.

Cult Collectors examines cultures of consumption and the fans who collect cult film and TV merchandise. Author Lincoln Geraghty argues that there has been a change in the fan convention space, where collectible merchandise and toys, rather than just the fictional text, have become objects for trade, nostalgia, and a focal point for fans’ personal narratives. New technologies also add to this changing identity of cult fandom whereby popular websites such as eBay and ThinkGeek become cyber sites of memory and profit for cult fan communities. The book opens with an analysis of the problematic representations of fans and fandom in film and television. Stereotypes of the fan and collector as portrayed in series such as The Big Bang Theory and films like The 40 Year Old Virgin are discussed alongside changes in consumption practices and the mainstreaming of cult media. Following this, theoretical chapters consider issues of gender, representation, nostalgia and the influence of social media. Finally, extended case study chapters examine in detail the connections between the fan community and the commodities bought and sold. Topics discussed include: The San Diego Comic-Con and the cult geographies of the fan convention Hollywood memorabilia and collecting cinema history The Star Wars franchise, merchandising and the adult collector Online stores and the commercialisation of cult fandom Mattel, Hasbro and nostalgia for animated eighties children’s television

Fan CULTure explores how present-day fans interact with the films, television shows, books, and pop culture artifacts they love. From creating original works of fanfiction to influencing the content of major primetime series through social media, fans are no longer passive consumers. They have evolved into active participants in creating and shaping these works. The all-new essays in this collection provide in-depth analyses of how fans interact with such popular franchises as Harry Potter, Lost, Supernatural, Lord of the Rings and Joss Whedon's Serenity, and examines as well topics not based on media-like fans of LEGO building blocks, Disneyland, and NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.