ABSTRACT
Despite Benjamin Woo’s recognition that “things are the sine qua non of fandom, that without which it remains only potentiality and not a realized capability” (2014: 1.3), the relationship between fandom and merchandise has received very little critical attention from scholars. Matt Hills theorizes that this diminished focus is due to the perceived relationship between merchandise and consumerism that has dogged fan cultures and which fan scholars have worked so hard to recuperate by emphasizing fan productivity at the expense of fan consumption practices (2014: 1.1). Hills also suggests that “material fandom” has traditionally been gendered male and been seen as complicit with official media industry conceptualizations of acceptable fan behavior (i.e. filial devotion to reproducing the text; loyalty to corporate brand owners and licensed merchandise), while fan scholarship has largely been informed by feminist approaches that focus on the work done by marginalized communities in challenging and disrupting the scriptural economy (1.3-1.4). Only very recently has there been a turn toward studying “object-oriented” fans, though the tendency has been to focus on maker and craft communities (see Rehak 2013, Hills 2014, Godwin 2015) rather than the role of merchandise within fan culture. There has also been general disregard for how some crafty fans have emerged as “fan-trepreneurs” (Scott 2014) seeking to capitalize on their fandom by—among other things—developing businesses that sell ‘fan-made merchandise’ to other fans (See Jones 2014 for exception).
