When tourism comes to you (but you still have to go get it, dawg): The Rickmobile and transmedia tourism/fandom

Booth, Paul 2019. When tourism comes to you (but you still have to go get it, dawg): The Rickmobile and transmedia tourism/fandom. JOMEC Journal (14) , pp. 91-105. 10.18573/jomec.177

Preview

PDF - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (801kB) | Preview

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Rickmobile as a site of mobile media pilgrimage and fan tourist destination. The Rickmobile is a mobile, pop-up merchandise car themed and designed around eponymous Rick Sanchez from the cult cartoon Rick and Morty. As a material fan object and as an object of fan tourism, the Rickmobile becomes a site of overlapping discourses surrounding the historical context of cult merchandising, media pilgrimage, and social media ‘pre-textual’ fan reporting (Hills 2015b). At the same time, it problematizes traditional fan studies’ examinations of active and passive fan labor. This paper argues that the Rickmobile functions as a pseudo transmedia extension, allowing fans to create one type of active Rick and Morty fan experience, but to be used as a different type of passive industrial Rick and Morty experience.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Fandom; Merchandising; Mobile Advertising; Social Media; Branding; Tourism; Consumer Culture; Transmedia
Publisher:	Cardiff University Press
ISSN:	2049-2340
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	8 January 2020
Date of Acceptance:	24 October 2019
Last Modified:	14 Aug 2023 00:59
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/128350

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item