This week’s lectorial and reading was centred around fandom’s and the culture of the fandom audience. The Henry Jenkins reading on Harry Potter was very interesting to read about the extreme fandom culture that Harry Potter has created. In my pop culture class we explored this further with cultural studies professors arguing that pop culture is created more from the community that uses the culture more so than the product itself . I tend to agree with this statement and it’s a lot nicer way to think about where pop culture and most current western culture as it gives a lot more power to the people and less to the giant media companies like Disney.

I can’t say I was ever heavily invested in the Harry Potter fandom and hype that was around with the books, most likely due to my lack of interest in them. One series I was invested in and its culture was the Lord of the Rings. I love reading about the insanely large fanbase and community that is built around people’s love for J.R.R Tolkien’s books and the extraordinary films that followed. There is everything from music festivals based on the music of the series to the entire town of Hobbiton being not only a visitable location in New Zealand but is a main tourist attraction for the country.

It is incredibly interesting learning about fandoms and the extreme cultural communities that are created from media texts, which seem to be becoming more and more prevalent in society.

“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” – Bilbo Baggins.