Fans and Fan Cultures: Tourism, Consumerism and Social Media

234 Pages·2017·3.852 MB·English

by  Henrik Linden, Sara Linden (auth.)

HENRIK LINDEN
SARA LINDEN
FANS AND
FAN CULTURES
Tourism, Consumerism and
Social Media
Fans and Fan Cultures
Henrik Linden • Sara Linden
Fans and Fan
Cultures
Tourism, Consumerism and Social Media
Henrik Linden Sara Linden
University of East London Goldsmiths, University of London
London, United Kingdom London, United Kingdom
ISBN 978-1-137-50127-1 ISBN 978-1-137-50129-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-50129-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016959758
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
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For Bengt Lindén
Contents
1 I ntroduction 1
2 Fans, Followers and Brand Advocates 9
3 Fans and (Post)Subcultural Consumerism 37
4 Text and Representation: The Community and the 
Individual 61
5 Celebrity Culture and Modes of Participation
Through “New” Media 85
6 Fans and Tourism 105
7 Football Fans: Representations, Motivations and Place 131
8 Popular Culture Fandom: Broadening the Picture 169
vii
viii Contents
9 Social Media: Millennials, Brand Fans and the 
Branding of Fans 187
10 C onclusion 215
Index 225
List of Figures
Fig. 7.1 V iew from Green Street of the Boleyn Ground,
Upton Park, 2016 (Photo: Henrik Linden) 153
Fig. 7.2 Anticipation ahead of West Ham-Arsenal, 2016
(Photo: Henrik Linden) 163
Fig. 8.1 Elvis Costello at the London Palladium, 2016 (Photo:
Henrik Linden) 173
Fig. 8.2 Australian Eurovision fans, Stockholm, 2016
(Photo: Joakim Bengtsson) 176
Fig. 8.3 Eurovision fans from Sweden and Finland, Stockholm, 2016
(Photo: Joakim Bengtsson) 179
Fig. 8.4 French Eurovision fans, Stockholm, 2016 (Photo: Joakim
Bengtsson) 180
ix
1
Introduction
An interview in 2016 in The Guardian with American director, screen-
writer and producer JJ Abrams starts with the interviewer, Jonathan
Bernstein, explaining that “JJ Abrams isn’t just a geek” as he knows
how to incorporate “intimate character moments” into his work (which
“elevates” him “above the geek herd”). The piece ends with Bernstein
showing how Abrams took an “awful question” (Abrams was asked if
he believes he has made—or will make—anything as good as the films,
TV programmes and books that inspired him) and “turned it into an
opportunity for a candid, vulnerable moment,” which is put forward as
“the reason JJ Abrams isn’t just a geek” (Bernstein 2016, pp. 8–11). The
term “geek” is not otherwise used in the article—instead the term “fan”
is used, with Abrams stressing how grateful he is for the “passionate and
obsessive” Star Wars fans who are “so involved” with the franchise, and
stating: “I’m one of them” (Bernstein 2016, p. 10). However, the explicit
separation of the successful Hollywood director from the “geek” fan—
not once, but twice—implies that there is a tendency in public discourse
to continually refer to, at least certain types of, media fans as “other” and,
in fact, less-rounded human beings inept to deal with the full range of
emotions.
© The Author(s) 2017 1
H. Linden, S. Linden, Fans and Fan Cultures,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-50129-5_1
2 Fans and Fan Cultures
In his book The Culture of Narcissism, first published in 1979,
Christopher Lasch critiques what he sees as the narcissistic nature of
consumer capitalism in America, and the increasing difficulty for “the
common man” to come to terms with “the banality of everyday exis-
tence” (Lasch 1979, p. 21). To counter this “banality,” Americans have
thus become “a nation of fans, moviegoers” and mass media is said to
“intensify narcissistic dreams of fame and glory” (Lasch 1979, p. 21).
This implies that Lasch makes a direct connection between narcissism
and fandom, and this connection has been made by many authors since.
For example, in their chapter “The Online Community: Fan Response of
Community’s Unlikely Fifth Season,” media researchers Matthew Collins
and Danielle Stern (2015) argue that their findings confirm that at least
some fans of the American television sitcom Community can be classified
as narcissistic, as they want to “see themselves” within the show. They
write: “These fans feel that Community is a smart show, and that they
are smart people, and they have to tolerate and put up with anyone else
who does not enjoy the show” (Collins and Stern 2015, p. 120). A study
conducted in a different field, psychology, argues that one of the reasons
for people to engage in geek culture may be to “maintain narcissistic self-
views” (McCain et al. 2015). The study concludes, rather bluntly, that
the “findings suggest that geek media is especially attractive to narcissists,
independent of demographic variables.” It further states that “we have
also found geek engagement to be related to subclinical depression, mak-
ing it potentially relevant to clinical psychologists as either a cause or a
potential remedy for depressed mood.” Although this study springs from
a field that has not particularly engaged with geek culture previously,
it also confirms the often fairly conservative nature of science studies,
adhering as it does to a traditional—and largely outdated—conception of
fans as “ill” and in need of treatment to overcome the obsession with their
object of fandom (so that they can direct their attention towards more
important things). It is therefore not surprising that the study gained
widespread media publicity, with articles appearing in The Independent
as well as The Daily Mail, the latter stating that “it seems those who have
taken part in the mass outpouring of geek culture surrounding the new
Star Wars films have merely been pandering to an ingrained tendency
for narcissism” (Gray 2015). In the first wave of fandom studies in the