1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910754895603321

Autore

Fathallah Judith May

Titolo

Killer Fandom : Fan Studies and the Celebrity Serial Killer / / Judith May Fathallah

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Bethlehem, PA : , : mediastudies.press, , 2023

©2023

ISBN

9781951399238

9781951399245

9781951399252

9781951399368

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (i-xii+244 pages) : 9 illustrations, 7 tables

Collana

Media Manifold Series ; ; vol. 2. , 2832-6202 , 2832-6199

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Available through mediastudies.press.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction --- 1. Fanlike Engagement before Fan Studies: Personators, Collectors, and Groupies --- 2. Textual Poaching to Discursive Formations: Serial Killers and Fannish Creation --- 3. Affect, Bonding, Boundaries: Is There Serial Killer Fan Community? --- 4. Killer Fandom and (Sub)Cultural Capital --- 5. Serial Killer Fandom as Digital Play --- References --- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

Killer Fandom is the first long-form treatment of serial killer fandom. Fan studies have mostly ignored this most moralized form of fandom, as a stigmatized Bad Other in implicit tension with the field’s successful campaign to recuperate the broader fan category. Yet serial killer fandom, as Judith May Fathallah shows in the book, can be usefully studied with many of the field’s leading analytic frameworks. After tracing the pre-digital history of fans, mediated celebrity, and killers, Fathallah examines contemporary fandom through the lens of textual poaching, affective community, subcultural capital, and play. With close readings of fan posts, comments, and mashups on Tumblr, TikTok, and YouTube, alongside documentaries, podcasts, and a thriving “murderabilia” industry, Killer Fandom argues that this fan culture is, in many ways, hard to distinguish from more “mainstream” fandoms. Fan



creations around Aileen Wuornos, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and Richard Ramirez, among others, demonstrate a complex and shifting stance toward their objects—marked by parodic humor and irony in many cases. Killer Fandom ultimately questions—given our crime-and violence-saturated media culture—whether it makes sense to set Dahmer and Wuornos “fans” apart from the rest of us.