Killer Fandom: Fan Studies and the Celebrity Serial Killer

by Judith May Fathallah

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.

Genres: Sociology

256 pages, Paperback

Published November 4, 2023

Reviews

[laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fathallah explica, de una manera precisa y cautelosa, el fenómeno de los asesinos seriales en los fandoms. A diferencia de otros varones que investigan desde el fetichismo y la misoginia, Fathallah discute las concepciones históricas de que "el killer fandom" es "moderno y de mujeres" exhibiendo como este fenómeno es muchísimo más complejo que esa mera concepción patriarcal.
Este libro es fundamental para cualquiera que quiera entender el fenómeno de los asesinos seriales en la cultura popular en la historia. Mucho mejor que cualquier otro.

[marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

very interesting but some parts of it lowkey pissed me the fuck off icl. the author sometimes vibes as too steven universe tenderqueer libfem for me and siding too much with the more.. weird side of this culture