I Built You a Shrine…

Today, despite my campaign insanity, which has included being interviewed by the French press and spending time talking with a White House staffer, I realized that we are officially in Duran downtime.  I know, I know.  I’m late.  I should have realized that on Wednesday.  Heck, Rhonda even talked about it and I’m still slow to pick it up.  Nonetheless, I thought about I would like to pass the downtime with minimum displeasure AND be productive!  After all, I will soon be focusing on things other than wards, candidates, turfs, rallies and volunteers.  The big thing that I will be putting all of my attention, of course, will be that book of ours.  One of the areas of the book that I want to expand some is the section on representations of fandom.  This won’t be the first time I have talked about this.  I did a blog way back in April of 2011, which you can find here.  During that blog, I talked specifically about the movie, Music and Lyrics.  In other blogs, we have talked about the movie, Fever Pitch, and I talked about the documentary, Something You Should Know.  Rhonda also took time to discuss the book, Talking to Girls about Duran Duran.  Yet, there are many, many other books, movies and TV that show fandom.  Thus, my plan is to take one representation of fandom per Sunday to discuss.

Of course, I have a list of what I plan to start with, but I’m sure that there are many more examples of fandom in books, movies and TV shows.  My list of movies is as follows:  Sugartown (wonder which famous bass guitarist is in that one?!), Trekkies, and Almost Famous.  I did see a movie by the name of Groupies once that I hope to track down.  From what I remember about the cover, it was some super cheesy horror film, which I’m sure presents groupies in the best of light.  Not.  The only TV show that I can think right now is Samantha Who, which again features a bass player that we might know.  For books, I have the following list:  Juliet Naked, How Soon is Forever, and I Love the 80s.  What I need for you, my dear readers, is other suggestions.  What am I missing?  What should I check out?

The other question, besides what representations should I check out, is what kinds of things should I be watching for.  The biggest thing that I will be watching for is how they represent fans.  Do they show them to be normal?  If not, what do they show them doing?  Do they show them in stereotypical ways?  If so, which stereotypes are they showing?  Are they showing just female fans?  Is there a difference between male fans and female ones?  Are they showing them to be obsessed and out of touch with reality?  Are they showing fans as unintelligent or unthinking people?  What questions am I missing?  I am obviously not expecting the representations of fans to be generally positive or well-thought out as most of these mediums are used to entertain and I realize that stereotypes are more amusing than not stereotypes. 

So, readers, we will start with something fun next weekend, Samantha Who.  I hope that this episode is available somehow, someway if people haven’t seen it or want to watch it again.  🙂

-A