My commentary will be on fandoms, which, according to Webster’s online dictionary is the state or condition of being a fan of someone or something. I will be focusing on the extreme aspect of one fandom in particular, Star Wars. It is easy to see how someone would enjoy this series. I would consider myself somewhat of a die-hard Star Wars fan, maybe even a Star Wars nerd, but even with following the series as closely as I do. I cannot seem to comprehend how someone could dedicate their life to something that is essentially a Si-Fi Fantasy. Throughout this paper I am going to touch on things such as what separates just a regular fan, a so-called nerd, and someone with a fandom. I will also go into depth about a few other things but most …show more content…
Fandoms can be considered an obsession or an addiction, which is not always bad but can be. There are a lot of people like me that follow everything, but then you have the super fans that take it to the next level. This can be caused by many things, one the leading reasons is people wanting to be a part of something. Having fandom is normal but it can turn into a dangerous addiction. I can personally testify to this, I have a buddy named Tavin from home and his family is made up of Star Wars nerds. His dads name is Jerry and he is what we would call an extreme nerd, or someone with an extreme fandom. Last time I went home I was making small talk about Star Wars and he offered to show me is collection. The first thing that caught my eye was an exact replica of Han Solo when he was frozen in carbonite, I asked him about how much it cost him, and he told me it ran him about $1,200. So, I went on to ask him how much money he has spent on memorabilia and he told me anywhere from $8,000- $12,000. I was in shock, and this didn’t include all the money he has spent going to Comicon six times. ComicCon is a festival where fans are able to express themselves completely when
He has accumulated a nice amount of net worth. He has a net worth of 120 million dollars. He is the first comedian to ever make more than Jerry Seinfeld--has changed the economy of the funny business by touring like a rock-star. He collected $90 million in 2016 and $28.5 million in 2015. Hart is the highest-paid comedian of the year 2016. His exact salary is undisclosed, but it is known that he has the highest salary as a comedian at the present time.
Through creating such a distinctive approach to music, Rivers has developed a fan base that stands out from the mainstream crowd. For the most part, a Weezer fan has a distinct look, age, emotional status, and social status. The socially inept, clumsy nerds who sport black-rimmed glasses, and are between the ages of 17-28 are usually put under the category of being a Weezer fan. The main characteristic of th...
He has really unusual wall paper (stripes & polka dots) and a bunch of trinkets sitting around. He has all sorts of little gumball machines and slot machines sprinkled throughout his residence. The house wasn't too big, seemed like your average 4-5 bedroom track home actually.
In his article “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten,” Henry Jenkins addresses the function of fandoms, more specifically the writing of fan-fiction, and further in the context of the Star Trek fandom. He claims that fans are “textual poachers” who take pieces of the original text that they deem as worthy, and rework, or improve areas that they find problematic or contradictory to the overall purpose of the piece. This “poaching” that is transformed works into fan-fiction are heavily written by females, at least in the Star Trek fandom. Jenkins states that this is due to the fact that women have a rather limited and highly stereotyped portrayal in science fiction. Thus, in writing fan-fiction, women are able to express themselves and their own
Motion Pictures have always had a strong influence in today’s culture, but maybe none as prevalent as Star Wars. Originating with Episode 4 A New Hope, the series boomed from 1977 to 2005 with yet another addition coming in 2015. The strongest of the series was the original trilogy episodes 4, 5, and 6, all generally released in the 1980s. As one of the strongest film francaises still today, it’s impact within the 1980s was only the tip of the iceberg. Children and adults alike still anticipate the new edition of this seemingly endless journey. If any singular film series still holds prevalence in its future decades it is Star Wars: Original Trilogy.
The term “fan” was originally used to describe sports fans during the nineteenth century and was later adopted by science fiction enthusiasts in the 1920s. The term “fan,” however, is used for describing a type of person who is enthusiastic, or fanatic about a certain subject. Popular fan culture, nicknamed “fandoms,” have become an integral part of society in many countries, and have connected people sharing a common interest through online communities where they can freely discuss fan related topics. Popular fandoms today include Directioners, Beliebers, and VIPs. People who are part of fandoms usually show their devotion by participating in fan conventions such as Comicon, writing fan mail, creating fan art, or by promoting their interests to others. Being a fan also comes with the responsibility of changing one’s lifestyle in order to accommodate time and energy into the fandom. Fan culture also offers people the chance to feel passionate about something or someone in order to satisfy the emotional needs they lack from their daily life.
The singer-actor-record producer is worth an estimated $80 million dollars. Rock has sold over 27 million albums worldwide throughout his career, making him one of the most successful American musicians of the last 15 years.
On an individual basis, popular culture helps establish and mold the subjective self. It influences the way individuals think, act and respond, and this becomes part of how people develop their personalities, preferences, beliefs, and their overall identity. For example, most people idolize certain fashion statements or fads which determines their preference of clothing. This process of self-formation coincides with both elements of personal choice and the responses and attitudes of others. Furthermore, the identity that an individual asserts is influenced by and helps determine the development of social relationships; it influences the communities and groups to which an individual will identify with and how that identification is processed. In the establishment of communal bonding, mass culture helps with, as Leavis describes, a “leveling down of society” (35). The lines of class distinction have been blurred which, to Leavis is not a good thing, but it unites us nonetheless. Popular culture also promotes unity in that it “blurs age lines” (29). As stated earlier, the products of popular culture are targeted towards a variety of audiences; adults read comic books, children watch adult films, etc. (Macdonald 29). Similarly, teenagers and young adults are brought together through night clubs, fashion, and music; college students come together to enjoy campus events; book fans wait in line hours for new releases, etc. Each of these instances produce feelings of belonging, acceptance and connection with members of society over a common
Fan Culture is something that has been around for a while, but it the last twenty years, since the introduction of the Internet, it is also something that has changed dramatically. A fan is an enthusiast of something and now the Internet is a good home for fans to gather and build together a community of fans, a ‘Fandom’. The turn Fandom means a community of a group of people who all enjoy them same thing and the Internet has created a place for online communities. Fan Culture has irreversibly changed the media industry because of the ability share information and fan made created content. The creation of these online based communities have meant that people from all over the world can talk about the latest TV shows, movies, books, comics and other forms of content and create groups dedicated to them. The Internet has also become a platform for the creation of a collective community, where individuals who all have shared interests can go. “Fans uses of technologies bring a sense of playfulness to the work of active reading” (2010; 12). Digital Fandoms are user-led forum of content creation, the fans create a number of things; fan fiction, fan blogs, fan made videos, fan art work, wiki leaks. The fans create a whole new life, another side of the TV show, film or book, that is complicity run and used by the fans. These fan made creation do not have to stick to what is canon in the show and can do what they wish with the character and the storylines. However is this an okay thing to do, Henry Jenkins refers to the fans who create these things are ‘Textual Poachers’. Those fans are now active interpreters instead of passive consumers. In this view the fans are poaching the created content of the writer. The fans have power to create t...
Strinati, D. (2004). An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (pp. 52-79). New York, NY USA: Taylor & Francis.
Fandom impact on life Google survey Do you ever look at your favorite book, movies, or television shows and wonder, "Has this made an impact on anyone else's lives? Ask anyone who participates in fandom culture, and they can guarantee you that it has. Many fandoms exist today due to pop culture and the internet, making it easy for fans of anything imaginable to join together and talk about characters, plots, setting, etc. with ease. These fandoms can be large, lovely places full of positivity or breeding grounds for hate and community backlash.
First of all, there are several reasons as to why social media has the potential to be extremely addictive to users. Many believe that “as in the case of other types of addiction[s], there are
Watkins, Craig. “Fast Entertainment and Multitasking in an Always-On World.” Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Seventh ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012. 97-103. Print.
Movie stars. They are celebrated. They are perfect. They are larger than life. The ideas that we have formed in our minds centered on the stars that we idolize make these people seem inhuman. We know everything about them and we know nothing about them; it is this conflicting concept that leaves audiences thirsty for a drink of insight into the lifestyles of the icons that dominate movie theater screens across the nation. This fascination and desire for connection with celebrities whom we have never met stems from a concept elaborated on by Richard Dyer. He speculates about stardom in terms of appearances; those that are representations of reality, and those that are manufactured constructs. Stardom is a result of these appearances—we actually know nothing about them beyond what we see and hear from the information presented to us. The media’s construction of stars encourages us to question these appearances in terms of “really”—what is that actor really like (Dyer, 2)? This enduring query is what keeps audiences coming back for more, in an attempt to decipher which construction of a star is “real”. Is it the character he played in his most recent film? Is it the version of him that graced the latest tabloid cover? Is it a hidden self that we do not know about? Each of these varied and fluctuating presentations of stars that we are forced to analyze create different meanings and effects that frame audience’s opinions about a star and ignite cultural conversations.
Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change” (John Podhoretz). It encompasses the advertisements we see on T.V, the clothes we wear, the music we listen too, and it’s the reason Leonardo DiCaprio has not won an Oscar yet. It defines and dictates the desires and fears of the mainstream members of society; and it is so ingrained into our lives that it has become as natural as breathing. Moreover, adults never even bat an eyelash at all the pop culture and advertising that surrounds them since it has become just another part of everyday life. Pop culture is still somewhat seen as entertainment enjoyed by the lower class members of society; but pop culture standards change over time. A notable example of this is the sixteenth century author, William Shakespeare, since his works were considered pop culture, entertainment that could be enjoyed by everyone, but now they are considered literary classics. While pop culture encompasses most aspects of our lives, its influence is most obvious through each generations reaction to media,