Popular Culture Fandom: Broadening the Picture

This chapter covers some aspects of popular culture fandom, and provides examples to illustrate how diverse this field is. While Chap. 5 focused more closely on film and screen fandom, in this chapter we look predominantly at popular music—including Morrissey, Elvis Costello, and the Eurovision Song Contest—but we will also touch upon Terry Wogan’s Terry’s Old Geezer’s and Gals (TOGs) and actor David Suchet’s relationship with Hercule Poirot fandom. The music examples in particular are linked to fan engagement on social media, but instead of treating these online fan activities as expressions and performances of homogeneous “communities,” we will view them as rather casual points of individual engagement with fellow fans and the artists or “scenes” they support. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.