ABSTRACT
For years after its initial publication, Fred and Judy Vermorel’s book Starlust (2011 [1985]) provided the main source material for academic discussions about popular music fandom. After considering the book’s impact, this chapter uses it as a case study to compare three academic perspectives on dedicated audiences: the mass culture critique, notions of transformative work, and a neo-Durkheimian approach. In many ways, these three perspectives are distinct. Ideas related to mass culture tend to dismiss fans as dreamers, dupes and addicts swindled by commerce. In cultural studies, new ideas emerged in the 1990s to challenge this perception and reposition fans as members of a socially and politically engaged, resourceful community who routinely transform what is given to them by media producers. NeoDurkheimian approaches provide an alternative explanation for fan behaviour that places emphasis on mutual understanding between fans and their heroes: a ‘combined effort’. From this viewpoint, fandom and celebrity are different aspects of a larger psycho-social system that redistributes interpersonal attention in pleasurable ways. Durkheim’s work can be used to hypothesize an affective motive for fan behaviour that contradict tenets of the mass culture critique and fill gaps in the transformative works paradigm. While the Vermorels’ book prompted reviews guided by mass cultural thinking, this chapter explores the extent to which statements offered by Starlust’s contributors might be used to support a neo-Durkheimian perspective.
